FACTS is an automatic deduction tuition plan that Valley Christian Schools has adopted in order to better manage our tuitions collections. It is the tuition management service most widely used by private and Christian schools nationally. In our immediate area Valley Christian Schools in San Jose, Contra Costa Schools in Walnut Creek, Big Valley Christian Schools in Modesto as well as other schools too numerous to mention utilize FACTS. This particular company originated in 1986 and now serves over 3,000 schools and has processed over two million families.

Allow me to give you a short history of the decision making process that occurred here and is representative of most other decisions that affect the schools. We spend a lot of administrative energy maintaining the proper fiscal balance in an organization that has over a thousand families and approximately 1350 students. Although our cash flow is well under control, three years ago ACSI (our school accrediting organization) recommended that we needed to augment or improve our tuition management system. ACSI, ECCU (Evangelical Christian Credit Union-our bank) and FACTS work in concert to provide support to our schools and we are increasingly aligning ourselves with them where it is advantageous to do so.

After a lengthy period of research and interviewing, the business administrator and our accounting supervisor recommended the FACTS approach to the VCC Finance Committee. (There were less expensive companies that could have been recommended, but the level of experience, support, software and financial resources were not adequate to give us the comfort that we needed). The Finance Committee agreed with the proposal; it was then presented it to the School Board who supported the proposal, as did the VCC Board of Deacons.

FACTS will provide us with detailed management reports that will allow us to keep our administrative and accounting costs from increasing in the immediate and long term future. It is our view that we want to do all that we can to minimize and even reduce administrative costs where we can. Incidentally, practically all of our costs have increased at the elementary school, and yet we did not raise tuitions there as we did in the high school and the preschool. The $38 that parents are being assessed is necessary in order that we can avoid even higher increases in the future, because of the costs of managing our tuitions and cash flow. The savings already realized from using FACTS will eliminate the need to pass on the $38 annual charge that the parents were assessed this year.

The amount of time that all of us, including the administrators of the schools spend to manage our tuition collections is time that would be better spent improving the quality of our educational programs.