High School Art Festival is May 24 |
Dear Families,
Our students are poets, musicians, dancers, actors, scientists, and mathematicians. They are gifted, curious and eager to learn. They are unabashed and adventurous thinkers. As one long-time teacher said, “We are not here to prepare kids for the real world, we are here to prepare them to change the world.” It is for this reason that we strive to make it possible for every family of a child who is accepted here to manage the cost of tuition. We recognize that Financial Aid is about need, but we also recognize that we need every student that goes here to be financially able to take part in all that our school has to offer.
Over one thousand individual students walk through our doors each morning. Whether our students come by car, take the subway, hop on a bus or walk they are one with the magic of our community from the moment they enter school each day. From preschool to their final senior gathering and poetry reading on our Red Stairs our students’ voices are heard, their dreams fed and their differences embraced. This, too, serves as motivation to strive to meet the financial needs of Saint Ann’s families and to make certain that they understand and are comfortable with our aid application process.
We are here to have honest, meaningful conversations about financial aid—it is a fundamental way in which we support the mission of our school. Our school is dedicated to making this process as transparent and as equitable as possible. Unfortunately, while our nurturing is unlimited our budget is not, so we must indeed gather information and adhere to a process that allows us to be fair and evenhanded and to help as many and as much as possible. We work with families to help them plan for the fact that our tuition, like the tuitions of other independent schools, will increase throughout a student’s time with us. The average tuition has increased at our peer schools each year for the past decade.
At Saint Ann’s we make every effort to get to know each of our students. Our financial aid process is no different. We want to know and understand your circumstances; we are happy to answer questions, and to speak with you to ensure that we understand your situation accurately and completely. At Saint Ann’s, a financial aid application is a conversation. If in doubt about your family’s ability to sustain the cost of tuition or if you simply fear that you will not meet the criteria for need, we nevertheless encourage you to complete an application and begin the conversation with us. We realize that this process can be daunting for many reasons. Many families are overwhelmed by the process or embarrassed to ask for help or concerned about confidentiality of sensitive financial information. We understand those concerns and invite you to reach out to our finance team at any point in the process as they will be pleased to guide you through the application and assist you in any way possible. You may send a confidential e-mail to our team by e-mailing Financial-aid@saintannsny.org.
Please also know that we are always willing to speak with you. The Finance Office can be reached at 718-522-1660 x216.
Sincerely,
The Finance Office
