Vail Mountain School looks stable. The school holds 1.6 years of operating cushion, a healthy buffer. Revenue is 84% tuition-dependent (peer median 85%), concentrated but in line with most independent day schools. Staff compensation runs 58% of expenses, leaner than the peer median. Expenses are outpacing revenue 2.6% vs -0.9% per year over three years, signaling margin compression worth flagging. NACUBO Composite Financial Index: 4.8 / 10, adequate — monitor.
Vail Mountain School reported $17.5M in revenue against $17.5M in expenses in fiscal year 2023, the most recent filing on record. Net assets stood at $28.1M — about 1.60x annual operating expense.
Operating margin landed at 0.1%, with 83.5% of revenue coming from tuition. Among same-size peers, that puts Vail Mountain School at the p57 on operating margin.
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Why “revenue scale” and not “endowment per student”: independent-school 990s don’t carry per-school enrollment, and NCES PSS coverage is partial, so we cannot divide endowment by a verified student count for every school. The bar above is each school’s latest reported total revenue. True endowment-per-student is scheduled for v1.1+ once Schedule D Part V parsing lands.
Peers are scored by similarity along three equal-weighted dimensions: size cohort (Form 990 employee count + max-revenue tier, a proxy for student enrollment, which the 990 does not carry), geographic region (eight-region grouping), and association overlap (NAIS, NBOA, regional councils). We rank the top 20 nearest peers and chart the first 12 by latest reported revenue. Values are the school’s most recently filed total revenue on IRS Form 990.