On November 20, Head of School Tim Seeley sent the following letter to members of the GSA community:

"As most of you know, Maine law requires towns without public schools to provide tuition support for their resident students. While the state sets a tuition rate annually, it also permits “tuitioning towns” to provide additional tuition to schools serving their students.

"In fact, GSA has never asked tuitioning towns for more than the minimum tuition (although other town academies do). Until two years ago, we were able to bridge the gap between the tuition paid by towns and the cost of educating our students, through fundraising, the use of our endowment, and, most especially, our boarding program. Bridging the tuition gap is, however, no longer possible without additional tuition from towns, and without additional tuition, our ability to serve all our students will be significantly and unavoidably diminished.

"On November 19 and 20, board chair Samantha Politte, trustee Zoë Robbins Tenney ’93 and I met with the school boards of seven surrounding tuitioning towns to let them know that we will soon be unable to operate GSA on the tuition the towns currently pay. We presented our predicament and our request for towns to provide additional tuition accompanied by a set of talking points that you can read [below]. These first two meetings are the beginning of a thoughtful process of communicating with sending towns, Select boards, budget committees, and town meetings over the coming weeks and months. 

"Let me emphasize that all of us at GSA—trustees, faculty, and administrators—are committed to preserving the outstanding education we deliver today and to making improvements we envision for the future. We will continue, of course, to leverage all our resources to cover the costs of educating every student at GSA, but to succeed in this we will also need increased support from our sending towns."

Read or download "A Conversation About Town Tuitioning" here.