During the past 8-10 years, through conservative fiscal planning by our Governing Board, administration and financial consultant, PFS has been able to create a cash reserve in our budget set aside as a “rainy day fund”. Even while setting a percentage of our monthly equalization payments aside, we have been able to provide the highest quality Waldorf education, compensate our employees well, and strive to improve our school during economically challenging times. PFS does all this with less, as charter school allocations from the state are less than the allocations given to regular school districts. A substantial portion of this budgetary line item has been much needed this year as the State of Arizona has, again, dramatically reduced funding to public education throughout the state. For example, the State of Arizona did not fund charter schools their monthly payments this July due to state budget shortfalls. Therefore, PFS drew from our school reserves to meet summer expenses.
In order to address the ongoing financial needs of our school and continue to improve our programs, PFS, for the first time in our history, will implement a Student Material Fee. The details of this program follow:
1. A $100 per student material fee is asked from all families;
2. Material fees will be applied directly to the class account ($100 for a third grade student will be applied to the 3rd grade class account);
3. Materials fees will be used for grade specific special program classroom supply expenses which exceed the supplies budgeted amount.
4. Materials fees will not be eligible for the Arizona Tax Credit Program this year.
5. Material fee contribution options are available. You are welcome to pay the $100/student material fee at the beginning of the school year, or spread payments out throughout the year.
6. Although parental fulfillment of the Student Material Fee is not required for your child’s enrollment in our school, we hope for and highly encourage 100% participation from our families. We project 225-250 students enrolled this year. If we receive activity fees for 200 children, that will add $30,000 to our classroom budgets!