Death of a School – But Not Its Spirit – Part 3

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In the first two parts, I looked at some of the reasons, both external and internal, as to why RCDS has struggled financially and finally had to close. I look at some more reasons in this third and final part. I also echo concerns raised by others about where the money went, but using my professional skills as a tax preparer for 30 years and a financial professional and auditor for 40 years. And for those who come to my blog to read about transgender issues, I make brief mention of a hope and dream for a new school in the same spirit, one that is geared specifically towards children with an alternative or transgender identity.

Downhill trend: RCDS went in and out of crisis mode throughout its entire history.  Someone recently posted on Facebook a column in the local newspaper by a reporter and former teacher about the school narrowly averting shutting its doors.  Based on my knowledge of that former teacher and coach who was at RCDS during my sophomore and junior year, that headline had to be at least twenty years ago.  So another generation of students was able to attend RCDS since that crisis was averted.

Certainly financial concerns lurked from the earliest days.  At least at the beginning RCDS had a group of wealthy backers, many of whom were sending their own children, interested in the school’s success.  But there were other concerns and conflicts, even as far back as the first decade of the school’s existence.  Those conflicts were over educational philosophy and direction of the school.  I’ve already discussed some of those.  One of them might be summarized as Preppie versus Hippie.  When I arrived, many of the older students fulfilled the dress codes with prep school attire.  But longer hair, particularly among the younger students, was starting to creep in and some of the older students were heading in that direction, too.  As I recall, some of the trustees and financial backers were starting to balk at the lack of discipline and counterculture attitudes that were emerging.  Freedom to explore educational opportunities in a more open manner, yes; freedom to rebel, thumb noses at authority, break rules about sexual mores, smoking (cigarettes and pot) and drinking, no.  And this schism was felt in the faculty ranks as well.  By the time I graduated, many of the teachers who were there when I started and who were among the faculty in the earliest years had left: Downs (although he returned later), Bridgio, Sandulli, Hyatt, McCurdy, and Gibson; Headmaster McClure, whose first year was my first year, stayed only three years and then left for Princeton Day.  His successor lasted only one year.

Yet the consensus is that even in these differences, whether someone stayed or left, while they were at RCDS the vast majority of them genuinely cared about the students and our success.  And after you get past the usual student griping about the pressure of tests, term papers and homework, we look back fondly on most of our teachers and the school in general.  The school had a sense of community that developed through shared activities with the teachers: sports teams, plays, recitals, field trips, clubs, kite day and undoubtedly some activities that sprang up long after I left.

The sense I am getting from parents (some of whom also went to RCDS), faculty members (current and former) and alumni who had stayed closely connected with the school for various reasons is that the attitudes of some of the school administration and some of the trustees started to change about 5-10 years ago.  Since this is all hearsay, I will not name any names.  (I will add that I do not suspect anyone in the final school administration who were present at the 8/31 gathering.)  But here are some of the comments I have heard: parents of alums were dropped from the contact list even though they were faithfully giving; the administration trashed their relationship with the alumni group; someone must have sold out the school; where has the money gone; a lot of key people have left or resigned in the last two years since the campus was sold (and there could be lots of reasons for that: some innocent and some not so innocent); the educational standards and environment went downhill; the school was not properly prepared for the arrival of international students with a lack of ESL teachers (later remedied); the school had too high an amount of scholarships.

On top of all this, the end was handled in a regrettable manner.  I’ve already talked about how the decision so close to the start of the school year on top of the notices sent out in May and June, has been terribly difficult on the students (and their parents), the teachers and staff (and their families).  It was the final insult added to a series of injuries.

I have also heard that there were a few heroes in the midst of this debacle, trying to do the right thing.  But they were outnumbered, overmatched, outmaneuvered and ran out of time.

As it happens, I was just starting to get more reconnected to RCDS in October 2016, although I had been giving faithfully for a few years before that.  (And one time, I was the first person to solve one of Mr. Boyer’s math puzzles.)  I had decided that I wanted my school to know the real me.  So I began going to events: the school-wide reunion in October 2016, the Holiday shopping village, the spring musical in 2017 and the last two graduations.  I was told that the school wanted to reconnect with the alumni and I wrote a series of reminiscences of my time at RCDS which I was told would be put into the school newsletter.  It would have run about 6 or 7 issues.  Only one was included, in part because the school newsletter, even a digital version that should have had minimal cost, suddenly ceased.  I told one of the trustees in 2016 that I wanted to be more involved and never heard from the school.

Even so when we toured the school at the 2016 reunion; when we saw the progress on the new STEAM lab; when I saw the happy faces at the 2017 spring musical: it still seemed like the same positive RCDS experience.  I liked the people I met from the administration.  When I had positive, supportive one on one conversations with teachers and administrators, there was no hint of anything terribly wrong.  The school looked great, the food was great and kids looked like they were doing well.  It may have been a patina.

Partially because it is my biggest concern and partially because it is my area of expertise, I am most concerned about what happened to the money.  But once again I need to tread lightly here.  I do not have access to the books of the school, nor do I have access to the closing documents for the sale of the campus.  The only things I know are that it has been widely reported without dispute that the school sold its campus to the Town of Clarkstown in early 2018 for $4.4 million and that I have read RCDS’s required Form 990 filed with the IRS for its fiscal year of 7/1/17 to 6/30/18.  Form 990 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2019 is not due until November 15, 2019, so it is not available for download with the IRS as of a few days ago.

With those caveats in mind, I have cause for concern.  This caution has to be kept in mind: there could be an accounting reason that is particular to non-profit organizations that explains it.  But based on a cash flow analysis of the Form 990, the numbers don’t add up as far as I have been able to dig with what I have available to me.  I’ve heard possible explanations offered up: what if the Town was allowed to pay in installments under the contract of sale?  Then, it should show on the balance sheet as an asset of some kind.  What if the school took out additional credit lines against the property to keep going?  Then that should be offset by additional cash coming into RCDS when doing the cash flow analysis.  What if there were $3.4 million in mortgages prior to the 2017-18 fiscal year?  Then why does only $2.1 million show up on the Form 990 reported to the IRS?  But until I have more proof, all I am willing to say publicly at this time is that the discrepancy appears to be major.

Should it be looked into further?  I believe so.  If wrongdoing was done, those responsible should be held to account and as much restoration made as possible, especially to the parents who paid out tuition for the upcoming year.  The sad thing is that if this money had been on hand, the school would have been able to open this month.  It would be even sadder if the people were finally in place who had the ability to find a long-term financial solution and still maintain the wonderful education that made RCDS so special to all of its alums.  Now they won’t have the chance.  But there is more investigation needed to confirm my suspicions about the monetary discrepancy.

I hope there is a better explanation, even if it is my own inexperience or error.  I’d rather the school failed because of falling enrollment revenue (and it did drop $550,000 from 2016-17 to 2017-18).  I’d rather the school failed because of poor fundraising efforts (it did drop by $120,000 between those two years and without hiring an outside fundraiser, RCDS actually lost $7.000 on its fundraising efforts in 2017-18).  I’d rather the school failed because of poor but honest management.  I’d rather my hypothesis is wrong either because of my error or because the accountants for RCDS filed Form 990 with an error in the numbers.

When I graduated, there were about 170 students spread over 7 grades, with 1 Headmaster, 5 non-faculty staff members and 27 faculty members (6:1 student-faculty ratio).  According to the website, there are about 120 students spread over 14 grades with 1 Head of School, 15 non-faculty members (more if school secretaries or administrative assistants aren’t listed on the website) and 18 faculty members for a 7:1 student-faculty ratio.  Some of those extra non-faculty employees are needed because of the International students who were boarded at Dominican College.  Even so, the number of employees is about the same for about 30% fewer students.  The faculty to non-faculty ratio went from about 6:1 to 6:5.  And yet this doesn’t necessarily mean poor management.  This might have been necessary to stay competitive with what other private schools in the area were offering for the high tuition being charged.  All I’m saying is that I’d rather the downfall be something other than evil.

The surrounding community: For most of the years that I attended RCDS (1963-70), we were called “Hippie Hill” by the public school kids (and maybe adults too … and maybe worse).  Boys were wearing Beatle boots and longer hair when the public school boys were wearing button down shirts, chinos, loafers and crew cuts.  Girls had long straight hair, granny glasses, boots, and Hippie or Bohemian fashions when public school girls were wearing Peter Pan collars, sweater sets, plaid skirts, wing-tip glasses and either penny loafers or saddle shoes.  The drug culture hit us in high school; it hit the public school kids in college or for many of the boys, in Vietnam.

We were disliked for being different.  (What else is new?)  We were disliked because it was assumed that we were all stuck-up rich kids.  (In fact many of us were getting quite mellow on a regular basis and many of us were not rich.  I know my parents weren’t.)

Some people say that the animus has never quite gone away.  Other sources would indicate that as the times changed and the cultural divide between town and gown narrowed, most or all of the animus departed.  I live in Suffern, far enough away that RCDS is not a topic of conversation.  People have heard about it and that’s all.

Nevertheless, there is talk and conjecture by some that there was politics involved in the purchase of the RCDS campus by the town, and politics involved in the slow response to the school’s request to renegotiate the lease agreement to give the school some breathing room and the Head of School more time to work out another of the school’s traditional last minute saving moves.  Some suggest that it was never about helping the school stay afloat.  It was about a land grab by the Town for its own purposes, reasons to become known when the Town makes its next move after the school is cleared out.  I have heard from more than one person close to the school that there was a shadow effort, sources unknown, that were at work countering the attempts to find the funding, whether through donations or new tuition paying students, or any other legal means to keep the school afloat and on a new path to sustainability.

I would love to see a school on that campus again, either a revival of RCDS or a school with the same spirit of RCDS but one that is geared as a place of learning and refuge for children who identify as part of my gender community, the transgender community.  It wouldn’t be Rockland Country Day School any more, but the name I would give it is “The Magnolia School at the Rockland Country Campus”.  (If the RCDS campus is no longer available, the school would simply be “The Magnolia School” but the goal would be to use the best aspects of the RCDS tradition as its academic model and the RCDS inspiration would be noted on the new campus.)

As we can see from the example of NYMA during this decade, that would require a large influx of liquid assets.  (I would estimate at least $10 million, mostly in cash with some high quality stocks and bonds as well to provide income.)  Hurdle number one is the same as the first headmaster wrote in 1961: where will the money come from?  Hurdle number two is how determined is the Town of Clarkstown board to get the property back on the tax rolls (assuming that they can find a developer willing to pay their price) or to keep the campus as an additional recreation site for their own residents.  Hurdle number three is outbidding anyone else who wants the property if it is put up for sale.

Even so, land and property, while not strictly fungible, can be found elsewhere if there are enough people with the vision to make it happen plus the ability to provide or find sufficient funding to make it happen.  And then it would remain to be seen if it could be run in a businesslike fashion without losing the special qualities that made RCDS so beloved by so many of its alumni.

There are 444 listed members of the Rockland Country Day School Alumni Group on Facebook (which is open to anyone who attended the school, even if they did not graduate, plus former faculty and staff).  Of that number, 65 have joined since the school announced its closing.  What can we do to keep that momentum going and accomplish something worthwhile with it?  The floor is open for suggestions.

Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. – Proverbs 29:18

God bless,

Lois

Death of a School – But Not Its Spirit – Part 2

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actuarial, administration, alumni, awards, bequests, Bill Irwin, boarding school, bonding, campus, capital asset, celebrities, Cherry Lawn School, Chinese, Community, Cornell, counterculture, Department of Education, development officer, donation, drugs, endowment, entrepreneurs, faculty, family, free education, Halsted School, irreverence, Jim Fyfe, land, life expectancy, Lower Hudson Valley, New York Military Academy, Niche, NYMA, Oakland Military Academy, operating expenses, planning, prep school, private school, professionals, progressive education, public school, RCDS, real estate sale, Rockland Country Day School, Rockland County, Scarborough, St. Mary's High School, St. Peter's School, suburbs, teacher, tuition, Tyne Daly, unprofessional, US News & World Report, vanity, wealth

While RCDS succeeded academically and in building connections between students, faculty and administrative staff, I look at some of the elements of the school that hindered its financial success. Even so, it outlasted a number of private schools (some day and some boarding) in the area. It may have also been hindered by diminishing advantages compared to the public school alternatives.

Public school improvement: It is difficult to compare, because either there were no ratings of public schools and school districts when RCDS was founded or those ratings were not archived.  What we know is that in recent years, public schools in Rockland have won awards and been well-ranked by independent groups or publications.  Since 2000, five elementary schools (two of them twice), one middle school and two high schools have received the Blue Ribbon School of Excellence Award from the U.S. Department of Education.  And since 2015, every public school district in Rockland except East Ramapo (the school district with a majority of students going to private schools, mostly yeshivas) has been ranked with an award or among the best by either U.S. News & World Report or Niche (formerly College Prowler).  RCDS was founded to provide a quality alternative to the public schools at that time.  If the quality of public education has risen to higher levels, it will be harder for parents to justify spending low five-figure tuition costs when their children can get good quality public school education for free.

RCDS culture: While there have been times when the mission of the school has been cloudy and there were different educational philosophies between the founders or board of trustees and the head of school, in general RCDS followed the country day school model of progressive education.  What varied over the years was whether the collegiate prep school element would be emphasized or the encouragement of student freedom to explore and develop model would be emphasized.  Both elements were present simultaneously regardless of the philosophy from the top down as faculty members varied in their approach.  I had teachers in each camp as well as those who tried to balance the two.  As a result at least based on the alumni I have known over the years and have recently reconnected with, there is a large dose of irreverence and counterculture among the alumni.  While there are a number of professionals (especially the medical profession) and entrepreneurs among the alumni, those who own their own businesses tend to have small businesses.  At least in my generation, there was a spirit of anti-materialism at RCDS.  And of course there was the drug culture.  Some who turned on, tuned in and dropped out didn’t drop very far back in.  The bottom line is that while there has been a profound outpouring of devotion to RCDS over the years, especially now that the school has announced its closing, for all these reasons it didn’t translate into a large amount of giving, certainly not enough to keep the school afloat.

Jim Fyfe

Borrowing a line from “A Tale of Two Cities”, RCDS was the best of schools and it was the worst of schools.  Or as Jim Fyfe (wearer of many hats, including former Trustee) put it at the school’s good bye event on 8/31, the best part of RCDS was also the worst part of RCDS.  It was a family.  The students, faculty and administration bonded like family.  But too often it was also run like a family, from the heart, not like a business.

Lack of endowment: When RCDS acquired the Pitkin farm, they had more land than they could use.  When I attended the spring musical/pajama party in 2017, I was sitting with a number of parents who didn’t realize that at one time, the school’s property extended all the way from Kings Highway to Lake DeForest.  Over time, some was sold off, whether for housing developments or Town athletic fields.  No doubt that was part of the original plan until the school could develop an endowment fund.  But the school ran out of land.  Perhaps the school could have sold off some more parcels rather than the entire campus, but the only one left of significant size would have meant losing its only remaining athletic field large enough to host a sport (and the baseball field, barely visible on Google Satellite, hadn’t been used in years).

The cash cow was used up and apparently all of it was used for operating expenses.  Using one’s capital assets for operating expenses is poor planning and partially based on wishful thinking that a rabbit can be pulled out of the hat in the future.  Like Bullwinkle, RCDS always had the wrong hat.  Whether past administrations got complacent because of the land sales or they tried and tried to build up an endowment but couldn’t because of current deficits, the end result is the same.  Without investment earnings on an endowment fund to supplement the income from tuition and fees, a school either needs to cut down on spending, increase enrollment or increase tuition (which usually is self-defeating unless the school was underpriced).

Part of the problem is actuarial.  Strange as it may seem, with increased longevity in the U.S., a school 60 years old is only now starting to see its earliest graduates reach the end of their life expectancy.  I’m not expecting to have a large estate unless something wonderful happens in the next few years, but I did include RCDS in my will for a significant percentage.  I’m sure others did, too.  That would be one source for an endowment fund if the school had the foresight and enough means to use it that way.  But until bequests from alumni start to come in, other sources have to be tapped.

Adrian Durant

Encouraging the more loyal and wealthy parents of students to include the school in their will would have been one way.  Appealing to vanity or a sense of community (plus advertising) is another.  Donate enough money and a building or the chairmanship of a department will be named after you or your company.  For example, Adrian Durant is not just a head coach at Cornell.  He is “The George Heekin ’29 Head Coach of Men’s Track and Field and Cross Country”.  While he was still alive, George donated enough money to Cornell that he was able to have them name the head coaching position of those teams after himself.  Presumably the income from that donation pays the salary of Adrian Durant, his predecessors and his successors.  If it would have put the school on a firm financial foundation, it would not have bothered me one bit to have the John Doe Chairman of the English Department, Mary Roe Children’s School Building or XYZ Corporation STEAM Lab.

I had a recent phone conversation with someone who attended RCDS when I was student but did not graduate.  She did not attend the 8/31 gathering.  She knew details about many of the school’s founders as well as parents of the students in the early years of the school.  She named 10-12 wealthy families associated with RCDS who could have easily established an endowment fund in the early years of the school.  There may have been more.  Some may have intended to but changed their mind as the students and school became more countercultural.  Some might have thought that their donations to buy the farm with excess land to sell off had been sufficient on their part.  No doubt some had different priorities for the bulk of their estates, or their fortunes changed or taxes ate up a significant portion of their holdings.  And perhaps some would have given much more if asked.  The facts of this matter have been lost to time.

NYMA Academic Building (c.1916 postcard)

RCDS is not alone in terms of private schools that closed in the Lower Hudson Valley and northern NYC suburbs.  A few years ago, I did an online search of the private schools that RCDS played in sports when I attended.  Roughly half of them have closed although one reopened.  I pitched against St. Peter’s School in Peekskill (NY) the year they closed in 1970.  Oakland Military Academy in New Windsor (NY) closed in 1972.  I remember throwing out a runner at home plate on the fly from right field in a game at their field in 1969.  A series of fires at Cherry Lawn School in Darien (CT) forced that school to close in 1972 due to declining enrollment (concerns about safety) and difficulty getting affordable insurance coverage.  I remember playing at their field and making a long running catch from second base into short right field, and then Peter Yang ’69 catching me to make sure I didn’t fall down.  Others that are no longer in business include Scarborough (Briarcliff Manor, NY; closed 1978), Halsted School (Yonkers, NY; closed 1983), St. Mary’s High School (Greenwich, CT; closed 1991).  New York Military Academy (aka NYMA, Cornwall, NY) was scheduled to close in June 2010 but alumni and local business leaders kept the school alive by raising $6 million in a matter of weeks and by planning to sell off underutilized portions of their campus.  It turned out to be a band aid.  Enrollment continued to decline, they failed to open in September 2015 and the school headed for the auction block.  The school was acquired by a non-profit corporation led by a Chinese national real estate mogul, reopened with a handful of students (both returning and recruited) that November, had 29 students the following academic year and has about 100 students now.  Only time will tell if the 130 year old school will continue to survive and even grow.

Tyne Daly

There was a time when celebrities connected to the school like Tyne Daly (first graduating class of ’63) and Bill Irwin (RCDS parent) would come to the school and headline a fundraiser.  At some point for whatever reason, I hadn’t seen anything like that in quite a while.

Other alums ask me “Didn’t the school do any planning?”  “Did RCDS have a development officer or hire a consultant on how to create an endowment?”  I was not on the inside and cannot answer those questions.  And even if the answer to some or all of those questions is yes, then the next question would be “Why was it ineffective?” Hopefully others more knowledgeable will be willing to supply answers.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. – Luke 14:28-30

God bless,

Lois

Death of a School – But Not Its Spirit (Part 1)

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academia, actor, Alan Jay Lerner, alma mater, alumni, baby boom, Broadway, celebrities, Clarkstown, Congers, Cornell, East Ramapo, firefighters, gentrification, Haitian, high school, Hispanic, Hollywood, junior high school, Kendall Pennypacker, maturing, New York City, Orthodox Jewish, police officers, power broker, prep school, prestigious, private school, professionals, professors, public school, RCDS, reverse migration, Rockland, Rockland Country Day School, Rockland County, South Nyack, suburban, Tappan Zee Bridge, Transgender, Transsexual, Ultra-Orthodox, yeshiva

On August 19, a little over two weeks before a new school year was supposed to start, my alma mater announced that their finances made it impossible to continue. They have closed their doors and declared bankruptcy.

No, I’m not talking about my college, Cornell.  That school is so large, well-endowed and supported by state government that it would take a collapse of civilization to threaten it with closure.

RCDS Pitkin Hall (Main Building)

I’m talking about the Rockland Country Day School in Congers, NY.  I went there from grades 6 through 12, the only grades it served at the time.  It was a bit of a culture shock for me at first when I went there.  I was from a family somewhere in the middle to lower-middle income range, one wage-earner, with typical values of that group.  I was entering a school populated by children of members of the entertainment and creative industries (actors, playwrights, musicians, producers, photographers, cartoonists), academics (Ivy League professors), and professionals (doctors, dentists, architects, stockbrokers, attorneys).  They had been exposed to so much more than I had when I started school there in September 1963.

At the same time as I was making that adjustment, entering a school that covered grades 6 through 12 brought my gender issues front and center for the first time.  Sure I knew that little kids got older and matured.  With a brother five years older, I saw his friends in small groups and even played sports with them on occasion (and held my own, thank you).  Going from a school that was K-6 to a school that was 6-12, suddenly I had panoramic view of the maturing process of the preteen through late teen years.  I didn’t like what I saw.  And I didn’t hear about anyone saying that they were going to change gender once they became adults.  Homosexuality was rarely talked about.  Transsexuals weren’t even on the radar.

But once I became acclimated, I caught up and thrived there.  I didn’t get into Cornell because I was cute.  I got good grades and good scores on standardized tests.  Out of boredom with a teacher who taught only to the middle of the class, my performance in public school started to suffer in 5^th grade (same year when it did for my brother) and my parents seized the opportunity to enroll me when one of my public school classmates announced that he would be going there next year.

Based on the remarks I have heard from alumni who graduated from there both before and after me, there are many of us who have fond memories of RCDS.  As sad as it is that the school is closing, it is equally sad that it took something like this to bring the alumni closer together.

The first Tappan Zee Bridge under construction

In a strange way, the school is closing pretty much the way it started.  It was supposed to open its doors in September 1958.  They hired a headmaster and were preparing to begin this brand new experiment in education in Rockland County.  There was only one problem.  They kept waiting for the new headmaster to show up to lead the way.  He never did.  Parents had to tell their children, many of them disappointed, that they would be going back to public school that September.

But the group that started the school was undaunted.  They had a vision to provide a better quality of education for their children without having to send them away to boarding school.  The found a new candidate to serve as the first headmaster, Kendall Pennypacker.  This man arrived with his wife, Ruth, who was the school librarian for many years.  The school began in September 1959 with just a few grades in a house in South Nyack, not far from the same Tappan Zee Bridge that had brought a population boom to Rockland County and made it a little easier for people to commute to New York City, turning the county from rural to suburban.

Alan Jay Lerner

Within a few years, the school received enough donations, Alan Jay Lerner being principal donor, to purchase a plot of land in Congers that was known as the Pitkin farm.  It had been home to one of the first women medical doctors in the United States.  I won’t go into detail about some of the strange things that were found when the school took position of the property.  Suffice it to say that the cleanup and transformation of the farm house and other buildings on the premises into classrooms, a library, an art studio and science labs took longer than expected.  Before the school could be ready for classes that year, everyone (faculty, teachers and students) pitched in to put the finishing touches on the place.  (A member of the class of ’67, someone whose father won five Tony awards, told me that it was her job to paint some of the baseboards.  As one of the younger students at the time, they gave her a job she wouldn’t have a problem reaching!)

Similar to the 1958-59 misfire for the start of RCDS, the school has ended in a similar way.  The latest information given to the press was that the parents were told in May that there was a possibility that the school might not continue in September.  But then they were assured in June that the school was committed to moving forward another year.  This time it wasn’t the head of school leaving that scuttled things.  Current Head of School, Jocelyn Feuerstein, was working every angle she could to find a way to keep the school in operation until the cavalry arrived.  But it didn’t arrive.  The Board of Trustees deemed in mid-August that the school’s finances did not warrant keeping the school open.  The chances were too great in their view that they might start the year and have to close down in mid-year, unable to pay the bills.  That would have made it even more difficult for teachers to find new jobs and students to move to new schools.  Two and a half weeks gave very little time, but at least there is some.

There are short-term reasons and long-term reasons that led to the school’s demise.  First the short-term:

• Declining enrollment which meant declining income.
• The sale of the campus to the Town of Clarkstown in early 2018 didn’t save as much money and help finances as expected.
• Negotiations with the Town for more favorable lease terms failed.
• A number of students who were supposed to attend in 2019-20, pulled out at the last minute, lowering enrollment revenue even further. Some sources indicated that many were international students who presumably (based on country of origin) were making significant tuition payments, but some local parents concerned because of the May announcement also found alternatives.
• Efforts to raise funds in the 11^th hour from alumni, local businesses, by attracting new students, or to get Clarkstown to reconsider the lease amount were all unsuccessful. Although that May letter had gone out, the reassurance made in June made the board reluctant to send out appeals for donations in any kind of a panic “save RCDS from dying” mode.  And so it has come to an end.

The long-term reasons require a longer explanation.  They are far more complex.  They are also just one person’s analysis.  But this one person has talked to a number of people, has a mind good enough to get into RCDS, Cornell and Mensa, and brings some professional skills to the table.

Hollywood, or more precisely Hollywood becoming more and more the center of the entertainment industry compared to New York City:  Yes, there is still Broadway theater and there are a few studios in NYC, but in general the stars of Broadway don’t have the same celebrity status they had 50-60 years ago.  The exceptions tend to be those who are on hiatus from filmmaking.  Lesser box office appeal would tend to translate to less relative income, meaning less ability to live in the suburbs and send their children to an expensive private school.

Gentrification of New York City: After years of flight from the city, it started to become the in place to be again.  Converted industrial building lofts in Soho and Tribeca became trendy.  As one indicator of how demand changed, a brownstone in a depressed neighborhood like Fort Greene that sold for $20,000 in the mid-1970’s couldn’t be touched for under a million dollars 20-25 years later.  As bus and rail service and transportation terminals became more crowded and dilapidated, the commute became more dreaded than urban life, especially as New York City started to get cleaned up and revitalized.  Stockbrokers, ad executives, publishing executives, college professors and others who had been part of the professional group that supported RCDS were leaving the county in reverse migration.  The supportive community was shrinking and becoming less close-knit.

Demographics: Who moved in to replace the people who moved out?  The population of Rockland County has increased in every census, except for the 1920 census.  While growth was heaviest in the 1950’s and 60’s, there are about 100,000 more people living in Rockland now that the nearly 230,000 counted in the 1970 census (the year I graduated high school).  While much of Rockland was still rural before the completion of the Tappan Zee Bridge and the Palisades Parkway to link the county by limited access road to the George Washington Bridge, it is now the third most densely populated county in New York State outside of New York City (behind Nassau and Westchester).

Ramapo HS (NY)

One group that has moved in heavily is the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish population.  6.3% of Rockland households speak either Yiddish or Hebrew at home.  31.4% (~90,000 households) of the county’s population is Jewish, many of them school age children, making them the largest per capita Jewish county in the United States.  At one time, the Jewish population was well represented at RCDS.  At least 12 of my graduating class of 30 identified as Jewish.  But the large Jewish population now has given rise to a large number of Yeshivas.  This is where many Jewish students now go to school.  East Ramapo Central School District is one of only three school districts in the United States where more students go to private school than public schools.  While some go to Catholic schools or nonsectarian schools, this is true throughout Rockland.  The difference in East Ramapo is the large number of Yeshivas.  This is a large group of students who are not candidates to go to RCDS.

Another group that is heavily represented in Rockland is those who are in the public service sector, mainly police officers and firefighters.  There are always exceptions, but generally their children are more likely to go to public schools.  The Hispanic and Haitian residents of the county also generally go to public schools.  13.2% of the county’s households speak Spanish, French Creole or French at home.

There is still a large group of students who would have been possible candidates for RCDS.  But on a percentage basis, it is probably smaller than when the school was founded.  There is also a trend towards more prestigious colleges (while small liberal arts colleges are declining) and in turn more prestigious prep schools.  Many parents and students are looking for the route to becoming Wall Street wizards, real estate tycoons and other power brokers.  A well-rounded education starting in high school doesn’t cut it.  This may be another reason so many local students in the lower grades didn’t continue on to high school and graduation.  And there is another trend that is affecting the candidate pool for the school. It will be discussed in the next post.

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; – Ecclesiastes 3:2

God bless,

Lois