St. Mary’s hikes tuition by 12 pct. for 2011-12

LYNN – St. Mary’s Junior-Senior High School will increase tuition by about 12 percent – or approximately $900 – for the 2011-2012 school year, in what school administrators say is an effort to move toward a cost-based tuition, according to Ray Bastarache, Head of School.”The rise in tuition is really out of necessity,” says Bastarache. “For a number of years there was a significant gap between our price to parents and our cost to educate a student here. Our price to parents has always been a couple of thousand dollars below what the actual cost to educate a student is.”But the rise in tuition will be beneficial in many ways, Bastarache said, because it will increase financial aid benefits to families during the upcoming school years.Bastarache says the school gave out about $850,000 in financial aid and scholarships last year.They expect that number to increase to more than $1 million during the next school year, he said.”We understand that there’s a ceiling to what our parents can afford,” said Bastarache.He noted that school officials have begun holding focus groups to talk to parents concerning what they can afford.”We’re spending a lot of time working with individuals and families and trying to make it work for everybody. If their students are already here, we don’t want them to leave,” he said.But Bastarache says the school needs to increase tuition in order to improve.”We’re aware that it’s a tough economy out there, but we want to remain firm in our mission to provide rigorous academics and extra-curricular activities,” he said. “But the model for running our business wasn’t very sustainable.”A $900 increase in tuition still puts St. Mary’s on the low end of tuition rates compared to other Catholic high schools in nearby communities and Boston, he contends.With the increased tuition figure, it will cost around $6,700 for a junior high school (seventh and eighth grade) non-parish student to attend St. Mary’s for the 2011-2012 school year, with the rate slightly decreased for parish families. The tuition rate for grades 9 through 12 for a non-parish student will be around $9,200.That’s still lower than the tuition rates of many competing Massachusetts Catholic schools; St. John’s Preparatory in Danvers charges around $18,500 in tuition, while Bishop Fenwick High School in Peabody charges around $11,000 a year.Pope John XXIII High School in Everett has around the same rates as St. Mary’s.”The reality of the value for what you pay here is unbelievable,” says Bastarache. “We want to serve the families in our communities while still upholding the fact that we offer a great education.”Bastarache says St. Mary’s students have been accepted into nine different Ivy League schools in the past four years. Presently, there are four St. Mary’s graduates enrolled at Harvard, a graduate at Cornell and a graduate at Yale, among several other prestigious colleges and universities.The spike in tuition will also allow the school to invest in its infrastructure, according to Bastarache, who says the school will add more courses, more instruction time and extra-curricular programs before and after school.”We will expand our course of study to include 140 credit bearing courses for our students, as well as add online courses through investing in the Virtual Global High School Consortium,” said Bastarache. “We do not want to become complacent with where we are. We always want to push the ball forward.”