Consumer Law, Warranties private school tuition refund if no contract was signed

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moki

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Hello,

My son who just started second grade and has attended a small private school since preschool. He has some learning difficulties and last year we paid our tuition plus an almost equal amount to have an aid in the classroom. We were under the understanding that this year we would be splitting the cost of an aid with another student. So we would pay tuition plus another $10,000 to share a full time aid. The school was requiring the aid in order to allow my son to continue at the school. We went ahead over the summer and paid the school the entire tuition for this school year. We however did not sign any contract. A few weeks before school started we found out that the student that we would be splitting the aid with would not be attending that school in the fall. We met with the school and their suggestion was to hire an aid privately for an hour or hour and 1/2 a day to come into the classroom. This seemed like a good compromise until I found out that this would cost about $18,000 for the school year. I would also now have the stress of personally contracting with them instead of using a person the school hired. A few days before school began my son asked to visit the local public school. We realized that our son would have many many more services that would better suit his needs for the tax dollars were paying regardless of where he went to school. We chose to switch him to the public school. Because we did not give the school much notice we only felt it fair to let the school keep a portion of the tuition. We really want to keep a good relationship with the school and understand that the school is financially struggling. We decided to offer to let the school keep $5500 and use some of the remaining $5500 as a credit for their summer camp and get refunded about $3000. The board of directors has turned this offer down and is unwilling to refund any of the money. My question is...because there is no signed contract do we have a right to a refund? We live in NH. Thank You in advance for your response.
 
My suggestion is to take this to small claims court. Why is the board refusing to return any of the money? Without an agreement, I'd say that the school has a very difficult time explaining why you aren't due the return of the entire amount paid and not earned, especially if they were running the program. If this was me, I would send a demand letter to the school to return the amount of money unearned and inform them that if not paid within X days that I would be filing a case in small claims court. Just my thought.
 
Unfortunately in NH the small claims court limit is still $5000. However, you might want to engage an attorney in this matter to recover as much as possible. My guess is that the school will cave if you have an attorney call their attorney. If you are paying or even considering paying $18,000 for a second grade education surely you can engage an attorney. That would probably be your best bet. Good luck.
 
I am not a member of this, but was doing a search online for something else. Can I ask if the school you speak of is CCA ? If so, I was doing the same thing and I really hope you were able to get your $ back.
 
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