My kids' private school recently sent out a $500 per student tuition credit (about $650K for the entire school). I see now that they got a multi million dollar PPP loan (which will be forgiven). Their revenues were unaffected by the epidemic (full enrollment for next year and no plans to rollback the tuition increase).
My kid's private school also got a PPP loan, but I don't begrudge them that at all. They applied for the program according to the rules and they're using that money to pay for necessities. While our school also hasn't (yet) lost much in the way of enrollment, their finances are worse now:
- more costs for financial aid
- more costs for cleaning and retrofitting facilities
- more costs for experts on reopening safely
- more costs for online education programs (software, training, etc)
- refunds of after-school programs, field trips, etc.
- fewer donations from alumni
The only thing that's really improved is maybe utilities? They 100% would have laid off teachers if they didn't get the PPP. It's ludicrous that people are begrudging schools for using this program exactly as intended.
Unless you can see their books you really have no idea how their revenues did. And you really have no idea what additional expenses they're incurring due to COVID mitigations.
