Defying an economic downturn that has felled scores of dot-coms, many private schools in Silicon Valley are raising tuition by at least twice the inflation rate. On the high end, at Phillips Brooks School in Menlo Park, tuition this fall will rise 28 percent. At a couple of schools, tuition now equals or surpasses that of some private colleges in the area.
Many parents can afford to shrug off the costs.
But to others, who might have two or more children in the same pricey school, the increases seem excessive. Martina, who has a commercial landscaping business, stressed that his children have been happy at St. Andrew's. No private schools, including those in the valley's popular parochial system, are exempt from price increases. But most of the biggest jumps are taking place among select prep schools, places that cultivate an image as the pathway to a great university. In Silicon Valley, laden with well-educated transplants who regard California's public schools with horror, there are plenty of parents willing to pay the toll on that pathway.