Blue Mountain Christian School hopes to be tuition-free with donations, tax credits

Blue Mountain Christian School in Jonestown is hoping to become one of the first tuition-free Christian schools in Pennsylvania through fundraising, community partnerships, and tax credit programs.

According to Nathali Calzado, administrator of Blue Mountain Christian School, this would remove financial barriers for families who want a Christian education for their children.

Currently, the school has education fees of several hundred dollars, depending on when families register, and preschool through 12th-grade student tuition starts at $5,150 for one student during the 2024-25 school year, which is the most recent information available on the website. The tuition cost for each additional child decreases.

Calzado said they hope to reach this tuition-free goal through fundraising, community partnerships, the Pennsylvania Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC), and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs. Around $58,000 has already been pledged through the OSTC, and the school has raised several thousand through donations.

“We could use tax money that actually has already been put aside — it’s not money that’s going to be taken away from public schools,” she said. “The state has a budget, and they already approve a certain amount, but most people just don’t use it. This is for us to make Christian education an accessible choice to people regardless of their income.”

She said many parents are homeschooling their children because private schooling is too expensive, and they feel they have to do so to ensure they get the education they want.

“We’re at a time where the economy’s really hurting. There’s a lot of parents hurting,” Calzado said. “There’s many parents that are homeschooling only out of necessity, not because it’s their first choice. They would like to have a school that they can trust to provide the academics and at the same time, give their kids a biblical worldview, but they don’t trust the public school system.”

Currently, around 80% of the families get financial assistance. Calzado said they can’t offer free tuition to any families at this point, though families can qualify for cost deductions.

Blue Mountain Christian School, started in 1977, currently has 93 students and can hold a max of 180 students.

Calzado said the school competes when it comes to academics. The main difference with the Christian school is that some questions a student asks might have an answer from a biblical perspective.

“We have many churches represented within our school, and that is what we like,” Calzado said. “Even the staff comes from different churches — it’s not one denomination.”

She said the magic number for tuition-free schooling for the 2026-27 school year is $600,000. Donations are a short-term option, and the long-term sustainable model is through the tax credit programs.