Affording PKS

We welcome families with a wide range of financial circumstances.

Access and affordabililty

Families choosing an independent school education are making is an important investment. We strive to make PKS as accessible as possible for the next generation of thinkers, makers, leaders, and innovators.

Tuition

Annual tuition is set by the Board of Trustees each January for the following school year. Tuition is payable in one annual payment or ten monthly installments. For 2026-2027, tuition falls within the following range based on a family’s financial circumstances:

$500 – $45,995: Preschool and Elementary (K-4)
$500 – $50,995: Middle School (5-8)

Tuition includes the cost of instruction and educational supplies and materials; field trips; PKS Travels | PKS 东南西北 and technology devices (middle school); and morning care before the start of the school day (K-8).

Tuition does not include the afterschool program (extended care, enrichment classes, music lessons, tutoring), morning care for preschool students, or summer / school break camps. Fees for these optional programs are generally adjusted in line with the family’s tuition adjustment, and charged as incurred.

Adjusted Tuition

We offer Adjusted Tuition on the basis of demonstrated financial need, and encourage you to explore this option if you feel you may benefit from it. Approximately 14% of PKS students in 2026-2027 pay tuition below the top of the range. We aim to provide grants to as many eligible applicants as possible with our available funding.

We use the Clarity Application, a third-party platform used by many independent schools, to obtain an objective assessment of each family’s financial need. This is based on the information families share in the application, including assets, income, expenses, and debts.

Clarity provides a number of guides, tools, and resources such as: Introduction Video, Family Application Guide, FAQs and Guidance. These links will be updated as available.

We also work with other programs that may help to offset tuition. PKS is an approved provider for Early Learning for All (ELFA) funding through the City of San Francisco; ELFA provides a tiered system of tuition offsets for families earning less than 200% of Area Median Income for children up to age 5. Families who qualify for ELFA must go through our regular application and adjusted tuition process.

If you are not currently receiving ELFA funds, we encourage you to go through our regular admissions and Adjusted Tuition application process, and we’ll work together to determine whether ELFA funding can further help offset your tuition. Income-eligible families may also qualify for the BASIC Fund.

Apply for Adjusted Tuition

The PKS Adjusted Tuition program is designed to make a PKS education possible for all families based on demonstrated need and the availability of funds. Applying for Adjusted Tuition is separate from our admission process, but to help families make an informed choice, we email your tuition decision at the same time as the admission decision.

Prospective families

We recommend that you attend an on-campus information session and tour prior to starting your application for Adjusted Tuition. Once you have visited and feel that PKS could be a great fit for your family, please move forward with the Clarity application. This is due at the same time as your PKS admissions application, and no later than January 11, 2027 (Preschool/Elementary) or January 15, 2027 (Middle school).

Re-enrolling families

PKS prioritizes applications from returning families, and we encourage you to apply by November 30, 2026. This allows us to offer Adjusted Tuition awards to families in conjunction with re-enrollment contract for 2027-2028 in late January / early February.

Submitting an application

Application opens in November. The application typically takes less than 30 minutes to complete. It is also mobile-friendly so you can complete it from anywhere, and you are able to save your progress and return at any time.

Once you complete the application, there is a $65 fee per household to submit, and you may share your application with additional schools that accept the Clarity Application for no extra charge. Email us if you need a waiver.

Apply

After you submit your Clarity Application, please return to your dashboard, as PKS requires you to provide certain tax documentation, including:

2025 federal and state tax returns and all supporting schedules
2025 and 2026 W-2s / 1099s for all employment held; if submitting before these are available, please upload your most recent paystub for all parents/guardians
2026 federal and state tax returns and all supporting schedules

While the Adjusted Tuition application is due before you file your 2026 tax return, you should still submit your Clarity application with all available supporting documents by the application deadline.

Final 2026 tax returns and supporting documents are due to Clarity by March 31, 2027. If we make a conditional offer of Adjusted Tuition (without your 2026 tax returns), your final 2026 tax returns and supporting documents are due by March 31, 2027 to finalize the offer. Any offers of Adjusted Tuition are conditional prior to receiving all required materials.

Frequently Asked Questions

PKS takes the privacy and security of your personal information very seriously. Clarity is certified for both GDPR and SOC2 and uses enterprise-level security standards including end-to-end encryption of all personally identifiable information. For more information, please refer to Clarity’s Privacy Policy.

We have chosen Clarity as our financial aid application provider in order to better serve both our current and prospective families. Clarity offers a streamlined, mobile friendly application that can be completed in as short a time as 20 minutes. Additionally, Clarity removes the need to upload your W2 and 1040 by transferring them directly from the IRS. This reduces the amount of information that you will need to enter manually and makes it possible to complete the application quickly and efficiently.

Don’t wait to submit a Clarity application! Admissions decisions and tuition adjustment determinations are made separately, but we send tuition information at the same time that admissions offers go out. Adjusted tuition applications are due prior to our decision dates for admissions. If you miss the deadline, we will consider applications but additional funds may be limited or unavailable

Along with an adjustment to tuition, families paying Adjusted Tuition qualify at the same adjusted rate for our auxiliary programs: extended care, after school enrichment classes (one class per session), music lessons (10 lessons per school year), school-recommended tutoring (10 lessons per school year), league and uniform fees for PKS-organized athletics, and PKS-run school break and summer camps.

Eligibility is based on multiple variables, and each situation is unique, so it is difficult for us to answer with any specificity. PKS families have a wide range of incomes, assets, and individual circumstances (for example, supporting grandparents, multiple children enrolled in school, disability or job loss, etc.). The Clarity application takes the following factors into consideration, among others: number of people in the household; family income; assets such as savings, retirement accounts, stock market investments, and real estate; monthly expenses including rent or mortgage costs; and other debt obligations.

In general, our approach assumes that the primary responsibility for financing a student’s education rests with the family. We expect that education takes priority over elective expenses such as secondary home ownership, and that all parents/legal guardians will contribute to tuition. Except when there are children younger than kindergarten age at home, the assumption is that both parents/guardians are employed; PKS will impute an annual income for a non-working parent.

We try to accommodate as many requests as possible, but because our budget is limited we cannot guarantee tuition adjustments to all eligible applicants. Currently enrolled PKS students and incoming siblings have priority over new students, and families who complete their applications by deadline have a higher chance of receiving a tuition adjustment than those who submit later.

The Clarity application will ask you to assess what you believe your family can afford to contribute. We recognize that tuition is not your only child-related expense, and encourage you to consider the full cost of child care and other supports (for example, extended care and coverage when school is not in session). We also recommend that you consider all your assets in determining your ability to contribute. This does not mean you must drain college savings accounts or IRAs! However, the Clarity application does take savings, retirement accounts, stock market investments, and real estate holdings into consideration, among other factors.

PKS requires complete financial information from all parents / legal guardians, custodial and non-custodial. Clarity is structured to allow all parents / legal guardians to submit information without the other parent seeing the details. PKS treats all information provided confidentially.

Yes, you will need to submit an application each year in order to qualify for Adjusted Tuition; however, Clarity retains your information from previous applications, so it will be straightforward to reapply .

While tuition adjustments are made for one year at a time, in general, if a family’s financial circumstances have not changed from year to year and the application is received in time, then the rate of tuition adjustment should remain consistent and approximately the same percentage of the total annual tuition for that year.

If you believe new or additional factors may impact your financial situation with regard to Adjusted Tuition, and you would like to appeal the rate of adjustment, please let us know. You may email your family’s circumstances and provide any additional documentation that may support your appeal to gillian@presidioknolls.org.