Growing together
For 35 years we have called this campus our home, that was before Microsoft moved in and when seeing a cow or goat poke its head through the fence to visit the students was a normal day. The neighborhood has grown since then and we have too. We are so excited about expanding our beautiful campus to better serve our current students and to allow space for more families to join our community.
Overview
By remodeling the Founders Wing building, we will be able to add 4 modern classrooms and increase enrollment to 130. This will allow us to have 1 classroom for every grade as opposed to shared rooms as it currently is.
New Upper grade rooms
Three of the new classrooms will makeup our new upper grade building of 3rd-5th. These rooms will be open and modern with technology thoughtfully integrated throughout to help prepare our students for middle school.
New Pre-K room
Pre-K will move from the “Studio” to its own larger, more open space, that still keeps Pre-K separate from the rest of the campus to help them integrate into the big adventure of school.
Invest in your child’s future at Cascadia
To fund this expansion, we want to invite you to not only invest in the future of Cascadia but invest in the future of your child. Instead of doing this through standard donations, we are asking families to lock-in their child’s final semester of tuition at Cascadia by paying that final semester now at the current year’s rate.
Have Questions?
About the expansion
What is the timeline of completion?
We are working with the city of Redmond to hopefully begin construction over the summer of 2021, with the target to complete the expansion during the upcoming school year. We will be ready with temporary modular classrooms, if needed, during the expansion.
why not add other facilities and go bigger?
It’s tempting for schools to try and bite off more than they should in the “arms race” of facilities improvements. Often these big capital projects put strain on school budgets through new fixed costs and it deters from investing in staff and students more directly. Part of our core values is to pursue sustainable growth and to put our students and teachers first in all we do. We want to start with a high impact project first and use that to build into future improvements.
How will the expansion change the instruction and teacher to student ratio
The expansion will allow for 130 students, and each class will have their own dedicated classroom as opposed to the shared room. There will still be multi-grade instruction where classes come together but it will be more intentional and less dictated by the space. We will aim for an average class size of 17 with assistants in each grade to help manage and invest in your kids and keep our ratio the same as it currently stands.
How much will this cost?
The total cost will be about $2 million. This will include the expansion, but we’ll also use this time to upgrade the campus IT/security infrastructure, and to update the parking and sidewalk safety.
About locking future tuition now
How does it work?
You pay half your final year now at this year’s rate (i.e if your tuition is $20,000 this year, then you’d pay $10,000), when your child reaches their 5th grade year then you will only owe the first semester of tuition for that year.
Am I saving anything by doing this?
The big savings for you is avoiding yearly tuition increases on that final semester, which has the impact of 3%-5% annual return on your investment. While we strive to keep tuition increases below 5% each year, it does increase primarily to ensure our teachers are competitively paid; to make other investments in our programs like new technology; and to help increase economic diversity through scholarships.
What if I leave cascadia before my child’s 5th grade year?
By default, it will apply to that final semester of their 5th grade year; but at every re-enrollment period for the years before that, we’ll chat about whether your child will be continuing on at Cascadia. If you decide to leave Cascadia before 5th grade, we will apply the prepaid semester to your current year’s final semester. So there is flexibility to use it before 5th grade, but only if you are moving on from Cascadia and inform us of that at re-enrollment.
Can I pay the full tuition amount instead of just half for that final year?
In order to give you the flexibility to apply it to an earlier year if you choose to leave Cascadia before your child’s 5th grade year, we have decided to cap it at half to be conservative with our financial modeling. If you want to pay the full amount to save even more on tuition increases, and are willing to give up that flexibility (unless there’s a family emergency or a work move that takes you from Cascadia) then reach out to us and we can discuss that further.
Ready to join us and build Cascadia’s future?
After signing up below to lock in tuition we’ll reach out with next steps.