This section explains our withdrawal procedure and refund policy.

General. We consider a family's registration request to be a well-intentioned commitment to take that class and pay all fees associated with it, and we assume that families do not request a class they believe they are likely to drop later. Holding a seat in a class prevents other interested families from taking that seat and commits income to the teacher.

Failure to Deliver. If we ever determine that we cannot deliver or have failed to deliver academically or technically what we have committed, we will cheerfully refund all monies paid for that commitment.

Family Registration Fee. If due to placement test failure or lack of seat availability we cannot offer a family at least one requested section, we will refund the Family Registration Fee.

Dropped Courses and Withdrawal Fees. We encourage families considering withdrawing from a course to notify us prior to deciding, because we have proven successful at helping with alternatives that are in the better interest of the student. This approach also usually avoids fees associated with a drop. To allow families to arrange multiple courses in often-complex schedules, we allow a class to be dropped without charge for seven days after registering for that class. We also never charge anything to be on a wait list.

To allow continued opportunity for schedule changes after the seven-day grace period, we charge $1 per day to drop a held seat prior to the start of the first semester. For full-year and first-semester-only courses, this fee is calculated from the date of registration in that course to the date of the drop request. For second-semester-only courses, this fee is calculated from the date of registration in that course to the start of the first semester.

If a full-year course is dropped before the start of second semester, we do not charge for second semester. In lieu of tuition for the second semester, we charge half of the $1 per day fee, calculated from the date of registration to the start of the first semester.

Unless we find we have failed to provide the course we committed, we generally do not provide refunds for any semester already in progress or completed.

Overpayment Refunds. If you paid by credit card, we will refund your credit card. Otherwise we will refund by check. Unless the overpayment is due to an error on our part, we will deduct from all refunds a fee of 3% of the amount of the refund, to cover our costs.

Mutual Responsibility. We deal in good faith with our families and we expect the same from our families. In rare cases, we may determine that a family has acted irresponsibly in the registration process or during the school year. When this occurs we first attempt to approach that family to resolve the situation. If those attempts fail, we withdraw that family from all classes, return tuition fees, and ask the family not to return.