The New York Association of Independent Schools is addressing the painful lessons some private schools learned in the last academic year and ways to protect schools going forward at its annual conference in November in New Paltz.
A number of prestigious private schools nationwide have either closed or come to the brink this year, according to Kate Lindsey, the longtime chief financial officer of Georgetown Day SchoolWashington, D.C. and president of the National Business Officers Association, who is giving the keynote address at the conference. According to Lindsey, in addition to the current volatility in the financial markets, schools are beginning to feel the impact of “arms races” to build facilities, as well as mounting pressure from public schools that historically were not deemed serious competitors. in
Less obvious, though equally problematic in Lindsey”™s view, has been the rise of what she terms “institutional complacency and arrogance” over the past decade.
The National Association of Independent Schools concurs, having addressed a substantial portion of last year”™s annual report to beseeching member schools to find ways to rein in tuition hikes.
Private schools in the lower Hudson Valley and by extension New York state performed exceptionally well in the most recent business expansion, as family incomes swelled along with the population of school-age children. Enrollment reached 63,500 in the academic year concluding last spring, according to NYAIS, up from 48,800 five years earlier.
The Hackley School, the lone member in the lower Hudson Valley of the so-called Ivy Preparatory School League, brought in $3.4 million in fiscal 2006 according to the most recent records available from the Internal Revenue Service, swelling the Tarrytown school”™s coffers to $82 million.
In Dutchess County, the moneyed Millbrook School finished its 2007 fiscal year with revenue in excess of expenses by $2.6 million, giving it $55 million in net assets. Bringing in nearly $8 million more than it spent, Rye Country Day School was similarly awash in cash with $61 million in assets.
That was pocket change across the border in Litchfield County, Conn., where the Hotchkiss School made $57 million in 2006, pushing its assets to a whopping $460 million, IRS records show.
Other schools are running tighter ships, however. The Storm King School in Cornwall-on-HudsonNew York member of the Fairchester Independent Schools consortium to run a deficit in the 2007 fiscal year, with expenses outpacing revenue by $400,000. Two decades after opening. Soundview Preparatory School in Yorktown Heights had $1.2 million in assets at the close of the 2007 fiscal year, after it cleared the year with $200,000 in excess revenue. And the French-American School of New York in Mamaroneck cleared fiscal 2007 with $600,000 in excess cash, giving it $7 million in assets. was the lone
Obviously, financial performance is not a proxy for educational prowess, and beyond the balance sheet, private-school trustees face a difficult task in assessing whether or not the headmaster and staff are achieving goals in a rapidly changing educational environment, both at the haves and have-nots.
Trustees should ask key questions in grading the schools they oversee, according to David Grant, an education expert who addressed a gathering this month of the Connecticut Association of Independent Schools.
“What does success look like for our school?” said Grant, who in addition to running the $300 million Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in New Jersey previously founded a semester-long Mountain School program at Milton Academy in Vermont. “We know there is much that we value beyond test scores and college placement lists. What is our picture of the graduate, and planning backwards from that picture, are we doing everything we can to foster it?”
NYAIS will hold its annual conference Nov. 5 at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz.
