Grand Lake Montessori School shows signs of real financial distress. Reserves cover 6 months of operating expense, a thin runway. Revenue is highly concentrated at 98% tuition-dependent (peer median 87%): a soft admissions year would flow straight to the bottom line. Staff compensation runs 63% of expenses, about par for the peer cohort. Three-year net-asset trend is negative (-8.6%/yr), indicating reserve drawdown. NACUBO Composite Financial Index: -0.4 / 10, distressed.
Grand Lake Montessori School operates at 98% tuition dependency — among the most tuition-reliant 3% of peers in its cohort. A soft admissions year would flow straight to operations.
Grand Lake Montessori School reported $3.2M in revenue against $3.5M in expenses in fiscal year 2023, the most recent filing on record. Net assets stood at $1.9M — about 0.53x annual operating expense.
Operating margin landed at -10.2%, with 97.5% of revenue coming from tuition. Among same-size peers, that puts Grand Lake Montessori School at the p13 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.