Free Pre-K

For those schools that offer pre-kindergarten, why not consider making the tuition FREE?

• It creates buzz in the community
• Buzz is good marketing
• It will increase the number of families coming to see your school - and talking about it
• It will create full enrollment at one of the earliest levels
• It creates an opportunity to raise dollars from Pre-K parents in the form of tax-deductible gifts to the school, rather than as tuition payments
• Those dollars raised could be directed by the Board to support other needs - endowment, for example
• Creative financial modeling could allow for the "disruption" in tuition-generated cash flow, considering that the buzz created by this program is the strongest marketing push you might have
• In other words, you might make it your goal to raise more money from these families than what the tuition would have cost, anyway! However, you're going to have to connect the families with programs that matter in your school. If you don't have those programs, you'll have to create them in order to attract families...
• To your free Pre-K program

It's an aggressive strategy, but is that such a bad thing? Why not schedule some Board time to conjecture on the upside and downside of the "free" approach? Perhaps the marketing impact is worth it.