Private school software that puts the contract, the aid and the balance on one family record
Private school administration is the business and compliance side of running an independent school: enrollment contracts, tuition and financial aid, student records, state reporting and the filings a tax exempt organisation owes. About 4.7 million US students attend roughly 30,000 private schools, and IRS Form 5578 is due annually from schools that do not file a Form 990. Neurobird puts the contract, the aid award, the balance and the filing calendar on one family record.
Watch the fields extract from the document.
Neurobird Private School Administration in short
- Issue and track re enrollment contracts with deposits and deadlines per family
- Hold financial aid awards against the contract so the net tuition figure is real
- Track the annual filings a tax exempt school owes and when they are due
- 4.7 million Approximate private school enrollment in the United States, measured by the federal statistics agency rather than by association membership. NCES, fast facts on private school enrollment
- Biennial The Private School Universe Survey is a recurring federal census of private elementary and secondary schools, and it is the closest thing to a full school count. NCES, Private School Universe Survey
- Pricing runs 200 to 900 US dollars per month across 3 tiers. Early access is free.
What private school heads and business managers actually deal with
Why it stays broken
Independent schools are small organisations with the compliance surface of much larger ones. The business manager is also the HR department and often the bookkeeper, so the systems that get bought are the ones that solve today rather than the ones that join up.
A school of 240 families loses roughly 10 percent a year, and the signal shows up in missed deposits months before August.
Every school must include a statement of its racially nondiscriminatory policy as to students in all its brochures and catalogues dealing with student admissions, programs, and scholarships.
Neurobird Private School Administration Document Automation Platform
Put the family at the centre instead of the student record. Contract, aid, balance and communication hang off it, and the questions a board asks become one lookup.
- 1Issue and track re enrollment contracts with deposits and deadlines per family
- 2Hold financial aid awards against the contract so the net tuition figure is real
- 3Track the annual filings a tax exempt school owes and when they are due
- 4Watch the early attrition signals rather than counting empty desks in August
What changes with Neurobird Private School Administration?
The same work, read left to right: how it runs today, and how it runs once the record is in one place.
| Today | With Neurobird Private School Administration |
|---|---|
| Enrollment contracts, financial aid decisions and tuition balances live in 3 systems, so nobody can answer what a family actually owes without opening all of them | Issue and track re enrollment contracts with deposits and deadlines per family |
| The annual nondiscrimination certification and the 990 come due while re enrollment is still running, and both fall on the same person | Hold financial aid awards against the contract so the net tuition figure is real |
| Attrition shows up in August when a family simply does not return, months after the signal was visible in a missed deposit | Track the annual filings a tax exempt school owes and when they are due |
Who is this for?
Same office, three different scales.
You are under 150 students
One person does admissions, billing and compliance. You need the whole business layer in one place rather than 3 subscriptions.
You run financial aid
Aid decisions change net tuition materially. You need the award attached to the contract so the budget number is real.
You report to a board
Enrollment, retention and net tuition get asked for by campus and in total. You need one set of numbers behind both views.
How does Neurobird Private School Administration work?
Run re enrollment as a pipeline
Contract issued, aid applied, deposit received, roster locked. Every family sits at a known stage with a date attached.
Hold net tuition honestly
Gross contract, aid, discounts and remission stored together, so net tuition per student is calculated rather than estimated.
Keep the filing calendar
Form 5578, Form 990 where applicable, state reporting and accreditation dates tracked with owners and deadlines.
What the public data and the filings actually say
Useful if you are benchmarking or preparing a board pack. Each source links out.
Approximate private school enrollment in the United States, measured by the federal statistics agency rather than by association membership.
NCES, fast facts on private school enrollmentThe Private School Universe Survey is a recurring federal census of private elementary and secondary schools, and it is the closest thing to a full school count.
NCES, Private School Universe SurveyPrivate schools exempt from federal income tax that do not file a Form 990 must file this annual certification of racial nondiscrimination with the IRS.
IRS, Form 5578Most independent schools operate as tax exempt charitable organisations, which carries governance, disclosure and annual filing obligations separate from anything the state education agency asks for.
IRS, charitable organizationsThe Digest of Education Statistics publishes long run tables on private school counts, enrollment and staffing, which is what a board benchmark should be built on.
NCES, Digest of Education StatisticsPrivate school administration software questions, answered
Key terms
- What does private school administration involve?
- Private school administration is the business and compliance side of running an independent school: enrollment contracts, tuition and financial aid, student records, state reporting, accreditation and the filings a tax exempt organisation owes. Roughly 4.7 million US students attend private schools, and most of the schools serving them are small enough that one person carries all of it.
- What is Form 5578?
- It is the annual certification of racial nondiscrimination that a private school exempt from federal income tax files with the IRS when it does not otherwise file a Form 990. It is due by the 15th day of the fifth month after the end of the organisation's accounting period, and it is easy to miss because it arrives outside the school calendar.
How many private schools are there in the United States?
The National Center for Education Statistics runs the Private School Universe Survey, a biennial census of private elementary and secondary schools. It has counted around 30,000 schools serving about 4.7 million students, with wide variation in size: many enroll fewer than 150 students.
Why is net tuition harder to track than it looks?
Because the contract price and the collected price are different numbers. Financial aid, sibling discounts, employee remission and payment plans all sit between them, and they usually live in different places. Net tuition per student is the figure that actually funds the school.
Does this replace our student information system?
No. Grades, attendance and transcripts stay in the student information system. This holds the business layer: contracts, aid, balances, filings and the early signals that a family is leaving.
Why we are building this
Independent schools carry the compliance load of a much bigger organisation on an office of 2 or 3 people. The student information system handles the academic side well. The business side gets a spreadsheet.
Attrition is the clearest example. A family that leaves in August almost always signalled it in the spring, in a missed deposit or an unanswered contract, and nobody was watching the right field.
We would rather build this with people who run school offices. Tell us how yours works, and where we have got it wrong.
Where the requirement comes from
The federal statistics and the filings an exempt school owes.
- NCES, Private School Universe Survey The federal census of private schools, with counts, enrollment and school characteristics by year.
- NCES, private school enrollment fast facts Headline national enrollment figures, useful for board benchmarking.
- IRS, Form 5578 The annual certification of racial nondiscrimination for private schools exempt from federal income tax.
- IRS, charitable organizations Exempt organisation obligations, including annual filing and disclosure requirements.
How much does Neurobird Private School Administration cost?
Priced per enrolled student because that is how a school budgets. Unlimited staff users on every tier.
- Family records
- Enrollment contracts
- Balance tracking
- Filing calendar
- Email support
- Everything in Small school
- Financial aid awards
- Net tuition reporting
- Attrition signals
- Named contact
- Everything in Independent school
- Cross campus roster
- Board reporting pack
- Accreditation document store
- Onboarding included
Get free early access
If you run a school office, tell us how re enrollment works today and what you cannot answer without opening 3 systems.
Straight answer on where this is: In development. Early access gets the working preview, a say in what ships first, and early access pricing. It does not get you a login today.
Prefer email? Write to office@neurobird.com and a person will reply. No autoresponder.