A Letter From Poly's Leadership About Tuition for the 2021-2022 School Year

Dear Poly parents and guardians,

The effects of the global pandemic have been extraordinarily challenging for all of us. With the move to distance learning, Poly’s faculty and staff have worked to ensure that the academic program is engaging, innovative, and supportive of rigorous and reflective learning. This past fall, in addition to a comprehensive remote learning program, we offered the following opportunities for students to be on campus: in-person instruction for grades K-2, socio-emotional programming for grades 3-12, and athletic conditioning and skill-building for Upper School student-athletes. The hallmark of a Poly education is the opportunity to gather and learn with, and from, each other. We look forward to doing so as soon as circumstances permit.  

Over this past year, Poly’s Board of Trustees and administration have had considerable discussion about Poly’s finances. While distance learning has saved individual costs associated with campus events, class trips, and utilities, we have had significant additional expenses and lost revenue, including the addition of portable classrooms, the hiring of additional teachers, upgrading technology, improving classroom ventilation, providing additional financial aid, suspending our summer program, and securing protective supplies to ensure a safe return to campus. To date, the additional costs slightly outweigh the savings. This year, we balanced the budget through a modest enrollment increase (1%), the Poly Community Fund created by trustees last spring, and by drawing on Poly’s reserve funds. The latter was set aside in prior years for crises and other unexpected costs. Foresight from previous trustees enabled us to draw on those funds at a critical time. We intend to rebuild those reserves when conditions normalize.  

The Board and administration recognize that—despite outstanding efforts by faculty and staff who worked incredibly hard to ensure programmatic excellence—the remote Poly experience is not the same as the in-person version. We also recognize that the pandemic has created unforeseen and significant financial strains on many in our community. With these factors in mind during our January meeting, the Board took the exceptional step and decided to hold Poly’s tuition flat for the 2021-2022 academic year. Hence, tuition rates will remain at the 2020-2021 levels. Here are the rates for the 2021-2022 school year:

Maintaining flat tuition requires us to balance the budget through another modest enrollment increase, tapping more reserve funds, and generating cost savings. As noted in prior communications, roughly 80% of Poly’s budget is covered by tuition—with 10% coming from the PolyFund and 10% from the return on our endowed funds. Poly’s largest expenses include salaries and benefits for teachers, staff, and administration. In prior years, the tuition increase has been approximately 4% with a comparable 4% increase in teacher salaries. We are happy to convey that while we have reached the decision to not increase tuition, we want to honor our faculty and staff with a salary increase, albeit not at the same levels of prior years, but an increase nonetheless. We want to support our teachers and staff as much as possible during this difficult time because they are critical to Poly’s commitment to have the best faculty and our focus on sustaining long-term excellence. We anticipate that the tuition freeze will happen only this year.  

Philanthropic contributions play a critical role in Poly’s ability to provide programmatic excellence, fair and competitive salaries and benefits, and robust financial aid. For this next year, our goal is to maintain or grow annual giving. Families able to increase their contribution are encouraged to do so this year, given current circumstances. Please know that we understand and are grateful for the support you can provide for those unable to do so. 

We thank you all for being a part of our community.

With sincerity,

Melany Hunt
Chair, Board of Trustees

John Bracker
Head of School