tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31550522386129613492024-03-12T18:28:20.606-07:00Prep School WatchInformation on political role that U.S. private schools play in promoting institutional classism historically and in the 21st-century within U.S. society.b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-43143079672034086092017-06-23T16:39:00.002-07:002022-08-18T15:29:37.229-07:00Who Funded Pre-1940 U.S. Prep School System?<span style="font-size: x-large;">In his 1937 book,<b><i> America's 60 Families</i></b>, Ferdinand Lundberg indicated how the U.S. power elite and Super-Rich folks funded their undemocratic private prep school system prior to 1940, by writing the following:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">"...The rich in general reserve their heaviest contributions for a small group of institutions in the East...The preparatory schools that feed these favored colleges and universities are themselves located in and around New England. They, too, are the recipients of huge sums, although their benefactors are not otherwise visibly interested in the broad field of secondary education...</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">"<b>Phillips-Exeter</b> has received large sums in addition to the $7,000,000 Harkness gave for its house plan, which prepares students for easy living at Yale and Harvard. William Boyce Thompson presented it with $1,000,000 for a gymnasium. Thomas W. Lamont and...Thomas Cochran of J.P. Morgan and Company both gave it large sums and helped it and <b>Phillips-Andover</b> to raise funds among other wealthy men..</span>.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">"Both <b>Phillips-Exeter</b> and <b>Phillips-Andover</b> have separate endowments of $6,000,000 [equivalent to over $103,000,000 in 2017 dollars] each, greater than those of institutions like the University of Alabama, Beloit College, the University of Buffalo, Carleton College, Colby College, Colorado College, Cornell College (Ia.), Creighton University, Denison University, University of Denver, Depauw University, University of Idaho, Kenyon College, Knox College, Ohio Wesleyan, Wabash College, Wittenberg College, or the College of Wooster.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">"In short,...money is lavished on a few Eastern preparatory schools...The private peparatory schools, moreover, have a class function only; they do not fill a genuine need, for the public high-school system is extensive.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">"<b>Andover</b> and <b>Exeter</b> are only two of the Eastern preparatory schools patronized by the rich families. <b>Groton</b> has an endowment of $1,500,000 [equivalent to over $25,000,000 in 2017 dollars]; <b>Lawrenceville</b>, $500,000 [equivalent to over $8,600,000 in 2017 dollars]; <b>St. Mark's</b>, $600,000 [equivalent to over $10,300,000 in 2017 dollars]; <b>Taft</b>, $500,000; and <b>St. Paul's</b>, $3,059,018 [equivalent to over $52,000,000 in 2017 dollars]. Andrew W. Mellon gave <b>Choate School</b> a library and the Archbold family fave an infirmary; Clarence Dillon, banker, gave <b>Groton</b> an auditorium, William A. Gardner gave a $500,000 chapel, while various large gifts were also made by...Payne Whitney; Edward S. Harkness contributed to the <b>Hill School</b> endowment of $2,340,187 [equivalent to over $40,000,000 in 2017 dollars], as did...T.Coleman du Pont; Charles G. Dawes, Lammot du Pont, and Mortimer B. Fuller (International Salt) made big gifts to <b>Lawrenceville</b>; Paul Block gave a chapel to <b>Hotchkiss School</b>, whose endowment is $400,000 [equivalent to over $6,800,000 in 2017 dollars]. <b>Middlesex School</b> was founded by W.Cameron Forbes, Henry Lee Higginson, Francis Lowell, and Dean Briggs of Harvard, all of whom gave it money and buildings. The Armour family and August Belmont contributed to <b>St. Mark's</b>. James Simpson of Marshall Field and Company and H.E. Manville contributed to <b>St. Paul's</b>. Benefactors of the <b>Taft School</b> have been Mrs. William Rockefeller, who gave Rockefeller Field, Edward S. Harkness, who gave $500,000, and Harry P. Bingham, who gave Bingham Auditorium.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">"This is only part of the story, for there are also the Eastern girls' `finishing schools.' These expensive and strictly upper-class institutions, where the tuition fee ranges from $1,000 to $3,000 [equivalent to $17,245 to over $51,000 in 2017 dollars), include <b>Foxcroft</b>, <b>Brearley,</b> <b>Miss Chapin's,</b> <b>Spence</b> <b>School</b>, <b>Rosemary Hall</b>, <b>Ethel Walker's</b>, <b>Farmington</b>, <b>Westover</b>, <b>Miss Hall's</b>, and <b>Dobbs Schoo</b>l..."</span></i>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-54829370248086246352017-03-12T12:47:00.000-07:002017-03-12T12:47:27.738-07:00Who Rules Brookline's Beaver Country Day School?<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">According to a pamphlet posted on the
Town of Brookline Assessor’s website, private schools in Massachusetts “<b>MAY
QUALIFY</b> for an exemption from local taxes on real and personal property they
own,” but “ownership <b>DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY ENTITLE AN ORGANIZATION TO AN
EXEMPTION, HOWEVER</b>.” The same pamphlet also notes that “exemption from taxation
is <b>A PRIVILEGE</b> and the organization must prove clearly and unequivocally that
it qualifies.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In the 21<sup>st</sup>-century, the
“privilege” of exemption from taxation is granted to Brookline’s “non-profit”
private schools like Dexter Southfield, the Park School and the Beaver Country
Day School (which is located in Brookline’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">According to data from an Exempt
Property Record Card that’s posted on the Brookline Assessor’s website, the valuation
of Beaver Country Day School Inc.’s property at 791 Hammond Street, for
example, increased from $24,511,800 in 2007 to $36,076,900 in 2016. Yet its
Fiscal Year 2017 Real Estate tax bill is <b>zero dollars</b>, while the total tax bill
for the owner of 764 Hammond Street (with a valuation of $1,474,200 in 2016) is
$13,316 in 2017. In addition, although the valuation of the currently vacant
parcel of property the private school also owns at 791 Woodland Road increased
from $1,250,500 to $1,567,000 between 2007 and 2016, Beaver Country will also
pay <b>zero dollars in taxes</b> to the Town of Brookline on this piece of real estate
in 2017.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Elsewhere on Woodland Road, the tax
bill for the owner of 320 Woodland Road (with a valuation of $1,782,000 in 2016)
is $15,337 in 2017. Yet in 2017, Beaver Country will pay zero dollars in
property taxes to Brookline on the house and real estate it owns at 333 Woodland
Road (although the valuation of this property increased from $1,144,400 to
$2,064,800 between 2007 and 2016).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">But if Beaver Country were taxed at
the same rate as most Brookline property owners who do not benefit from the
same tax exemption privilege are taxed, Brookline would be requiring this
private school to pay around $389,000 in taxes on its real estate. In addition,
if Dexter Southfield were not benefiting from a tax exemption privilege, it
would be billed for around $767,000 in taxes; and the tax payment of Park
School would be around $487,000, if it were not also exempt from taxes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Around $1,643,000 in additional tax
revenue to use for things like helping to fund Brookline’s public school system
could, thus, be obtained from these three “non-profit” Brookline private
schools alone, if their tax exemption privileges were taken away by the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Town of Brookline.</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Beaver Country Day School Inc.’s
private school first opened in 1921 as a school for 65 students at Boylston
Street and Buckminster Road, on the leased Jonathan White estate. But on
Sept. 28, 1921 it also purchased for $13,640 the 17-acre wooded campus site
at the corner of Hammond Street and Woodland Road in Brookline’s Chestnut Hill section
that its school currently occupies. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Around $1 million was then spent to
construct buildings for the school (which was then a 4<sup>th</sup> to 8<sup>th</sup>
grade school for female and male pupils and a 9<sup>th</sup> to 12<sup>th</sup>
grade secondary school for only female students) on its newly acquired Brookline
property; and by 1930 the construction project on Beaver Country’s campus was
completed. The additional parcel of vacant land at 791 Woodland Road, whose
value is now assessed to be $1,567,000, was then purchased on Dec. 29, 1932
for $100.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">By 1945, the number of students
enrolled at Beaver Country had increased to 300 students; and on June 2, 1961
the house that the private school currently owns at 333 Woodland Road, whose
value is now assessed to be $2,064,800, was purchased by Beaver Country Day
School Inc. for $100.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">After 1970, Beaver Country began
admitting male students into its 9<sup>th</sup> to 12<sup>th</sup> grade
secondary school that previously only admitted female students. And today, the
school is a co-educational private day school that enrolls around 470 students
from 6<sup>th</sup> grade to 12<sup>th</sup> grade: 30 students in 6<sup>th</sup>
grade; 50 students in 7<sup>th</sup> grade; 50 students in 8<sup>th</sup>
grade, 85 students in 9<sup>th</sup> grade; 85 students in 10<sup>th</sup>
grade; 85 students in 11<sup>th</sup> grade; and 85 students in 12<sup>th</sup>
grade.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The parents of most students enrolled
at Beaver Country were required to pay $45,500 in tuition to the private school
for the 2016-2017 academic year; and between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015, Beaver
Country Day School Inc.’s total revenues of $28,149,811 exceeded its total
expenses of $24,728,469 by $3,431,342, according to its Form 990 financial
filing for 2014. In addition, the net assets of Beaver Country increased by
$2,768,587—from $22,813,093 to $25,571,680—during the same period.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Nearly $13 million of the over $28
million that Beaver Country collected in revenues between July 2014 and June
2015 was spent on salaries for its 413 employees, according to its financial
filing. The private school’s “Head of School,” Peter Hutton, for example, was
paid an annual “reportable compensation” of $405,527 and “other compensation”
of $102,047 (which apparently included the annual monetary value of being
provided with the Beaver Country-owned house at 333 Woodland Road in which he
lived), according to the same financial filing. In addition, between July 1,
2014 and June 30, 2015, Beaver Country paid $2,166,465 to RAD Sports of
Rockland, Massachusetts for “Turf.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Although the value of Beaver
Country’s endowment fund only increased from $11,647,966 to $11,674,659 between
July 2014 and June 2015, the school earned an investment income of $1,160,639,
including the $736,000 that it gained from the sale of $5,809,352 worth of
securities. As of June 30, 2015, over $3 million of Beaver Country’s endowment
was still invested in an off-shore Cayman Islands-Based Hedge Fund Investment;
but, as its financial filing noted, “private foreign investment co. rules do
not apply to tax exempt organizations,” and <b>zero in federal income taxes</b> were
paid between 2014 and 2015.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Over $8 million of endowment funds
were also invested in Equity mutual funds and fixed income funds. Yet on
Feb. 1, 2013 the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency still issued
$15,282,914 in tax exempt bonds to help “refinance” Beaver Country’s private
school debt.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Part of this debt may have been
generated from cost of building a visual and performing arts facility on its
Brookline campus in early 21<sup>st</sup>-century. Beaver Country’s
administration apparently used cheaper non-unionized workers to build this
visual and performing arts facility, rather than unionized workers. As Lawrence
Fahey noted in a July 17, 2003 <b><i>Brookline Tab</i></b> article, then-New
England Council of Carpenters administrator Mark Erlich “said his organization”
had “been in contact with Beaver Country Day School’s administrators since
winter 2002, when bids for the project were being accepted;” but though it
“urged the school to use a union company, Beaver selected the only non-union
bid submitted.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Although Beaver Country pays zero in
property taxes, according to an Apr. 9, 1998 <b><i>Tab</i></b> article by Jeremy
Pawloski, in the late 1990’s, “Beaver Country Day School’s two soccer fields”
were “used by the town in the fall and spring, and its baseball diamond is used
from April to June.” Yet in 2017 a community benefit like establishing a free
tuition and/or open admissions policy for all 6<sup>th</sup> to 12<sup>th</sup>
graders whose parents are Brookline residents, , for example, has still not
been provided by the school’s board of trustees.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Beaver Country Day School Inc.’s
board of trustees which “plays a central role in overseeing the school’s
operations and in planning Beaver’s future,” according to the school’s website,
has apparently not been an “eager beaver” about using its annual revenue
surplus to help fund Brookline’s public school system. Nor has the school’s
board apparently been an “eager beaver” to pay property taxes at the same rate
as the neighboring homeowners who also own real estate on Hammond Street. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">One reason might be that, instead of
including members of Brookline’s democratically-elected School Committee on its
board of trustees, Beaver Country’s board includes some well-heeled folks
associated with external organizations whose priorities do not include helping
to fund public grade or secondary schools in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
or providing community benefits to Brookline.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Boston-based Archipelago Ventures
Ltd. private investment/speculation firm founder, Tomes Bergstrand, for
example, is president of Beaver Country’s board of trustees. Another member of
Beaver Country’s board of trustees, Charles Argyle, is Global Equities
Portfolio Manager at Wellington Management stock investment/speculation firm
(that speculates with and manages $929 billion in assets of its 2,150 clients
from 13 offices around the globe, including its Boston headquarters office at
280 Congress Street, according to the Wellington Management website).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Westfield Capital Management CEO,
President and Chief Investment Officer William Muggia is also a Beaver Country
trustee. His speculation/investment firm “provides investment management
service to institutional and high net-worth investors” like Clark University;
and it speculates with/manages over $12 billion in assets from its office at
One Financial Center in Boston, according to Westfield Capital Management’s
website. Another Beaver Country trustee, Steven Kaitz is a Co-CEO of New
England’s largest independent supplier of building materials, the National
Lumber Company, which does business in the Town of Newton on Needham Street.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Besides sitting on the private
school’s board of trustees, Beaver Country Trustee Paula Price (a former Chief
Financial Officer at Stop & Shop’s Ahold USA parent company) has also been
sitting on the corporate boards of Dollar General Corporation, Financial Guaranty
Insurance Company, Western Digital Corporation, Accenture PLC and Blue Cross
Blue Shield of Massachusetts, as well as on the Museum of Fine Arts board, in
recent years.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Brigham and Women’s Hospital and
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation board member Josh Kraft, coincidentally,
sits next to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts board member Price on Beaver
Country’s board. Like his brother, Massachusetts General Hospital Trustee and Kraft
Group President Jonathan Kraft (who’s also a trustee of Brookline’s Dexter
Southfield private school), Beaver Country Trustee Josh Kraft is the son of
Robert Kraft: the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots who also owns a
stake in the Ultimate Fighting Championship [UFC] mixed martial arts promotion
company—and whose personal wealth was estimated to be $5.2 billion in 2016 by <b><i>Forbes</i></b>
magazine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Within his family’s Kraft Group
business, Josh Kraft holds position of president of New England Patriots
Charitable Foundation—which collected $3,695,431 in contributions (including
116 separate contributions from individuals, corporations or family foundations
that exceeded $5,000), earned $326,035 more in revenues than it spent, paid
only $1,147 in state and federal taxes and made only one grant of $1,000 to a
Brookline-based organization in 2015, according to its Form 990 financial
filing for 2015.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Another Beaver Country trustee, David
Fubrini, also is a trustee of both University of Massachusetts and MITRE research/development
organization, which received $281 million in Pentagon contracts in 2014; making
MITRE the 6<sup>th</sup>-largest recipient of Pentagon contracts in
Massachusetts in that year. Coincidentally, Retired U.S. Navy Admiral Edmund
Giambastiani Jr., Retired U.S. Air Force General C. Robert Kehler and Retired
General Montgomery Meigs also sit on MITRE’s board of trustees; and also,
coincidentally, Beaver Country Trustee Fubrini is past chair of the board of
trustees of Brookline’s Park School private grade school.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Working-class and middle-class
residents of Brookline may not be able to create enough political pressure in
Massachusetts to require “non-profit” tax-exempt private schools like Dexter
Southfield, Park School and Beaver Country to pay a fair share of local
property taxes in 2017. But perhaps more needed funding for Brookline’s public
school system could be obtained in 2017 if Massachusetts began taxing more
heavily the external organizations in which trustees or directors of
Brookline’s private school system currently hold executive or board member positions?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-35832498973650869212017-03-06T21:06:00.006-08:002021-04-13T09:58:01.422-07:00Who Rules Brookline's Park Corporation Day School?<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">At a March
19, 1998 meeting of the Brookline School Committee, Brookline’s Dexter
Southfield private school—which was then called Dexter School—received approval
for its proposal to expand its ninth-grade program at that time. A 1982 state
law had required that local school committees in Massachusetts vote to approve
the kind of program expansion that this private school was proposing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But at this
same March 19, 1998 meeting, then-Brookline School Committee member Helen
Charlupski said, according to an April 2, 1998 <b><i>Brookline Tab</i></b> article by
Jeremy Pawloski, that the Newton Street private school officials “have
wonderful facilities, but they don’t share them with the town” and “there’s a
frustration with non-profits who do not see any responsibility to towns in
which they live.” The then-School Committee chairperson, Terry Kwan, also
observed that “this institution has been very recalcitrant about payment in
lieu of taxes to the town of Brookline.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The same
1998 article noted that in 1997 then-Brookline Selectwoman Donna Kalikow and
other town officials had met with Dexter private school officials “in a
fruitless effort to secure community benefits for the town;” and that “an
example of Dexter’s lack of community involvement” was “the school’s failure to
allow the town to use its” then-new “indoor ice-skating rink at reduced
prices.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Yet Dexter
Southfield may not be the only tax-exempt private school in Brookline that has
not, historically, provided either enough “payment in lieu of taxes to the Town
of Brookline” (to, for example, help fund Brookline’s underfunded public school
system) or enough “community benefits for the town.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">According to
the <b><i>Town
of Brookline 1969 Tax Lists</i></b>, a daughter of Lammot Du Pont, Mary Du Pont
Faulkner, apparently was assessed $15,043 in taxes on the property she still
owned in the 1960’s at 235 and 255 Goddard Avenue. But in 2016 the “non-profit”
Park School Corporation paid zero dollars in taxes on its private grade school
campus property at 171 Goddard Avenue, according to the data from an Exempt
Property Record Card that’s posted on the Town of Brookline Assessor’s website.
Yet between 2007 and 2016 the assessed valuation of the Park School
Corporation’s day school campus property increased from $25,906,000 to
$49,764,900.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As Jeremy
Pawloski noted in an April 19, 1998 <b><i>Tab</i></b> article, “though they use town
amenities, including police, fire and other municipal services, for free,”
Massachusetts’ constitution exempts private schools from paying property taxes.
Yet Pawloski also reported in the same 1998 article that “in Brookline…the town
has encouraged many local tax-exempt properties to make `payments in lieu of
taxes’,” but, according to then-Deputy Town Administrator Brian Sullivan,
“unfortunately for the town,” in 1998 “efforts to receive cash donations for
services” had “all but fallen flat.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">First
located in Brookline on Walnut Street when it was established (under a
different name) in 1888 and following the Park School Corporation’s formation
in 1923, the Park School was located in the 1960’s on 3.6 acres of land at
Kennard and Hedges Road (where the Brookline public school system’s Lincoln
grade school is now located).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But the Park
School’s board of trustees, which then included a grandson of Lammot Du Pont
and a son of Mary Du Pont Faulkner—Kim Faulkner—as one of its trustees, in the
late 1960’s “concluded that” its private school’s Kennard Road “site and
facilities were simply inadequate and that a new site should be acquired as
soon as possible,” according to the <b><i>Park School Corporation 2007 Spring Bulletin</i></b>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">So,
coincidentally, Park School Trustee Faulkner’s mother (who was born into an
extended family that was described by <b><i>Louis Rukeyser’s Business Almanac</i></b> as
“the wealthiest and most powerful dynasty in the United States” in 1991, “with
a family fortune of over $8.6 billion” at that time) then “gave Park the
incredibly generous gift of 14 acres of woods and fields on Goddard Avenue;”
and “ground was broken in December 1969 to build the `new’ Park School,”
according to the same <b><i>2007 Spring Bulletin</i></b>. The donor of
“the incredibly generous gift” received by the Park School, had previously
inherited $250 million from her late father, Lammot Du Pont (who died in 1952),
according to Gerard Colby’s <b><i>Du Pont Dynasty</i></b> book.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In September
1971, the Park School then opened on 14 acres of its current 34-acre campus,
just across the street from Larz Anderson Park
(but on a different side of the park than Dexter Southfield’s campus);
and the additional 20 acres of its Brookline campus were acquired when Mary Du
Pont Faulkner donated 10 more acres of her Goddard Avenue property to the
tax-exempt private school in 1980, and her son and daughter-in-law gave the
Park School a first option to eventually buy the last 10 acres of the day
school’s campus.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In recent years,
around 540 grade school students have been enrolled in Brookline’s Park School
private school and nearly 5,500 grade school students have been enrolled
Brookline’s public schools. But although it paid less than $101 for the initial
14 acres of its Brookline campus that it received as a gift, the Park School
has apparently not been eager to establish an open admissions and free tuition
policy for all grade school age children of Brookline residents, whose parents
might wish to enroll them at the Park School (where the average class size has
been 14 students in recent years).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Instead, the “non-profit” Park School is
requiring most of the parents whose children are enrolled there to pay $32,490
for a first and second-grade classroom seat, $33,890 for a third, fourth and
fifth-grade classroom seat and $38,750 for a sixth, seventh and eighth-grade
classroom seat during the 2016-2017 academic year.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Like
Brookline’s Dexter Southfield private school, the Park School also claims to be
a “non-profit” educational operation. Yet according to the Park School
Corporation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2014, between July 1, 2014 and June
30, 2015, the Park School’s total revenues of $33,704,139 exceeded its total
expenses of $25,014,673 by $8,689,466; and its net assets increased from $63.5
million to $65.7 million during the same period. In addition, the value of the
tax-exempt Park School’s endowment increased from $43.8 million to $48.4
million between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The same
Form 990 financial filing also indicated that between July 1, 2014 and June 30,
2015, the Park School paid both an annual base salary/total annual compensation
of $145,335 to former Head of School Jerry Katz and an annual base salary of
$248,895/total annual compensation of $411,840 to its then-Head of School
Michael Robinson. In addition, tax-exempt bonds of $9,435,000 on February 21,
2007 and $14,025,500 on April 1, 2012 were issued by the Massachusetts
Development Finance Agency to apparently finance and refinance private school
building construction costs, according to the same 2014 Form 990 financial
filing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Park
School’s board of trustees may still not be too interested in paying more
property taxes or payment in lieu of taxes to help the Town of Brookline fund
its public school system (which requires around $108 million each year to
operate); or in providing more community benefits (such as, for example, open
admissions and free tuition for all children of Brookline residents). One
reason might be because some of the wealthy folks on its board of trustees have
perhaps been more interested in apparently using hedge fund money to speculate
and attempt to profit from for-profit U.S. health industry firm stock
ownership, searching for lucrative real estate development deals, sitting on
U.S. federal court judicial benches or filling high Massachusetts state
government agency posts?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Park School
Trustee Conan Laughlin, for example, manages North Tide Capital (a $2.9 billion
hedge fund firm whose offices are located at 500 Boylston Street in Boston),
which apparently makes 88 percent of its speculative investments in for-profit
health care industry corporations like the following: Select Medical Holding
Corporation (in which it owned $163 million worth of stock in September 2016);
the Tivity Health Inc./Healthways fitness centers industry firm (on whose corporate
board Laughlin also sits); and the Community Health Systems chain of 158 for-profit
hospitals in 22 states (in which North Tide Capital owned $34.1 million worth
of stock in September 2016). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Coincidentally,
a 2015 study revealed that 7 of the 10 hospitals in the United States which
charged their uninsured patients the highest medical costs above what Medicare
allowed in 2012 were for-profit hospitals owned, operate or leased by Community
Health Systems [CHS]’s hospital chain affiliates. And according to a May 18,
2016 National Nurses United [NNU] labor union press release, “CHS has engaged
in rampant and serious unfair labor practices at their hospitals, including
terminating Registered Nurses [RN] leaders in a wide scale attempt to weaken
support for the union and forestall reaching initial collective bargaining
agreements.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Another Park
School trustee, Seth Brennan, is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Lincoln
Peak Capital: a speculation/investment firm (with offices at 177 Huntington
Avenue in Boston) that is “focused exclusively on investing in asset management
firms” and which “currently has minority equity investments in five asset
management firms which collectively manage over $55 billion in assets,”
according to Lincoln Peak Capital’s website. In addition, Brennan also sits on
Artisan Partners Asset Management’s corporate board and the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum’s board of overseers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The founder
of the Corbelis residential land development/dealmaking firm and the Henley USA
Head, Garrett Solomon, is also a Park School trustee. According to the
London-based Henley private equity real estate investment/dealmaking firm’s
website, in 2015 Henley “launched its first USA business” which “was
underpinned with the announcement of Henley USA headed by Garrett Solomon and
his team from Corbelis in Boston;” and it “has an active pipeline of deals” and
“is aiming to have a business the same size as its European operation within
short order,” where “total equity invested per deal currently range from $5
million to $150 million.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 106%;">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Other
members of the Park School’s board of trustees in recent years have included: the
for-profit New Century Health CEO Atul Dhir; U.S. Federal Court Judge Denise
Jefferson-Casper; and the current Undersecretary and Chief Operating Officer of
the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development,
Stephanie Neal-Johnson. In addition, Boston Public Library Trustee Laura De Bonis,
a former Director of Library Partnerships for Google Book Service, has also sat
on the Park School’s board of trustees in recent years. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 106%;">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 106%;">
<span style="line-height: 106%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Perhaps
the time has come, however, for more local community-elected Brookline School
Committee members and local Town officials to now be included on the board of
trustees of “non-profit” Brookline private schools like the Park School (instead
of top executives and officials of external for-profit corporations or state
and federal external organizations)--in order to increase likelihood that
Brookline’s private schools begin serving the local community’s public interest
more in Brookline on their privately-controlled campus sites?</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-7848287749362887792017-02-22T20:49:00.000-08:002017-02-22T20:49:59.563-08:00Who Rules Brookline's Dexter Southfield Private School?<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">During the 2015-2016 school year,
around 8,000 students were enrolled in Brookline’s public schools. In Brookline
High School, for example, around 1,800 students were enrolled in 2015-2016; and
it’s anticipated that by 2023 Brookline’s public school system will need to
find enough public high school classroom seats for 2,600 enrolled public high
school students.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Brookline’s public school students,
however, are not the only elementary, junior high school or high school age
students enrolled in a school in Brookline. At 20 Newton Street, on a 36-acre
campus hilltop estate, opposite Larz Anderson Park and the Antique Auto Museum,
around 825 students are enrolled, for example, at a “non-profit” private school
called Dexter Southfield, whose entrance is located on St. Paul’s Avenue off
Newton Street.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In 1966 the then all-male Dexter
School purchased its 36-acre Newton Street property for $520,000 and soon began
constructing a Brookline campus containing 69 classrooms in four buildings,
athletic facilities and art studios. In addition, Dexter Southfield also has a
Rowing Center, located on the Charles River, just 4 miles away in Dedham.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">According to the Exempt Property
Record Card data for 20 Newton Street, that’s posted on the Town of Brookline
Assessor’s Office website, the valuation of Dexter Southfield’s Brookline real
estate increased from $37.2 million in fiscal year 2007 to $78.3 million in
fiscal year 2017, yet its fiscal year 2017
town real estate tax payment bill was zero dollars. In addition,
according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2014-2015, the value of the
“non-profit” Dexter Southfield private school’s endowment fund on June 30, 2015
was over $30 million.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">An “Upper School” secondary school
was not established on Dexter Southfield’s Brookline campus until 2002, when
the school was still called the Dexter School; and following its merger with
the Southfield private all-female day school in 2013, the name of the private
school was changed to Dexter Southfield. Despite this 2013 merger, however,
according to Dexter Southfield’s website, “the school will always operate
under”” a “core belief that boys and girls benefit from distinct paths of
learning;” and except for some selected special advanced high school level
classes, all pre-8<sup>th</sup> grade classes and most secondary school classes
apparently don’t include both male and female students in the same classroom.
Dexter Southfield’s website also notes that “transportation to and from the
School” for its students “is provided by our fleet of faculty-driven school
buses from central locations throughout Greater Boston, Metro West, and the
South Shore.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Town of Brookline doesn’t charge
an admissions fee for any Dexter Southfield private school student, parent,
teacher or administrator who might wish to play across the street in
Brookline’s Larz Anderson Park on weekdays or weekends. But Brookline parents
in the neighborhood whose sons or daughters were accepted for admission to
Dexter Southfield’s campus were generally required to cough up a tuition fee of
$43,175 for a 6<sup>th</sup>, 7<sup>th</sup> or 8<sup>th</sup> grader and
$46,670 for a 9<sup>th</sup>, 10<sup>th</sup>, 11<sup>th</sup> and 12<sup>th</sup>
grader, in order for their child to be allowed to enter the Dexter Southfield
classrooms during the 2016-2017 school year.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Among the special educational
advantages provided the 825 private school students enrolled at Dexter
Southfield is that only 14 other students are generally sitting in each class
that a student takes. So, presumably, each classroom teacher can provide more
special attention and personal instruction to individual Dexter Southfield
private school students than what a Brookline public school student might
receive in most Brookline public school classrooms, where the average class
size is 21 students, rather than 15, like it is in Dexter Southfield. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Dexter Southfield private school
claims in its Form 990 financial filing for 2014-2015 to be non-discriminatory
in its admissions policy. Yet its website indicates that only 15 percent of its
students are “students of color;” and, as late as the 2013-2014 school year,
The <b><i>Handbook
of Private Schools</i></b> indicated that only 2 percent of Dexter Southfield’s
male students were African-American in racial background.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Not surprisingly, Dexter Southfield
is governed by a board of trustees whose members include folks with business,
professional or family links to corporations, Wall Street investment banks,
corporate law firms and various tax-exempt “non-profit” institutions that might
be considered economically exploitative by some of Brookline’s 21<sup>st</sup>-century
working-class and middle-class residents.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">K & L Gates corporate law firm
partner William Shaw McDermott, for example, has been the president of Dexter
Southfield’s board of trustees since 1991; and according to the website of K
& L Gates, the law firm’s corporate clients include The Goldman Sachs
Group, Halliburton, Microsoft, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Wells Fargo,
Starbuck’s, Duke Energy, E.I. DuPont du Nemours, United Technologies,
Honeywell, Viacom, CBS, One Lincoln Street Boston, John Hancock Financial and
Education Management Corporation. McDermott also is a member of the Harvard
School of Public Health Leadership Council and has been a trustee of Deaconess
Hospital or overseer of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital since 1990.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Despite being the board of trustees
president of a private school located in Brookline, however, K & L Gates
Partner McDermott has apparently been less interested in establishing an open
admissions and free tuition policy at the Dexter Southfield secondary school,
for all high school students whose families reside in Brookline that wish to
attend his school, than in being involved in Dedham, Massachusetts town
politics. Since 2005, McDermott has, for example, been the president of the
Citizens for Dedham Neighborhood Alliance; and he also is both a Dedham,
Massachusetts Town Meeting Member and the co-chairman of Dedham’s Master Plan
Committee.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Other members of the Dexter
Southfield board of trustees include: former Managing Director of The Goldman
Sachs Group Scott Barringer; Thomas H. Lee Partners
investment/stock-speculation firm Co-Chair and Dunkin Brands/Dunkin
Donuts/Baskin Robbins corporate board member Anthony Di Novi; and Welch &
Forbes LLC Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager Charles Thorndike
Haydock.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Kraft Group President Jonathan
Kraft—the son of the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots who also
owns a stake in the Ultimate Fighting Championship [UFC] mixed martial arts
promotion company, Robert Kraft—is also, coincidentally, a member of Dexter
Southfield’s board of trustees. Besides sitting on Dexter Southfield’s
governing board, Jonathan Kraft (whose father’s personal wealth was estimated
to be $5.2 billion in 2016 by <b><i>Forbes</i></b> magazine) also is a
Massachusetts General Hospital [MGH] trustee who chairs the MGH board of
trustees’ Finance Committee, a member of Harvard Business School’s Board of
Dean’s Advisers, the Williams College Investment Committee’s Chair and a
Williams College Trustee Emeritus, and a trustee of another private school, the
Belmont Hill School.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The tax-exempt Dexter Southfield
private school in Brookline claims to be “non-profit.” But according to its
Form 990 financial filing for 2014-2015 between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015,
Dexter Southfield’s total revenue of $36,077,974 exceeded the school’s total
expenses of $32,783,379 by $3,294,595; and the value of the school’s total net
assets increased from $24.5 to $24.8 million. Yet the tax-exempt Dexter
Southfield private school paid zero dollars in U.S. federal income tax during
the same period (although it has also apparently benefited from millions of
dollars in Massachusetts Development Financing Agency-issued tax-exempt bonds
financing in 21<sup>st</sup>-century).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The $36 million that Dexter
Southfield collected included over $29.5 million from tuition and fee payments
from families of enrolled students, over $2.4 million from grant contributions
and $2.2 million from stocks and bonds portfolio investment income.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Over $16 million of the $36 million
that Dexter Southfield earned from its “non-profit” private school operation
was used to pay salaries of Dexter Southfield’s 105 employees. Between July 1,
2014 and June 30, 2015, for example, Head of School Todd Vincent was paid a
total annual compensation of $331,664, including an annual base salary of $284,
652, by the Brookline private school (while the annual base salary of the
Superintendent of Brookline’s public school system is apparently just $170,115).
The Head of School’s wife was also employed by Dexter Southfield and paid an
annual salary of $62,500; and according to its Form 990 financial filing for
2014 “Head of School Todd Vincent lives in campus housing provided by the
school.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In recent months, there has been much
discussion in Brookline about whether or not public tax money should be
diverted from unionized non-charter public schools in Massachusetts in order to
create more, generally non-unionized, publicly-funded charter schools in the
Commonwealth; and about whether or not a new public school building in
Brookline should be constructed for $95 million on the 2.7 acre Baldwin School
land site on Heath Street.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Yet until the well-heeled folks who
control Massachusetts private schools like Dexter Southfield are politically
pressured to help fund Brookline’s public school system more and to prioritize
serving community educational needs—by perhaps enrolling for free more
working-class and middle-class students whose parents live in Brookline and
sharing land space on its 36-acre campus with Brookline’s public school system—students
in under-funded and overcrowded Brookline public schools may be in danger of
not receiving, during the next 8 years, the same schooling advantages received
by Dexter Southfield students. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-38182465012276385072014-12-26T12:22:00.001-08:002014-12-26T12:22:50.895-08:00Do Ivy League Universities Favor Applicants From Elite Prep Schools?<span style="font-size: large;">The elite Ivy League universities of the U.S. power elite (like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, etc.) have apparently historically favored, in an undemocratic way, applicants to admission to these universities who are graduates of the U.S. power elite's elite prep school system. As Richard Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff noted in their 1991 book <i style="font-weight: bold;">Blacks in the White Establishment? A Study of Race and Class in America</i>:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"...By the early 1980s, `only' 34 percent of the incoming freshmen at Harvard and 40 percent at Yale and Princeton were from prep schools...It remains...a distinct advantage for an applicant to an Ivy League school to attend an elite prep school. Two studies have shown that students from the...private secondary schools continue to have an advantage over public school graduates when it comes to admission to Harvard. In one of these studies, David Karen, a doctoral student in sociology at Harvard, noted that the Harvard admission staff places applications from certain boarding schools in special colored folders to set them apart from other applications. Karen found that applicants from these schools were more likely to be accepted for admission, even when he controlled for parental background, grades, SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores, and other characteristics...."</span></i>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-90078796579315407912014-10-29T13:57:00.000-07:002014-10-29T13:57:11.869-07:00Prep School Prejudice At Andover Historically<span style="font-size: large;">During the 20th century, the elite prep schools of the U.S. power elite--like Andover--apparently reflected the racial and religious sectarian prejudices of 20th-century U.S. society in general. As G. William Domhoff and Richard L. Zweigenhaft noted in their 1991 book <i style="font-weight: bold;">Blacks in the White Establishment? A Study of Race and Class in America</i>:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"Not surprisingly, there is considerable evidence that prep school administrators and students have demonstrated many of the same prejudices found in the larger society over the years. The experiences of Jews and blacks at Andover are instructive because that school has long prided itself on educating `youth from every quarter,' and it was one of the first boarding schools to accept black students. Frederick Allis's history of Andover, <b>Youth from Every Quarter</b>, is unlike any of the histories written about prep schools for it does not gloss over embarrassing or distasteful moments. Allis provides ample evidence that, for Jews and blacks at Andover, anti-Semitism and racism were likely to be part of their prep school experience. In the 1930s, when about 3 percent of the student body was Jewish, the headmaster wrote to a colleague: `We shall never have a larger percentage, and I am trying to reduce it just a little. On the other hand some of them make first class students and real leaders, although very few of them are permitted to hold important social positions.' Some Jewish students were given the `silent treatment' by the other students in their dormitory. And though Andover accepted black students relatively early, it did not accept very many, and they were not especially welcomed by the community. Prior to the 1950s, Allis writes, `the School had done little if anything for blacks.' For example, in 1944, in response to a request from an alumnus that Andover accept more black students, the headmaster responded that there were currently 2 black students at the school, and that accepting more might `cause trouble.'</span></i>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-34816134037630484902014-10-17T12:47:00.000-07:002014-10-17T12:47:21.876-07:00Revisiting Lawrenceville School and Other Prep School Campuses and Endowments<span style="font-size: large;">In their 1991 book <i style="font-weight: bold;">Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America</i>, Richard Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff wrote the following in reference to the tax-exempt and "non-profit" Lawrenceville School prep school:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"...With the exception of the specific geographic location, the following description of the Lawrenceville School could apply to many American boarding schools: `The school is located on 330 magnificently landscaped acres of New Jersey countryside just five miles south of Princeton. Its physical plant--including a nine-hole golf course, mammoth field house and covered hockey rink, library of some 23,000 volumes, science building, arts center with 900-seat auditorium and professionally equipped stage--would be the envy of most colleges.'</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"Most colleges would be pleased to have Lawrenceville's endowment as well. In 1983, Lawrenceville and the other 15 prep schools that make up Baltzell's select 16 had a combined endowment of $381 million, and their physical plants were valued at about the same amount...`In effect,' Cookson and Persell claim, `the combined real estate holdings of American boarding schools represent a "Prep National Park," a preserve free from state and local taxes...' </span></i>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-16422628012941203822014-10-15T12:19:00.000-07:002018-09-25T08:23:55.610-07:00Are U.S. Prep Schools Still Excluding Working-Class Black Students?<span style="font-size: large;">In the 1980s, the percentage of Black students attending the U.S. power elite's prep schools whose family background was low-income and working-class apparently decreased. As G. William Domhoff and Richard Zweigenhaft's noted in their 1991 book <i style="font-weight: bold;">Blacks in the White Establishment: A Study of Race and Class in America</i>:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">"<i>The ABC [`A Better Chance'] program was founded in 1963 by 16 independent secondary schools, with assistance from Dartmouth College, the Merrill Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation...The changing role of ABC, and the increasing entry of middle-class blacks into private schools are reflected in the one survey we know of that provides a comprehensive look at the racial composition of elite prep schools in the 1980s. It indicates that the number of black students has leveled off and that more of them are from the middle class. In their study of 2,475 freshmen and senior students at twenty prep schools, Peter Cookson and Caroline Persell found that 106 were black (4 percent). Notably, the fathers of 70 percent of their black sample were professionals: 17 percent were doctors, 14 percent were lawyers, 6 percent were bankers, 8 percent were college teachers, and 25 percent were secondary school teachers. One-third of the black respondents indicated that their families earned more than $75,000 per year [equal to over $153,000 in 2018]..."</i></span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-77496143314090164092014-10-13T08:23:00.000-07:002014-10-13T08:23:28.498-07:00St. George's School's Undemocratic Role In U.S. Society<span style="font-size: large;">In their 1991 book, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America</i>, G. William Domhoff and Richard L. Zweigenhaft indicated the undemocratic role in U.S. society that the St. George's School prep school has historically played, in the following reference:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"...St. George's School in Rhode Island, one of the most exclusive prep schools in America...St. George's, a scenic New England prep school that caters primarily to the children of the American upper class. Indeed, St. George's is singled out by sociologist E. Digby Baltzell as among the 16 most exclusive of the many boarding schools that `serve the sociological function of differentiating the upper classes from the rest of the population.'...</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"Before World War II the graduates of the country's most prestigious prep schools had a virtual guarantee that the Ivy League college of their choice would accept them. Some prep schools were known to have special relationships with specific colleges. The six boarding schools many consider the most socially exclusive, often collectively referred to as `St. Grottlesex' (Groton, St. Mark's, St. Paul's, St. George's, Kent and Middlesex) served as strong `feeders' to Harvard...'</span></i>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-63934389915776638012014-10-12T07:36:00.000-07:002014-10-12T08:07:47.228-07:00Prep School Racism and Sexism At St. Paul's School Historically<span style="font-size: large;">As late as the 1990s the prep school that the ultra-rich U.S. Secretary of State, John "Secretary of War" Kerry, attended--St. Paul's School--was apparently operating in an institutionally racist and institutionally sexist way. As Columbia University Professor of Sociology Shamus Rahman Khan--who was a student at St. Paul's School during the 1990s--recalled in his 2011 book <i style="font-weight: bold;">Privilege: The Making of An Adolescent Elite At St. Paul's School</i>:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"I am surrounded by black and Latino boys...It was September 1993...I quickly realized that St. Paul's was far from racially diverse. That sea of dark skin only existed because we all lived in the same place: the minority student dorm. There was one for girls and one for boys. The other 18 houses on campus were overwhelmingly filled with those whom you would expect to be at a school that educated families like the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts...Why were there comparatively few Black or Latino students? Why did blacks and Latinos not do as well as the white and Asian students? Why, though girls consistently did better than the boys, was the student body still half boys and half girls? If you believe that boys should not win more academic awards than girls, even though girls outperform them, then the school is not a meritocracy...It was in the 1950s...that St. Paul's hired its first black teacher, John T. Walker..."</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i>
<span style="font-size: large;">And, coincidentally, the St. Paul's School administration apparently also required its women students "to cover their shoulders, resulting in that was called the `no bare shoulders rule,' until this rule was "challenged" in recent years by the women students at St. Paul's School, according to the same book. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In her 1983 book <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Good School</i>, Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot also reported "that there were 45 black students at St. Paul's in 1969, but only 23 in 1980," according to Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff's 1991 book <i style="font-weight: bold;">Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America</i>.</span><br />
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<i><br /></i>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-33045642454860680082013-09-12T13:32:00.002-07:002013-09-12T13:36:09.586-07:00Who Rules St. Paul's School?--Part 2As the 2004 book by Michael Kranish, Brian Mooney and Nina Easton, “John F. Kerry”, observed about U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (who has recently been acting more like a “U.S. Secretary of War” in 2013):<br />
<br />
“To his critics, Kerry is an aloof politicians who lacks a core…As a boy, he was shipped off for a 7-year odyssey at boarding schools in Switzerland and New England…The boy who was educated at patrician prep schools…married wealthy wives whose net worth dwarfed his own…Kerry…went to St. Paul’s…on the generosity of his great-aunt Clara Winthrop…She owned an estate in Manchester-by-the-Sea…Winthrop offered to pay for much of John’s prep school education… Kerry began at <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">St. Paul</st1:place></st1:city>’s in the eighth grade and stayed for a total of 5 years, through graduation…”<br />
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Coincidentally, John “Skull and Bones” Kerry’s step-son, Christopher Heinz, has also been a member of the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">St. Paul</st1:place></st1:city>’s prep school’s board of trustees and co-chair of the St. Paul School's Investment Committee in recent years. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">St. Paul</st1:place></st1:city>’s Trustee Heinz is described in the following way on the Heinz-Kerry dynasty’s Heinz Endowments website:<br />
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<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“Christopher Heinz is a founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a New York-based, private-equity investment company. Prior to Rosemont, Mr. Heinz worked as a senior advisor for the John Kerry for President 2004 campaign. Before joining the campaign, Mr. Heinz worked as an associate and principal at Jacobson Partners in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city></st1:place>. The private-equity group focuses on small to medium-sized companies that have enterprise values between $20 million and $150 million, and are in turnaround or restructuring situations. <br /><br />“From 1996 to 1999, Mr. Heinz was employed by Cambridge Associates, a Boston-based investment advisor for investors classified as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. During his tenure at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Cambridge</st1:city></st1:place>, Mr. Heinz focused on private-equity and venture-capital partnership evaluation and portfolio construction. Mr. Heinz currently serves on the board of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">St. Paul</st1:place></st1:city>'s School and on the Board of Visitors of the Carnegie Mellon School of Public Policy…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Coincidentally, according to the <st1:city w:st="on">St. Paul</st1:city>’s School’s Form 990 financial filing for the year beginning July 1, 2011 and ending June 30, 2012,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the Cambridge Associates LLC investment advisor that employed St. Paul’s School Trustee Heinz between 1996 to 1999 was paid $261,317 by the tax-exempt St. Paul’s prep school between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012 for “investment consulting.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The "New York Times" (2/11/07) also reported in 2007 that <st1:city w:st="on">St. Paul</st1:city>’s Trustee Heinz also married the daughter of “the chairman of Devon Value Advisers, a financial consulting and investment banking firm in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>” in 2007. And as the Muckety blog noted in a May 24, 2011 post:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“Two easily recognized names head Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment firm founded in June 2009, with offices in <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“The company is co-chaired by R. Hunter Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden; and Christopher Heinz, son of the late Sen. H. John Heinz III and stepson of Sen. John Kerry.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">"The Heinz-Biden alliance opens doors across the political spectrum. While John Kerry and Joe Biden are Democrats, John Heinz was a Republican….Heinz is founding partner of another investment firm, Rosemont Solebury Capital Management."</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“As the great-great-grandson of the founder of H.J. Heinz Co., he would have had access to wealth even without the political connections of his father and stepfather…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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And, coincidentally, both the St. Paul's prep school and the Kerry-Biden administration in Washington, D.C. seem more interested in training young people to serve the special corporate interests of Wall Street investors and "the 1 %" (whose foreign investments overseas the U.S. war machine is being used to protect) than in educating young people to create an egalitarian, democratic society in the United States that serves the class interests of U.S. public school graduates and "the 99 %."b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-34085315274994436862013-09-03T15:11:00.000-07:002013-09-12T13:37:33.318-07:00Who Rules St. Paul's School?--Part 1One of the most exclusive prep schools in the militaristic U.S. power elite's private school system is located in Concord, New Hampshire and operates under the name of "St. Paul's School." As St. Paul's School prep school graduate and Columbia University Professor of Sociology Shamus Rahman Khan observed in his 2011 book "Privilege: The Making of An Adolescent Elite At St. Paul's School::"<br />
<br />
"...St. Paul's...had long been home to the social elite of the nation. Here were members of a national upper class...Children with multiple homes who chartered planes for weekend international trips, came from family dynasties, and inherited unimaginable advantages met me on the school's brick paths...<br />
<br />
"...A cursory look at St. Paul's leaves no doubt that the school is a place where already privileged youth spend their adolescent years; two-thirds come from families who can afford over $40,000 per year for high schools. The colleges that students from St. Paul's are most likely to attend is Harvard followed by Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Yale, Cornell, Princeton and Stanford. The acceptance rates to these institutions are well above three times the national average. In recent years, 30 percent of graduating classes attended an Ivy League institution and around 80 percent attended one of the top 30 colleges and universities in the nation. The school's annual per-pupil expenditure of over $80,000 for each student is approximately 20 times what most high schools spend. St. Paul's also has one of the largest endowments of any educational institution in the country (nearly $1 million per pupil)...<br />
<br />
"...If St. Paul's was a meritocratic place--if you got there because of your hard work and your own personal excellence--then why was the school made up of mostly very wealthy students?...Why were many students the children of parents who went to boarding school, particularly St. Paul's?...The school is not, in reality, a meritocracy...If you believe that the children of alumni should not have a far better chance of attending the school than childrn who are not `legacies,' then the school is not a meritocracy...<br />
<br />
"...Just like at other elite schools, at St. Paul's receiving an A is closer to average performance than it is exceptional work...Today as in the past, elite colleges still listen to elite high schools...It is not just the quality of the students that gets them into college, but the quality of the relationship between elite high schools and colleges...St. Paul's refuses to rank its students...It is only a slight overstatement to say that I rarely saw a student reading...at St. Paul's...If we think back to the history of how elite colleges accept high school students, we can recall how they deemphasized academic excellence in favor of other factors (`character') so as to advantage students from already established backgrounds...<br />
<br />
"...There are more rich kids at top schools than there were 25 years ago and fewer poor ones...Rich people have more money than poor peoople. And they use that money to buy advantages for themselves and their children. One of the places they do so is St. Paul's School..."<br />
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Coincidentally, the former preppie 2004 Democratic Party presidential candidate and current preppie U.S. Secretary of State who's been pushing for the U.S. war machine to be used in 2013 for a cruise missile attack on people in Syria recently--John "Skull and Bones" Kerry--is a graduate of St. Paul's School. And apparently the stepson of U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, Christopher Heinz, has also, coincidentally, been sitting on the St. Paul's School board of trustees in recent years.b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-52191295184742351052013-08-24T19:27:00.000-07:002013-08-24T19:27:11.480-07:00From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 9The 1999 book by Harlow Unger, "How To Pick A Perfect Private School" indicated how the elite private prep schools of the U.S. power elite's private prep school system contradict democratic and egalitarian values and provide their mainly wealthy students with a different educational experience than what most U.S. public schools provide most students who graduate from U.S. public schools:<br />
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"If your child is accepted by, and enrolls in, private school, both your child and you...will enter a new educational and social world unknown to (indeed unimagined by) the vast majority of Americans whose children routinely attend public schools. Most have never seen or even heard of America's most prestigious private schools. Most respond with blank stares at the mention of such names as Exeter, Hotchkiss or even Collegiate...Attending private school...is a privilege...<br />
<br />
"...Enrollment in a private school will mean your child will join a private club. Some of these `clubs' can often ease entry into the most selective colleges and universities and into the halls of power and leadership in business, industry, government and the profession. Membership in such clubs often lasts a lifetime, and can produce...associations that last equally long.<br />
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"Flagrant violation of private-school rules, however, can mean swift expulsion from that club...Many private schools...are the way they are because those who own them...want their schools to be that way...Again, they are private! So if you disagree witih the way a school is run, don't enroll your child!"b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-66218171207771462762013-08-23T12:59:00.000-07:002013-08-23T12:59:20.015-07:00From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 8The admissions offices of most U.S. elite universities, in an undemocratic way, generally grant preferential treatment to student applicants who have graduated from one of the U.S. power elite's private prep schools--and not from a U.S. public high school. As Harlow Unger's 1999 book "How To Pick A Perfect Private School" observed:<br />
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""...About a dozen of the most selective boarding schools of the Northeast, which...limit admissions.., send a disproportionately high number of their students to the most selective colleges and universities...Phillips Academy...has a physical plant that is larger and more extensive than many colleges...More than one-fourth of the typical graduating class goes to Ivy League colleges...Andover [Phillips Academy] and Exeter [Phillips Exeter Academy] along with...boarding schools as Groton, Hotchkiss, St. Paul's and Deerfield and...New York City day schools as Collegiate, Dalton and Horace Mann, place disproportionately large numbers of their graduating seniors in the most selective colleges and universities..."b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-32165008223305466342013-08-22T14:00:00.000-07:002013-08-22T14:00:48.059-07:00From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 7In his 1998 book, "How To Pick A Perfect Private School," Harlow Unger indicated how Catholic parochial/private schools differ from U.S. public school system schools and the elite prep schools of the U.S. power elite's private school system by writing the following:<br />
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"...Catholic schools, like most private schools, refuse to admit...disruptive children...Children who don't obey the rules are expelled. Public schools must by law deal with all children, and, therefore, incur far higher costs handling disruptive, emotionally disturbed, physically handicapped or learning-disabled children...<br />
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"...The academic quality of most Catholic schools--especially parochial schools--is far below that of most selective independent schools...Only 44 percent of 8th-grade students in Catholic schools achive the highest level of reading proficiency..."b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-5744895941687251292012-10-20T09:18:00.004-07:002012-10-20T09:27:32.666-07:00Hawaii's `Non-Profit' Punahou School Assets Increased By $28 Million After Obama's Inauguration<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In 2009 funding for the public school system in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:place></st1:state> was decreased by around $468 million. Yet between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011 the total net assets of the “non-profit” and tax-exempt elite, private prep school in <st1:state w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:state> from which Democratic President Obama graduated in 1979--the <st1:place w:st="on"><strong><st1:placename w:st="on">Punahou</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype></strong></st1:place>--increased from over $288 million to over $316 million, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2011.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The <st1:place w:st="on"><strong><st1:placename w:st="on">Punahou</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype></strong></st1:place> claims to be a private educational institution that is run on a “non-profit” basis. Yet between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011, the total revenues earned by the <st1:place w:st="on"><strong><st1:placename w:st="on">Punahou</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype></strong></st1:place> exceeded its total expenses by over $16 million. In addition to collecting over $73 million in tuition and fees from the parents of its preppie students, the <strong>Punahou School</strong> also collected over $9.5 million in investment income from its endowment funds’ and Ltd. Partnership stock portfolio between 2010 and 2011, as well as over $17 million from the tax-deductible contributions and gifts which it received.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">And, coincidentally, the annual salaries received by officials in the “non-profit” <strong>Punahou School</strong> private prep school administration since Obama’s inauguration were significantly higher than the annual salaries received by most U.S. public school teachers between 2009 and 2012. <strong>Punahou School</strong> President James Scott was paid an annual salary of $433,00, the <strong>Punahou </strong>vice-president and treasurer was paid an annual salary of $276,00 and the principal of the <strong>Punahou School</strong>’s Academy division was paid an annual salary of $298,000 between July 2010 and June 30, 2011. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-80232629328687119942012-10-19T10:51:00.000-07:002012-10-19T10:53:53.174-07:00Obama's Hawaiian Punahou Prep School Connection<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><em>“<st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:place></st1:state>'s public schools are in crisis.</em></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><em>“Simply put, there isn't enough money to keep them open full-time. With…a $468 million budget cut to Hawaii's Department of Education, in September the Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA) voted to accept a two-year contract that includes 17 furlough days for both the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 academic years….The cuts have been scheduled for regular school days, reducing Hawaii's public instruction from 180 days to 163, the fewest in the nation and ten days less than the state second from the bottom, North Dakota….<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><em>“There is no shortage of frustration to go around, particularly among parents of public school children. One such parent is Jack Yatsko,…the father of fifth and eighth grade daughters on the island of Kauai….Of the 34 furlough days planned this year and next, Yatsko said, `this is educational neglect.’…<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><em>“…The latest two-year contract…reduces their pay by nearly 8 percent as it slashes instructional days for students…Governor Lingle… imposed 14 percent budget cuts on the Department of Education…Hawaii's fourth and eighth graders' test scores lag behind in National Assessment of Educational Progress rankings.<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><em>“<st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:place></st1:state>'s state employee furloughs haven't been limited to educators and school employees. One furloughed state employee is Raymond Catania...<st1:city w:st="on">Catania</st1:city>, who has two teenage daughters, one a sophomore at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Kauai</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">High School</st1:placetype></st1:place>, pulls no punches.<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><em>"`By forcing teachers to take furloughs, it hits our children. Rich families can send their kids to Punahou (where Obama studied) or other private schools, but the working class can't afford that so our kids get cheated.’ …Catania said that with Hawaii's huge military presence, it is painful to see military expenditures increase, while the host state suffers what he considers disproportionate cuts to education and human services….<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><em>On <st1:place w:st="on">Oahu</st1:place>, Kyle Kajihiro, program director for the American Friends Service Committee…sees the current economic crisis as a pretext to cut programs for political or ideological reasons…. <o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><em>"I have to question why the defense budget keeps going up and up and schools keep getting cut. It's unconscionable." Citing the National Priorities Project, Kajihiro points out that since 2001 <st1:state w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:state> residents have paid a $3 billion share of the wars in <st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country> and <st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country>. "For that same money, <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:place></st1:state> could have funded 54,718 elementary school teachers for a year," he said. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:place></st1:state> has around 13,000 public school teachers.”<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">--from a November 6, 2009 <strong>Truthout </strong><a href="http://archive.truthout.org/1106098">article</a> by Jon Letman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Aloha! My name is Jim Scott, president of <st1:placename w:st="on">Punahou</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype> in <st1:city w:st="on">Honolulu</st1:city>, Hawai‘i. <st1:placename w:st="on">Punahou</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype>…is the largest single-campus private school in <st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country> with 3,750 students. All of our students go on to college, with over 90 percent coming to the mainland for college…I personally benefited from financial aid as a former Punahou student; so did President Obama, Punahou Class of ’79, who attended Punahou from fifth through twelfth grades…Today 40 percent of the children in Honolulu attend a private school…”<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">from Punahou Prep School President James Scott’s Sept. 28, 2011 <a href="http://www.punahou.edu/page.cfm?p=3442">speech</a> at the Office of Non-public Education’s Private School Leadership Conference<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><strong>Obama’s Hawaiian Punahou Prep School Connection<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Most working-class people in the <st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United States</st1:country> attend or graduated from underfunded <st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country> public school system schools—like the public schools of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:state></st1:place>. But some <st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country> public officials, like Barack Obama, are preppie jocks who graduated from exclusive private schools like <st1:state w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:state>’s <st1:placename w:st="on">Punahou</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype>—which currently undemocratically requires the parents of most of its students in <st1:state w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:state> to cough up over $17,000 to have their kids sit in a <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Punahou</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype></st1:place> classroom. Perhaps that’s one reason why the Democratic Obama administration failed to produce much change in the United States that created more affluence and more qualilty education for U.S. working-class families and public school students between 2009 and 2012? As <strong>Newsweek</strong> columnist Jonathan Alter noted in his 2010 <a href="http://www.jonathanalter.com/the-promise">book </a><strong><em>The Promise: President Obama, Year One</em></strong>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><em>“…Some black Chicagoans found Obama too `bourgeois’ for their tastes—too middle-class…The rap that Obama lacked a common touch reappeared in…[the 2008] campaign…The…reason Hillary Clinton hung on so long in the [2008] primaries was Obama’s weakness among white working-class voters…Obama…reminds them that a class of…elites had left them behind…As one of the…kids at the elite Punahou School in Honolulu, he [Obama] was a…jock…”<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
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b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-36249464269044688622012-06-22T09:18:00.000-07:002012-06-22T09:18:54.643-07:00From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 6<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 9.75pt;">
In his 1999 book, <b><i>How To Pick A Perfect Private School</i></b>, Harlow Unger wrote the following about the U.S. power elite’s private school educational system: </div>
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<em>“…Day students make up 20 percent of the student body at…such highly selective schools as Choate, Lawrenceville, Taft, and <placename w:st="on">Phillips</placename> <placetype w:st="on">Academy</placetype> at <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Andover</city>, <state w:st="on">Massachusetts</state></place>. At <city w:st="on">Groton</city>, Deerfield and <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Phillips</placename> <placename w:st="on">Exeter</placename> <placetype w:st="on">Academy</placetype></place>, day students make up more than 10 percent of the student bodies…</em></div>
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<em>“…Graduating seniors from the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., go on to Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard and…Stanford University…The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey…sends its graduates to Harvard and Columbia…Iona Preparatory School…regularly sends graduates to Cornell…and Yale…”</em></div>
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</em>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-10362874514350932332012-06-16T13:03:00.000-07:002012-06-16T13:03:30.788-07:00From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 5:<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 9.75pt;">
In his 1999 book, <b><i>How To Pick A Perfect Private School</i></b>, Harlow Unger indicated how even the prep school students in the U.S. power elite’s private school educational system who don’t score very high on their SATs have apparently still been admitted into certain prestigious U.S. colleges during the last 20 years:</div>
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<em>“…20 of the 43 members in a recent graduating class at one of America’s finest private day schools only scored in the 500-600 range in the verbal SATs—well below the 800 maximum possible score. But…those kids with SAT scores in the 500-600 range are now attending such colleges as Duke, <place w:st="on"><placetype w:st="on">University</placetype> of <placename w:st="on">Pennsylvania</placename></place> and Swarthmore…”</em></div>
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<em>“Chances are that you and your child will be amazed…by the magnificent facilities at most…private schools. They’re far better than at most public schools—better even than at many colleges…</em></div>
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<em>“…Even with a scholarship to pay for all or part of the tuition, there are heavy extra costs at a private school—clothes, because many private schools have dress codes, which can often add $250 to $500 a year to total costs…Aid from private schools is…limited…Status and snob appeal…are all too often the motives of some parents who send their children to private schools…</em></div>
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<em>“…Independent private schools…have an average student-teacher ratio of 9.8 or one teacher for every 10 students. In sharp contrast, the average public school has a student-teacher ratio of 17.4, or more than 50 percent more.</em></div>
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<em>“And that’s why…parents send their children to private schools—especially independent private schools…”</em></div>
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</em></em>Unger also indicated how some of the prep schools in the <country-region w:st="on">U.S.</country-region> power elite’s private school educational system differ from most <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">U.S.</place></country-region> public schools:b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-82491982409989060432012-06-14T18:47:00.000-07:002012-06-14T18:47:03.585-07:00From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 4:<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
In his 1999 book, <strong><em>How To Pick A Perfect Private School</em></strong>, Harlow Unger indicated from where the <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">U.S.</country-region></place> power elite’s undemocratic private school system tends to select its student body:</div>
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<em>“…Unlike public schools, private schools can pick the kids they want…Now that may sound elitist to some…Most private schools limit their enrollment…</em></div>
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<em>“…There are a lot of private school children from extremely wealthy families. About one-third come from families with annual incomes of more than $100,000 [in 1999 money]…More than 16 percent of the kids at private schools in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> are students of color, including…Asian-American…students. Foreign students make up an additional 3 percent of the student population at independent schools…</em></div>
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<em>“…The prestigious <placename w:st="on">Lawrenceville</placename> <placetype w:st="on">School</placetype>, in <city w:st="on">Lawrenceville</city>, <state w:st="on">New Jersey</state>, near <place w:st="on">Princeton</place>, reaches outside the community to draw children…Its student body includes children from about 20 nations. In <city w:st="on">Lakeville</city>, <state w:st="on">Connecticut</state>, at the <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Hotchkiss</placename> <placetype w:st="on">School</placetype></place>, a famed preparatory school that sends about one-third of its graduates to Ivy League…colleges,…10 percent are foreign nationals. At…<placename w:st="on">Phillips</placename> <placetype w:st="on">Academy</placetype> in <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Andover</city>, <state w:st="on">Massachusetts</state></place>, half the seniors go to Ivy League schools each year…About 10 percent are international students…”</em></div>
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</em>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-19046200134945952282012-06-11T12:20:00.000-07:002012-06-11T12:20:07.544-07:00From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 3:<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
In his 1999 book, <strong><em>How To Pick A Perfect Private School</em></strong>, Harlow Unger indicated how the preppie graduates of the <country-region w:st="on">U.S.</country-region> power elite’s private school system undemocratically occupy a disproportionate number of leadership positions within <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">U.S.</place></country-region> society:</div>
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<em>“…Although students from private schools represent only 12 percent of all school children in the United States, they fill <strong>40 percent</strong> of the seats at the most selective…colleges. As they become adults, they fill a disproportionately large number of leadership positions in business, finance and government as during their higher education. More than <strong>10 percent</strong> of the chief executives of America’s 1,000 largest corporations, for example, graduated from just four universities—Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford…”</em></div>
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</em>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-56887933575530731602011-11-27T20:26:00.000-08:002012-06-11T12:09:16.146-07:00From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 2:In his 1999 book, <em><strong>How To Pick A Perfect Private School</strong></em>, Harlow Unger wrote the following about the U.S. private school educational system:<br />
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<em>“Of the…school children in America,…nearly 11.2% attend private schools…Of the more than 111,000 schools in America, just over 26,000, or about 23.5% are private. The vast majority of these, however, are operated by religious organizations and churches. Only 1,500 private schools are `independent’ or unaffiliated with any church or state agency…<br /><br />“…According to the U.S. Department of Education, private schools spend $36.54 per pupil for library facilities—more than double the…$17.58 spent per pupil in public schools…” </em></blockquote>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-16809851101783780142011-11-25T09:37:00.000-08:002012-06-11T12:08:40.502-07:00From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 1:In his 1999 book, <em><strong>How To Pick A Perfect Private School</strong></em>, Harlow Unger indicated how the U.S. power elite's private school system differs from the U.S. public school system:<br />
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<em>"Instead of about 25 students per teacher, as in public schools, private schools assign only about a dozen students to each teacher (9.8 in independent schools that are unaffiliated with any church or government agency), thus guaranteeing the individual attention each child needs to thrive intellectually...<br /><br />"Unlike private schools, public schools are required by law to accept <strong>all</strong> children in the school district, and a teacher has no choice but to admit them into the classroom...Private schools try not to admit...unruly children...The handful that slip through are summarily expelled as soon as they begin to disrupt school routine...Private-school teachers are thus free to devote all their time to teaching instead of dealing with disciplinary problems..."</em></blockquote>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-14835317417183001202011-09-27T08:10:00.001-07:002011-11-23T20:32:48.298-08:00From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--ConclusionIn their 1985 book, <em><strong>Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools</strong></em>, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and indicated how elite prep school graduates have, historically, generally lived in exclusive U.S. neighborhoods; and have, historically, undemocratically monopolized—in disproportionate numbers--the most lucrative and powerful executive positions within the U.S. business, media, political and foundation world:<br /><br /><blockquote><em>“…In the period between 1962-72, 70 percent of the grooms whose wedding announcements appeared in the <strong>New York Times </strong>were from private schools. Of those grooms that were listed in the <strong>Social Register</strong>, 20 percent were from St. Paul’s alone; 8 percent were from Exeter, and 6 percent were old Grotonians. A private school, and particularly a prep school, education appears to be still important in establishing social pedigrees…<br /><br />“…In some exclusive neighborhoods in New York, Boston, and Washington, preps could be said to have achieved a critical mass, insulating themselves against outsiders through high prices and high taxes. Preps are particularly fond of Connecticut suburban areas such as Darien, Greenwich, and New Canaan. In fact, Connecticut is probably <strong>the</strong> prep state…<br /><br />“…Do the interpersonal relationships of preppies become interorganizational and institutional, linking corporate boards, banks, industries, government cabinets, and philanthropic organizations?...Michael Useem’s study (…1984)…found that 13 elite boarding schools [Andover, Choate, Deerfield, Exeter, Groton, Hill, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, Milton, St. George’s, St. Mark’s St. Paul’s, and Taft] educated 10 percent of the members of the boards of large American business organizations. Considering that these 13 schools enroll fewer than 1 percent of the population, 10 percent is striking. Even more so is the fact that 17 percent of those who become directors of two large companies (rather than just one) attended one of the thirteen elite boarding schools, as did 15 percent of those who are directors of 3 or more large companies…<br /><br />“Select 16 boarding schools provide a `booster shot’ for success. Nearly half of the senior corporate managers who achieved the high corporate position…had prep school or social register backgrounds…There is considerable impressionistic evidence to suggest that substantial numbers of boarding school graduates enter banking…In a period of economic scarcity and contraction, we might expect the prep experience to become relatively more important, as those already holding power try to cling to what they have…” </em></blockquote>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155052238612961349.post-62085260859319759242011-09-24T09:15:00.000-07:002011-09-24T09:18:06.085-07:00From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 20In their 1985 book, <em><strong>Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools</strong></em>, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and indicated how some of the tax-exempt and “non-profit” elite prep schools profit from the current U.S. economic system:<br /><br /><blockquote><em>“…It is not unusual, for example, for the alumni and wealthy friends of an elite school to give annual gifts in excess of $1 million…Endowments can be impressive; as of 1982, Andover’s endowment was over $82 million, St. Paul’s’ was over $61 million, and Hotchkiss’s over $$20 million…<br /><br />“Elite boarding schools invest heavily and their cash reserves attract brokers and other money market managers. Exeter’s Third Century Fund was worth $20,453,001 as of September 1981…<br /><br />“:The collective portfolio of America’s most elite prep schools is impressive…Morgan money helped to finance Groton, Taft was founded by Horace D. Taft, brother of President Taft, Hotchkiss, whose deceased husband perfected the machine gun, and St. George’s School was helped by John Nicholas Brown, the Rhode Island industrialist whose family helped establish Brown University. Choate can count Mellons as benefactors, and a Lowell and a Forbes funded the Middlesex School in Massachusetts. The Kent School was given an early boost by several DuPonts…”</em></blockquote>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0