Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thank you - the term "tuition remission" is even new to me- so thanks for pointing me in that direction.

What I most appreciate from having read the threads is that it is a dicey relationship it puts your family in possibly: other people getting annoyed with you for getting a perk, either the other parents or other faculty. I hadn't considered that before. In the public setting it is a wonderful thing for moms/dad and their kids to go to the same school, and everyone gets treated better whereas it sounds like there is potential resentment about the issue in the private setting all the way around, no matter how it is handled from a policy perspective. Interesting for me to ponder.

17:45 - is the school you are referring to SSSAS? Just curious.

Like many things on DCUM, the supposed resentment over faculty kids is something largely limited to a few antisocial posters on this board; my kids go to the school where my spouse teaches, and we've never had even the slightest feeling of being different or resented by other families. Tuition remission is an employee benefit, just like health insurance and 401k contributions, designed to attract the best employees. Private schools are competing for the most talented teachers, and tuition benefits are a good way of doing that (and for most schools easier to manage than offering higher salaries) - a number of the teachers at our school (including my spouse) were highly sought after by several schools and chose our school in part because they liked the idea of having their kids at the school where they teach, so tuition remission made our school more attractive to them despite comparable (and sometimes lower) salaries. Being annoyed about these teachers "getting a perk" is nonsensical - and again, I've seen zero evidence that anyone thinks or acts like that in real life.



As an aside, I also think it's good for morale and sense of of community when the teachers and administrators are invested in and committed to the school not just as employees but also parents. When our kids previously went to a private school where my spouse didn't teach, I felt good about seeing faculty kids in their classes - it's a sign the teachers believe in their school and the quality of the education they're providing.

1) People who object to tuition remission are not resentful or “antisocial”.
2) Tuition remission is not the same as health insurance or 401K contributions because the benefit is only offered to a subset of employees.
3) If PP really views tuition remission as ‘”getting a perk”’ then clearly PP doesn’t understand the income loss to the school due to tuition remission. Using PP 23:07 as an example, even at a 50% Potomac discount why should one teacher receive $15,000, $30,000, $45,000 etc. (depending on the number of kids) per year for possibly 13 years? That’s not a perk; it’s an unequal distribution of benefits.
4) The proponents of tuition remission always say that it “attracts good teachers”. What they fail to acknowledge is that every employee (bookkeepers, secretaries, aftercare coordinators, camp directors, etc.) receives the benefit, which amounts to a huge amount of money. At a previous DC school a secretary received full tuition for four kids for 13 years at a rate of ~$30,000/kid. Why should a secretary, or any employee, receive a $120,000 per year benefit let alone for years? Is the school balancing that benefit by donating that amount to other employees 401K?
5) The teacher kids numbers are huge – sometimes my kids were in classes with half the class teacher kids (free tuition). That means half of the class was paying for the full class. Also, teachers are typically not big donors. Therefore, there’s a two-way income hit to the school.
6) The continuous whining about how little teachers make and how they take a pay cut at private schools gets old. No one made them be teachers. It’s a choice. Too, a lot of times the spouse makes a huge income, so why should a teacher with a spouse that makes a lot of money receive tuition remission?
7) Teacher kids are typically favored in the classroom. The misbehaved kids are never counseled out and any misbehavior is handled casually. Aftercare is especial bad. At my DCs school, the teacher/staff kids wander around and taunt the aftercare kids flaunting their freedom.
8) Providing tuition remission does not create a “sense of community”. So many of the teachers who are at a school due to tuition remission leave after their kids leave the school. Parents can tell who is passionate about teaching and who isn’t. Too, teachers tell the parents they are there only for tuition remission. Their leaving just advertises that they are only there only for tuition remission.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thank you - the term "tuition remission" is even new to me- so thanks for pointing me in that direction.

What I most appreciate from having read the threads is that it is a dicey relationship it puts your family in possibly: other people getting annoyed with you for getting a perk, either the other parents or other faculty. I hadn't considered that before. In the public setting it is a wonderful thing for moms/dad and their kids to go to the same school, and everyone gets treated better whereas it sounds like there is potential resentment about the issue in the private setting all the way around, no matter how it is handled from a policy perspective. Interesting for me to ponder.

17:45 - is the school you are referring to SSSAS? Just curious.

Like many things on DCUM, the supposed resentment over faculty kids is something largely limited to a few antisocial posters on this board; my kids go to the school where my spouse teaches, and we've never had even the slightest feeling of being different or resented by other families. Tuition remission is an employee benefit, just like health insurance and 401k contributions, designed to attract the best employees. Private schools are competing for the most talented teachers, and tuition benefits are a good way of doing that (and for most schools easier to manage than offering higher salaries) - a number of the teachers at our school (including my spouse) were highly sought after by several schools and chose our school in part because they liked the idea of having their kids at the school where they teach, so tuition remission made our school more attractive to them despite comparable (and sometimes lower) salaries. Being annoyed about these teachers "getting a perk" is nonsensical - and again, I've seen zero evidence that anyone thinks or acts like that in real life.



As an aside, I also think it's good for morale and sense of of community when the teachers and administrators are invested in and committed to the school not just as employees but also parents. When our kids previously went to a private school where my spouse didn't teach, I felt good about seeing faculty kids in their classes - it's a sign the teachers believe in their school and the quality of the education they're providing.

1) People who object to tuition remission are not resentful or “antisocial”.
2) Tuition remission is not the same as health insurance or 401K contributions because the benefit is only offered to a subset of employees.
3) If PP really views tuition remission as ‘”getting a perk”’ then clearly PP doesn’t understand the income loss to the school due to tuition remission. Using PP 23:07 as an example, even at a 50% Potomac discount why should one teacher receive $15,000, $30,000, $45,000 etc. (depending on the number of kids) per year for possibly 13 years? That’s not a perk; it’s an unequal distribution of benefits.
4) The proponents of tuition remission always say that it “attracts good teachers”. What they fail to acknowledge is that every employee (bookkeepers, secretaries, aftercare coordinators, camp directors, etc.) receives the benefit, which amounts to a huge amount of money. At a previous DC school a secretary received full tuition for four kids for 13 years at a rate of ~$30,000/kid. Why should a secretary, or any employee, receive a $120,000 per year benefit let alone for years? Is the school balancing that benefit by donating that amount to other employees 401K?
5) The teacher kids numbers are huge – sometimes my kids were in classes with half the class teacher kids (free tuition). That means half of the class was paying for the full class. Also, teachers are typically not big donors. Therefore, there’s a two-way income hit to the school.
6) The continuous whining about how little teachers make and how they take a pay cut at private schools gets old. No one made them be teachers. It’s a choice. Too, a lot of times the spouse makes a huge income, so why should a teacher with a spouse that makes a lot of money receive tuition remission?
7) Teacher kids are typically favored in the classroom. The misbehaved kids are never counseled out and any misbehavior is handled casually. Aftercare is especial bad. At my DCs school, the teacher/staff kids wander around and taunt the aftercare kids flaunting their freedom.
8) Providing tuition remission does not create a “sense of community”. So many of the teachers who are at a school due to tuition remission leave after their kids leave the school. Parents can tell who is passionate about teaching and who isn’t. Too, teachers tell the parents they are there only for tuition remission. Their leaving just advertises that they are only there only for tuition remission.

Hmm, sounds pretty resentful and antisocial to me, but to each his/her own. You're missing the point that this is really about basic economics - if your observations were accurate and the benefit didn't attract better teachers at lower salaries, then schools wouldn't offer it. No one on this thread is "whining about how much teachers make" - the point is that in all job markets, the employers who offer the most competitive salary/benefits packages are going to get the most talented employees. If you look through the faculty directory at our school, you'll see a lot of ivy league degrees and phds, and most importantly the names of teachers who by all accounts are phenomenally good at what they do. And many of them will tell you that they chose our school because the tuition discount made the salary/benefits package more attractive than other school. I assume you agree that people who go into teaching are educated/talented/desired enough to make choices about where to work the same way everyone else does, and that the more talented your kids' teachers are, the more you're getting for your money?

There are all sorts of employee benefits that benefit some employees more than others - if you've got more kids, then you get more out of health insurance; if you want to get a masters degree, then an employer contribution toward continuing education is going to benefit you more than someone who already has a masters degree; and so on. Are you also bitter about maternity leave because it only benefits women who just had babies?

I'm sorry morale is low at your school, and that apparently it has to do with faculty kids running around taunting other kids. We've been at two private schools, one where my spouse teaches and one where we were just a regular full paying family, and at both places the faculty kids fit it beautifully and helped make the schools a special place. OP, my main point is just that you shouldn't take posts like the PPs as reflecting what you would encounter in real life where reasonable people don't think or talk this way.

I don’t know where you work but the days of offering employees’ kids & spouse health care are long gone. And they don’t offer paid maternity leave anymore (and now there is paternity leave). Your comment about continuing ed makes no sense because employees are not denied the benefit if they have advanced degrees. Regardless, the benefits you mention (when they existed) are nothing compared to the cost of tuition remission.

We must live in different worlds then - I'm a lawyer married to a teacher and every law firm and school I know offers health insurance benefits and some amount of parental leave. You didn't think though your comment re: continuing ed: no one is denied any of these benefits, they're just more useful to some people than others. Every employee is free to have children and then take advantage parental leave and tuition remission, and every employee is free to go back to school and get tuition assistance. In both situations, whether or not you take advantage of the benefit turns on whether you choose to undertake the condition precedent based on your personal circumstances. I'm not sure what you think you've proven in the last sentence - of course cost is a factor the employer takes into consideration when doing an economic analysis of whether it makes sense to offer the benefit in order to attract talented employees. Which is really the bottom line for all this - resenting teachers for getting benefits like tuition remission is no different than resenting teachers because you think they get paid too much. Either way, I think it shows a lack of respect and appreciation for teachers as educated, hard-working professionals who compete and are competed for in the job market just like the rest of us.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thank you - the term "tuition remission" is even new to me- so thanks for pointing me in that direction.

What I most appreciate from having read the threads is that it is a dicey relationship it puts your family in possibly: other people getting annoyed with you for getting a perk, either the other parents or other faculty. I hadn't considered that before. In the public setting it is a wonderful thing for moms/dad and their kids to go to the same school, and everyone gets treated better whereas it sounds like there is potential resentment about the issue in the private setting all the way around, no matter how it is handled from a policy perspective. Interesting for me to ponder.

17:45 - is the school you are referring to SSSAS? Just curious.

Like many things on DCUM, the supposed resentment over faculty kids is something largely limited to a few antisocial posters on this board; my kids go to the school where my spouse teaches, and we've never had even the slightest feeling of being different or resented by other families. Tuition remission is an employee benefit, just like health insurance and 401k contributions, designed to attract the best employees. Private schools are competing for the most talented teachers, and tuition benefits are a good way of doing that (and for most schools easier to manage than offering higher salaries) - a number of the teachers at our school (including my spouse) were highly sought after by several schools and chose our school in part because they liked the idea of having their kids at the school where they teach, so tuition remission made our school more attractive to them despite comparable (and sometimes lower) salaries. Being annoyed about these teachers "getting a perk" is nonsensical - and again, I've seen zero evidence that anyone thinks or acts like that in real life.



As an aside, I also think it's good for morale and sense of of community when the teachers and administrators are invested in and committed to the school not just as employees but also parents. When our kids previously went to a private school where my spouse didn't teach, I felt good about seeing faculty kids in their classes - it's a sign the teachers believe in their school and the quality of the education they're providing.

1) People who object to tuition remission are not resentful or “antisocial”.
2) Tuition remission is not the same as health insurance or 401K contributions because the benefit is only offered to a subset of employees.
3) If PP really views tuition remission as ‘”getting a perk”’ then clearly PP doesn’t understand the income loss to the school due to tuition remission. Using PP 23:07 as an example, even at a 50% Potomac discount why should one teacher receive $15,000, $30,000, $45,000 etc. (depending on the number of kids) per year for possibly 13 years? That’s not a perk; it’s an unequal distribution of benefits.
4) The proponents of tuition remission always say that it “attracts good teachers”. What they fail to acknowledge is that every employee (bookkeepers, secretaries, aftercare coordinators, camp directors, etc.) receives the benefit, which amounts to a huge amount of money. At a previous DC school a secretary received full tuition for four kids for 13 years at a rate of ~$30,000/kid. Why should a secretary, or any employee, receive a $120,000 per year benefit let alone for years? Is the school balancing that benefit by donating that amount to other employees 401K?
5) The teacher kids numbers are huge – sometimes my kids were in classes with half the class teacher kids (free tuition). That means half of the class was paying for the full class. Also, teachers are typically not big donors. Therefore, there’s a two-way income hit to the school.
6) The continuous whining about how little teachers make and how they take a pay cut at private schools gets old. No one made them be teachers. It’s a choice. Too, a lot of times the spouse makes a huge income, so why should a teacher with a spouse that makes a lot of money receive tuition remission?
7) Teacher kids are typically favored in the classroom. The misbehaved kids are never counseled out and any misbehavior is handled casually. Aftercare is especial bad. At my DCs school, the teacher/staff kids wander around and taunt the aftercare kids flaunting their freedom.
8) Providing tuition remission does not create a “sense of community”. So many of the teachers who are at a school due to tuition remission leave after their kids leave the school. Parents can tell who is passionate about teaching and who isn’t. Too, teachers tell the parents they are there only for tuition remission. Their leaving just advertises that they are only there only for tuition remission.

Hmm, sounds pretty resentful and antisocial to me, but to each his/her own. You're missing the point that this is really about basic economics - if your observations were accurate and the benefit didn't attract better teachers at lower salaries, then schools wouldn't offer it. No one on this thread is "whining about how much teachers make" - the point is that in all job markets, the employers who offer the most competitive salary/benefits packages are going to get the most talented employees. If you look through the faculty directory at our school, you'll see a lot of ivy league degrees and phds, and most importantly the names of teachers who by all accounts are phenomenally good at what they do. And many of them will tell you that they chose our school because the tuition discount made the salary/benefits package more attractive than other school. I assume you agree that people who go into teaching are educated/talented/desired enough to make choices about where to work the same way everyone else does, and that the more talented your kids' teachers are, the more you're getting for your money?

There are all sorts of employee benefits that benefit some employees more than others - if you've got more kids, then you get more out of health insurance; if you want to get a masters degree, then an employer contribution toward continuing education is going to benefit you more than someone who already has a masters degree; and so on. Are you also bitter about maternity leave because it only benefits women who just had babies?

I'm sorry morale is low at your school, and that apparently it has to do with faculty kids running around taunting other kids. We've been at two private schools, one where my spouse teaches and one where we were just a regular full paying family, and at both places the faculty kids fit it beautifully and helped make the schools a special place. OP, my main point is just that you shouldn't take posts like the PPs as reflecting what you would encounter in real life where reasonable people don't think or talk this way.

I don’t know where you work but the days of offering employees’ kids & spouse health care are long gone. And they don’t offer paid maternity leave anymore (and now there is paternity leave). Your comment about continuing ed makes no sense because employees are not denied the benefit if they have advanced degrees. Regardless, the benefits you mention (when they existed) are nothing compared to the cost of tuition remission.

Anonymous wrote:STA definitely gives 100%. They take less of a "hit" of course because they are all boys, so about half the faculty kids aren't covered. (There is a scholarship for STA faculty girls at NCS but it is divided among the kids who are there, so it could be 100% or significantly less.) STA also starts at 4th grade, so they are not faced with admissions decisions in pre-K when all kids look equally smart playing with blocks. Lastly, the STA faculty is quite long-tenured so there are a fair amount of faculty past child-rearing/bearing age.

I'm sure if they were flooded with applicants they too would have to re-think the benefit, but they've been able to make it work under the circumstances.

Anonymous wrote:


1) People who object to tuition remission are not resentful or “antisocial”.
2) Tuition remission is not the same as health insurance or 401K contributions because the benefit is only offered to a subset of employees.
3) If PP really views tuition remission as ‘”getting a perk”’ then clearly PP doesn’t understand the income loss to the school due to tuition remission. Using PP 23:07 as an example, even at a 50% Potomac discount why should one teacher receive $15,000, $30,000, $45,000 etc. (depending on the number of kids) per year for possibly 13 years? That’s not a perk; it’s an unequal distribution of benefits.
4) The proponents of tuition remission always say that it “attracts good teachers”. What they fail to acknowledge is that every employee (bookkeepers, secretaries, aftercare coordinators, camp directors, etc.) receives the benefit, which amounts to a huge amount of money. At a previous DC school a secretary received full tuition for four kids for 13 years at a rate of ~$30,000/kid. Why should a secretary, or any employee, receive a $120,000 per year benefit let alone for years? Is the school balancing that benefit by donating that amount to other employees 401K?
5) The teacher kids numbers are huge – sometimes my kids were in classes with half the class teacher kids (free tuition). That means half of the class was paying for the full class. Also, teachers are typically not big donors. Therefore, there’s a two-way income hit to the school.
6) The continuous whining about how little teachers make and how they take a pay cut at private schools gets old. No one made them be teachers. It’s a choice. Too, a lot of times the spouse makes a huge income, so why should a teacher with a spouse that makes a lot of money receive tuition remission?
7) Teacher kids are typically favored in the classroom. The misbehaved kids are never counseled out and any misbehavior is handled casually. Aftercare is especial bad. At my DCs school, the teacher/staff kids wander around and taunt the aftercare kids flaunting their freedom.
8) Providing tuition remission does not create a “sense of community”. So many of the teachers who are at a school due to tuition remission leave after their kids leave the school. Parents can tell who is passionate about teaching and who isn’t. Too, teachers tell the parents they are there only for tuition remission. Their leaving just advertises that they are only there only for tuition remission.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thank you - the term "tuition remission" is even new to me- so thanks for pointing me in that direction.

What I most appreciate from having read the threads is that it is a dicey relationship it puts your family in possibly: other people getting annoyed with you for getting a perk, either the other parents or other faculty. I hadn't considered that before. In the public setting it is a wonderful thing for moms/dad and their kids to go to the same school, and everyone gets treated better whereas it sounds like there is potential resentment about the issue in the private setting all the way around, no matter how it is handled from a policy perspective. Interesting for me to ponder.

17:45 - is the school you are referring to SSSAS? Just curious.

Like many things on DCUM, the supposed resentment over faculty kids is something largely limited to a few antisocial posters on this board; my kids go to the school where my spouse teaches, and we've never had even the slightest feeling of being different or resented by other families. Tuition remission is an employee benefit, just like health insurance and 401k contributions, designed to attract the best employees. Private schools are competing for the most talented teachers, and tuition benefits are a good way of doing that (and for most schools easier to manage than offering higher salaries) - a number of the teachers at our school (including my spouse) were highly sought after by several schools and chose our school in part because they liked the idea of having their kids at the school where they teach, so tuition remission made our school more attractive to them despite comparable (and sometimes lower) salaries. Being annoyed about these teachers "getting a perk" is nonsensical - and again, I've seen zero evidence that anyone thinks or acts like that in real life.



As an aside, I also think it's good for morale and sense of of community when the teachers and administrators are invested in and committed to the school not just as employees but also parents. When our kids previously went to a private school where my spouse didn't teach, I felt good about seeing faculty kids in their classes - it's a sign the teachers believe in their school and the quality of the education they're providing.

1) People who object to tuition remission are not resentful or “antisocial”.
2) Tuition remission is not the same as health insurance or 401K contributions because the benefit is only offered to a subset of employees.
3) If PP really views tuition remission as ‘”getting a perk”’ then clearly PP doesn’t understand the income loss to the school due to tuition remission. Using PP 23:07 as an example, even at a 50% Potomac discount why should one teacher receive $15,000, $30,000, $45,000 etc. (depending on the number of kids) per year for possibly 13 years? That’s not a perk; it’s an unequal distribution of benefits.
4) The proponents of tuition remission always say that it “attracts good teachers”. What they fail to acknowledge is that every employee (bookkeepers, secretaries, aftercare coordinators, camp directors, etc.) receives the benefit, which amounts to a huge amount of money. At a previous DC school a secretary received full tuition for four kids for 13 years at a rate of ~$30,000/kid. Why should a secretary, or any employee, receive a $120,000 per year benefit let alone for years? Is the school balancing that benefit by donating that amount to other employees 401K?
5) The teacher kids numbers are huge – sometimes my kids were in classes with half the class teacher kids (free tuition). That means half of the class was paying for the full class. Also, teachers are typically not big donors. Therefore, there’s a two-way income hit to the school.
6) The continuous whining about how little teachers make and how they take a pay cut at private schools gets old. No one made them be teachers. It’s a choice. Too, a lot of times the spouse makes a huge income, so why should a teacher with a spouse that makes a lot of money receive tuition remission?
7) Teacher kids are typically favored in the classroom. The misbehaved kids are never counseled out and any misbehavior is handled casually. Aftercare is especial bad. At my DCs school, the teacher/staff kids wander around and taunt the aftercare kids flaunting their freedom.
8) Providing tuition remission does not create a “sense of community”. So many of the teachers who are at a school due to tuition remission leave after their kids leave the school. Parents can tell who is passionate about teaching and who isn’t. Too, teachers tell the parents they are there only for tuition remission. Their leaving just advertises that they are only there only for tuition remission.

Hmm, sounds pretty resentful and antisocial to me, but to each his/her own. You're missing the point that this is really about basic economics - if your observations were accurate and the benefit didn't attract better teachers at lower salaries, then schools wouldn't offer it. No one on this thread is "whining about how much teachers make" - the point is that in all job markets, the employers who offer the most competitive salary/benefits packages are going to get the most talented employees. If you look through the faculty directory at our school, you'll see a lot of ivy league degrees and phds, and most importantly the names of teachers who by all accounts are phenomenally good at what they do. And many of them will tell you that they chose our school because the tuition discount made the salary/benefits package more attractive than other school. I assume you agree that people who go into teaching are educated/talented/desired enough to make choices about where to work the same way everyone else does, and that the more talented your kids' teachers are, the more you're getting for your money?

There are all sorts of employee benefits that benefit some employees more than others - if you've got more kids, then you get more out of health insurance; if you want to get a masters degree, then an employer contribution toward continuing education is going to benefit you more than someone who already has a masters degree; and so on. Are you also bitter about maternity leave because it only benefits women who just had babies?

I'm sorry morale is low at your school, and that apparently it has to do with faculty kids running around taunting other kids. We've been at two private schools, one where my spouse teaches and one where we were just a regular full paying family, and at both places the faculty kids fit it beautifully and helped make the schools a special place. OP, my main point is just that you shouldn't take posts like the PPs as reflecting what you would encounter in real life where reasonable people don't think or talk this way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My spouse's school won't admit our kids because it would be too much of a financial sacrifice for the school to give us the *partial* tuition remission. They told us that straight up, basically, but only after spouse worked there for awhile and it came time for our kids to apply. So the perk may exist on paper, but not in reality. And this is at a financially secure, in-demand school: it's not that they don't have the money, it's that they'd rather give spaces to kids whose parents can pay full fare, for obvious reasons. Our kids now go to an equally respected private, on FA, which is fine - I'm not complaining about their situation, only about spouse's school's initial dishonesty.

My advice would be that anyone considering teaching at a school for the tuition break should negotiate their kids' tuition AND admission up front. At least it's clear to everyone, then, whether there is any available benefit or whether the "tuition remission" is a carrot that will forever dangle at the end of the stick. Get that carrot in writing if you expect to eat it!

That's terrible! Our school was also 100 a few years ago (maybe six) and now it's 50. Wish it was 100 again! I'll most likely have to apply for another teaching position at a 100 school sometime in the near future.

Who gives 100% these days? I don't know of any.