General Financial Information
Believers Academy is committed to making Christian education available to as many families as possible. Because of that, we not only strive to hold down expenses but also seek to give parents more flexibility in deciding how much of the academy they wish to use—and, consequently, how much they have to pay—through our practice of course-by-course scheduling. On the other hand, we are also committed to providing our students with a high quality academic education thoroughly informed by a Biblical worldview. Doing so involves some very real costs that we must be able to meet if we are to remain a viable institution. Besides the compensation of our teachers (who themselves donate to the school community tens of thousands of dollars worth of sacrificed earning opportunities every single year), we also have to find ways to pay for supplies, computing technologies, association membership and accreditation fees, and so forth.
In general, tuition covers most of the normal operating costs associated with running a private school. Most notably, it funds staff salaries. Tuition and study hall fees are charged by the instructional or supervisory hour. “Hours,” in this context, mean the number of hours of instruction or supervision per week per semester for a given scheduled course or study hall. Most secondary courses, for example, are three-hour courses since they meet for three hours each week for one semester. Instructional hours for elementary courses show considerably more variation. Fees, on the other hand, are intended to fund fixed, per-student expenditures (such as insurance, standardized testing, association memberships, parent portal technologies, and so forth); special individual services, such as testing, graduation, and add-drop fees; special costs associated with individual courses, such as laboratory or instructional materials fees; or costs associated with optional participation programs, such as athletics or after school care.