Financial Aid
Challenge and Commitment:
Endowment Opportunities at Breck School
“Breck believes . . . that each student’s life is enriched in a diverse community where differences among people are recognized and appreciated.
From the school’s statement of values
The Challenge: Maintaining Diversity in Challenging Times
At Breck, diversity is treasured. There is a clear understanding community-wide that Breck students will inherit a more multicultural world where they will need to interact and communicate successfully and respectfully with people from widely diverse backgrounds.
Therefore, educating for the future requires a community that is racially, ethnically, religiously, and economically diverse.
In 2006-07, 25.9 percent of the student body is African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, East Indian and multiracial. Breck students come from 80 different Twin Cities’ communities, and represent the Catholic, Episcopalian, Jewish, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic faiths.
Seventeen percent of Breck’s students receive need-based financial aid. Without a strong financial aid program, the school would not have been able to serve the 203 students who are receiving financial aid in 2006-07. Over the last decade, the financial aid budget has increased 144 percent from $1,364,326 in 1996-97 to $3,336,204 this year. The average award in 2006-2007 is $16,020 per student, with tuition and fees ranging from $18,000 - $20,000.
The need for an increased financial aid program is even more critical given the growing number of middle income families requesting assistance. In 2006-2007, 20 percent of financial aid recipients are from families with household incomes over $100,000. Many have more than one child at the school or are paying college tuitions as well. If the school cannot meet the financial aid needs of these families, it runs the risk of polarizing the student body between the very affluent and the very needy. That is the antithesis of diversity.
The Breck community has been responsive to the school’s financial aid initiatives. The New Century Campaign added $4 million to financial aid endowment. However, if Breck is to continue to meet the demonstrated financial aid need, which increases in challenging economic times, it must seek significant endowment growth.
The Solution: Financial Aid Endowment
An increased financial aid endowment would:
- Improve tuition assistance to promising students who otherwise might be denied a Breck education,
- Ensure the availability of aid necessary to retain current students, and
- Establish an adequate financial aid contingency endowment fund to underwrite curricular and extracurricular expenses of assisted students.
The financial aid goal is to maintain or improve grants to current financial aid students and increase the percentage of the student population receiving financial aid. If that is to be accomplished without dramatically increased tuition charges, a growing percentage of financial aid funds must come from endowment income.
To meet this financial aid goal, Breck will need approximately $800,000 more per year in financial aid funds. Given the school’s current draw policy of 5 percent of a 12-quarter trailing average of endowment value, the endowment fund would require an additional $16 million.
A pledge or gift of $400,000 will endow a named scholarship at Breck in perpetuity. Pledges or gifts of lesser amounts will be added to a financial aid endowment pool. In either case, donors of financial aid endowment and their heirs will receive annual reports documenting the progress (although not the names) of the students aided.
The Commitment: Diversity at the Core
Breck is presently developing a multicultural curriculum that will likely serve as a model for other schools nationwide. The success of this ambitious and important undertaking will depend, in no small measure, upon a student body that is diverse in every way.
The Breck Board of Trustees and administration are committed to sustaining the kind of school that its mission and values statements envision. They invite the entire Breck family to help.
