Draper Preschools
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Draper Preschool Pricing
Draper's diversity of preschool options comes with equally diverse business pricing strategies. This page will tutor you on what to Draper. If price is one of your criteria in selecting a Draper preschool for your child, be diligent in understanding what you are paying for. It’s not as simple as just comparing monthly tuition rates. |
| WARNING: because every preschool is selling you a different sized apple. Daily preschool sessions and attendance days per month can vary dramatically between schools. |
| School Year Shrinkage: Several years ago, a chain-school adopted a pricing strategy that involves shrinking a ten month school year by trimming the days children actually attend while still charging parents for 10 full months. In other words, a parent pays 10 equal installments for only 9 months of preschool classes. How does a business do this? It starts the school year later, ends earlier and takes longer Christmas or spring breaks than other ten-month schools. Consumers don't know it unless they count the days on the school's calendar. For perspective, this year another preschool's parents paid for a 10 month (MWF) school year that consisted of 118 days and a chain-school's parents paid for a 10 month year that consisted of just 106 days. The chain-school trimmed 12 days or one full month of MWF classes off its school year. |
| Extra Fees & Parent Volunteer Time Requirements: Be aware of supplemental enrollment fees, deposits, materials fees, snack fees and activities fees at Draper preschools. There is a real cost to you if you are required to provide a class snack or the school mandates a required quota of volunteer time from parents. Ask up-front if the preschool expects parents to work, bring materials and snacks or to pay extra fees. Extra Fee Example: Children attending preschool for almost three hours should have a snack built into the session. It is extremely rare for a preschool not to provide a daily snack. If the school is asking the Extra Fee Example: There is a local preschool that requires a $200 materials fee, up-front in addition to monthly tuition. That huge materials fee is an incremental cost that equals about a month’s tuition. Spread over a nine month school year, that fee effectively raised their actual tuition rate from $185 per month to $207 per month. Extra Fee Example: Occasionally there will be a preschool that charges a fee for activities such as field trips and special programs and presentations. Preschool age programs seldom take children off the premises for field trips but there are some that do and require parents to transport the students. Parent time and fees for activities is an incremental consumer cost beyond monthly tuition. Uniforms Expense: If you choose to send your three year old to a private school that requires her to wear a uniform, consider that an incremental (and unnecessary) expense that adds several hundred dollars to the annual cost of a year at preschool. There is no evidence to suggest that 3-5 year olds learn faster or better when they wear the same clothing. Preschoolers should dress in comfortable play clothes and come home every day with paint on their elbows and glue in their hair. |
| BE SMART: Review your prospective school's annual calendar so you can compare apples to apples with other schools. Paying for ten months and only getting nine months of service is not a good value. |
| Daily Session Shrinkage: Some Draper preschools have reduced their daily sessions to just two hours while other schools sessions have sessions as long as three hours per day. That consists of two and a half hours of organized class time with another 30 minutes with the children in transition. A preschool with just two hour sessions has reduced its service versus other schools by over 30%. Over a nine month school year that is equivalent to parents paying for three full months tuition and getting no services in return. BE SMART: Factor in the LENGTH OF DAILY SESSIONS as you are comparing relative pricing among Draper preschools. |
| Some preschools routinely take holidays on each of the Jordan or Canyons School District's career ladder "teacher One preschool limits its days each month to a certain number of class sessions which is well below the number days of the other area preschools. BE SMART: Ask pointed questions of the directer before you enroll and ask to see the schools annual calendar and compare it versus other schools to make sure you are getting your money's worth. |