Summit Schools is a private non-parochial business, and does not have additional resources to backfill our expenses. Summit dramatically decreased tuition during the pandemic to make Summit more accessible for families and to remain open, and now the school needs to move tuition closer to what it actually costs to educate a Summit student, which is approximately $14,500. Summit’s operating costs have increased significantly over the past two years. On average, tuition has only covered around 60% of the operating expenses for the last seven years.
In addition to phasing out fundraising for year-to-year operations for the first time since opening 25 years ago, Summit needed to set a salary scale for teachers that is more in line with the public school’s salary scales. Private school teachers make notably less money than public teachers because there are limited funding sources. The salary-scale adjustment that Summit’s Board of Trustees has approved is an important step to retaining valuable staff and attracting the best candidates in the future, especially at a time when there is a national teacher shortage.