Los Angeles Private-School Financial Aid for Fall 2027

Fall 2027 aid calendar

“January” is not a deadline. Put the exact school date in ink.

Facts: Brentwood separately requires 2025 returns by January 8 and 2026 W-2s/1099s by February 5; a file still incomplete on February 12 is placed on a financial-support waitlist. Campbell Hall says 2026 taxes are due April 15 only if the family enrolls.

Archer’s page says 2026 tax documents go to FAST by April 15 after its December Clarity submission—a school-specific second step worth flagging in the family calendar.

Inference: the safe family deadline is at least a week before the school deadline. A submitted platform form is not a complete file if a second household, business return, K-1, wage statement, or school-specific upload remains missing.

Unknown: this is a useful cross-section, not a directory of every Los Angeles school. A school not listed here still has its own form, document calendar, and late-file policy.

Clarity, SSS, and the school

The platform organizes the file. The school makes the award.

LAIS currently links five possible services—Clarity, FAST, FACTS, SSS, and Blackbaud—and warns that schools keep their own policies. Clarity’s July 2026 help page is unusually direct: it does not give applicants one universal expected-family-contribution figure. Each school uses its own formula and budget, so the same Clarity file can produce different contributions and awards.

SSS’s current family guide makes the same boundary clear: the PFS can be shared with multiple schools, but each school sets its own document deadlines and makes the actual grant decision.

Current conflict: Campbell Hall’s dated Fall 2027 timeline says its Clarity application opens August 24, 2026 and is due January 20, 2027 for new families. An older undated policy page still says Campbell Hall belongs to SSS and requires a PFS.

We treat the dated current-cycle page as the stronger evidence, but only the school can resolve the live contradiction for a family. Do not send sensitive records to both systems “just in case.” Ask which portal is controlling and save the written answer.

Opinion: a clean file tells one coherent financial story. It does not hide the second home, minimize a business asset, or flood the committee with unreconciled explanations. Put unusual facts in a short cover note, tie each number to a document, and name what changed between the tax year and today.

Beyond tuition

A $40,000 grant can still leave the wrong $25,000.

The comparison should begin with the school’s latest published cost sheet, then move to the offered 2027–28 contract. The figures below are facts for 2026–27, not projections of next year. They show why “tuition minus grant” is an incomplete number.

Unknown: Marlborough lists $57,850 tuition and a $3,300 new-student fee for 2026–27, but its bus figures are expressly labeled 2025–26 pending an update. We therefore do not carry the bus number into a current comparison. That small footnote is exactly the kind of detail a family should catch before signing.

Build one “family contribution” for each school.

Add tuition after the grant, every mandatory fee not covered, transportation, extended care, meals, books, device and replacement insurance, uniforms, trips, athletics or arts charges, tuition-plan finance fees, and any required tuition-refund plan.

Then add the family’s own driving, parking, childcare gaps, and lost work time. Subtract only support that is written into the award or fee schedule.

Hypothetical: a 30-minute drive in each direction at both drop-off and pickup is two parent-hours per school day—about 360 hours across a 180-day year before practices, performances, and traffic spikes. The exact number will differ. The point is to price the actual route, not admire the distance on a map.

Complex households and assets

The tax return is the start of the story, not the whole story.

Clarity generally requires living biological parents in separate households to complete separate applications and says a remarried spouse or another adult in the household who helps care for the children is listed.

Oakwood likewise requires both households and considers stepparent income and assets. Sierra Canyon says it may also consider an adult living with a parent and requires third-party confirmation when a family asks to exclude a missing parent.

A divorce decree may allocate educational costs between adults, but Brentwood, Oakwood, Marlborough, and Sierra Canyon each publish some version of the same warning: the school is not necessarily bound by a parent’s disclaimer or by the family’s private allocation.

That does not mean exceptions never exist. It means the waiver question belongs with the aid office early, supported by the specific evidence the school requests.

Opinion: privacy and dignity matter, especially in coercive or unsafe family situations. Do not send a sensitive court record to a general admissions inbox. Ask the aid office which person, channel, and minimum evidence are appropriate.

Siblings and renewal

Plan the family, not only the first child’s first year.

Renewal is not autopilot. Crossroads, Oakwood, Marlborough, Sierra Canyon, Campbell Hall, and Harvard-Westlake all publish annual reapplication or annual review language.

The reassuring versions are still conditional. Crossroads ties a similar award to stable income and good standing. Marlborough says roughly the same amount absent changed circumstances. Sierra Canyon says it will strive to continue aid when demonstrated need remains similar. Oakwood says aid can rise or fall with need.

Renewal families also move earlier. In the current published sample, Crossroads is November 6, Oakwood October 9, Sierra Canyon November 20, and Campbell Hall October 19—months before new-family decisions. Missing that earlier lane can put a current child’s budget at risk.

The sibling questions families avoid until too late

• Does one platform application cover both children, and does each child still need a school-specific record? Sierra Canyon says one aid application may include all children, while each child needs a separate admission application.
• How will the school treat tuition paid to another K–12 school or college? Several formulas consider children in tuition-charging institutions, but the school may expect you to seek aid there too.
• If the second child is not admitted, does the first child’s award change? Harvard-Westlake publishes a particular same-grant sibling rule when a younger child is admitted and the family qualifies; do not assume another school follows it.
• Can the family carry two contributions if neither award is as large as hoped? Build a two-child stress case before enrolling the first.

Fact: Oakwood, Marlborough, and Harvard-Westlake each warn that entering as full-pay generally communicates the ability to carry full cost for the child’s enrollment. Later aid is reserved for an extraordinary, significant, or unforeseeable change, with wording that differs by school. If future need is visible now, apply now.

Unknown: a school’s statement that it prioritizes renewals, as Campbell Hall and Sierra Canyon do, is not a guarantee of a particular dollar amount. The new contract and award govern the next year.

An appeal with evidence

Ask for reconsideration quickly, quietly, and specifically.

There is no LAIS-wide appeal process. Brentwood is a rare school in this sample with a public rule: a family that questions or is denied support may write to the committee chair within two weeks of the award; the committee reviews the appeal and may invite or accept a meeting request.

Inference: Brentwood’s two-week appeal window is longer than LAIS’s seven-day decision window. A family should appeal immediately and ask in writing whether the enrollment seat, reply deadline, or deposit clock changes while the appeal is pending. Do not assume it does.

A parent can write this in six sentences.

“Thank you for admitting Maya and for the $___ grant. We are grateful and remain sincerely interested. Our file appears to treat ___ as ___; the attached ___ shows ___. With required transportation and fees, our maximum sustainable family contribution is $___.”

“Would the committee reconsider the award, and does the March 19 enrollment deadline remain in effect during review? We will respond promptly to any request for documentation.”

Opinion: an appeal is a request for a different number, not a referendum on the child’s worth or the school’s moral character. If the final number still fails the family ceiling, the loving answer can be no.

Before “accept”

The deposit is only one clause in a larger promise.

Brentwood’s current cost page provides a useful example, not a citywide rule: its published 2026–27 tuition deposit is $4,000 for full-pay families and $50 for financial-support families, described as non-refundable and non-transferable.

Crossroads lists a $3,400 new-student enrollment fee and waives it for Affordability Program families. These are different charges with different labels. The 2027–28 contract—not a prior-year web summary—controls.

Before anyone clicks, download the offer, award, fee sheet, contract, tuition-refund or protection-plan terms, and payment schedule. Ask a qualified lawyer about language you do not understand; this article cannot interpret a family’s contract.

• What amount is due at signing, and is any part refundable?
• When does responsibility expand from the deposit to part or all of annual tuition after withdrawal?
• Is tuition insurance required, optional, or unavailable under the chosen payment plan, and what events does it actually cover?
• Does the grant apply proportionally to fees, bus, care, trips, books, device, lunch, and activities—or only tuition?
• Are finance charges added to monthly plans? Brentwood publishes an approximately 6% charge on its ten-month plan; Campbell Hall lists a 4% monthly-plan service charge waived for aid participants.
• What happens if a public, wait-pool, or relocation option changes after signing? Never assume a later school offer cancels the first obligation.

Unknown: most 2027–28 contracts and withdrawal schedules were not publicly available on September 2, 2026. We do not infer them from 2026–27 deposit tables.

March 12 to March 19

Seven days is enough only if the questions are already written.

LAIS says member schools do not encourage extra visits because of disruption to current schools, but an admitted family may request one and a school may grant it at its discretion. That is permission to ask, not a promise of a revisit.

Bring three questions to a revisit, not thirty: one about the child’s ordinary day, one about the support or program that could change the decision, and one about the practical week. The school tour is not the place to renegotiate aid in front of a student host; keep the financial conversation with the authorized office.

Three different wait pools

A seat, funding, and a complete file are separate gates.

Brentwood explicitly places files still incomplete on February 12 on a financial-support waitlist.

Oakwood explains that after admission review, limited aid and enrollment goals may leave strong applicants without funding; its admissions FAQ describes some candidates being placed on a waiting list in hopes that space and funding emerge.

Campbell Hall says a candidate may be denied aid or moved to the admission wait pool when funding cannot cover all accepted students.

Unknown: none of those statements provides your child’s rank, probability, or movement date. Do not translate “we hope” into “likely.” Keep the place you can use, state continued interest once, update only with material information, and set a private family end date after which a late move would be too costly or disruptive.

Public and private clocks

The LAUSD answer may be due before the private answer exists.

A current LAUSD school page publishes the 2027–28 Choices window as October 1 through November 6, selection or waitlist notices February 8–12, and an accept/decline deadline of March 5. LAIS private-school decisions follow March 12. The dates create a real seven-day gap.

Families should verify the central Choices portal and their specific program because LAUSD pages can update or disagree.

Inference: follow each system’s instructions on its own calendar. If the public placement is genuinely usable, preserve it by the public deadline; when a later private offer arrives, read its aid and contract and release the option the family will not use.

Ask LAUSD how a later withdrawal affects the placement rather than inventing a rule. Do not sign two tuition contracts.

The public comparison is not merely “free versus expensive.” Look at program access, class path, special-education services, transportation, after-school coverage, peer geography, and the child’s own comfort. For one detailed public-school lens, read our parent guide to LACES. A tuition-free choice can be a positive educational decision, not a consolation prize.