Latest news on the 'deflation" front.:
New York Kindergarten Tuition Fees Top $26,000 a Year (Update1)
Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Tuition at some of New York's top private kindergartens will exceed $26,000 for the first time in September, almost as much as the cost of attending Princeton University and twice the price of the state universities.
``It's supply and demand,'' said Nina Bauer, a counselor at Ivy Wise Kids, a service that for $5,000 will coach parents on how to prepare 4- and 5-year-olds for tests and interviews. ``Wall Street got big bonuses this year. Everyone is just dying to get in. No one has ever once asked me about tuition.''
Parents of the 30,000 students at the city's private schools are receiving contracts this week showing next year's tuitions will rise to record levels after five years of annual growth of as much as 7 percent. Demand for about 2,300 kindergarten spots at such schools as Dalton and Horace Mann is stronger than ever, with some getting 15 applications for every seat.
Behind the surge in demand is a growing belief among parents that the schools put their children on track to make it to Harvard, Yale or other top universities, Bauer said. Parents are also seeking the specialized instruction and facilities lacking in New York's 1.1 million-student public school system, which is the biggest in the U.S. and where less than half the students meet state reading requirements.
``People who don't live in New York City don't understand it, but if you look at what the private schools offer here, it is an unbelievable education,'' said Mark Kopelman, a marketing executive who hopes to send his 4-year-old son to Ethical Culture Fieldston School or the Bank Street School for Children. ``To us, this is a great investment.''
Acceptance Letters
Private schools will be mailing out acceptance letters for kindergarten today.
Driving up prices is the rising cost of health insurance, maintenance and faculty salaries, said George Davison, headmaster at Grace Church School, where even some families earning $200,000 a year can get financial aid so their children may attend.
Horace Mann, a preparatory school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx whose 150 to 175 seniors all go on to college, will raise tuition in September to $26,100 for kindergarten through 12th grade, according to Catherine Hausman and Victoria Goldman, authors of ``The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools.'' The school declined to confirm that figure.
That's more than twice the $12,140 U.S. average for kindergarten, according to the National Association of Independent Schools, which acts as the voice of private education.
70% Jump
It's also at least 70 percent higher than Horace Mann's 1996- 1997 tuition, when fees ranged from $10,105 to $15,425, according to the book by Hausman and Goldman. Since 1997, the U.S. Consumer Price Index has risen only 14 percent.
Goldman said the figures don't include expenses such as tutors, bus transportation that may cost as much as $2,000 a child or the annual fund drive that's held to raise money for the school.
``This market isn't going to blink at tuition over $25,000,'' said Sandra Bass, editor of the Private School Newsletter, which chronicles the city's independent schools. ``If Wall Street continues to come back and deals continue to happen, you won't see any exodus.''
Profits at securities firms, which account for about 15 percent of the city's wages, soared to $15 billion last year as the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 26 percent, its biggest gain since 1998. Bonuses at financial companies such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. rose 25 percent to $10.7 billion, the third-highest ever, New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi estimated in a report.
`Sense of Entitlement'
Even the three-year stock market decline did little to diminish demand, Bass said.
``New York City is a social-class echo chamber, and all that noise drives people to madness,'' said Alfred Lubrano, the author of ``Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams,'' a book published last year about class and social mobility. ``It feeds a sense of entitlement in these children. They will have no idea what it is like to live in a world with others who exist a lot closer to the ground.''
Some parents have questioned the tuition increases. At a meeting last February, Robert J. Katz, chairman of the board at Horace Mann, said trustees ``agonized'' over the cost, according to minutes posted on the school's Web site. The board said 80 percent of the cost is accounted for by compensation and benefits and that the school had fallen behind in faculty wage levels.
`Like a College'
Katz, a managing director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the third-biggest securities firm by capital, declined to comment on the tuition increase when contacted by Bloomberg News.
Olivia Koppell-Levy, a musician whose 15-year-old daughter transferred from a public school to Horace Mann after fifth grade, said that while the tuition is ``not easy,'' it's worth it.
``The academics are strong, they have a wonderful orchestra, a glee club, a beautiful theater,'' Koppell-Levy said. ``The teachers have fabulous credentials, and there are so many choices of classes that it's like a college.''
The cost is also comparable to college: Yearly tuition at Princeton is rising to $29,910 in September, not including room and board. A year of in-state tuition, room and board at the State University of New York at Binghamton comes to $14,790.
The costs are ``unprecedented, but few cities are as expensive,'' said Myra McGovern, public information director for the National Association of Independent Schools.
National Trend
New York is the world's fourth-most-expensive city after Oslo, Hong Kong and Tokyo, according to a survey last July by Swiss bank UBS AG. Buyers of New York apartments paid an average of $903,259 in the fourth quarter, said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel Inc., a real estate appraisal firm.
The demand in New York arises partly from parents' mistrust of the public system, said Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, a city official whose job is to help citizens cut through government red tape.
``A lot of parents read and hear about how terrible all the public schools are and immediately write off all of them,'' Gotbaum, who attended the Brearley School, said in an interview.
``There's a little bit of social cachet in the whole thing, a myth that if your kids get into private school, they will get into the best colleges,'' she said.
Brearley, whose alumni include Caroline Kennedy, charges $26,200 a year, including books, lunch and trips, from kindergarten to fourth grade.
Harvard's Take
William Fitzsimmons, Harvard University's dean of admissions, who oversees applications from New York, said he reads 30 to 40 a year from Horace Mann students and gives them no preference.
``Horace Mann has wonderful teachers, counselors and resources, and it happens to get great students,'' Fitzsimmons said. ``But the vast majority of students from Harvard did not go to Horace Mann. And all of these great students might have gotten into Harvard anyway, even if they hadn't gone there.'' Annual tuition for an undergraduate degree at Harvard University is $26,066 this year, according to the university's Web site.
Still, the average spending per public elementary school student in New York was $10,793 in 2001-2002, according to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a nonprofit group aiming to change state funding formulas. While private-school kindergarten classes often have two teachers and 20 students, public schools can have as many as 30, said Ron Davis, a spokesman for the 80,000-member United Federation of Teachers.
``We are reforming schools so that parents will want to send their children to any of our 1,200 schools,'' said Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, a graduate of the public school system.
Seats Taken
The Dalton School won't say how many parents are vying for 90 seats at its five kindergarten classes, where as many as half the spots may be reserved for siblings of those attending the school or the children of alumni.
``We never tell the number of applicants, as it just makes parents even more nervous,'' said Elisabeth Krents, director of admissions. ``I'm trying to keep them as calm as possible.''
Kindergarten tuition at Dalton will rise to $24,560 in September, Krents said.
At Grace Church School in Greenwich Village, 150 students competed for 10 kindergarten spots for next fall, said headmaster Davison, who also leads the Independent Association of Schools of Greater New York, a nonprofit group of some 70 schools.
The Chapin School, an all-girls prep school on Manhattan's Upper East Side, approved a 5 percent tuition increase that will bring the annual cost of kindergarten through grade 12 to $23,700 next fall, according to a Jan. 29 letter to parents.
Comparing Prices
Tuition increases will raise the cost of kindergarten to $24,300 at the all-boys Allen Stevenson School on the Upper East Side. At Grace Church School, a tuition increase of 6.5 percent will bring the cost of kindergarten to $23,500, Davison said.
``We know it's really expensive, but it isn't frivolous,'' Davison said. Some private-school teachers ``are getting $55,000 with a master's degree and 12 years of experience, and that is not a living wage in New York City.''
The top scale for faculty at Grace Church in 1993-1994 was $45,424; this year it's $85,750. Another reason for the higher tuition is that more economically disadvantaged students are being subsidized with scholarships.
As many as one-third of the students at Grace Church apply for need-based financial aid and tuition grants, Davison said.
At Riverdale Country School, parents received a letter last week saying kindergarten costs will rise to $24,900, said Bass, editor of the Private School Newsletter.
Many Amenities
Among the school's amenities: a theater, tennis courts, an indoor swimming pool, a new gymnasium, two football fields and soccer, lacrosse and baseball fields, along with art studios and science laboratories.
New York's independent-school kindergartens are more costly than those in other U.S. cities, said McGovern.
The Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California, will charge $18,700 for kindergarten in September. The Katherine Delmar Burke School in San Francisco will charge $17,600. The Latin School in Chicago costs $15,440 for what it describes as ``senior kindergarten.''
Amanda Uhry, founder of Manhattan Private School Advisors, says schools raise prices ``because they can find people to pay it.''
``If you have a Nissan Pathfinder, do you really need a Hummer?'' she said. ``No, but the guy down the block did.''
Jackie Pelzer, who runs Early Steps, a program that placed 145 minority children in New York's private kindergartens last year and arranges financial aid, said the tuition increases are hard to fathom outside the city. Some parents are so jarred that she needs to quickly mention the financial aid that's available.
``When I say $25,000 for kindergarten, I get laughed at all over the place,'' she said. |
