Move over college students -- you're not the only ones seeking financial aid to pay for tuition.
More parents are applying for loans and other help to pay their kid'sprivate elementary and high school tuition, reports CNN Money.
And it's not just the poorest families looking for help. The number of families earning more than $150,000 that requested financial assistance for the 2010-2011 school year increased 6 percent since the 2002-2003, according to CNN Money, which reports that 20 percent of families seeking financial aid to pay for K-12 education are in that income bracket.
Is it worth it? Should parents be sending their kids to private schools they can't afford? Let us know what you think by emailing money@huffingtonpost.com
The average cost of a year of private school is $21,995, a figure that's ballooned 35 percent since the 2001-02 school year when adjusted for inflation, according to the New York Times.
Many families that were once able to pay private school tuition can't keep up with school costs that are rising faster than income is growing.
Families earning as much as $350,000 are applying for financial aid in droves at Tabor Academy, a private high school in Marion, Mass., according to CNN Money. The increase in well-to-do families requesting help has squeezed some lower-income students out of aid altogether, CNN Money reports.
Despite rising tuition and the lingering effects of the recession on disposable income, cash-strapped parents are increasingly considering private school a cost that's not worth cutting. It doesn't help that many localities squeezed by budget cuts are scaling back education funding.
This phenomenon has caused an uptick in the amount of money being borrowed out by parents of grade-school students. According to SmartMoney, the amount of money parents requested to borrow to pay for K-12 tuition rose 10 percent this year.