School Life

Small class sizes work. In fact, small class sizes are one of the main reasons why you send your child to boarding school. Here are some reasons why small class sizes are so important.

1. There's nowhere to hide in a small class.

Imagine your child is in a large high school class of 30-35 students. She's not good at math. Most of the students in her class don't understand math and could care less about it. So your daughter hangs out in the back of the class, keeps quiet and tries to pay attention. The distractions and cutting up going on around her mitigate against any meaningful learning. Your daughter falls further and further behind in math. Sadly, public school class sizes continue to increase in many districts as schools struggle with staffing shortages and budget pressures in 2026. Class sizes of 30-35 students remain common in many public high schools.

Contrast that learning environment with 12-14 students seated around a Harkness Table in a boarding school. A Harkness Table is an oval table. The teacher sits at the table with his students. Immediately students are placed in a situation where they have no choice but to engage and interact with each other and with their teacher. A Harkness table creates a climate for learning.

Implicit in the small teaching groups is a climate of tolerance. The views of each individual are expressed. Critical thinking skills are practiced and polished precisely because the small group allows time

One of our parental prerogatives is to worry about our children. That's probably because your child never came with an instruction manual and, as a result, you have had to learn so many things about parenting simply by being a parent. No matter, worry is part of the parental landscape. Now, if you are thinking about sending your child off to boarding school, your worries will be quite specific. Probably along the lines of the following questions.

Many parents find the concept of sending a child to boarding school upsetting; a child's adolescence is such a distinctively affective period that entrusting it to others seems wrong. Yet boarding schools prosper, successors to institutions dating to medieval times.

In 2026, those worries are still understandable. Families are asking not only about academics and college placement, but also about safety, mental health, residential supervision, social adjustment, and cost. The good news is that today’s boarding schools are built around structure, accountability, and close adult guidance.

Will My Child Be Safe?

Boarding schools take your child's safety very seriously. Contractually, a boarding school functions in loco parentis, which is a legal way of stating that the school acts in the place of the parent when it comes to supervision of its students, your child included.

In many respects, your child is a whole lot safer at school, where she cannot drive or go to somebody's house and get into who-knows-what. Drugs, drinking, and smoking are not permitted in a boarding school.

By now, two decades into the 21st century, it is obvious even to the most jaded, cynical people out there that we must rethink how we live and function on this planet, which we call Earth. We are discovering that Earth's resources are finite. We are finally realizing that we must conserve energy. We are rethinking the cost of goods and services regarding their carbon footprint. Sustainability is no longer a theory. It is a concept that is being put into daily practice. In 2026, sustainability has also become a strategic priority for many independent and boarding schools, influencing everything from campus operations to curriculum and long-term planning.

That's why it is very encouraging to see so many private schools making progress towards developing sustainable schools. For schools, sustainability involves the wise use of energy and foodstuffs, the prudent management of a school's fiscal resources, and more. The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) published an excellent white paper, Sustainability: Creating 21st Century Sustainable Schools. Let's look at the five areas of sustainability that this document puts forth. The NAIS calls these "dimensions," which is an apt description. "Area" implies a confined space. "Dimension" speaks to the challenge's vastness and the solution's scope.

Financial Sustainability

Financial sustainability is all about drawing a line and setting responsible limits. It doesn't matter whether you have $100,000 in the bank or $900 million in your savings account. Schools need to use all the expertise and tools available to them

We took our eldest daughter off to boarding school in 10th grade. That was back in the 80s. While the times were certainly different from today, our motivation for making such a major decision would be the same in 2026 as it was back then. Let me tell the story that I hope will give you the courage to send your daughter (or son, for that matter) off to boarding school. It's well worth it.

Families today have access to far more information than we did decades ago, including virtual tours, online student panels, and detailed school profiles. Yet the fundamental reasons for choosing boarding school remain remarkably similar: academic opportunity, personal growth, independence, and preparation for college and life beyond high school.

Our Rationale

We were busy parents with careers and two children. The girls were five years apart. One was in junior high. The other was in elementary school. We lived in a little town in northwestern Connecticut. You had to drive ten miles to get to anything. Literally. While the regional high school was doing a good job, the number of academic courses and extracurricular opportunities it could provide for our daughter was limited. Not only that, she had to be driven everywhere to participate in sports or extracurricular activities.

With those factors looming large, we sat down one day with her and asked: "What do you think about going off to boarding school?" There was a rather enthusiastic acceptance of the idea. Probably because

By Shari Bunks Geller, parent of Blair Academy alumni

I survey my son's room. High school graduation is just two weeks away. College is no longer on the horizon but our next step forward. I am looking to see what he will need to take with him and what he will leave behind. Looking around his room, I am keenly aware of how our world has expanded more than we could have imagined just four years ago when we applied Michael to high school. Boarding school was consciously not on our radar when we began our high school search.

At the start of his eighth-grade year, our son said he would like to apply to boarding school. My husband and I seriously discussed boarding school as an option. We both attended good public schools growing up. We had decided against our public high school as an option for our four children and were committed to sending them to an independent day school. While neither my husband nor I came from families with a boarding school culture, we had many friends whose children attended boarding schools across the country. We have frequently cautioned that once a child visits a boarding school, all-day schools will pale in comparison. The facilities, the campus, and the notion of a different level of independence are alluring to a fourteen-year-old. Although our conversation was serious, we quickly agreed that we would not consider boarding school.

We investigated our local day schools. We toured,