Last week there was a talent show at Calvin's school so I went down to watch his music class sing. They did a nice job! I was chatting with one of the moms as we walked to our cars. Her son is the same age as mine and just started at the school a few months ago. I was asking about their journey to get to this school and she told me that they recently moved from out of state and knowing that public school wouldn't work they enrolled in private school. Since Calvin's tuition is covered by our school district I only had a ballpark guess (20-30K) as to how much tuition is. Curiosity getting the better of me I asked this Mom plainly, "how much do you pay for tuition?" The answer "Thirty-six thousand dollars per year." I was shocked! That is much more than I had thought.
I have been stewing over this information for days and several thoughts have dominated. 1. It is a miracle that we got Calvin into this school so quickly and that the district so willingly paid for it. It took only a few months. and we didn't have to hire an attorney or an advocate. That is pretty rare. 2. How will we ever manage to move to another school? It is so unlikely that a district will pick up Calvin as a student and just offer to send him to a private school? (When a special education student moves districts they get 30 days of coverage while they are re-evaluated and get a new IEP. A complete set of testing takes place and then they determine placement. I am sure that a district would try to place him in their own special education classes and then the only way to move to non-public school would be to fail out of them as he has here. Who would do that to a child who is stable? And I'm assuming Calvin will be stable 2 years from now . .. . And if the district doesn't pay, it is in no way possible for us to pay out of pocket such an exorbitant amount of $ for Calvin's schooling and yet, it is not really possible to live without it either. I will be a tiny bit patient and wait until we know more of our plans before I completely panic, but this definitely weighs heavily on my mind. 3.No wonder this school is good at what they do!
In addition to the school district paying for tuition, they also provide transportation to and from school in the form of a bus that comes to our house and delivers Calvin from our driveway to school and back. The district also pays for services through the county of mental health at a clinic (at children's hospital) such as therapy, family therapy, counseling, and medication management.
After just a few years of this Calvin's education will exceed the cost of Dave's medical school education. This is mind boggling to me but I am hopeful that just as Dave's education has served him well, so will Calvin's and that in the end he will be ready to face the world with as much hope in a bright future as his Dad had when he put an MD after his name!
I hear you on the tuition thing. Natalie's is $18,500/year when she is 3 and under and $29,500 when she is over 3. (of course they prorate the amounts since she isn't 3 til March. Her total for this next year is $21,000.)
ReplyDeleteLuckily, we don't even have to pay that amount. They write-off things right from the get go, we have scholarships, financial aid and then the school district will kick in hopefully towards the end, but it only amounts to a few hundred of dollars a month we will owe, and having all of her services in one place.. priceless!
Her school offers speech therapy services daily, audiology as needed and then all of her basic stuff they do each day in class. The student to teacher ratio is 3:1.
We are very blessed to be near such an amazing school for her and I know it will pay off in the future!