Wilbraham & Monson Academy Cuts Day Tuition by 20%

WILBRAHAM — Wilbraham & Monson Academy (WMA) announced a 20% cut in its day student tuition rate for the 2020-21 academic year. The tuition for Upper School day students will decrease from $42,500 to $34,000.

The tuition reset, recently approved by the board of trustees, was made in part because WMA recognized the growing cost of private secondary education, which has outpaced growth in regional household median income. In turn, this has created uncertainty for local families about the attainability of an independent school education.

“WMA understands the need to address this gap and believes it is our responsibility to share the Wilbraham & Monson Academy experience with as many deserving students as possible,” Head of School Brian Easler said.

The reset is paired with a new five-day boarding option, two recent $10 million bequests to the endowment, a $6 million library set to open this spring, and a new, 4,800-square-foot, state-of-the-art STEM Lab that will be ready for use in September.

“The trustees respect the sacrifice of every tuition dollar by every family and are committed to providing an attainable, high-quality private-school experience,” said Scott Jacobs, who chairs the board of trustees. “When tuition goes up, from a natural market standpoint, so does financial aid. Through a detailed process of financial and budgetary modeling, and analysis of our day market, we determined that we could reset our day student tuition to balance revenue and aid at a lower price point. Nearly 10 years ago, we went through a similar reset with our Middle School tuition, and this is the next natural iteration of that process.”