I'll also post this in the finance/frugality forum.

I am looking into a private school in my city for dd for when she's school-age. She's only 3.5 now, but we're looking at all the options.

A school in our city which looks amazing charges $9000 for Kindergarten. Their website doesn't list any prices, I emailed the school and asked them. But I have no sense of whether that's a "good" price or not.

What do other schools charge?

Most of the schools in our area, when I looked in to it, charged about $5000 for part-time kindergarten. Is the $9000 for part time/full time? I think it may be a little steep for part time kindergarten, but for a full-time school day, it seems to be right on par with the ones near me.

It's full day kindergarten. If I were paying every week of the year it would work out to be about $175 - which actually doesn't sound that bad. I just don't have anything to compare to yet.

$5000 for first through sixth grades. Not sure what the Kindergarten price is, though.

That sounds about right for my area if you're talking about full-time. There's a wonderful school I've had my eye on for some time. Even thought DD is only 16 months now, I've been scoping the schools around here. The tuition to this amazing school is..*gulp*...$10,000/year! And that's the price right now. I imagine it will go up in another 5 years.

My DS's school fees are $7,400 for K/1st/2nd grades. This is cheaper than most of the other private schools in the area which can go as high as $16,000. The local Waldorf school is $10,000.

Ds's Montessori is 5000 year for full time. That's on the cheaper side of private schools in the county. The one I went to is now 10,000-12,000 a year.

We pay $10,800 per year - full time. Per kid.... I have three - two of whom are there (dd3 is in co-op preschool at $62 a month!) So our yearly tuition is just under $20,000 (sibling discount) for private school for two kids. (One in first grade, one in fifth.) By the time dd3 is old enough to go, we'll be paying over $30,000 per year. There is only one or two years of overlap with all three - depending on whether dd3 goes there for kindergarten or not until 1st grade.

And it is worth every penny. I feel like we should do one of those "uniforms - $300, books and materials fees - $500, an education like this - priceless" commercials. :) Every parent in our school feels like we have hit the educational lotto. If there are ten teachers this amazing in the entire country, I'd be very, very surprised.

We are paying $3700 for 1/2 day kindy. Next year tuition goes to about $6K:crap

i pay 230.00 per month 10 months a year for full time first grade

We paid $12,000 per year for a full-day K and 12,500 for 1st. It goes up each year, plus whatever cost increases they add. Well, that's what the tuition is, we actually only pay about 1/3 of it, plus some payment-in-kind. Thank God for financial aid.

I would have paid $15,400 per child for this year but withdrew my girls just before school started. private year round montessori with no extra fees.

oops

We pay $11,000 for full-day kindergarten. The tuition includes before and after care (if you want it) and lunch. The price is the same for all grades.

Around here, Catholic schools are about $6,000 for kinderrgarten, and the more "prestigious" private schools are $16,000 to $19,000 for kindergarten.

We are paying $3700 for 1/2 day kindy. Next year tuition goes to about $6K:crap

This is what I pay for three half days/week of preschool! It's a lot. :(

About $3500 per year for grades Pre-K-6 at our Catholic school.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you people afford yearly tuitions of $16000 per child?

About $3500 per year for grades Pre-K-6 at our Catholic school.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you people afford yearly tuitions of $16000 per child?

We will probably wind up paying that much or more per year once dd finishes up at our "inexpensive" $11,000/year school. :o I don't know how exactly we will do it, but it will probably involve me going to work full time. It's one of the reasons that we will probably stop at one child. Sigh.

Well we couldn't afford a private school. The ones in our area are about 500/mo . My son goes to a magnet school and we're pretty happy with it. If I needed private school I would homeschool as again we don't have the money for private school. we have an adoption to pay for instead. :)

I've always wondered this about private school. If you send your child to a non-religious private school, do you do so because the schools in your neighborhoods are not good or the schools offer something that the neighborhood school doesn't?

I've always wondered this about private school. If you send your child to a non-religious private school, do you do so because the schools in your neighborhoods are not good or the schools offer something that the neighborhood school doesn't?

I have one child in private school, one in public high school and homeschool the other. We chose to send DS to the private school (we decided on hsing DD at the same time) because the teachers are awesome and the level of consciousness of the school, it's board of directors, teachers and parents are way above anything at public school. The school is a labor of love for those that started it. It is based on the Buddhist Shambhala teachings and the have the lofty aim of educating children so that they will truly make a difference in this world. My 9 year old DD would love to attend too, but they are a new school and only go up to 2nd grade and she is an "old" 3rd grader. They plan to add a grade a year, so she is going to miss out unfortunately.

We paid $3500 per year when dd was 3 and was in a Montessori preschool 5 days a week, 3 hrs a day. That's cheap for M school but it also wasn't a private school, it was a public magnet school that charged tuition until 1st grade.

I've always wondered this about private school. If you send your child to a non-religious private school, do you do so because the schools in your neighborhoods are not good or the schools offer something that the neighborhood school doesn't?

We send dd to private school because the public schools in our city are not good. The are severely underfunded, doing the best that they can in crumbling buildings with inadequate libraries and non-existant technological resources.

The one public school around here that is considered good is packed to the rafters. Imagine 30 five-year-olds with one teacher in a kindergarten. The administration there is also obsessed with test scores, so it pushes the kids really hard preparing them for the standardized tests. I have nothing against rigorous academics, but it seems ridiculous to teach to a test while doing away with things like recess and art and music. And even if we wanted to send dd there, we couldn't because we can't afford a house in that neighborhood.

There is a brand-new charter school in the next neighborhood over that we seriously considered sending dd too. I really loved the teachers and the curriculum, but when push came to shove I wasn't willing to take a risk on a brand-new start-up. (At the time that we had to make our decision, there weren't even classrooms, just a falling down warehouse, a lot of ideas, and not a lot of time.)

We are fortunate that we were able to scrape together tuition for a nice private school where dd is thriving. If we couldn't, I don't know what we would have done. We probably would have sent her to the charter school and hoped for the best. I'm glad that we didn't have to make that decision.

$25,000+ in NYC :dizzy:

Wow I feel lucky to have found my daughters school after seeing how much every body else pays. I pay 1200 a year for my daughters privet school.

Rachel

The cheapest private school in our city (not including Catholic schools, which are cheaper) is $14,000/yr. Most are around $18,000/yr. Yeah, right.

The private school my kids attend offer the same price for tuition no matter what the age is and it goes down for multiple children enrolled. :) It starts at 4,000/year (per child), not too bad. But we also have to pay for lunches which are 50-60/month, it varies. And we pay for any before and after school which we don't utilize. They also offer tuition assistance for families that can't afford it. Maybe you could check in to the tuition assistance?

Wow, NYC is high. We have a couple of private schools in our town that are really high, like college tuition high. But the ones in NY beat those :lol

where I am, the 5-day preschools are 900-1100 a month.

I pay $4,500 a year (sep thru may) for just 3 days a week (M, T, W) at a waldorf kindergarten. (ages 3-7) and I send lunch daily.

Its worth every penny to us though.

In our area private schools range from about 2500-20000 yr depending on grade
It seems relig. based are less and montessori is more, and the priciest sp? is a "college prep" school but their SAT scores are not that much higher than others...are not as high as one of the relig. based...but that could be that that relig. based school will choose not to let a pupil re-enroll I he does not "apply" himself to his schoolwork

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Holy cow, this is insane!

I'm new to this forum (DD will possibly begin pre-school in the fall). I had no idea private school was *that* spendy.

We definitely can't afford those kind of prices. We're living on one income so that I can stay home with DD (and baby on the way), so things are tight already.

Fortunately our public school system has a preschool, so if DD gets in (they have a lottery for open spaces) she can go there. I certainly hope our public school experience here doesn't completely suck, because DH and I have already agreed that homeschooling full time isn't going to work for us.

I went to public school and I found that it was what I made of it.... hopefully that will hold true today as well.

We haven't started yet but the schools we're looking at are around $9-10k per family, not per child (obviously important in our case :lol) - that's Canadian.

My oldest son attended a preschool that was 900 dollars per month for full-time; he went 3 days per week and I think it was about 700 dollars per month.

My second ds will attend a co-op preschool 4 days per week (I'll work there 1 day per week) for 1/2 days at $244 per month ...

My oldest boy attends a Catholic school which is $500 dollars per month--Catholic schools are less expensive than other private schools because the Catholic Church spends a great deal of money per child; his school has music, spanish, art, daily science (for K, even)... for the bay area this is a really good value...

About $400 a month per child is what we will pay if we choose private school.. or if we go with the Waldorf school, it will be $550 per month per child

My 13 yr old DS attends a 'home school co-op" of 12 kids. It costs $3500 a year, but it's just 7 & 8th grade. I am praying he gets into one of the charter schools in the area for 9-12 :o even though I will need to drive him up to 45 minutes away (there are carpools) The public schools in my town are not so great :gloomy:

I've always wondered this about private school. If you send your child to a non-religious private school, do you do so because the schools in your neighborhoods are not good or the schools offer something that the neighborhood school doesn't?

I have serious issues with public school - the biggie being mandated high-stakes testing starting in 3rd grade. The school DD attends is wonderful. Here is it's website: http://www.villageschool.to