“We are committed to each child feeling like they’re in the front row.”

That was the vision shared by Judy Miller, the head of Raleigh’s Maas Jewish Community School. Hers is one of the newest nonpublic schools in the state, just starting its second year this fall. It is also one of the smallest; the 2004-2005 enrollment was 10 students.

Miller’s comment underscores one of the contrasts in North Carolina’s educational landscape. While the state’s public school systems and their constituent campuses have grown to massive proportions, with some superintendents presiding over student populations near 100,000, there are a significant number of small private schools attracting their own share of students and supporters. In many cases, their very smallness is key to their success.

According to data published by the state’s Division of Non-Public Education, nearly one-third of North Carolina’s 646 private schools enrolled 25 or fewer students in 2004-2005. While some of these were kindergarten programs, the majority, 167 of the 192 total, offered instruction in multiple grade levels, up to and including 12th grade.

These numbers do not include schools with special or at-risk populations, most of which report zero enrollment because their students rotate through the school in a matter of weeks or months. Neither do they include the 31,000-plus home schools, which state law treats as the smallest of small private schools.

The average school in this group comprises only 14 students and four staff members. Miller’s school is an exception; besides herself, a full-time teacher as well as the school’s administrative head, there were four full-time teachers and “many” part-time instructors, she said. This is partly due to their special mission.

“We want to be the school of choice for the Jewish community here,” she said, and so Maass begins teaching modern Hebrew in kindergarten and Judaic studies every day. The school’s website emphasizes academic excellence and growth in the students’ awareness of Jewish faith, history, and cultural heritage.

That relatively large staff, though, is anchored by three homeroom teachers, in classes of two grade levels each, grades kindergarten through the first grade, grades two through three, and four through five. “The research shows there is significant and beneficial bonding that goes on between the teacher and students,” Miller said. “This way each student has their homeroom teacher for two years.” She indicated that even as the school grows—the expected enrollment this year is “well over 20, and we’re very happy about that”—Maass will continue with the two-year classes.

Asked about the future, Miller said school officials want to continue to strive for excellence in the kindergarten through fifth grades rather than expanding too rapidly into middle school. “And we hope to have our own building someday,” she said. The school now meets in portable classrooms located on the property of Congregation Sha’arei Israel in north Raleigh.

North Carolina’s law is favorable for founding nonpublic schools. The statute is brief, outlining requirements for initial reporting, record keeping, immunization, attendance, and standardized testing. The office overseeing the law, the Division of Non-Public Education, is separate from the Department of Public Instruction, so there is no conflict between private schools and public school systems, which may consider them competitors. The private-school law is straightforward enough that when homeschooling was recognized by the General Assembly in 1988, the new option became simply an amendment to the existing statute.

However, Rod Helder, director of DNPE, points out that there are a few significant differences. The law considers homeschooling as a one- or two-family endeavor, he said; enrollment of more than two families becomes a conventional nonpublic school. While initial filing, testing, and record-keeping are very similar, conventional nonpublic schools are also liable for health and safety inspections.

That requirement occasionally trips up a new school. According to Helder, local building codes and liability insurance often have different requirements for a building used twice a week for religious services, for example, versus one occupied six hours a day by a school. Delays securing the necessary inspections can result in postponed opening dates, or even preclude a new school from opening at all.

That has not been a problem for High Country Christian School in Banner Elk. The tiny academy in the high mountains of Avery County opened its doors in 1930 and continues today.

“I know 70-year-olds in the community who attended our school when they were children,” said Eulita Heisey, head teacher at High Country. She assisted at the school herself 15 years ago, and after time in another locale, returned to Banner Elk three years ago as the chief administrator of the school.

She is the entire staff of the school. The student body consisted of six children last year, which is not unusual.

“At one time, in the 1950s, the school had about 50 students,” she said. “That is really surprising, given the size of the town and the remote location. But for the past 15 to 20 years, the enrollment has varied from about four, one year, to 15.”

Like many of its counterparts across the state, the school is associated with a local church but welcomes students from the community at large. Children of church members receive a discount—“because those families are already supporting the school, to some extent, through their support of the church”—but even full tuition is moderate; High Country charges only $1,650 per year, which includes the cost of books and annual registration fees.

Heisey’s program covers grades one through eight in a modern-day one-room schoolhouse. She speaks in the quiet, gently flowing cadences of the life-long elementary school teacher, but allows a note of surprise when asked how this arrangement works out for the students.

“It works great!” she said. “It’s great for the younger children to be exposed to what the older children are studying, and to be able to move ahead if they have aptitude. Sometimes we have the older children helping the younger ones, like a big family working together to achieve our educational goals.”

A former homeschooler herself—she taught her son at home 10 of his 12 years before college—Heisey frequently compared the atmosphere of her class with home education. Some of the challenges are the same; with multiple grades represented, “It takes a lot of planning to make sure everyone has work to do each moment,“ she said. The school depends on outside resources for activities such as music and sports, too. On the other hand, the smallness of the school is an advantage. “We treat every student as special. Their lesson plans are customized to them, much like a homeschool parent would do.”

“You know,” she said, “we can put everybody in two cars, and we can take our school outside the classroom whenever we want. We can hold class at Grandfather Mountain, or in the park downtown.”

That smallness gives them a flexibility and responsiveness that larger schools are hard-pressed to match, and it ensures a continuing niche for these tiny schools in a world of big-box institutions.

Hal Young is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.