Reply to Any experience of walking away from a school contract?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There is a reputation issue. Since most families are relatively well off, they would prefer to pay the full year rather than going to a trial.

Having said that, private schools don’t really care if the family is poor. They just want their money:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/08/private-school-lawsuit-sandy-springs-families/[/quote]

It's a reputational issue for the schools, not for the families. SSFS sued this mother when it was on the verge of closing due to collapsing finances. It ultimately forgave the debt because of how bad the publicity was for it. But SSFS evidently didn't have a wait pool of tons of eager, full-pay families. Otherwise, it wouldn't have come close to closing. [/quote]

That’s same WaPo article said it was not uncommon for schools to go after people who break their contracts, regardless of the reason:
Private institutions filed at least 140 cases over the past decade seeking more than $1.6 million in debt, The Post found in a search of court databases in the District and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Among them: suits against the mother of a kindergartner dismissed after a week of school for “extreme incidents”; a father who signed an enrollment contract but withdrew his son ahead of the academic year because of alleged bullying; and a couple who moved out of state.
Schools pointed to the contracts signed by parents, which generally state that they are binding after a spring or summer deadline, at which point they hold parents to a full year of tuition. In court paperwork and hearings, their attorneys argued that administrators relied on commitments from families while budgeting and hiring for the school year, and the loss of expected tuition put them in a bind.
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