You’ve been sent a link to this page because you’ve requested cancellation. Our policies, which require agreement before registration, are always posted on our site, and some are also at the bottom of this page. They begin with the explanation that our course tuition is a full purchase for the school year, or the remainder of it, and the monthly payments towards this purchase are a free payment plan to help pay over time. We aren’t a month to month program, but the payment plans can make it seem like we are.
Please read more about cancellation before continuing on to our cancellation form, (provided that it is before our cutoff date of Feb 20 – we can’t accept cancellations at the end of the term). We work hard to create a robust long-term program and this is stated all through our site and in the registration process. Please do not schedule new activities and then try to cancel the art course to accomodate them.
If you have any questions at all, or want a scholarship application, please call Mr. Dennas: 615-202-6426 or email. Thank you so much!
Here are exerpts from our Questions and Answers page:
“What if I want to quit the art course sometime during the school year?”
A yearly educational course like ours, and for most educational courses, is a one-time purchase for the school year, but since we offer a monthly payment plan, it can seem like we are going month to month. The payment plan is a convenience for our families so you don’t have to pay the course fee all at once. Cancelling a class is actually returning part of the course you purchased and asking for your money back for the rest of the year. We do have an option for doing this with our 30-day cancellation policy. Please continue if you are considering cancelling.
Cancelling with a 30-day notice is largely reserved for insurmountable reasons, such as moving, dissatisfaction with our teaching, or health issues. Otherwise, it is very important for the Class, the Student, and for Firstlight, that registrations are completed as purchased. Signing up for other activities later on in the year, or feeling busy, is not what our cancellation policy is designed for. Financial considerations can usually be handled with our scholarships, which we take applications for at any time during the year.
Issues For The Class
Students in a class develop community. Taking students out mid-year is a loss to that community, and some students take it hard when a friend disappears. It can cause other students to become discouraged and not enjoy their class. Other students often ask about their friends when they’ve only missed one week. Other class considerations are that if a class is small, we can fall under our break-even point with just one cancellation. If the class is full, we probably have turned away other students who wanted in the class.
Issues For The Student
Our courses are designed to give a strong foundation to every art student. The curriculum has been crafted and revised for years to ensure that once you get through the 2 years of Foundations lessons, you can stand on your own and pursue art at home with a degree of confidence. While It does help to continue with our advanced lessons (if you are serious about pursuing art), for the casual artist, Foundations is a complete course. If you quit even for a month or two and then come back, you will have a significant gap in that course. Key lessons are intermingled with the more fun-oriented lessons, so that students won’t be overwhelmed, and will enjoy “doing what I want” in addition to learning valuable insights. Since we have a two-year cycle, that means taking any break, such as cancelling mid-year and planning to return in the fall, means the missing pieces won’t be available for two years down the road. This makes it more difficult for a student to advance to the next level, since they don’t have certain skills or insights. That said, we have made it work when needed!
Issues For The School
Our main enrollment season is in the late Summer and early Fall. Cancelling your art course mid-year is like returning a partially used product that most likely can never be resold to another student. We try hard to make the courses and supplies as affordable as possible, and we have tight margins as a result. In short, to stay in business we need the courses that have been sold, to be paid for, and offering the interest-free payment plan shouldn’t negate the idea that the entire year has been purchased.
We do offer a 30-day cancelation before our cutoff date in February. If you have something big come up unexpectedly that requires you to cancel your enrollement, please use our 30-day advance notice CANCELATION REQUEST FORM. Because we don’t sign up students later in the year, we have a cut-off date of February 20 for all cancelations. Please read the policy excerpts in the green toggle bar directly below if you want to review them.
If you are considering cancelling, please give us a call and we’ll do everything we can to help you finish your course in a way that works for you. Thank you!
“Why do I need to pay for 30 days after I cancel?”
There are two reasons.
1) We are looking for committed artists, not a place for kids to just hang out. Since we can’t keep our doors open without full classes for the school year courses, we need for families to consider the decision carefully. Without a 30-day policy, and especially with our easy interest free monthly payment plan, it’s easy for someone to begin the year treating it as a month-to-month class, which it’s not. We’d hate for a person to only try us out for a month without that consideration, and then casually quit, taking a space in the class that other, more committed artists would have liked to have. Once courses are 1 or 2 months into the school year, many people will have looked elsewhere for after-school activities, and our courses may have empty spaces the rest of the year.
2) It can take time for another student to change their schedule and fill a vacant spot.
The good news is that you are encouraged to stay in the class for those 30 days and make more art!
From our policies - Tap to open
9. If you can’t finish your course – We need 30 days advance notice on or before our cancelation cut-off date of February 20th using our CANCELATION REQUEST FORM. We understand when things happen unexpectedly. We just ask you to TALK to us if something big comes up. Please call Dennas at 615-202-6426. Please read our Frequently Asked Questions (Q & A) also on this page, for more information, and look at our detailed cancelation explanation at the bottom of this page in the colored area. Appropriate reasons for cancelling a course after you purchased it and have used it for several months are thing such as moving out of the middle TN area or family health problems. Changing your class/schedule or applying for a scholarship can solve most any other problems that arise.
Whatever you do, please don’t attempt to make any changes in your class by speaking to one of us in person, especially when classes are going or ending, or starting, or about to start, or well, any other time. Let us make it clear; all verbal communication will be forgotten immediately by visual people like us. (“who was that I just spoke with?! didn’t they have a purple shirt?) Only by using the cancelation request form can a tuition be refunded or payments stopped. And only before our cut off date. (ok, if something really freaky happens, call. We are pretty understanding folks).
Here is our cancelation policy explained in extra loving detail.
Firstlight Arts Academy loves art students and we want to keep ’em happy. If you or your child is unhappy for any reason, please let us know as soon as you can so that we can address the issue. We like to be encouraging and proactive. Please know that talking to us about anything will be as good an experience as we can make it!
Most schools are a tight business financially, and we struggle to make the ends meet every single year. We simply cannot operate successfully without full classes all year long. We are a school-year supplemental program, with most of our activity squeezed into a 2-hour window each day. Students usually sign up for these type of courses at the beginning of the school year, and it’s harder to fill empty spaces in the middle of the year. We also do most of our advertising during the sign-up season at the beginning of the school year.
That’s why we ask for a commitment from our families. It’s a promise that you will do your best to complete the courses purchased, and give us a chance to work with you. In turn, we promise that we will do our best to make the art course as fabulous as we can in every way. We can’t refund a course when people just want to try something new that came up. Then we have an empty seat that someone else could have used.
There are other reasons beyond just keeping us going, however, that makes sticking to your commitment a great idea.
- Each class is a wonderful little social group, and we hate to see it disturbed during the year.
- The curriculum is designed to be taken for the full year, so quitting gives you an incomplete art course.
- We may have given away a month of tuition to someone who referred you as a yearly sign-up.
- The most important reason: Artists can have ups and downs, and it is good for them to see that they can get past a few “learners” and find a “keeper” by sticking with it past the mood of the moment. This can actually be critical to the enjoyment of art for the rest of your life. We have lots of stories…
That said, we understand when things come up unexpectedly. If you have to quit for some unforeseen issue, or if you feel that the program has not fulfilled our description of it, then there is a 30 day cancelation policy. To request a cancelation and refund, you MUST use our cancelation form before February 20th. Please contact our founder and director, Dennas to discuss your situation.
If you are having financial trouble and that is affecting your decision, then please talk to us to see if we can work something out together. There are several scholarship options available to you.
Thank you!