Everything that Urban does from year to year has to be planned for in its budget. Athletic bus rides, health benefits for teachers and the costs of helping students pay for books all have to be budgeted for in advance. The price of Urban’s tuition dictates how big this budget will be and how affordable Urban is for families. Understanding tuition — how it is set, how it affects the budget and how affordable it is — is key to understanding Urban itself.
The tuition and budgeting process, led by Head of School Dan Miller and Chief Financial Officer Diane Walters, begins when the school administration creates a series of proposed budgets for the incoming school year. Based on the budgets, the Board of Directors’ Finance Committee works to set the cost for the next year’s tuition.
“The finance committee reviews the budget proposed by the administration and ultimately recommends a budget to be approved by the Board,” said Chris Wilkens, Finance Committee and Board of Directors member.
When approving the budget, the Board of Directors makes a strategic decision to balance future objectives with present needs. “Stewarding the finances is one of the biggest responsibilities of the board,” said Ruth Chang Hess, a member of the Board of Directors’ Executive Committee. “We have to make sure the finances are sustainable, not just for our kids but for everyone’s kids in the future.”
The official budget for the incoming school year is ready after review by the Board of Directors. “We build the budget from the ground up,” Miller said. “Anything we want to do, we have to plan a year or more in advance.”
The Finance Committee meets once a month ahead of monthly board meetings and reviews around three to five proposed budgets each year. Each budget comes with a suggested cost for tuition that families would be required to pay in order to fund the school.
There is usually a small difference between the largest and smallest proposed budget — according to Wilkens, this year’s discrepancy was around $260,000. “When we consider different budgets, it’s not like we’re considering cutting different programs,” said Wilkens. “The difference is rarely more than one percent of the budget.”
“If you look just by expenses, a school is basically just teacher salaries and facilities costs,” Wilkens said. “Everything else is less than five percent of the budget.” Some cost sources like Flik or running the Salkind Center rise at around the rate of inflation. Teacher salaries and benefits, however, increase faster than the rate of inflation.
Walters said, “The budget has to incorporate rising costs in buses, operational building expenses [and] professional services, including food costs for Flik, student activities and readers.”
Each budget proposal includes a tuition raise which is proportionally larger than the percent increase in inflation. “We raise [tuition] at inflation plus [a percentage more] because all of our costs do [rise],” Wilkens said.
Budget costs are particularly significant in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The cost of the independent school model is a function of the Bay Area’s high costs,” Wilkens said. “Independent school tuition is expensive by any measure, but it reflects the costs required to operate a school like Urban in San Francisco.”
Urban pays salaries in proportion to the cost of living in the Bay Area. According to Pew Research Center, the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metropolitan area is one of the most expensive areas in America. “We have to pay competitive salaries for some incredibly talented people that [allow] them to live in the Bay Area,” said Wilkens. “These costs continue to increase.”
The budget’s basic outline and continuous increase will not change unless the school decides to make a large change to how the raise money or what they spend it on. “Unless a new source of funding, such as growth in our endowment, is identified, … increasing the percentage of [the] budget allocated to financial assistance or teacher salaries or anything else would require significant changes to how we operate,” Walters said.
Major projects, such as the Performing Arts + Community Center (PACC), are financed and budgeted separately. “When the school constructed the PACC, it was financed entirely by new fundraising and was entirely separate from the standard yearly operating budget,” Miller said. “It’s important to understand that the PACC did not affect things like financial assistance or teacher salaries.”
“The board could make decisions that would result in tuition that stays flat or a tuition that rises at the rate of inflation,” Wilkens said. “But ultimately, you have to make those [hard] decisions at some point. It’s like a house: If you don’t spend any money on maintenance for 10 years, in the 11th year you’re going to have a roof that is falling in and a bathroom that doesn’t work, and you’re going to have some big expenses.”
Wilkens stressed that both the Board of Directors and administration would rather have smaller and smoother tuition increases each year than larger ones every few years. “The budget is like an oil tanker, not a small dinghy. You can’t make big changes quickly,” he said.
Urban’s budget for the current school year is $29 million. Tuition is $61,998 and funds over 90% of the budget. The rest of the budget comes from donations and the school’s endowment, which is $16 million and contributes 4% of its value to the budget each year.
In the 2023-2024 school year, the median household income was $78,538 in the United States, $96,334 in California and $141,446 in San Francisco. This puts the price of an Urban education out of reach for most families. “There’s plenty of privilege at Urban,” Miller said. “Having the ability to pay for an Urban education puts you in a pretty high socioeconomic bracket.”
Students have reflected on the presence of wealth at Urban. “It’s almost absurd how wealthy some people at Urban are,” said Ferris, who received financial assistance when attending Urban. “There are people with multiple houses and [people who] go on insane vacations.”
Those who qualify for financial assistance at Urban are often in the upper-income bracket nationally. To qualify as middle class in the United States, one’s household income needs to fall between $56,600 and $169,800, according to a Pew Research Center Report. At Urban, financial assistance recipients’ average household income is $268,353 — almost three times the California median.
Applications for financial assistance are made through Clarity Tuition, a mobile app company that partners with Urban to allow families to submit financial information.
Walters and the Financial Assistance Committee receive financial assistance applications from the app and carry out the next steps of the financial assistance process. “I lead the process of responding to family requests for financial assistance by reviewing applications made through Clarity Tuition and preparing files for review by the Financial Assistance Committee,” Walters said. “When the committee (made up of key Urban employees, not Board members) agrees upon the financial assistance package for families, the Business Office provides the communication to [those] families.”
Urban’s financial assistance program helps families with more than just tuition. “We know that when you pay for school it isn’t just the check you send for tuition,” Miller said. “One of the things I’m proudest of about my tenure has been how we’ve expanded non-tuition financial aid.”
Non-tuition financial assistance includes support for a variety of resources. “The goal of non-tuition financial assistance is to support equitable access to the full range of the Urban experience,” Miller said.
Resources include books, athletic equipment, SAT and ACT prep, music lessons, neuropsychological evaluations and a Flik allowance for students receiving 75% assistance or more.
“The financial assistance helps a lot with all of the smaller things,” said Declan Chabra ’25, who is on financial assistance. “You still have to pay a lot to go on, say, the Spain or France trips, and understanding the breakdown of what the school pays for and what it doesn’t can be complicated.”
Urban does offer ways for students to further understand financial assistance. Students with questions can follow up with Dean of Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Jason Ernest Feldman or their grade dean.
With the PACC’s construction complete, Urban’s next major fundraising project is expanding the school’s endowment to reduce growth in tuition. “In order for us to increase financial assistance, we need to grow the endowment,” Miller said.
Currently, the endowment grows at an annual rate of around 6%. “At present, the endowment contributes around three or four tuitions’ worth to the school,” Wilkens said. “Now that the campus is complete, we’d love to see if we can improve that.”
Wilkens and Miller emphasized Urban’s aim to be accessible for families of all incomes. “We’re not doing financial assistance for the fun [of] it,” Miller said. “We do it because the school believes that we fulfill our mission better if we have a more socioeconomically diverse student body. And the only way to do that is with financial assistance.”