This school year, SPA awarded $4.6 million in financial aid. Financial aid recipients comprise 27% of the student body, but this statistic is often invisible. Although there can be visible signs or indicators, wealth can remain fairly hidden and private—but harm arises when so much goes unsaid. Family finances are not commonly discussed at SPA, leading to a culture of silence regarding financial differences and diversity.

Senior Theo Bonin wrote his senior speech with this in mind. He hoped to call attention to the lack of discussion regarding financial diversity at SPA.

“I was initially planning on writing more about how SPA talked about the financial reality of students, but I kind of toned it down a bit,” Bonin said, “the original one was a little bit hostile.”

Bonin feels as though the dominant SPA culture not only avoids discussions of wealth and access but assumes every student has similar financial resources. This attitude ignores the diverse financial reality of SPA students. Some students are on significant financial aid and scholarships, others may make familial sacrifices to pay in full, and others may have no issue forking over the annual Upper School tuition of just over $38,000.

“While the majority of people at SPA are very wealthy, it is not the same for everybody. A lot of people don’t realize that and it is very easy to oversimplify everyone’s situation,” he said.

Pain and misunderstanding can arise from the erasure. Bonin feels that the college search process has exacerbated unequal assumptions about wealth.

“The moment things get outside of school it’s really easy to see differences,” he said.

During senior year, he challenged classmates’ comments that felt blind to different financial experiences, especially in the Early Decision application round. Early Decision is a binding agreement between an applicant and a college that doesn’t allow an admit to compare financial aid packages. This admissions strategy can exclude applicants who cannot pay in full.

Although SPA students do come from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, significant financial diversity is contradictory to the private school system.

On its website, SPA describes its founders and early benefactors as wishing for “an educational experience similar to the Eastern private day schools.” These independent college prep schools were designed to and still serve as an alternative to the public school system. Parents send their children to private schools for a variety of reasons, but often for the academic rigor, college prep curriculum, and individualized attention from teachers. These hallmarks of private education are luxuries reserved mostly for those who can pay, perpetuating wealth inequality by setting their graduates up for career success. Bonin wonders, how a school, committed to the idea of financial diversity, address this paradox?

“It’s kind of hard for the school to talk about because the idea of wealth inequality is a cornerstone of the SPA identity. There is a literal paywall to get in here. It’s not really fixable,” Bonin said.

Private schools like SPA rely on hefty tuition that most families pay at sticker price. Bonin feels that discussion of wealth at a schoolwide level, while helpful, wouldn’t change much about the fundamental problem.

Within this paradox, nearly one-third of SPA students are on some sort of financial assistance, but because the discussion of wealth is fairly taboo, there is no programming, schoolwide education, or check-ins with students on financial aid. There is no easy number to point to how many students feel comfortable sharing their familial finances.

“There is no way of knowing how many people feel different from their peers because of [wealth inequality],” Bonin said.

Bonin wishes the SPA community was more vocally understanding of different financial backgrounds. On the plus side, Bonin feels wealth inequality at SPA is less evident within the school building. Even with one in three students on financial aid at SPA, the community struggles to candidly discuss wealth and financial diversity of its students and families.