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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Health care costs; higher teacher salaries; new FTE positions for the legions of IT specialists needed to support all the technologies; constant capital expense for IT and lassroom technology; new FTE positions for expanded college counseling and educational counseling; new FTE positions for the environmental or diversity or international programs coordinator;  higher insurance premiums due to more litigation against schools; higher energy costs (costs a lot to fill up the as tank on the school bus and heat and cool those big buildings); fancy new facilities.

That's where the tuition money goes.  Crazy rising costs in aggregate but any given piece seems very defensible.[/quote]

The average It salary is about 40K a year. maybe the head IT guy gets 200K/year, so the whole department costs the school maybe 500K a year. OK, say its a million. Now where did the remaining 39 million dollars in annual revenue go ? teachers salaries ? I don't think so. Even if health care costs have tripled, that still does not get you to 40 million in expenses a year ?[/quote]

1. You seem to be focusing on just one item out of a long list of accurate items -- and even at that, remember to multiply every FTE salary figure by about 20 to cover payroll taxes and benefits.

2.  If you look at a typical private school budget, something like 65-70% of costs are related to personnel.  Health care premiums is a big piece of that; moreover, talk to private school teachers who've been around for 20 years or more and they will generally be able to identify a time period where they got big pay raises (in part bc the pay was so very low).

3.  Your 40 million revenue per year figure is crazy.  A private school with 500 kids at 35k is $17.5 in tuition revenue BEFORE financial aid, so let's say $15 million.  The best day school annual giving campaigns might raise $2 million per year, so that's high end.  A very good endowment for this area is $40 million -- a prudent 4-5% draw gives you $1.6 - 2 million more.  So you're talking about $18.5 to $20 million in yearly revenue, max.  Capital campaigns by definition are raising for a specified capital expense like a building.  Even if the capital campaign raises money for endowment, $10 million (NOT easy by any means for a day school to raise) still only gets you an additional $500,000 yearly income with a 5% draw.  On the expense side, assume at least 100 full time employees (teachers, IT, admin, front office, buildings and grounds, some coaches, nurse, counselor, college counselor, learning specialist, librarians) for a school of that size.

The economics get a little better at 1000 students, but schools are not great places for economies of scale -- small class sizes mean lots of teachers.  One area independent with an enrollment of about 1000 has at least 225 full-time faculty/staff.

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