charliehall — “The Catholic Church would never allow a school with 70 students per grade to continue operating. It would be forced to merge.”
This is not accurate. Even with the recent closures and mergers, the 9 Catholic elementary schools in Queens that I am personally familiar with all have only one or two classes per grade, with no more than 25 students per class — i.e. less than 50 students per grade. The high schools are significantly larger (and also have much more expensive tuition), but many still do not have more than 3 parallel classes per grade.
Your overall point about the economies of scale, however is a great point, and in my opinion a big part of the “tuition crisis”. As long as parents want schools that fit exactly the niche they are looking for, and we therefore have multiple tiny schools rather than a few larger ones, we are dealing with an innately inefficient model, however responsible and efficient administrators try to be. Additionally smaller schools generally do not have the budget for a specific staff member to oversea the finances, and often tend to be more laid back in their calculations.
However than is not really applicable to the one school mentioned previously in this thread. BYBP is one of the largest Bais Yaakov’s in the world (I think that the only larger ones are in Yerushalayim.) So whatever there financial issues are, it’s not too small a school!