Wild Seeds Admission
Admissions Process
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Review our Core Values and Wild Seeds Overview
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Families are strongly encouraged to attend an Open House (held monthly from January–May 2026).
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Complete the enrollment application
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Our team will contact you to schedule a family enrollment meeting to share more about the program and learn about your kid(s).
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We will work with you to schedule a trial day (fee: $25–$70) so your kid(s) can experience the program before full enrollment.
Admissions Philosophy
Our goal is to welcome as many families to Wild Seeds as possible who feel their child will benefit from our program. At the same time, we are committed to providing a high level of personalized support for every child. Because of this, we may not be able to accept all applicants if an age group is already fully enrolled.
We are currently reviewing applications for all age groups for the 2026–2027 school year.
We prioritize applications from:
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Black, Brown, and Indigenous youth
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Queer youth
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Youth already connected to any of our programs
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Kids currently struggling in school settings looking for a more supportive space
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Youth in our older age group (ages 12–18)
Getting to know your family is an important part of our enrollment process. We encourage families to provide thoughtful and complete responses on the application so we can better understand your priorities and expectations.
During enrollment meetings, we will:
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Share detailed information about Wild Seeds
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Ask follow-up questions based on your application
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Answer any questions you may have about the program
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Share next steps in the enrollment process
Our goal is for families to feel informed and confident in deciding whether Wild Seeds is the right fit for them.
Scheduling Options
Wild Seeds meets on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
Young people may enroll 1–4 days per week. We strongly recommend enrolling for at least two days per week to support children in building strong relationships within the community.
For the 2026–2027 school year, all young people ages 13 and older should enroll on Fridays (in addition to any other days their family chooses) to participate in special teen classes, mentorship, and internship oppourtunities.
Children ages 5–12 may also enroll in Dandelion After School from 3:30–6:00 p.m. for extended care.
Although Wild Seeds does not meet on Wednesdays, we offer enriching programming for families and children through the Dandelion Homeschool Co-op. Our team can also recommend other local programs that meet on Wednesdays for families who need additional childcare.
TUItion + fees
Access, equity, and inclusion are core values at Wild Seeds. Although our program is almost entirely tuition-funded, we are committed to serving families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and have never turned away a family for financial reasons.
All Wild Seeds program fees are offered on a sliding scale to support families in participating in a way that works for their individual circumstances.
Program Fees
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Application Fee: $5–$25 (payable via PayPal or Venmo)
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Trial Days/Weeks: $30–$70 per day
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Annual Activity Fee (Day Program): $50–$150 (based on number of days enrolled)
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PRISM Portfolio Fee: $75
(A digital record of your child’s learning experience at Wild Seeds) -
Aftercare: $37 per day (10% discount available for families of color)
Sliding Scale Tuition
Families are asked to choose a daily tuition rate that feels both generous and sustainable for their unique situation.
We trust families to make thoughtful assessments of their own finances and we have never turned away a tuition offer.
To fairly compensate our facilitators and cover essential program costs—including rent, insurance, utilities, supplies, administrative labor, building materials, and accounting—we need approximately $344 per month per day of enrollment per young person for the program to meet its budget. This equals $1,376 per month for full-time enrollment.
Our staff choose to work at Wild Seeds ALC instead of teaching in public schools because of their commitment to youth partnership and values-centered pedagogy. This choice comes with meaningful financial tradeoffs.
Currently, our staff—most of whom have masters' degrees in education and years of teaching experience—earn approximately $52,000 per year, and we provide a stipend covering half of their health insurance costs. By comparison, public school educators in Philadelphia earn about $65,000 per year and receive full health insurance coverage.
Over the next year, we aim to grow our program enough to cover 100% of our staff’s health care costs. Over the next three years, we hope to increase salaries to be more comparable with public school teaching positions.
Families with greater access to financial resources are encouraged to contribute at the higher end of the sliding scale (or above!) Doing so helps ensure that Wild Seeds remains accessible to families with less access to wealth and supports our goal of more fairly compensating our staff. We ask families to consider your tuition offer carefully with this information in mind!
Vaccines
Wild Seeds ALC encourages all vaccinations for children. We require certain vaccines and are in the process of updating this policy for 2026-2027 to provide strong support for our immuno-compromised community members. We will update our policy here as soon as we have more detailed information to share.