Heritage School
Choosing Christian Schooling
Tuition and the Christian Family’s Budget
Why do families consider Christian schooling?
As parents, we consciously provide the best nutrition possible for our children’s growing bodies, whose current and future health likely depends significantly upon the quality and example of our choices in nourishment. Similarly, the intellectual and spiritual health of young minds and souls depends significantly upon the quality of intellectual and spiritual “nourishment” we provide. Good schooling should include 1) academic challenge, which includes practice of significant thinking skills, 2)patient, consistent cultivation of ethical and moral character as well as good decision-making, 3) an appropriate living curriculum in the form of the adult models around them, and 4) the respect each child—unique in personality and blend of gifts, abilities, and limitations—deserves as an “image-bearer” of God who has made each. For these and other reasons, especially in the face of subtle, complex pressures inherent in the culture of our times, parents often seek the support of Christian schools to help them to nurture a Christian worldview in their children.Who sends their children to a Christian School?
The community which makes up a healthy, visionary Christian school includes a broad diversity of families, representing various educational, socio -economic, and professional backgrounds, which shares a common awareness that children have but one opportunity to experience quality schooling. In spite of costs which might seem prohibitive to some parents, though, families choosing single -income lifestyles, others with several children to educate, or those under economic stress not of their own making can attend.
How do parents pay the tuition for private schooling?
Many parents simply assume that their budgets cannot afford tuition for quality Christian schooling. Sometimes, however, family or friends offer to help (i.e., grandparents or godparents) with the cost. Occasionally, churches contribute a tuition subsidy directly to the school for students from their congregations. Advance planning for finanancial matters may even allow tuition to be paid with pre-tax dollars, reducing the impact on your family's budget.
What if a family still cannot afford quality Christian Schooling?
Some families—are in special circumstances of stress— and need more assistance. While using gifts to the operating budget of schools to control tuition costs for all of its families, many Christian schools offer some additional type of aid—usually in the form of discounts for multiple children, church membership—which offer a modest degree of help to limited budgets. Discounts, however, rarely offer sufficient assistance.
Increasingly, visionary schools growing in quality recognize that tuition assistance must be used not to keep schooling “affordable” but to keep schooling “available.” They charge the true cost to educate each child while budgeting for and granting a college -typeincome -and -need -based tuition -assistance. Calculated and administered by a third -party agency in a confidential process—it allows each family to pay what its income or budget can afford. Thus, Heritage Schoolmakes its visionary program of classical and Christian schooling available to its growing community.
How does offering tuition assistance to families benefit the school?
Every student and family in a Christian school benefits from tuition assistance provided to some families on a family-income need-basis. How?
A. A program of tuition-assistance at a Christian school which enables students to attend, whose families could not otherwise afford full tuition, bolsters a sense of shared Christian community and mission on behalf of covenant children.
B. Instead of a community comprised primarily of financially “comfortable” or affluent families, a much broader socio -economic range of families—one more characteristic of a healthy congregation and of the Body of Christ—can receive quality schooling which integrates faith and learning to establish a Christian worldview within an educational culture both historically classical and Christ -centered.
If you would like to consider the Heritage School classical and Christian program for your children, as well as potential eligibility for our income -based, college -type tuition assistance, our school can provide an information packet.