20 How Do I Afford Christian Education?

Ron could readily feel and see how the commitment that he and his wife had made to send their children through private Christian schooling was affecting his family’s finances and lifestyle. Yet to Ron’s surprise, the financial commitment wasn’t straining their household budget and affecting their lifestyle in the negative ways that he had assumed. To the contrary, Ron felt as if the budget discipline his family had to show and the bit of extra work Ron had to take on had improved their finances and lifestyle rather than detracting from them. The costs had also not been as high as Ron had expected, given some scholarships and adjustments. The best part was that Ron could daily see greater than expected returns on their tuition investment. 

Costs

The financial cost of Christian education is a legitimate concern for many families, especially those who must significantly adjust their household budgets to pay private-school tuition. Planning to address those costs can be a key part of the success of your Christian education journey. Parents considering Christian education for their children can face so-called sticker shock when first learning of a school’s published tuition figure. Yet published tuition figures may not take account of significant scholarships, adjustment, or other financial relief available to many or most families in the school. Christian school leaders are well aware of the obstacle that unaffordable tuition can be for a family seeking Christian education for their child. They thus seek not only to be the best possible stewards of the school’s budget and resources, to keep tuition within reach of more families, but also to assist families in reducing tuition costs through special programs and avenues. Work with your child’s Christian school enrollment coordinator and others, as this chapter suggests, to make your child’s tuition affordable. 

Benefits

Before examining potential ways to make your child’s Christian education affordable for your family, take a moment to balance the cost against the benefits. The above chapters should have shown you the inestimable worth of your child’s Christian education, both to your child throughout your child’s life and to you, your spouse, and your family. Knowing that Christian education has profound value doesn’t directly make it more affordable. A man may know well the value of the diamond ring that he wishes he could buy and present to his future wife, when first proposing to her. That knowledge doesn’t promptly put the favored ring within the man’s reach. But it might make the man work a little harder or smarter, or spend a little less on himself, to be able to afford the ring. Don’t be foolish about the costs of Christian education. Evaluate them carefully, and put a wise plan in place to afford them. Just be sure that you give your best effort to placing Christian school within reach for your child, knowing its benefits. 

Return

To elaborate the same point as the prior paragraph, Christian education is an investment in your child and family, abundant lifetime and eternal returns from which you, your child, and your family should expect. Investors properly consider return on investment. You’ve seen in a prior chapter how your child’s Christian education correlates with dramatically increased probabilities of academic success, college graduation, increased lifetime earnings, an enduring marriage, children and education and health of those children, along with dramatically decreased probabilities of the things that parents fear for their children, like alcohol and drug abuse, and gang and criminal activity. If Christian education could guarantee parents those improved outcomes for their children, rather than only dramatically increase their probabilities, even more parents would choose Christian education, no matter the sacrifice required. Just appreciate the lifetime material, marital, familial, and social returns. Also appreciate the inestimable return on investment that your child’s vastly increased likelihood of enduring faith and eternal salvation represents. 

Tuition

Without direct public support, private Christian schools must charge parents tuition for the attendance of their children. Private schools tend not to publicize their tuition rates on their websites or other readily available public disclosures. Yet your child’s Christian school should readily disclose its tuition to you in response to your private inquiry. The school’s purpose in not publicly disclosing tuition costs isn’t to conceal tuition costs to manipulate the public. The purpose is instead so that the school can provide important interpretive information along with the initial tuition disclosure. Your family may well not have to pay the full published tuition cost. The programs and adjustments described below may substantially reduce the published tuition cost. Don’t let sticker shock drive you off. Instead, explore with the school enrollment coordinator and others your family’s opportunity to substantially reduce tuition costs below the initially disclosed figure. Consider the following discussion.

Vouchers

As already indicated in a prior chapter, many states have tuition voucher programs enabling parents to use public taxpayer funds to pay for private school education, including Christian education. In a voucher state, parents may in effect take their child’s portion of public school funding, to devote instead to their child’s private Christian school education. You choose the school, while tax revenues fund the voucher. Where they exist, the terms and conditions of state voucher programs can vary. Your child’s tuition voucher may pay for all, most, or only some of your child’s Christian school education. But voucher programs can so substantially reduce the tuition cost of private Christian education as to make it available to any parent who desires it for their child. If your state has a voucher program, take full advantage of it. If your state does not have a voucher program, advocate with your state representatives to adopt such a program. Its adoption may open the door to Christian schools for many families.

Credits

As already indicated in prior chapters, Congress’ 2025 adoption of the Big Beautiful Bill Act created a federal tax-credit program to fund private K-12 school education, including Christian education. The program begins January 1, 2027. Under the legislation, state governors must opt in to the program for it to be available within the state. Most state governors have done so, although others have not. In states in which the governor approves, any federal taxpayer may donate up to $1,700 ($3,400 for a taxpaying couple) to an approved scholarship granting organization (SGO) for the benefit of scholarships at the designated private school, and receive an equivalent federal income tax credit. The tax credit effectively permits taxpayers to shift up to $1,700 of their federal income tax obligation from government coffers directly to scholarships for students at the designated school. Your child’s Christian school may soon have the benefit of a new federally funded scholarship program, substantially reducing the tuition cost of your child’s attendance. 

Fundraising

Aside from the new federal tax-credit program, Christian schools have always engaged in substantial school fundraising activities, to provide for tuition scholarships for all needful families or to devote to the school’s general budget to enable an across-the-board tuition reduction each year. The tuition figure you first hear at your child’s Christian school may not be the tuition that most families or even any families are paying, once the school devotes its fundraising proceeds to its scholarship or cost-reduction program. Your family may save hundreds or thousands of dollars in tuition costs, simply because of the school’s own fundraising activities, whether you participate in or contribute to those fundraising efforts or not. Christian schools use all manner of fundraising programs, from bake sales, auctions of donated items and services, banquets, and prayer walks, to appeals to alumni, grandparents of enrolled students, and other donors. Determine the tuition reduction available from your child’s Christian school through the school’s own fundraising. 

Endowments

Some private Christian schools have also built up endowments, the proceeds from which the schools devote to tuition scholarships or general-budget cost reductions keeping tuition lower than it otherwise would be. An endowment is a fund grown, maintained, and invested to provide assured funding to the school well into the future, if not into perpetuity, under the endowment’s restrictions. A typical school endowment will limit annual expenditures of funds to four percent of the principal or a like amount that will ensure the endowment’s continuation. The expenditure limitation may also protect the endowment’s principal against erosion by inflation. A well-managed endowment may, with growth in investments and with additional annual donations, supply the school with substantial annual funding or its families with substantial annual scholarships, while continuing to grow in order to supply even greater funding in the future. Determine whether your child’s Christian school has endowment funds that reduce your child’s tuition cost. 

Adjustments

Christian schools can also maintain policies that permit the school to adjust tuition that a family pays for the attendance of its child or children. The adjustments may depend, for instance, on the family having multiple children enrolled at once at the specific Christian school, multiple children enrolled at once at any Christian school in the same private district, or income below the area median. Adjustments may alternatively depend on the parents’ status as a teacher in the same school, full-time non-teaching employee in the same school, or a part-time employee. Some schools may even swap tuition reductions for goods or services, or for other contributions the family makes to the programs and operations of the school. Determine from your child’s Christian school enrollment coordinator or other financial administrators and leaders whether your family should have a tuition adjustment based on your family’s special status. 

Churches

Christian schools also frequently benefit from church sponsorship or scholarships. Some Christian schools have one or more sponsoring or supporting churches that either provide annual grants to the school for general tuition reductions or that fund scholarships only for the children of their own church members. If, in other words, you belong to a church that sponsors and supports your child’s Christian school, your family may be in a position to receive a scholarship from your church, paid directly to the school, that effectively reduces your tuition costs. Churches support their area Christian schools in a variety of ways. Check with your church and your child’s Christian school to determine whether a scholarship or other tuition reduction is available because of your church membership. If your church does not support your child’s local Christian school, then consider it within your rights and interests to diplomatically advocate with your church’s leadership that it does so. Christian churches support Christian schools because they benefit one another, sharing overlapping faith missions. 

Gifts

Gifts from your own parents (your child’s grandparents) or other extended family members may be another financial source to pay for your child’s Christian school tuition. Many grandparents support and delight in their adult children’s decision to send the grandparents’ grandchildren to Christian school. Raising children requires a household financial commitment. Grandparents generally no longer have that financial obligation. Grandparents may also have accumulated savings over their longer lives, and may have earnings from investments, out of which to be generous with their adult children and school-age grandchildren. Let your own parents’ hearts guide them in whether to financially help you send your children (their grandchildren) to Christian school. And be sure that your decision to accept their offer, if made, is the right decision. Just consider the possibility that an extended family member may be willing to help you send your child to Christian school, if they know of your desire and commitment, along with your financial need to pay the net tuition. 

Assets

After you have considered all of the above options, you may still have a shortfall in your budget for your child’s Christian education. If so, then don’t overlook your opportunity to sell unneeded assets to pay for that part of tuition costs that your household budget and other sources won’t quite cover. Families can, for instance, accumulate extra vehicles, boats, recreational equipment, and other personal property for which they have no substantial need but having substantial resale value. Families can also acquire vacant lands, second homes, cottages, other real property and other valuable assets, whether by their own purchase, family gift, or inheritance, from which they derive no special benefit other than the financial value. Consider paying the last unaffordable bit of your child’s Christian school tuition out of the proceeds of the sale of one or more of those expendable assets. Doing so may be well worth it. 

Budget

Your determination whether your household can afford your child’s Christian education depends on your budget evaluation. If you are not already planning, monitoring, evaluating, and adjusting a household budget to reflect your values, goals, and commitments, then now may be your time to do so. Developing a written household budget may be especially appropriate right now, if you don’t believe that your family can afford your child’s Christian education. Drafting, evaluating, and adjusting a budget may prove otherwise, that your family can afford your child’s Christian education, consistent with the priority that you give it. A little trimming here and there, combined with a little increase in household earnings, may be all your family needs to afford the perceived shortfall in tuition cost. If you are unfamiliar with budgeting, then read this author’s Help with Your Money guide or other budgeting resources. Seek budget advice from a qualified friend or expert. Many churches offer budget counseling and have members with the financial knowledge, skills, and experience to provide it. Don’t leave your child’s Christian education to chance. Get the financial advice you need to make your best effort to preserve and pursue your child’s best interest.

Reflection

Have you determined the tuition rate for your child to attend Christian school? What was your initial response to learning the tuition rate? How or from whom did you learn it? Did the means by which or person from whom you learned it disclose scholarships, grants, or other potential reductions of the tuition rate? Does the Christian school you chose for your child’s attendance have an endowment to provide scholarships or otherwise reduce tuition costs? Does the school conduct substantial annual fundraising to provide scholarships or reduce tuition costs? What other scholarships, grants, or tuition adjustments or relief are available to your family at the Christian school you have chosen for your child? Are you a member of a church or other organization that provides scholarships for your child’s attendance at the Christian school you have chosen? Do your parents (your child’s grandparents) support your desire to send your child to Christian school, to the point that they may wish to pay for some of the tuition cost? How does your child’s anticipated net tuition cost for attending Christian school, after all of the above adjustments, fit with your household budget? Can you make budget adjustments on either the expense or income side, or both, to make Christian school tuition more affordable? Does your family have an unneeded, expendable, valuable asset to sell to cover any shortfall in your child’s tuition for Christian school? What do you see as the probable return on your family’s investment in your child’s Christian education?

Key Points

• Private Christian schooling generally requires arranging to pay tuition.

• Keep the benefits of Christian education in mind when paying tuition.

• Christian education can have remarkable returns on your investment.

• Christian schools disclose tuition subject to substantial reductions.

• State tuition vouchers can offset all or much of Christian school costs.

• Federal tax credits may substantially reduce Christian school costs.

• Christian schools conduct substantial fundraising for scholarships.

• Christian schools also maintain endowments for scholarships.

• Christian schools may also reduce tuition based on several factors.

• Churches support their members with Christian school scholarships.

• Grandparents and other family members gift funds to pay tuition.

• Families sometimes make up tuition shortfalls with asset sales.

• Christian school families budget wisely to pay for Christian education.

Read Chapter 20.