TUITION & SCHOLARSHIPS
Sliding Scale Tuition
Rainier Valley Cooperative Preschool is offering a sliding scale tuition model for the 2024-25 school year. Our Board and Social Justice Committee will re-evaluate this model in December of 2024 to set tuition for the following school year. It is important to note that this will not affect our scholarship program, which will be used in tandem with the sliding scale model to give families facing economic challenges the support they need to be included in our school.
We believe this program will put into action our school’s inclusivity and diversity goals. We recognize our school is located in an economically diverse neighborhood, and also acknowledge that Black and brown families face disproportionate economic oppression due to systemic and institutional racism. We believe that economic inequity should not keep the high-quality, social emotional curriculum our school provides out of reach for some families. Our Board, along with our Social Justice Committee, will continue to look for ways to update or bring new policies forth that will be steps to bringing our school into alignment with our anti-racist goals.
Families will be asked to self-select their tuition based on their corresponding income tier. Please note that the income tiers below are based on 2023 HUD numbers for Seattle and will change yearly depending on area median income (AMI). We will not ask for or collect any financial information from any families for the sliding scale tuition – all families will choose their tuition tier on the basis of trust and community.
Please use the sliding scale tables and the corresponding income tiers to determine your tuition amount. If your financial situation changes and you need to change your tier, please reach out to treasurer@rainiervalleycooppreschool.org.
Financial Scholarships
Our school welcomes scholarship applications from families who need financial assistance – we encourage you to apply! We are affiliated with North Seattle College (NSC) Cooperative Preschools, and use their scholarship fund to provide additional assistance for our families. You may qualify for as much as 75% of the tuition being covered if your income is below the federal poverty guidelines, and up to 5% for those who are closer to 400% of the poverty level.
You can visit the NSC Cooperative Preschool's website for more details regarding their financial scholarship process. All scholarship applications are kept strictly confidential.
To apply for a financial scholarship, please fill out the NSC scholarship application using the link below.
Note: In order to be accessible to our families, we offer a temporary 50% scholarship until we hear back from NSC regarding your scholarship application. Please let the treasurer@rainiervalleycooppreschool.org know that you've applied for a scholarship to receive the temporary scholarship or have any questions.
Registration Fee
In lieu of a registration fee, we kindly ask that you consider a donation of $50. All money collected from this fee goes to fund our scholarship program to improve access for all families. The $50 is a suggested amount. The amount you pay in no way affects your chances of enrollment, and payment of this fee is not at all required.
Scholarship families are exempt from these fees.North Seattle College Parent Education Partnership
Rainier Valley Cooperative Preschool is a part of the North Seattle College Cooperative Preschool Program. Started over 50 years ago, the NSC Cooperative Preschool Program offers a warm and gentle introduction to school and community life for young children and their families. Adults and children learn together, grow together, and actively build a community together. NSC’s Cooperative Preschools provide parent and early education for families with children from infancy to Pre-K.
Adults are Students, Too
Our partnership with North Seattle College's Parent Education Department provides a shared learning experience for parents, caregivers and their children. Parents and caregivers are involved in their child's early education experience by participating once a week in the cooperative preschool classroom where their child is enrolled, and at a monthly evening adult-only class taught by a Parent Educator — an NSC faculty member. The Parent Educator also advises and supports the "lab experience" of adult students while they are assistant teachers in their child’s preschool.
Every family will enroll at least one adult in the North Seattle Parent Education class. In this course, the Parent Educator is the parent’s “professor,” the monthly parent education meeting is the “class,” and the preschool classroom is the “class laboratory.”
Benefits for Caregivers and Families
Parent Education at RVCP helps adults become more effective and satisfied in their roles as caregivers by helping them understand child development and behavior, by encouraging the recognition of developmentally appropriate activities and responses to challenges, and by creating a supportive and accepting atmosphere for adults to learn from one another.
Parent Education is rooted in an anti-bias framework. All teaching and methodology recognizes and celebrates that there are many different ways to raise a family, and that we have much to learn from each other, and from our children.
Parent Education Enrollment Fee
Each parent or caregiver working in the classroom will register as a student in the Parent Education program with North Seattle College. North Seattle College’s tuition fee for enrolling is $260 a year, per working grown up. This fee covers adult enrollment for the NSC Parent Education class, access to Family Resources and Support staff through North Seattle College, and direct contributions to the scholarship fund for families who need financial support.
RVCP is still adjusting to the changes that our new affiliation with North Seattle College has brought. One of those changes is passing down the NSC enrollment fees to the adults that are directly enrolling at the college through their cooperative preschool. We continue to fully cover this fee for all our of enrolled families, while most of the other preschools under the North Seattle College umbrella ask families to pay the fee independently.
Our Ask
RVCP's mission is to be as accessible to as many families as possible. As part of our in-good-care policy, we understand that not all families will be able to commit to this additional fee. We are asking families that are financially able, to donate this fee back to our RVCP. All donations will significantly help with the sustainability of our school. This fee will be added to your monthly tuition in your Jovial Family Portal.
Scholarship families are exempt from these fees.Alternative Participation Model
Our Alternative Participation Model (APM), is a program intended to increase accessibility to our cooperative preschool. At RVCP, a typical family commitment involves both working in the classroom on a regular basis and holding a Family Preschool Job to help run the school.* The APM program allows for a family to modify that commitment to double their classroom time and hold no Family Preschool Job, or hold Family Preschool Jobs and have no classroom time. We hope this greater flexibility enables a wider range of families to attend and enjoy the benefits of co-op preschool. New and existing families are encouraged to download and read through the application to see if the program might be a good fit for your family.
*Participants in APM retain all the usual remaining agreements of the RVCP co-op model, including fundraising, cleaning shifts, and monthly parent meetings. Please see the general Enrollment Application for more details on the co-op model agreements.