Madison Country Day School (MCDS), an independent Pre-K–12 school in Waunakee, Wisconsin, is guided by a mission to help students realize their full potential within a learning environment that is both intellectually challenging and deeply supportive. As Wisconsin’s only independent International Baccalaureate (IB) World School, MCDS offers a globally-minded curriculum that cultivates critical thinking, student ownership, and meaningful learning experiences.

Supporting the school’s growth and progress beyond the classroom was a thoughtful evolution in operations that has helped transform the school's approach to tuition assistance.

“When Bobbie Jean and I got to MCDS, we were using formulas in Excel and parents were emailing, faxing, or dropping off their tax documents to us,” shared Aleksandra Drabik, Director of Finance at Madison Country Day School.

“We wanted a system we could rely on. One where we could trust the methodology, and that was secure and accessible for our families,” she continued. 

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Getting Buy-In From the Board

Securing board support was an essential part of transitioning to a more mission-driven financial aid strategy for Madison Country Day School. With Clarity, they were able to demonstrate both the impact and the integrity of their approach.

“Our board was initially concerned that by adjusting awards we would run the risk of some families leaving,” explained Bobbie Jean Huerth, Director of Enrollment Management at Madison Country Day School.

“Once they understood the purpose of Clarity, they could see that the move was actually a mission-aligned decision, and that we are dedicated to serving families without either over-awarding or price-gouging them," she continued.

“I think we were able to solidify confidence with the board once we showed that with this methodology we were still a fully functioning school that’s meeting our budget, hitting our net tuition revenue, and growing our enrollment."

“We're continuing to grow enrollment, with over 30% of our students on some sort of assistance,” Drabik added. “When we share with the board the number of families that are on tuition assistance and the amount of our budget we’ve spent, they know that we’re doing our due diligence rather than using aid indiscriminately to boost enrollment,” she continued.

‍“Clarity helps us build trust with our parents, but it also helps us build trust with our board members.”

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Right-Sizing Awards to Reach More Families

“There were some gaps in our previous methodology that meant we weren’t awarding in a way that provided aid to as many families as we could have been,” shared Huerth.

“Clarity has helped us create a consistent process. It makes it easy for us to consider things like whether a family has one student versus multiple in a tuition charging school, and it helps us look at any difference in business taxes,” added Huerth. “These are things we might not have necessarily caught before.”

“We also suspected that we had been over-awarding some families, and we were able to confirm that was the case,” Drabik explained. 

While communicating changes to awards is never an easy conversation, having a clear, consistent methodology made it possible to approach those conversations with confidence, and it gave families the transparency they needed to understand the changes.

“We could show parents exactly why they no longer qualified for an award, or how their new award was calculated. We were able to come to an understanding with consistency and transparency,” Huerth shared. 

“With Clarity, now we’re now able to see things like how much net tuition revenue each grade is producing and how much need-based aid we’re able to offer for each grade," she continued.

"Knowing all the different levers we can pull, we're able to keep an eye on our budget, be more consistent with our awarding, and can really serve as many families as possible."

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Driving Enrollment and Tuition Revenue Growth

With a more strategic and consistent approach to awarding aid, Madison Country Day School has not only improved access for more families but has also strengthened both enrollment and net tuition revenue.

“We’re able to allocate 18% of our revenue towards tuition assistance, and we have a mix of families – from full-pay to very high need to somewhere in the middle,” explained Drabik.

“In the past, our tuition assistance was allocated to returning students, and then we had very little to none for incoming students, which made it really hard to reach our enrollment goal,” Huerth added. “It was a huge challenge.”

“Once we got the right methodology and formula with Clarity, we were able to increase enrollment.”

“Our enrollment goals over the past two years have increased by roughly eight and a half percent,” said Drabik. “Bobbie Jean has not only exceeded her enrollment goals each year, but we’ve stayed within budget for tuition assistance.”

“What's more is that our net tuition revenue per student has increased between $800 and $1,000.” 

“Clarity not only gives us deeper insight into the financial situations of our families so we can more accurately award tuition assistance, but it helps us stay within budget and award more families.”

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A Platform Shaped by Real School Feedback

“The responsiveness to product feedback at Clarity has been a really nice breath of fresh air,” shared Huerth. 

“We love what we have, but we can say ‘these are a couple of things that would make this product work even better for us from either the enrollment side or the business office side’ and the Clarity team actually hears us,” she added.

“That in itself has made us really strong advocates of Clarity, because it’s such a rare approach these days.”

“Early on there was anxiety and a lot of concern about whether we were making the right decision in moving to Clarity. Looking back now, all signs point to yes," shared Huerth.

"It’s been nothing but a positive experience, and Clarity has helped us reach our enrollment and our net tuition revenue goals." 

“We want to provide an education to as many students as we can, and when it comes to independent schools, tuition assistance is the most important way of being able to do that,” Drabik shared. “We recommend Clarity to everyone we speak to.” 

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