Roanoke school halves its tuition fee
Community High School of Arts and Academics, which has about 42 students, said its financial footing enables the unusual move.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
A small, private school in downtown Roanoke has taken the unusual step of cutting its tuition in half.
Roanoke’s Community High School of Arts and Academics announced Tuesday the school’s board of trustees voted to drop tuition next school year from $10,200 to $5,000 per student.
School leaders said reducing tuition is something they should do to make the school more affordable and something they can do thanks to long-term, generous supporters, including a partnership with the owners of the school’s building.
“If our primary goal is to make the option of small liberal arts based college preparatory education available to as many families as possible, we have to think a lot about the price point people can afford to come in on,” said Josh Chapman, the school’s academic director .
Chapman said the decision to slash tuition, an unusual move among private schools, was driven by ethical concerns. He said the board looked at the numbers and could afford to cut tuition and felt it was the right call. The school enrolls about 42 students.
“We don’t often talk in private education about the ethics of pricing,” he said, noting private K-12 and higher education tuition is becoming more difficult for middle class families to afford.
Linda Thornton, chairwoman of the school’s board of trustees , said they’ve watched rising private school tuition, noting it primarily relates to higher education, and have found it troubling.
“It’s become incumbent on all of us to look at what is happening,” she said, adding Community High School is on secure enough financial footing to make this change.
Community High School’s IRS filings show it lost money last fiscal year, despite a 70 percent increase in donations, to $618,000. The school had operated in the black before.
Thornton said donors have long-term commitments to the school. Donations have ranged between $317,000 to $643,000 a year over the past four years, while tuition payments have climbed from $338,000 in 2009 to a high of $451,592 for the fiscal year ended July 31, 2011, IRS filings show.
“It is truly from a position of confidence we moved forward,” Thornton said.
Part of what has helped the school’s financial situation is its location.
Community High School started more than a decade ago in Jefferson Center and later resided in the TAP building before moving in 2011 to its current location across Williamson Road from the Taubman Museum of Art.
Innovative Educational Partners owns the facility that houses the school, as well as apartments on the second and third floors, and partners with the school. Chapman said the school doesn’t pay market value for rent, which contributes to its good financial position.
Thornton said the building was “developed in part by some of the people that are invested in the well being of the school” and noted some of the school’s supporters prefer to remain anonymous.
Court records show developer Thornton’s son Lucas Thornton and John McBroom are members of Innovative Educational Partners.
Chapman said the unusual marriage of apartments and students has been a nonissue so far, save for some parking issues in the first year, is working well and is a financial boon. He said the goal is to keep tuition down indefinitely, and that the building helps to accomplish that.
“We wouldn’t do this if it was in any way jeopardizing the community we already have,” he said. “The board had long conversations about making sure we’re in a position where we can commit.”
That commitment seems to be an unusual one though.
Myra McGovern, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based National Association of Independent Schools, said it’s quite rare for independent schools to lower tuition.
“The most common situation I’ve seen has been a situation where someone has given a large gift that can help the school reduce the tuition for a period of time or sometimes it’s an endowed fund,” she said. “That’s the most common case of it.”
McGovern said schools might also make the case for lower tuition based on a particular situation of hardship in a community, such as an industry leaving an area or a recession hitting a locality especially hard.
“But in other cases it has been schools simply wishing to attract new students,” she said.
McGovern said private school tuition has been steadily increasing above the rate of inflation because of increasing costs related to the addition of new programs, attracting top candidates and the rising costs of benefits and insurance.
She concluded, however, that “Any time you can make an education a more viable option for people, I think it’s a good thing.”
Staff writer David Ress contributed to this report.
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THE ROANOKE TIMES
