How to Choose a Private Elementary School in Richmond, VA

Seven questions that reveal what a school is actually like on a Tuesday in November.

Choosing a private elementary school in Richmond is not a small decision. You will trust the school with the first years of your child's education, the years when a child forms her earliest ideas about what learning feels like, and about whether school is a place where she is known.

Most tours will feel warm. Most brochures will use the same words. Community. Excellence. Whole child. Rigor. Every school in Chesterfield County, Midlothian, and the West End will say some version of the same thing, and most of them will mean it. That is what makes the decision hard.

So I want to give you what I would tell my own sister if she asked me, as a head of school, how to actually tell one Richmond-area elementary school from another. These are the seven questions I would ask, and what to listen for in the answer.

1. How many children are in each class, and how many adults?

Every school will tell you the class size. Ask instead for the student-to-teacher ratio in the room your child would be in. Ten children with one adult is a very different classroom than ten children with two. Ask whether there is an assistant, an aide, or a co-teacher. Ask how often the head of school is in the classroom.

Small class size is the single strongest predictor of whether a young child feels known at school. If a Richmond school tells you class sizes are around fifteen, ask how often those classes are actually at fifteen versus twenty-two by December. Numbers on a website are the plan. You want to know the reality.

2. What happens when a child is struggling?

Ask what the school does when a child cannot yet read on grade level. What it does when a child cannot regulate in the classroom. What it does when a child is far ahead. Listen for specifics. A good answer names a person, a practice, and a timeline. A vague answer names a philosophy.

In a small JK–6 school, every child struggles at some point. What matters is not whether the school prevents that struggle. It is what the school does inside of it.

3. How long have the teachers been here?

Teacher retention is one of the most honest signals a school can give you. Teachers stay where they are respected, paid fairly, and given autonomy. They leave places where they are not. If a school has replaced most of its teaching faculty in the last three years, that is worth asking about directly, without apology. A healthy small school will have an answer.

4. What does an ordinary Tuesday actually look like?

Tours show you the greatest hits. The garden, the makerspace, the science lab. Ask instead for the daily schedule. Ask what a Tuesday looks like in November, when there is no field trip, no visitor, no special program. That schedule is what your child will live inside for 180 days a year.

Some questions to hold up against the answer: How many minutes a day is your child sitting still? How many minutes outside? How many transitions? When does the day feel busy, and when does it feel calm?

5. How does the school know if a child is learning?

Ask how the school assesses progress. Some schools use standardized tests. Some use portfolios. Some use narrative reports. Some use a mix. There is no single right answer, but there is a wrong answer, which is a fuzzy one.

A good school can tell you, concretely, how it will know your child is learning to read and how it will tell you what it is finding. Ask what the parent conference looks like, and how often it happens. Ask to see a sample progress report if the school will share one. What a school measures is what a school values.

6. Who else goes here?

Ask, gently, about the community. Not for anyone's private information, but for the shape of it. How far do families drive? What do parents do for work? Are there scholarship families, and what does the aid process look like? Is there a Parent Association, and what does it actually do? A school's community is the second faculty of the school, and your child will grow up alongside those families.

7. What is the school honest about?

This is the most important question, and the hardest to ask. Every school has weaknesses. Every school has things it is still building. The schools worth trusting are the ones that will tell you what those are, without defensiveness. If a school tells you it is perfect, or that everything is a strength, be careful. Small children need adults in their lives who can say, honestly, this is what we do well and this is where we are still learning. Schools are no different.

What this looks like at The Laurel School

I run a small JK–6 private school in North Chesterfield, Virginia. We are new. We are enrolling our founding families for 2027-2028. We are honest about that. Our class sizes will be small by design, capped at eight to twelve children with a lead teacher and support. Our teachers stay because we pay them, respect them, and let them teach. Our days begin outdoors. Our progress reports are written in sentences, not letters. We measure what we value, and we say plainly what we are still building.

I offer this list not because it makes Laurel look good, though I hope it does. I offer it because I have watched families choose the wrong school for their child and I would not wish that on anyone in Richmond. Ask the seven questions. Trust the answers that name a person, a practice, and a Tuesday. Your child will spend six years of her life inside whichever school you choose. The choice deserves the questions.

And if you find yourself, after all of this, still wondering what a small, intentional Richmond-area school could look like, we would be glad to show you.