Student/Parent comments | Site Map
The North Fork School address is 812 Reedy Lane in McCall.
Going north on Davis (toward Ponderosa Park), turn right on
Reedy Lane (the road to the McCall Golf Course Clubhouse). Number 812 is on the right, after Ponderosa Street. It is a brown house with a red roof & detached garage.
Why does the website never change?
Most class pages are updated once/week, except for the
Writing Workshop page, which is updated twice/month. When you go regularly to an internet site, your computer saves the pages for you in its temporary memory, so that the page does not take so long to load each time you visit. It is necessary to "refresh" the page to access information that may have been uploaded since you last downloaded the site.
Why is there a separate school fee in addition to tuition?
The separate school fee allows NFS to keep costs lower for
everyone, by prorating the site expense by the number of families enrolled each year. We could give out one "uition" number that included all fees, but it would necessarily be estimated on the high side, to cover all of our unanticipated costs. The sliding scale enables everyone to save,
especially as enrollment rises.
How is the deposit applied to future billing?
The registration fee of $250.00 ($50.00 if all forms are
sent in before May 31) is just that: a registration fee. It does not
apply to any part of tuition or other fees, Discounts are given in June in
order to ease the "crunch" of paperwork that comes with late registrations
as we are trying to determine schedules, communicate with families & public schools, and order books in August.
The additional $300.00 per student that is due with your
deposit goes toward the ultimate school fee, which is determined when our registrations are complete in September. The additional school fee (above the initial $300.00 deposit), is outlined on the back of the tuition sheet in the chart [# of families enrolled], and will be billed on your October bill.
A note on private school tuition:
Private Day school tuitions in the United States vary from $18,000 to
$44,000 per year for full-time students. As fully-enrolled students take
between six and eight classes during the school year, the actual cost of
tuition ranges from 2,250 to $7,333 per class taken per year. The lower
tuition amount represents that of parochial schools, which are heavily
subsidized by their local parishes or diocese. Even private religious
schools in McCall receive free or subsidized rent from their churches to
help keep tuition costs low. Sometimes, private schools with large
endowments offer significant scholarship opportunities to students; in every case, private school tuitions cover only half of the actual cost of
educating students. The balance of funding comes from annual fundraising through parent, alumni and donor networks.
The North Fork School is not a 501c3 tax entity; this means that the school is not run by a Board of directors; it cannot do fundraising activities to offset tuition costs; it does not have an endowment to provide scholarships; it does not offer the benefits, retirement, and salary packages to teachers that other private (and public) schools can offer. Additionally, most NFS students are dually-enrolled in the MDSD schools, which receive full state funding for each NFS student. None of those state dollars come to the North Fork School; all tax dollars go toward making MDSD programs run as well as possible.
In view of these typical private school costs, NFS tuition, although it
seems to be expensive if this is a family's first experience with private
school payments, is actually quite low. The 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Year programs, each of which consists of two for-credit classes, are only $2300 per class (at the higher rate for fewer students), while High School English, Math, or History is $2033 -$2700, depending on the number of classes taken in one year.
Are scholarships available for NFS classes?
The North Fork School has never turned away a student who is motivated to work hard, but whose family cannot pay the full tuition. At the same time, almost every family would like to receive some sort of financial aid.
Families who can prove true financial need do have options, including
payment plans (each plan must be requested and in place before the September billing), a work-exchange for partial tuition credit, or a personal assessment of financial status that can result in reduced tuition.
Families who request reduced tuition must understand that, since the NFS is not run by a non-profit board that could fundraise to offset such costs, any financial aid is a direct gift from NFS teachers, who agree to take a reduction in their student-based fee to help a student who is academically motivated.
There are no aid programs for private schools in general that I know of -- basically, Brigid, Paige & I agree to accept less money for students who can't afford to pay. As we each make less than $20,000 per year, with no benefits and no retirement package, it is also a stretch for us - we offer help usually if there is a trade available, or if a student is REALLY
motivated, and a parent is REALLY poor. The North Fork School also counts families who make monthly payments as receiving aid -- the school is basically personally financing families' abilities to pay over time, without charging interest or other fees. This is, from a business perspective, also "financial aid". The number of families who receive actual discounts is very small; all have extenuating circumstances.
Most parents would like help for tuition. This is also true at the college level -- when parents must fill out detailed financial forms to see if they qualify for financial aid. This is a great process to do right now to see
what your own income level may allow you to receive (this is pure financial aid, not merit scholarships, or other school funding that a student could potentially earn through high test scores & grades). It would be a great exercise for your family to do together -- just to see where you "stand" as far as potential financial aid goes. Go to FAFSA As far as NFS goes, there has been a discussion this year about starting a foundation just to help NFS students pay for tuition. This discussion was in the form of "if a charter school plan doesn't work out, perhaps this could be a better place to put our energy." At this point, I think that's a good idea -- parents who get involved would not FUND such a project, but, with help looking into grants & funding from other places, would work together to set up a separate 501c3 foundation that could then aid NFS students.
I do think that, even with such a foundation in place, families would have to be able to prove actual "need".
Copyright © 2011 Marie M. Furnary All rights reserved.
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