Future Focus
Future Focus (FF) had been running a small, for-profit preschool program for young children between the ages of two and four for several decades. FF was one of several privately run programs in the suburban Boston area. For each of the three age groups (i.e., two-, three- and fouryear olds), there were two classes per day for a total of six classes in the facility each day. The classes were held both in the morning and in the afternoon, five days a week between September and June; there were approximately 200 days (40 weeks), or 1,200 class meetings, per year. Only about onethird of FF's local competitors offered classes during the summer months. The morning classes ran from ...view middle of the document...
Each had been offering specialized birthday parties for many years and charged very high prices. As a result, FF was able to significantly under-price these other firms while maintaining a very high profit margin. In fact, due to the success of the birthday parties over the past year, FF wanted to expand this business. FF was considering switching the bulk of its advertising campaign from one that was designed to build general awareness of the school to one that was specifically directed at promoting the birthday party business.
Current Cost System
FF's largest expense was related to the building (Exhibit 1 for an income statement). FF had initially purchased a single-family home and converted it to a daycare/schoolhouse setting. The house cost $400,000, including $50,000 for the necessary renovations and license applications. Building-related expenses included depreciation, utilities, maintenance, cleaning, property taxes, and so forth. Traditionally, these costs were assigned to the classes on a per class-meeting basis. The buildingrelated costs had not significantly changed since the introduction of the birthday party business. Therefore, no building-related costs had been assigned to the new product. Salaries, supplies, and food were also allocated based on the meeting, where a meeting was either a single class meeting for three hours or a single birthday party for four hours. The actual cost of supplies and food for all of last year's birthday parties was $3,000; the actual cost for the preschool classes was approximately $18,000. FF had five employees—three full time and two part time. The
school's director earned $50,000, taught two of the preschool classes each day, and administered both the preschool and the birthday party programs. She spent approximately 20% of her time in administration, evenly split between the two programs. The remaining two full-time employees earned $20,000 per year and taught the other four preschool classes. Finally, FF had hired two part-time employees to run the birthday parties on weekends,...
