Anonymous wrote:what extracurriculars?
what vacations? A flight to Europe to spend a month on grandmothers couch?

My child is in lower school so we are talking young kid - the extra curriculars are usually mulitple dance/gymnastics and sports classes - all private. Some with private coaching on the side. The private summer camps also.

Vacations - it usually ends up being at least one big Disney trip, cruises, trips to ski, trips to the beach - in fact the destination doesn't matter when you are paying air fare for a family of 4 or 5 - 3 to 4 times a year it adds up to a lot.

To 23:10 - I am the poster who a day or two ago said she hoped her older kid forgot to turn in the scholarship auction check so she could tear it up. I want to say this to you quite clearly:

You do not have to justify why you have aid and why your kid "deserves" it.

There is a four or so year cycle that plays out on DCUM where everyone comes out and complains about aid and who gets it (and who abuses it), followed the next year or so by some of this tax nonsense and complaining about tuition increases and how schools manage their costs, then things settle down for awhile, and then it starts all over again. What bothers me are the posts (and this is completely a part of the cycle) when those whose children receive aid (actually, I am not sure that is true; maybe it is people who wish their kids would receive aid) attack the people like me who actually believe in aid and contribute to it. Over the years it has been: your kids are boring filler kids who add nothing; you lawyers and doctors are not the people they want just the ones whose money they grudgingly accept; your kids don't have as high of an IQ as ours, your kids will have no values or morals unless they go to school with children whose families earn less than $200K a year (that one always makes me laugh since I grew up in a family that makes less than my secretary at work makes), and so on. My favorite this year: four figure braggard. That one is almost as good as the time I got accused of signing up to be an organ donor just so I could brag about it on DCUM. I realize these people are really just one or two crackpots and not the view of the broader private school community. By the way, for that poster, I would like to point out that building a wing doesn't actually do anything for the scholarship fund, but why confuse her with the facts?

Let me say this quite clearly. I believe that part of being a member of a school community is to do what you can for that community. That means we volunteer and give to the annual fund and support the auction. The other thing it means is that I trust the same people to whom I send my children every day to make appropriate decisions and to be good stewards of the scholarship funds they raise. I do not intend to put myself in that role - who has the time or the experience, really, to second guess aid decisions? I sure don't even if I wanted to, which I don't. I also like that, in the recent downturn, the focus on helping our community retain families already in it made me realize why relatively high earning families (otherwise known as the middle class on DCUM) might need aid. If you are in the community, then you belong there. That is my view. I don't fly speck admissions decisions either, but maybe I don't have enough free time on my hands.

It doesn't sound like your family is at my children's school (it's not in DC) and that's too bad, in a way. I would want you to know that there is somebody who gives money to the scholarship fund who is very glad that your child has it and doesn't begrudge it. I am sure, though, that the donors at your school feel the same way I do, and that the community appreciates all you do to volunteer and for the annual fund.

Anonymous wrote:Fact: there are FA recipients wo drive luxury cars, spend several hours a day at the gym, attend every function and field trip, enjoy their pricey season tickets.

I believe you 100% and now I am going to go and puke.

We struggled to pay for tuition for our two children over the last couple of years. We NEVER asked for any aid at all. We finally pulled them out for our local public school and lo and behold they are actually doing better socially/emotionally and academically at their new, free public school.

I am not the OP, but am the parent of a child who receives about a 50% grant. Someone asked what I have given up and how hard I am prepared to work. I hope my answers are informative for those who are concerned about abuse of aid. I don't view a good education as a "luxury" . I believe that in a civil society it is a requirement. Unfortunately DC has the worst public schools in the country, despite the thousands of dollars in DC taxes I pay a year. I think that most families who receive FA are just like me. We don't talk about it and as a result you might assume that we are lapping it up. So, a reality check:

I have worked 70 hours a week for past 7 years( two jobs,some years three)
I am a single parent
My earnings are divided as follows: one paycheck( after taxes and health insurance premiums): DC's monthly tuition and after care bills ( after a 50% grant)
Second paycheck plus second job earnings:pays rent, food, utilities,as well as clothes,books,educational items for DC plus summer camp.

What I have given up: all personal expenditures: that's right. no personal expenditures.Just what you see above. I don't buy clothes, eat out, have my hair done,"treat " myself. Most days of the week I eat what is left off my DC's plate at meals. I skip lunch for myself. I do not have a 401K or a savings account.

MY DC scored in top 0.1% on the WISC and her ERB's. I volunteer at the school and donate to the annual fund.

I don't feel entitled, but I do think that if the school says that "a child shall not be denied admission because of a parent's inability to pay" that I would hope that my DC would be carefully considered because as, I said, she did well on the tests and is a good kid. We live in a neighborhood where our neighborhood school has a 70% fail rate for reading and math and the majority of the class time 1 teacher is screaming at 30 children. For me private school is not about a "brand" or social connections or a reflection of me. For me it is as simple as I believe in my child and want her to have a good education. And, yes, there are some great schools just one mile or so from our front door and she was accepted.

what extracurriculars?
what vacations? A flight to Europe to spend a month on grandmothers couch?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I disagree
Families wanting the best education for their children is not a luxury.

Private school is a luxury. No one should be expected to foot the bill for someone else's child. Those of us who pay tuition still subsidize the public schools through our taxes (rightly so), should we also be expected to subsidize the tuition of those who choose to go to private school?

I think there are 2 or 3 people repeating the farcical Financial Aid Welfare Queen story over and over (driving an Audi while receiving financial aid! receiving weekly Botox injections while filling out the financial aid forms! luxuriating on the French Riviera while other parents work 160-hour weeks in ghastly law firm jobs so they can donate ever more to the school!).

If you are unhappy with the way financial aid is disbursed at your child's school, you have 2 choices:

1. Talk to the school administrators and demand changes in the system (based on whatever information you think you have about people cheating the system) so that
a) financial aid programs are ended; or
b) the programs are changed to only give $ to the very poorest families, perhaps those living below the poverty line. Then your children will go to school with millionaires like yourselves plus a handful of extremely poor children "for whom private school will change the trajectory of their lives." There will be no middle class government worker/nonprofit worker/professor kids' children, and very few of your own children's teachers will continue to send their children to the school at which they work, but perhaps that's OK with you.

2. Stop donating.

But I think you would all rather gather here and repeat your false stories.

The issues I have seen with FA families at our private school is that they truly do believe that they "need" financial aid. Their reasoning is that if they spend all their available income and money on tuition than they can no longer maintain their current standard of living and that includes several extra curriculars for the kids and several vacations a year.

Anonymous wrote:To the PP who claims that private school is NOT a luxury. Get real! It is a $30k plus per year school -- it is the definition of luxury. You live in an are with some of the best public schools in the country, access to good public schools are more in reach for most families than are these private schools. You can continue to tell yourself that it is not a luxury...but many of us are just not buying that.

so why are you sending your kid to the private?
Is it to buy him/her a more expensive peer group with some academic superstars that live in poverty?
Just think, if the lower income kids attend the school with FA then they will not stand out or be forced into the corner because of their financial status and your kid will not learn how to treat servants.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:... Every school has a mix and full pay families are needed more than ever now. It's just thatI don't think its so bad that we are going back to a solely private pay only system. I think privates probably gave that up for a better tax status years ago and can't ever go back on that.

I'm confused. So the private schools are roughly half diverse and half not and roughly half FA and half full paying? And you'd like to see schools go to all full paying but the school's tax status prevents it from doing so? Yeah, I have no idea what the point is.

I don't think PP's point about "trading for a better tax status" has any basis in fact. All these schools are tax exempt simply because they are non-profits under the applicable tax regs. See http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/Non-profit_organizations and http://www.irs.gov/publications/p557/ch03.html . It does not matter at all how much (or how little) financial aid they choose to offer.

A few people have raised the argument many times before on DCUM that private schools should be denied tax-exempt status. I think their argument has something to do with geography -- complaining that DC private schools are admitting too many MD & VA residents. IMHO, it's a stupid argument. But if you're interested, you certainly can find a dozen or more pages of discussion about it in the DCUM archives.