Who Funded Pre-1940 U.S. Prep School System?

In his 1937 book, America's 60 Families, 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:

"...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...

"Phillips-Exeter 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 Phillips-Andover to raise funds among other wealthy men...

"Both Phillips-Exeter and Phillips-Andover 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.

"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.

"Andover and Exeter are only two of the Eastern preparatory schools patronized by the rich families. Groton has an endowment of $1,500,000 [equivalent to over $25,000,000 in 2017 dollars]; Lawrenceville, $500,000 [equivalent to over $8,600,000 in 2017 dollars]; St. Mark's, $600,000 [equivalent to over $10,300,000 in 2017 dollars]; Taft, $500,000; and St. Paul's, $3,059,018 [equivalent to over $52,000,000 in 2017 dollars]. Andrew W. Mellon gave Choate School a library and the Archbold family fave an infirmary; Clarence Dillon, banker, gave Groton 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 Hill School 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 Lawrenceville; Paul Block gave a chapel to Hotchkiss School, whose endowment is $400,000 [equivalent to over $6,800,000 in 2017 dollars]. Middlesex School 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 St. Mark's. James Simpson of Marshall Field and Company and H.E. Manville contributed to St. Paul's. Benefactors of the Taft School have been Mrs. William Rockefeller, who gave Rockefeller Field, Edward S. Harkness, who gave $500,000, and Harry P. Bingham, who gave Bingham Auditorium.

"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 Foxcroft, Brearley, Miss Chapin's, Spence School, Rosemary Hall, Ethel Walker's, Farmington, Westover, Miss Hall's, and Dobbs School..."

Who Rules Brookline's Beaver Country Day School?

According to a pamphlet posted on the Town of Brookline Assessor’s website, private schools in Massachusetts “MAY QUALIFY for an exemption from local taxes on real and personal property they own,” but “ownership DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY ENTITLE AN ORGANIZATION TO AN EXEMPTION, HOWEVER.” The same pamphlet also notes that “exemption from taxation is A PRIVILEGE and the organization must prove clearly and unequivocally that it qualifies.”

In the 21^st-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).

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 zero dollars, 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 zero dollars in taxes to the Town of Brookline on this piece of real estate in 2017.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Around $1 million was then spent to construct buildings for the school (which was then a 4^th to 8^th grade school for female and male pupils and a 9^th to 12^th 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.

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.

After 1970, Beaver Country began admitting male students into its 9^th to 12^th 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^th grade to 12^th grade: 30 students in 6^th grade; 50 students in 7^th grade; 50 students in 8^th grade, 85 students in 9^th grade; 85 students in 10^th grade; 85 students in 11^th grade; and 85 students in 12^th grade.

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.

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.”

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 zero in federal income taxes were paid between 2014 and 2015.

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.

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^st-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 Brookline Tab 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.”

Although Beaver Country pays zero in property taxes, according to an Apr. 9, 1998 Tab 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^th to 12^th graders whose parents are Brookline residents, , for example, has still not been provided by the school’s board of trustees.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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 Forbes magazine.

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.

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^th-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.

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?

Who Rules Brookline's Park Corporation Day School?

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.

But at this same March 19, 1998 meeting, then-Brookline School Committee member Helen Charlupski said, according to an April 2, 1998 Brookline Tab 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.”

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.”

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.”

According to the Town of Brookline 1969 Tax Lists, 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.

As Jeremy Pawloski noted in an April 19, 1998 Tab 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.”

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).

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 Park School Corporation 2007 Spring Bulletin.

So, coincidentally, Park School Trustee Faulkner’s mother (who was born into an extended family that was described by Louis Rukeyser’s Business Almanac 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 2007 Spring Bulletin. 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 Du Pont Dynasty book.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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?

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).

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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?

Who Rules Brookline's Dexter Southfield Private School?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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^th 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.”

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^th, 7^th or 8^th grader and $46,670 for a 9^th, 10^th, 11^th and 12^th grader, in order for their child to be allowed to enter the Dexter Southfield classrooms during the 2016-2017 school year.

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.

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 Handbook of Private Schools indicated that only 2 percent of Dexter Southfield’s male students were African-American in racial background.

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^st-century working-class and middle-class residents.

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.

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.

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.

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 Forbes 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.

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^st-century).

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.

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.”

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.

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.  

Do Ivy League Universities Favor Applicants From Elite Prep Schools?

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 Blacks in the White Establishment? A Study of Race and Class in America:

"...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...."

Prep School Prejudice At Andover Historically

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 Blacks in the White Establishment? A Study of Race and Class in America:

"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, Youth from Every Quarter, 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.'

Revisiting Lawrenceville School and Other Prep School Campuses and Endowments

In their 1991 book Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America, Richard Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff wrote the following in reference to the tax-exempt and "non-profit" Lawrenceville School prep school:

"...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.'

"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...' 

Are U.S. Prep Schools Still Excluding Working-Class Black Students?

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 Blacks in the White Establishment: A Study of Race and Class in America:

"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]..."

St. George's School's Undemocratic Role In U.S. Society

In their 1991 book, Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America, 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:

"...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.'...

"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...'

Prep School Racism and Sexism At St. Paul's School Historically

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 Privilege: The Making of An Adolescent Elite At St. Paul's School:

"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..."

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. 

In her 1983 book The Good School, 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 Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America.

Who Rules St. Paul's School?--Part 2

As 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):

“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 St. Paul’s in the eighth grade and stayed for a total of 5 years, through graduation…”

Coincidentally, John “Skull and Bones” Kerry’s step-son, Christopher Heinz, has also been a member of the St. Paul’s prep school’s board of trustees and co-chair of the St. Paul School's Investment Committee in recent years. St. Paul’s Trustee Heinz is described in the following way on the Heinz-Kerry dynasty’s Heinz Endowments website:

“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 New York City. 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.

“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 Cambridge, Mr. Heinz focused on private-equity and venture-capital partnership evaluation and portfolio construction. Mr. Heinz currently serves on the board of St. Paul's School and on the Board of Visitors of the Carnegie Mellon School of Public Policy…”

Coincidentally, according to the St. Paul’s School’s Form 990 financial filing for the year beginning July 1, 2011 and ending June 30, 2012,  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.”

The "New York Times" (2/11/07) also reported in 2007 that St. Paul’s Trustee Heinz also married the daughter of “the chairman of Devon Value Advisers, a financial consulting and investment banking firm in New York” in 2007. And as the Muckety blog noted in a May 24, 2011 post:

“Two easily recognized names head Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment firm founded in June 2009, with offices in New York and Washington.

“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.

"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."

“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…”

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 %."

Who Rules St. Paul's School?--Part 1

One 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::"

"...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...

"...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)...

"...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...

"...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...

"...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..."

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.

From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 9

The 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:

"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...

"...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.

"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!"

From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 8

The 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:

""...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..."

From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 7

In 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:

"...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...

"...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..."

Hawaii's `Non-Profit' Punahou School Assets Increased By $28 Million After Obama's Inauguration

In 2009 funding for the public school system in Hawaii 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 Hawaii from which Democratic President Obama graduated in 1979--the Punahou School--increased from over $288 million to over $316 million, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2011.

The Punahou School 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 Punahou School 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 Punahou School 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.

And, coincidentally, the annual salaries received by officials in the “non-profit” Punahou School 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. Punahou School President James Scott was paid an annual salary of $433,00, the Punahou vice-president and treasurer was paid an annual salary of $276,00 and the principal of the Punahou School’s Academy division was paid an annual salary of $298,000 between July 2010 and June 30, 2011.

Obama's Hawaiian Punahou Prep School Connection

 “Hawaii's public schools are in crisis.

“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….

“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.’…

“…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.

“Hawaii's state employee furloughs haven't been limited to educators and school employees. One furloughed state employee is Raymond Catania...Catania, who has two teenage daughters, one a sophomore at Kauai High School, pulls no punches.

"`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….

On Oahu, 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….

"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 Hawaii residents have paid a $3 billion share of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "For that same money, Hawaii could have funded 54,718 elementary school teachers for a year," he said. Hawaii has around 13,000 public school teachers.”

--from a November 6, 2009 Truthout article by Jon Letman

 “Aloha! My name is Jim Scott, president of Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Punahou School…is the largest single-campus private school in America 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…”

from Punahou Prep School President James Scott’s Sept. 28, 2011 speech at the Office of Non-public Education’s Private School Leadership Conference

Obama’s Hawaiian Punahou Prep School Connection

Most working-class people in the United States attend or graduated from underfunded U.S. public school system schools—like the public schools of Hawaii. But some U.S. public officials, like Barack Obama, are preppie jocks who graduated from exclusive private schools like Hawaii’s Punahou School—which currently undemocratically requires the parents of most of its students in Hawaii to cough up over $17,000 to have their kids sit in a Punahou School 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 Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter noted in his 2010 book The Promise: President Obama, Year One:

“…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…”

From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 6

In his 1999 book, How To Pick A Perfect Private School, Harlow Unger wrote the following about the U.S. power elite’s private school educational system:

“…Day students make up 20 percent of the student body at…such highly selective schools as Choate, Lawrenceville, Taft, and Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts. At Groton, Deerfield and Phillips Exeter Academy, day students make up more than 10 percent of the student bodies…

“…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…”

From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 5:

In his 1999 book, How To Pick A Perfect Private School, 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:

“…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, University of Pennsylvania and Swarthmore…”

“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…

“…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…

“…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.

“And that’s why…parents send their children to private schools—especially independent private schools…”

Unger also indicated how some of the prep schools in the U.S. power elite’s private school educational system differ from most U.S. public schools:

From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 4:

In his 1999 book, How To Pick A Perfect Private School, Harlow Unger indicated from where the U.S. power elite’s undemocratic private school system tends to select its student body:

“…Unlike public schools, private schools can pick the kids they want…Now that may sound elitist to some…Most private schools limit their enrollment…

“…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 America are students of color, including…Asian-American…students. Foreign students make up an additional 3 percent of the student population at independent schools…

“…The prestigious Lawrenceville School, in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, near Princeton, reaches outside the community to draw children…Its student body includes children from about 20 nations. In Lakeville, Connecticut, at the Hotchkiss School, a famed preparatory school that sends about one-third of its graduates to Ivy League…colleges,…10 percent are foreign nationals. At…Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, half the seniors go to Ivy League schools each year…About 10 percent are international students…”