$75,300 can buy you a lot: a brand new Porsche, a gold Rolex, and, in New York City, one year of kindergarten.
As the city’s affordability crisis deepens, the cost of everything from a slice of pizza to private school has risen to new heights.
Avenues: The World School, a 14-year-old school in Chelsea, is the most expensive, with 2026-2027 tuition set at $75,300 for full-time nursery (age two) through grade 12, up about 4% from the current school year. That’s $456 per day.
It’s not alone. Next year, tuition at eight New York City private schools will top $70,000, Bloomberg reported. By comparison, the average tuition of the National Association of Independent Schools’ member schools is $33,361 this year. Public school is, of course, free.
For thousands of parents across the five boroughs, the cost is worth it.
Sharon Decker, the cofounder of private school consultancy The Admissions Plan, told Business Insider that she’s seen more applications for private schools in the area.
“It’s getting more and more competitive at the upper tiers,” she said. “They’re maintaining small class sizes; they’re hiring expert faculty; they’re offering expansive extracurriculars, and the infrastructure is rivaling a small college.”
The golden ratio: students-to-teacher
Faculty is the main driver of price hikes at Avenues, Tara Powers, the school’s head of communications, told Business Insider over email. As the cost of living in New York City continues to grow, the school must adjust, she said, adding that the costs of healthcare and other benefits have also increased.
Though private school teachers don’t get paid significantly more than their public school counterparts, there are more of them per student. Avenues has a student-to-teacher ratio of 5:1; New York City public schools have a ratio was 11.5:1.
It’s the No. 1 area in which private schools stand out, Robin Aranow, the founder of a private and public school consultancy School Search NYC, told Business Insider.
Then there’s the auxiliary staff: teams of college counselors, learning specialists, advisors, and deans that form “layers upon layers of support in the schools,” Decker said.
Avenues, unlike most other private schools, is a for-profit school; therefore, it doesn’t report its finances.
The financial disclosure form for Collegiate, the city’s second-most-expensive school, with tuition rising to $72,070 next year, indicates that faculty is, indeed, the school’s largest expense. In 2024, the most recent year for which data is available, Collegiate spent $32 million, or 49% of its revenue — made up of tuition, gifts, and investment income — on compensation, including benefits and payroll tax.
A representative for Collegiate did not respond to a request for comment.
Across NAIS member schools, employee salaries accounted for more than 50% of schools’ operating expenses, according to a 2025 report.
The makings of a ‘Renaissance kid’
Books and other classroom supplies, lunch and snacks, musical instruments, and technology like iPads and MacBooks also factor into tuition. Plus the athletic uniforms, field trips, and costs associated with extracurriculars. There are no Amazon wishlists or classroom fundraisers, which have become popular at public schools.
“There are incredible athletic facilities with squash courts and Olympic-sized swimming pools,” Decker said. “Then for the theater kids, there are one or two black box theaters, and a main stage theater, and sound booths. For the tech kids, coding rooms and robotics rooms.”
At least one school, Marymount, has Bloomberg Terminals available to students as part of its financial literacy and entrepreneurship curriculum.
“The private schools, I think, do a better job of creating what I might call a Renaissance kid,” Aranow said.
Part of the tuition helps float financial aid offerings. More than 20% of Avenues’ students received financial aid this year, Powers said, with the school offering an average award of $49,000. Nearly 10% of Collegiate’s 2024 revenue, or $6.2 million, went to grants and other assistance.
Still, few parents who can afford private school are breaking down the five-figure bill to determine whether the line items add up to a good choice for their kid. There are many less tangible reasons they pony up: “things like status, what other families are doing, what you did,” Aronow said.
Plus, one of the most valuable parts of a private school education, in the mind of some parents, is a big unknown that may not be resolved for 15 years, when their kids are applying to college.
“There are definitely families I work with who, when their kids are applying for kindergarten, are thinking about it already,” Aranow said. “Will my kid have a chance to go to an Ivy League school? That’s what they all want to know.”
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