Supporting the Las Cruces Academy
A summary by Vince Gutschick, Board Chair, financial planner, bookkeeper, and co-founder. June 29, 2025.
Here is a broad perspective of all LCA income and expenses from our founding in 2007 through the end of this fiscal year, 30 June 2025. We are grateful to all the families who enrolled their children as our students, contributing the students’ lively presence and exhibiting their willingness to pay tuition that accounts for 92% of monetary support. They also contributed 2% of monetary donations, with businesses, friends of the school, and the Board contributing as well. All of this helped critically, adding to the $156,000 that founder and Head of School Lou Ellen Kay put into the school at the start, with more since then.
We also value the goods-in-kind that families and friends have given us. These are many books, reams of paper, art supplies, markers, cleaning supplies, special teaching materials, teaching equipment, some computer and electronic equipment, whole bookcases large and huge, music stands, and more. Some are hard to value monetarily but all are appreciated.
Over our 18 years from our date of incorporation, a critical role has been played by donations of labor. In the two years before our opening to classes, dozens of friends worked tirelessly along with founders Lou Ellen Kay and Vince Gutschick and their son David to plan, clean, find and construct furnishings, run wiring and networking, and arrange classrooms. Since then, forty LCA parents and relatives have helped in ways that varied from cleaning to working the events to helping in the classroom and after school. Many LCA families also appreciate that founders Lou Ellen Kay and Vince Gutschick have donated their time for 18 years, in the amount of 69,808 hours valued at $2,030,978, with David adding 3,000 hours more.
We appreciate donations of funds and of volunteered time by LCA families; we also wish to encourage LCA families who have yet to volunteer to do so.
Overall, the LCA has been a great academic success, shown in our students while they’re with us and in their later academics in high school and universities. The LCA has also been managed so as to be financially sound, even with a few years with decreases in assets. The financial soundness, critically supported by donations, has enabled us to grow in programs, to accumulate funds toward the critical down payment for purchasing our building this year, and to convince three banks (we chose WAFD) that it’s worth offering us a mortgage to sustain the purchase of the building for the next decades.
The role of donations is apparent in the financial totals:
- Operating expenses over our 18 years, 2007-2025, total $4,704,315 as funds. In recent years these run about $420K to $450K each year or about $9-10K per student.
- Total income of funds exceeded expenses by $346,784. This ‘nest egg’ enabled us to make the down payment on the building!
- The ‘nest egg’ or net income only accumulated because we had donations:
- As funds, the donations totaled $394,047, representing 8.9% of funds. Of that total, $255,166 came in as the Annual Fund, with $146,671 donated by LCA families and the rest by friends of the LCA, corporations, and our Board of Trustees. Lou Ellen, Vince, David, and Yi put in $88,881 as donations and $85,000 more as a note. We deeply appreciate two grants from the Giles W. and Elise G. Mead Foundation of Napa, CA.
- Donated unpaid labor was even more critical. As we noted above, this totaled $2,017,130, as 33% of expenses (funds + labor)! I valued it at the median hourly rate that we paid our teachers over 16 years of classes. The 40 LCA parents and relatives over the years also donated time in the classroom, at events, and in constructing things for the school. Our Board of Trustees and several advisors pitched in, especially in these recent, very busy months arranging the purchase of the building and the mortgage (another good, long story!). We are grateful.
Most of the unpaid labor was donated by Lou Ellen. She put in this time and money because, as she has said, as a biologist she’s terrified by the changes in the world; the most important thing she saw that she could do is to start a very strong school to educate talented students who could help handle all these challenges in their careers. We look forward to even more LCA families volunteering.
We know that our tuition rate is the highest in the area for primary school. It goes with our well-supported claim of being the best school. You can compare us financially to the top private schools in the state such as Manzano Day School in Albuquerque who charge even more ($14.5-18.5K, variously for pre-K to 5), and similarly the Desert Montessori School. Almost all other private schools in the state with lower tuition are religious, receiving church support; we are not/ do not. Add our donated labor to tuition and you get that $15K per year rate. We have made detailed financial plans to keep our tuition rate in its current range, even as Lou Ellen and I finally retire in a few years, phasing out our donated labor. Paid administrators will come on board. Elizabeth Brasher is one of these, a great teacher, Board Member, and current Deputy Head of School. A key part of the plans is expanding enrollment of additional good students. LCA families and friends, you can help us recruiting, too!