One home, where a child’s program can adapt as their needs change—so their community doesn’t have to.

In the admissions process, our clinical team reviews each child’s file to determine what programming level and customization will be required to address—not just accommodate—the challenges that are threatening to hold a child back. Our aim is to help students discover and experience their own gifts, while giving them a toolbox they can use to self-monitor, self-manage and self-advocate for their needs in whatever educational, social or professional setting they prefer. An outplacement to Cajal Academy is not about ‘putting a child in a bubble.’ Rather, it is a small and focused environment in which to identify and remove the roadblocks that interfere with their ability to access and enjoy their strengths, including roadblocks that led some of our extremely bright students to feel unsuccessful in mainstream environments.

Each student’s program is customized through our Cajal Profile Analysis process. It is important to note that our goal is not just to cram in more curriculum despite the child’s profile, but rather to identify and address the challenges—whatever they may be—that interfere with your child’s ability to thrive not just at the current grade level but with the curriculum and developmental stages to come. We believe strongly in the educational value of diversity, and we’ve seen first hand how it gives perspective when they learn alongside kids who have different passions, challenges and “superpowers” to bring to the table. Our spectrum of programming and tuition levels is intended to make our program accessible to as many children as possible, while providing a home where students with even very complex profiles can learn within a community of peers.

Some children will join at our Core Program level. Others will gradually be able to reduce their programming to this level as they progress through the program and respond to our interventions and unique environment. Our team will also advise you if a change in programming levels is required to address new needs as they arise. Having this spectrum of service levels within an expertised environment gives kids the advantage of a stable social community where they can continue to engage in intellectually-stimulating academic programs at prices competitive with mainstream environments that do not offer any special education services—let alone Cajal Academy’s unique remediations.

Programming Levels and Tuition

Core Program Level

Tuition: $47,500

Students who do not have learning, social, emotional or neurophysio differences that interfere with their access to academic or social activities, and therefore not requiring a customized program or services beyond those that are integrated into the environment for all students will be offered the opportunity to enroll at our Core Program Level. This level offers all the benefits of our project based learning curriculum, small class sizes, close teacher relationships and Body-Informed Learning.

For all those students who do have areas of academic, social-emotional or physio needs (whether or not they may have an IEP), our team will create a custom program tailored to address the specific challenges identified during the admissions process. Because of the success of our program, many students have initially enrolled at Cajal with fairly substantial programs (and accordingly high tuition levels) but have seen their child’s needs dramatically reduce over the course of as a school year, resulting in declining tuition rates for each successive year. That is the purpose of our program!

We created our Core Program Level to offer our families an alternative, priced equivalent to mainstream private schools in our community, that would allow intellectually gifted kids the opportunity to access our standards-based project based learning, small class sizes, close teacher relationships, Body-Informed Learning and coaching to prepare our college-bound students to manage their physio and social-emotional needs in an independent environment. Students who initially enroll at Cajal at higher tuition levels will “migrate towards” this programming level as their needs are addressed.

Custom Program Levels

For students who do have learning, social, emotional or neurophysio differences interfering with their access to academic or social activities, which our team believes would require customization beyond what is integrated in our Core Program Level, we will create a custom program based on one of our four custom program levels (Learning Interventions, Complex Educational Profiles, Journeys and Medically Complex Profiles). The clinical understandings & supports are integrated into all aspects of the program, curriculum design, scheduling approaches  & the classroom, and the type & quantity of services shifts over time as the child’s profile evolves: decisions and adjustments that are made seamlessly by our team.

Tuitions are set accordingly, and reflect the level of complexity of the student’s profile, proportion of our clinicians’ time, the extent to which 1:1 instruction may be required (either due to the uniqueness of the learning profile or due to social-emotional challenges) and other factors impacting our capacity to accept additional children into the program at this time that we are scaling our student body. This is fundamentally different from the way public schools (and many private schools) deliver and contract their services; it is not possible for Cajal to provide a breakdown of our tuition levels on an hourly basis. This assessment starts through our admissions process; should there be a significant discrepancy between your child’s presentation at school and the materials provided to us during the admissions process, a tuition adjustment may be required.

Please use the links below to learn more about our four custom program levels, or scroll down to read sample programs for common profiles within the community that we serve. We have provided tuition ranges to give a sense of the scale and criteria of our tuition levels, however as noted above each student’s program is customized within those programming tiers, based on the complexity and intensity of the programming needs.

Tuition and Financing Frequently Asked Questions