Whittle School
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Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
Hi infantile! Look up the lifestyle of Chinese princelings in Vancouver and the backlash it created, both in Canada and in China. Not everyone is as ignorant as you are. And not everyone who knows a bit more is a racist. |
Anonymous
Charter schools are FREE. Different customer Parents who have 50K / kid a year to burn have that money for a reason and Dc Privates are a social climbing vehicle for them. Whittle offers them Zero in that regard |
Anonymous
The PP’s point about lack of financial motivation is an interesting one.. I also cannot get my head around the math unless the investors / nation state backers / quasi government investment arms care little about financial returns... Rental rates in the Georgetown area average between $46 and $54 per sq/ft (https://www.squarefoot.com/dc/washington/office-space)! Given the size of the building, that implies well over $30 million a year to the landlord, and that’s before expenses for faculty, staff, electricity, transportation, catering, recreation. It will take a lot of undiscounted tuition paying kids or financial backers who are content to keep pouring money in to to cover those kinds of expenses |
Anonymous
| Well, it’s not in Geiorgetown. But, the point is broadly correct. It’s a virtual certainty that they had to put up tens of millions as a deposit before getting the lease. No commercial real estate owner is going to take any kind of risk on Whittle, so the securitization had to be intense and cash heavy. Again, only a nation state or irrational investor (seeking alpha through something other than money) would even consider it. |
Anonymous
The silver lining is that no one can accuse them of being for-profit  
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Anonymous
| Anyone have updates on their "very brief" delay that won't impact the opening? |
Anonymous
The standard process for getting a demo permit takes 5-6 months in the normal course.. Given that they were flouting requirements and were working without the correct permits in place, I cannot imagine their retroactive application will be fast tracked... Seems like some aggressive spin to claim it is a “brief delay”. Brief in the cosmic sense perhaps |
Anonymous
Given the level of corruption in DC politics, I wouldn't be surprised if Whittle opened as scheduled, and with a 30-story-high skycraper tower imported from China. |
Anonymous
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Sticking to the story of opening on September 5. Would anyone like to buy a bridge I have for sale?
https://www.foresthillsconnection.com/news/neighborhood-in-the-news-whittle-school-expects-to-be-punctual-rock-n-roll-burger-king-still-here/ |
Anonymous
 +1
The operator in question here has a long track record of big promises and under / no performance. A brief google search reveals a lot.. |
Anonymous
No but they probably have one to sell to you
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Anonymous
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I was at the information session today and asked some basic questions about corporate structure, financial transparency, identification of investors and mechanisms for accountability that one finds with all non-profit and public school systems. The administrators said that Whittle was a private company and that they would not provide this information (specifically financial statements and the identity of investors) to prospective parents. Then a staff member sitting in the audience quickly posed unrelated questions changing the subject and shut down the discussion. It's clear that they feel very sensitive and vulnerable about these issues and do not have meaningful answers. These are basic relevant questions any prospective parent should ask and information which the school should be willing to provide openly, especially because it is a start-up and with close ties to China.
I was also informed that enrollment is currently less than 200 families with hopes of having only one class per grade level this year. By any standard, that situation does not bode well for early students at the school. In general, all I saw was a large group of over qualified administration consultant types in very nice clothes and fancy offices, bragging about all of their advanced degrees and trying to sell a very expensive and speculative pie in the sky deal. None of them had any experience in starting or running a successful, for profit school system. There were no teachers present. And there are no classrooms ready for the coming school year. On the bright side, they said that they will fly their teachers from DC and China to Switzerland this summer for a week of training how to teach kids one-on-one. Sounds like a nice trip! |
Anonymous
| I wish I cared enough to show up for the meetings and ask the very same questions. How awkward and nefarious sounding. I’m certain that this ends with unhappy parents and probably some folks in cuffs and stripes. Just not sure if it’s a Ponzi scheme, some kind of foreign intervention, a Chris Whittle self-enrichment gig or, more likely, all of the above. Can’t wait for Alex Gibney to do a documentary. |
Anonymous
Every time someone mentions race =/= racism Princelings in China is a thing, and obviously to be called a princeling would put you in a spoiled category. |