household income of 250K to send kids to private school

[Anonymous]

Are there any reasonably priced schools in the suburbs other than parish schools?

[Anonymous]

For pre-K through lower elementary check out Evergreen School in Silver Spring

[Anonymous]

Same with Primary Day.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

Having more than one kid, for starters.

Yeah, our lives would look a lot different with one teenager. We make pretty good money too. But with a kid in Kindergarten, a preschooler and baby ...we don't have an extra $50k to pay down the mortgage. I went to Catholic schools my whole life. But that was in the Midwest in the 1980s, when those private schools were full of kids whose parents were teachers, electricians, auto workers, etc. The paradigm has completely shifted. I truly believe in the value of private and parochial schools. But there's no way we'd qualify for any sort of aid, and I'd be a damn fool to drop $80,000 to 120,000 a year on three kids going to private school.

Our parish school is $13k for 3 kids. No where near $80-120k.

$13k? I can assure you that price is more of an exception, not the rule.

No it’s not. For example:

http://stann.org/wp-content/uploads/2017-2018-k-8-tuition-rates-1.pdf
https://www.stlouisschool.org/apps/pages/tuition
https://www.saintjamesschool.org/admissions/tuition
http://www.smsva.org/admissions/tuition-and-fees

I don't even know where those schools are -- not in DC for sure though.

Arlington, Alexandria and Falls Church. There are parish schools in DC too, but you would have to look it up. There are probably links to them all on the Archdiocese of Washington website.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are there any reasonably priced schools in the suburbs other than parish schools?

We send our kid to Friends Community School in College Park, MD. Tuition ranges from $18,700 (K) to $20,740 (8). We have one kid, make about $300,000, and feel we get good value for the money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there any reasonably priced schools in the suburbs other than parish schools?

We send our kid to Friends Community School in College Park, MD. Tuition ranges from $18,700 (K) to $20,740 (8). We have one kid, make about $300,000, and feel we get good value for the money.

Are you going to send your child to a private high school?

[Anonymous]

We send our kids to a private Catholic school + have an au pair on that HHI. Not tight for us, but we bought little house relative to our income so I think that helps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there any reasonably priced schools in the suburbs other than parish schools?

We send our kid to Friends Community School in College Park, MD. Tuition ranges from $18,700 (K) to $20,740 (8). We have one kid, make about $300,000, and feel we get good value for the money.

Are you going to send your child to a private high school?

We don't know yet. Our daughter's still very young. We'll know better what might be the best high school option for her once we see what sort of student she develops into. Also, I expect she'll have a big say in where she goes next. One of the benefits of a K-8 school is having the student play a much greater role in making these sort of decisions. Even though we're years away from outplacement ourselves, there seems to be a lot of thought and care put into finding the best fit for each student. There's Eleanor Roosevelt High School nearby (a public science, math, tech, and engineering magnet), which is an option if we go public, but, given the things we value about the educational experience she's having at her private school, I suspect we're likely to continue with private. We might even move, depending on how things play out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We could send one kid to private on $250k (at $40K tuition) but not two.
Another thing to think about is that tuition is rising at the pace of about 1-$2K a year at the top schools. We anticipate our $41K school will be $45K within 3 years and $50K within a few more.

Do you really think this is sustainable?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We could send one kid to private on $250k (at $40K tuition) but not two.
Another thing to think about is that tuition is rising at the pace of about 1-$2K a year at the top schools. We anticipate our $41K school will be $45K within 3 years and $50K within a few more.

Do you really think this is sustainable?

Private school tuitions click up at about the same rate as adjustments for faculty salaries. So if teachers are getting 2.5% increases (and you should hope they do with the cost of living in DC), you'll be paying that much more in tuition next year.

Here's what I think is going to happen. Private schools will continue to charge ever increasing prices for the reason stated above. More and more parents will apply for financial aid, and those schools with large enough endowments will adjust tuition for more students -- while fundraising like hell from families able to both pay full tuition and also donate. It's no different than universities, right?

But here's the critical part. Most private day schools in this area do not have large endowments. So, there's going to be a consolidation of schools. Weaker ones will be merged with stronger ones to combine endowments and resources.