$30K? $40K? $50K? How do you make it work?
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Anonymous
| I can say as a parent of a child in one of the $30-40K schools, what I discern is a combination of families there. You have families who are obviously wealthy and can write a check at the beginning of the year for the full tuition, and who may have more than one child in private school. Then, you have families who may receive some aid and pay the balance in 10 monthly installments. There are also, I suspect, families who get financial help from grandparents through a trust fund or a gift. I think these are the primary ways people make it work. It is still a lot of money but I am sure most families have thought it through carefully before making the decision to apply to private school -- special neeeds or traditional private school. |
Anonymous
|
The thing that always bugs me when this discussion comes up is that people will say -- oh we just sacrifice on vacations or eating out, as if its a lifestyle choice versus your special needs child's wellbeing.
For us, we have put the money into our special needs child. But the sacrifices are necessary upkeep to our home. Our hous is in major disrepair because we do not have the money for that. |
Anonymous
| PP, I see your point but I think or suspect that most people, who choose to pay for their child to go to a SN school or school that offer more support than traditional privates, can generally afford to pay for it and make some lifestyle changes so it won't be too much of a squeeze. Otherwise, they seek services through the public school system which are not always consistent from grade to grade or school to school. The parents who lack the financial resources for private also pursue public funding although most school systems have drastically curtailed the outplacement of students as it is costly and they are making it harder to fight for funding. This may sound trivial to you but we cut back on outside housecleaning. We used to have a cleaning come twice a week at a cost of $750 a month, which looking back now was frivolous. We had outside child care to pick kids up and take them to activities at a cost of $1400 per month. We refinanced our home and saved almost $2000 a month. These were lifestyle changes that were easy to make and basically added up to close to the monthly tuition we pay. So, change in lifestyle choices affected our ability to afford private school without going in a financial hole. And, we cannot afford to let our house go into disrepair because it is a major asset that we will eventually sell to further fund our retirement. |
Anonymous
13:07 here. I said all those things above. What I didn't include is that our house is in need of an interior paint job. We are going to need a new roof soon. We have outgrown our house and need to move, but cannot afford to do so. We need to make some repairs to the house that simply will not get done because there is nothing left after paying for all the therapies and specialized school. We still have walmart furniture in the bedrooms. So this is in addition to not eating out and not taking vacations so we can afford to make sure our SN child gets a proper education and can function in society. |
Anonymous
You can do the interior paint job yourself. People do. Now, roofing, yeah, that's a bummer. |
Anonymous
| Letting your house deteriorate is not wise. Find some way to maintain the upkeep especially if you plan to sell one day. |
Anonymous
| No savings, living in a condo, borrowing on pension money, good insurance, staying in public school and getting outside services as long as we could. It's the no savings that bothers me. |
Anonymous
| Why is it you don't have savings and are borrowing from your retirement and you are not paying for private school? Insurance doesn't cover any outside services? Also, although we left public school for private, our public had ST and OT therapy in the school. Something seems out of whack for you, PP. |
Anonymous
| NP here. So far we're at $55 a week for psych and OT copays, in network, which we looked for hard. Needs are too mild for OT at school. We can handle but could not handle private tuition. |
Anonymous
Public schools offer ST and OT but what they will cover and who they will remediate is pretty stringent. If your kid has low muscle tone, for example, he really needs OT but the school will only deal with handwriting/scissor skills. Or your child might need work with social speech and not just articulation--or their articulation errors might be noticeable and harm their ability to communicate but might not meet the bar to receive public school services. |
Anonymous
A friend in another state (not DC area) took her school system to court and won. The school system paid the $50K to place her child in a private school. Her child was bipolar and violent, and it was impossible for the school system to handle him. Yet they tried, and refused to pay for private placement until she and her husband hired a lawyer who made it happen. Problem is, they have to renew every year, which means they have legal fees every year. But it's cheaper than private school tuition. They are not wealthy by any means (social worker and freelance artist), but they scraped together enough money for the lawyer. Their kid is thriving at the school, which is small and knows just how to handle him. OP, be sure you find a lawyer very experienced in this type of thing. The lawyer my friend hired had done a lot of work getting this particular school system to place kids in private schools, so he knew what he was doing. |
Anonymous
Sometimes, you can catch the school in a procedural or substantive error related to the rights of kids with disabilities and force the school to pay for private. That's what happened with my sister in law and her family with respect to one of their children. I think they had an advocate but not a lawyer, and they got private for the child -- who had severe speech delays and other developmental issues but is doing much better now. |