10 Questions to Ask a Private School Before You Enroll

A private school owes your child exactly what its own handbook says it owes. Not one thing more.

That lands hard on most parents, because we assume rights travel with the child. They do not.

In a public school your child stands on the Constitution and a stack of federal statutes. Enroll in a private school and nearly all of that stays at the curb, replaced by a contract you sign in the spring and probably skim.

This is not a scandal. It is the same freedom that lets a school open in prayer, teach a book the district would never approve, and hire only people who believe what you believe. Plenty of us are paying for exactly that freedom, gladly.

But you are also buying whatever else is in the document. Which is why the tour cannot answer your real questions, and the paper can.

The short answer#

In a private school your child's protections come from the enrollment contract and the handbook, not from the Constitution. So ask only questions that can be settled with a document, in the four places values actually collide: what the school teaches, what it believes about your child, how it corrects, and what it costs to leave.

A school that hands you the paperwork before you apply has told you something real. So has the one that will not.

What this guide covers#

• Why the paper outranks the tour
• The 10 questions to ask before you enroll
• What your child keeps and what your child gives up
• When values collide
• The money question almost nobody asks in time
• Five mistakes good parents make
• How to run the visit
• Frequently asked questions
• The bottom line

Why the paper outranks the tour#

A public school is the government. That one fact is the engine behind everything your child is owed there: notice and a hearing before a suspension (Goss v. Lopez), a First Amendment, a federal entitlement to special-education services.

A private school is not the government, so none of that machinery starts. What replaces it is ordinary contract law, and the contract is the enrollment agreement plus the handbook it points to.

Michelle Ball, a California attorney who has represented students since 1995, puts the consequence plainly: "In private schools, unless the school writes in a term that an expulsion hearing will be provided, a school may have no obligation to provide one prior to a student being kicked out suddenly" (Law Office of Michelle Ball).

Work through the specifics and the pattern holds:

• Special education. Federal regulation says it outright: "No parentally-placed private school child with a disability has an individual right to receive some or all of the special education and related services that the child would receive if enrolled in a public school" (34 CFR 300.137).
• Your access to records. The U.S. Department of Education says private and parochial K-12 schools "generally do not receive such funding and are, therefore, not subject to FERPA" (Protecting Student Privacy).
• Sex discrimination. Title IX reaches only a program "receiving Federal financial assistance," and even then not a school "controlled by a religious organization" where it would conflict with that body's tenets (20 U.S.C. 1681).
• Disability access. Private schools are named as public accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. 12181), but religious organizations and entities they control are exempt from that title entirely (42 U.S.C. 12187).

Same child, same age, two completely different sources of authority.

One protection does reach across that door. Federal law guarantees every person "the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts" (42 U.S.C. 1981), and in Runyon v. McCrary the Supreme Court held that this bars private, commercially operated, nonsectarian schools from refusing a child admission on the basis of race (Legal Information Institute). The Court expressly set aside the separate question of religious schools.

Now the part your family should actually want. In 2020 the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment's ministerial exception blocks employment-discrimination suits by teachers who carry out a religious school's mission, deciding for two Catholic schools on July 8 of that year (Justia).

That is not a loophole. It is the reason a Christian school can require that the woman teaching your eight-year-old about Genesis actually believes it. The autonomy is real, it is the product, and the flip side is that no government agency is standing behind you when you and the school disagree.

The landscape is enormous and wildly uneven: roughly 29,730 private schools serving about 4.7 million students (NCES), under fifty different state regimes. New York requires instruction "substantially equivalent" to the local public school's (U.S. Department of Education), while Florida tells schools the state "and local school district do not have the authority to oversee or control the curriculum" of a private school (U.S. Department of Education).

The test for every question below: if the school can answer it with a feeling, it is the wrong question. Ask what produces a document.

The 10 questions to ask before you enroll#

1. May I read the full parent-student handbook and a sample enrollment contract before I apply?

This is the master question, and the answer to it predicts the answers to the other nine. Everything binding lives in those two documents. A confident school emails them the same day.

Red flag: "We share that after acceptance." The document that governs your child should not be a reward for committing.

2. What is your statement of faith or statement of beliefs, and who is required to sign it?

Teachers only, or families too? A school where only the board signs, and the faculty need not, is a school whose stated convictions may not reach the classroom.

On paper: the statement itself, plus whatever the employment agreement and the family covenant require.

3. Who chooses the curriculum, and may I see the publishers and titles by subject?

In much of the country nobody outside the building is checking, so "who chooses" has a real answer: a publisher, a department head, or each teacher alone. All three are defensible. Not knowing which one it is, is not.

On paper: the scope and sequence, and a book list by grade with publishers named.

4. How does the school handle a student who identifies as a different sex, and where is that in writing?

Ask it calmly and ask it of every school, including the one you assume agrees with you. You want the policy text, not the admissions director's personal view.

Red flag: "That has not come up here." It will, and then it will be decided by whoever is in the office that week.

5. What does discipline look like in practice, and what has to happen before a child is dismissed?

In a private school the handbook is the due process. Whatever steps it promises are the steps you can hold the school to, and the steps it does not promise are steps you cannot.

On paper: the discipline ladder, and any language about warnings, meetings, or an appeal.

6. On what grounds can you end our enrollment mid-year, including for something a parent does?

Ask Michelle Ball how small the trigger can be and she does not reach for a dramatic example. "If a student pushes another student, they may be expelled, depending on the school's handbook." Then the one most families never see coming: "If a parent causes an uproar or yells at a teacher, the student and family may be terminated, depending on the contract" (Law Office of Michelle Ball).

Read that second sentence twice. It has nothing to do with your child's behavior. It has to do with yours, on a hard Tuesday, in an email you sent at eleven at night about a grade you thought was unfair.

I am not telling you that to frighten you, and I do not think schools go hunting for reasons. I am telling you because the version of you who writes that email has already signed something, and the version of you reading this has not.

On paper: the termination or "continued enrollment" clause in the contract.

7. If my child has a diagnosed learning difference, what do you provide, and is any of it in writing?

Warmth is not a service delivery model. Federal law gives your child no individual right to those services in a private school, so the only real answer is a written description of what this school does.

On paper: the learning-support policy, a sample accommodation plan, and who is credentialed to write one.

8. How many of this year's teachers are returning next year?

A school's values live in the people who show up in August. In the 2021-22 federal survey, 12 percent of private school teachers left the profession against 8 percent of public school teachers (NCES).

On paper: nothing formal, which is exactly why the number is worth asking for out loud.

9. Who accredits you, and what does our state require of you?

Accreditation is voluntary in much of the country, and a school can be perfectly legal and entirely unaccredited. The reason to care is downstream: credit transfer and college applications.

On paper: the current accreditation certificate, with the agency named.

10. If we withdraw in November, what do we still owe?

Ask for the number, not the philosophy. Then ask the harder version: if you dismiss our child in November, what do we owe then?

On paper: the tuition obligation paragraph and the withdrawal notice deadline.

Print it, fold it, put it in your pocket. Most of it can be answered in one meeting.

What your child keeps and what your child gives up#

Read the right-hand column twice. Half of it is the reason your family is considering this school at all, and the other half is the reason to read the contract.

When values collide#

It rarely arrives as a fight. It arrives as a policy, a new head of school, or a book on a summer reading list, and it arrives at a school you already love.

Many Christian schools handle this by writing their convictions down in advance. A typical statement holds "that God wonderfully creates each person as male or female at birth" and that "rejection of one's biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person," then spells out what that means for school culture (Northwest Christian Schools).

Whatever you think of that language, notice what the school has done. It told you where it stands before your money and your child were inside.

Worry less about the school that writes it down. Worry about the warm school with no clause at all, because the question still gets answered eventually, just later, quietly, by whoever happens to hold the office that week.

Four collisions, four documents. Ask for all four before you sign any of them.

So ask the collision question directly: what happens when a family disagrees with you about this? "We would ask you to find a school that fits you better" is honest, and it is something you can plan around. A pause and a smile is not an answer at all.

The money question almost nobody asks in time#

Most enrollment contracts obligate you for the full year. Schools write them to make parents "responsible for an entire year of tuition unless written notice of withdrawal is received by a certain deadline," and Judith Islas, an education lawyer at Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, told the independent-school business officers' magazine Net Assets that such clauses "should be enforceable" like any other agreement to pay for a service (NBOA).

Her hedge is worth as much as her answer. "There is always risk that a court will not enforce the agreement," she added, "and parents can appear sympathetic, particularly where a school has been able to replace the student."

That withdrawal deadline usually sits in the spring, months before anything goes wrong. And some contracts go further, keeping the tuition obligation alive even when the school is the one ending the enrollment (Law Office of Michelle Ball).

Sit with that asymmetry for a second. The school can generally end the relationship faster than you can end the bill.

Every question is cheap before you sign and expensive after. Ask early.

A school with a budget to protect writes contracts that protect the budget. That is ordinary, it is predictable, and your leverage still ends at your signature.

Five mistakes good parents make#

1. Touring three schools and reading zero handbooks. The tour is the marketing. The handbook is the deal.
2. Assuming a shared label means shared beliefs. "Christian," "classical," and "college prep" are not doctrines. Two schools wearing the same word can teach opposite things.
3. Asking the admissions director instead of the principal. Admissions is trained to reassure. Ask whoever will apply the policy.
4. Skipping the money questions because they feel rude. Everyone in that office has answered them before.
5. Never asking about teacher turnover. Every value a school has is delivered by a person, and people leave.

How to run the visit#

1. Request the documents by email, before you apply. What comes back, and how fast, is your first data point.
2. Read the handbook backward. Discipline, dismissal, tuition obligation. The warm parts are at the front for a reason.
3. Write your questions down and take the list in. You will forget the hard ones otherwise.
4. Ask one question you expect to like, and one you do not. How a school handles the second tells you more than the whole tour.
5. Ask to sit in on a class in your child's grade. Not the showcase class. The ordinary one, on an ordinary Tuesday.
6. Put the deposit deadline on your calendar, then sleep on it. Nothing good has ever been decided in an admissions office lobby.

The first two steps happen at your kitchen table, and they decide most of the rest.

Frequently asked questions#

My district offered a "services plan" for my child. Is that an IEP? No. A services plan is the separate, thinner document a district writes for a parentally-placed private school child who is designated to receive equitable services (34 CFR 300.132). It covers only the services that child is designated to get, not everything an IEP would provide.

Can a private school really expel my child without a hearing? Unless its own handbook promises a hearing, often yes. Courts generally treat the relationship as contractual and hold schools to the procedures they published, not to the ones public schools must follow.

Can a religious school require families to sign a statement of faith? Yes, and many do. Religious schools have broad legal latitude over belief and mission, and the Supreme Court has protected their authority over the people who carry that mission out (Justia).

Do private school teachers have to hold a state teaching license? In many states, no. Florida's rule is typical of the permissive end: "Teacher certification is not required for instructional personnel in private schools" (U.S. Department of Education). Ask what this school requires of its own hires instead.

Does accreditation mean the state has approved the school? No. Accreditation is a voluntary peer review by a private agency, and some states, North Carolina among them, do not require it at all (N.C. Department of Administration). State approval or registration is a separate question worth asking separately.

What is the single best question on this list? The first one. Ask for the handbook and the contract before you apply, and the other nine mostly answer themselves on paper.

The bottom line#

Every school will walk you down that hallway. The trophy case, the artwork, the teacher who is genuinely wonderful with children. None of it is a lie, and none of it is the agreement.

The agreement is two documents most families never read until something has already gone wrong, and by then the questions cost real money. Ask for them in February and they cost you an email.

Call it what it is: ordinary diligence, the same you would bring to anything that will shape your child for the next decade. Some schools will hand you everything before you ask twice, which tells you a great deal about how they intend to treat you later.

Your child does not belong to a school, however lovely its hallway. Your child belongs to you and, before that, to God, and the authority to ask hard questions on your child's behalf was never something an admissions office granted you.

So this week, send the email. Ask for the handbook and the contract, in full, before you apply. Then read the last pages first.