All the lovely people have silently lined up scampering around Omnicold protocol. N95’s! Bah. Booster!! Baah. Annual fund!!! Baaah. Strategic plan!!!! Baaaah. More zoom school!!!!! Baaaaah.
Independent X School’s Board of Trustees is meeting to rubber stamp a tuition increase even as school days are being cancelled over Omnicold under the guise of “inclement weather” days. The Brandon Admin does not have a monopoly on shrinkflation. After multiple covid tests in our first week back, announcements of N95’s for all, and “pivoting” to zoom, the more we pay the less we get is making even our most progressive virtue signaling friends at Chapin and Crossroads nuts.
It’s All About The Bucks, Kid
How high should headmasters’ salaries be? Every year headmasters’ salaries increase after being artificially compared to peer NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) schools who also artificially increase headmaster salaries after campaigns by Carney Sandoe and NAIS search firms incentivized with a cut of headmasters’ salaries. Have teacher salaries been increased proportionally? How many DEI and SEL staff and consultants have been added? As tuition rises each year, are our children learning as much at Independent X School as 5 years ago? Are matriculation rates as strong?
The more tuition increases, the fewer the number of families who can afford tuition, the more tuition needs to increase, and the more the few families who can afford tuition need to pay for increased financial aid. The “independent school middle class” is squeezed out and Independent X School is even more economically and socially stratified. Very equitable and inclusive, right? Even NAIS admitted in a surprising moment of honesty in Episode 20 of its podcast The Trustee Table that tuition prices are becoming a barrier to a well-rounded student body.
Tuition does not even take into account the additional and increasing fees for lunch, books, trips, instruments, sports uniforms, and even crayons. The $5.99 kid’s meal at California Pizza Kitchen includes crayons but $60K doesn’t? Should we just be satisfied the disdain with which our administration treats us is on the house? If we had an Ethereum for every time the administration was recorded calling parents Nazis or insurrectionists! (Here’s looking at you American School in London and Rodney Glasgow.)
Blue Horse Shoe Loves Anacott Steel
In reality, the increase in tuition is used to subsidize the DEI Industrial Complex and simultaneously dismantle private schools. Why else would Independent X School send teachers and our own children to NAIS POCC & SDLC (People of Color Conference, Student Leadership Diversity Conference) for 5 days to construct CRT curricula then claim CRT is not taught in Independent X School? Why would NAIS try to conceal the contents of its own conference that is supposed to be shared with teachers and others to teach our children?
Don’t worry – we have over a hundred hours of NAIS POCC video archived. The kimono is wide open for all to see! Read more on The Post Millenial and Legal Insurrection. (List of December 2021 NAIS POCC workshops, equity seminars)
This Is Really A Nice Club, Mr. Gekko
We all know the Board is a prestige seat, a country club membership. We all know the trustee whose non-legacy subpar children get into Stanford and Harvard because of her seat on the Board. We all know trustees are only appointed – through an opaque social network, for the stature of the school to fundraise. We all know the Board is tacit pay-to-play even for Murdochs and Pritzkers who don’t even need it. We all know the Board is filled with people who want to revel in the feeling that they’ve made it along with All the Lovely People such that they do not want or feel that they can speak up.
But maybe you do not know that Independent X School’s Board of Trustees does not function as a usual board. They do not have open discussion or engage in disagreement in order to make the best decisions. They do not adhere to a real prohibition on conflicts of interest. (Raise your hand if Independent X School is using covid tests supplied by a company associated with a trustee. How many bids did the board compare? Who is footing the bill?) They do not meet without the headmaster. They do not know what is happening at Independent X School except what the headmaster is telling them. They sure as hell do not know the vast time and resources spent sending teachers to present or attend the NAIS POCC only for NAIS to try to stop the public from seeing its teachings.
It was not always that way.
The Most Valuable Commodity I Know Of Is Information
It’s not entirely trustees’ fault. Trustees were castrated by design. With subtly revised Principles of Good Practice, NAIS has systematically eroded trustees’ understanding of their own capacity and authority throughout the years. With the help of search firm Carney Sandoe, NAIS has groomed and installed headmasters who follow its edicts. With the Institute for New Heads, NAIS has trained headmasters in dealing with trustees and parents. NAIS has advised headmasters to pick individuals whom they believe will champion the headmaster above all else. NAIS has written the playbook, and Independent X School’s headmaster has been following it to the tee.
Consultant Martha Haakmat instructs headmasters to dismiss any trustee who expresses disagreement with the Cult of Wokism just as headmasters tell parents who disagree they can leave Independent X School. (Hear: Full quote) While the DEI Industrial Complex is replete with grifters, Haakmat’s client list reveals schools (and organizations like NAIS) take her advice.
But Independent X School’s Board of Trustees is still a real and usual board with legal duties under federal 501(c)(3) laws. Regardless of any belief of their impotence, trustees must still fulfill their duties of care, loyalty, and obedience to the Institution of Independent X School, not to the headmaster or NAIS. Independent X School was founded 30, 70, 300 years ago. It never needed NAIS before and does not need it now. If trustees don’t educate themselves and start taking their fiduciary duties seriously, they will be held accountable.
Life All Comes Down To A Few Moments. This Is One Of Them.
Trustees: We know NAIS has tried to castrate you, but you don’t have to be a eunuch. You can be a hero. Was it Carl Jung who said – the degradation of a society begins at the moral degradation of an individual, but the moral improvement of a society begins at the improvement of an individual. Undercover Trustee, you can make a difference by standing up and speaking out. Be a hero to whom it matters the most. Be a hero to your children.
If you do, we stand with you. If you don’t, you will be held accountable.
First step – No New Tuition.
Shits and Giggles Corner
Street data. Not grammar, not math. That’s white supremacy! Instead, teachers should learn street data from children to change the world. Well, we don’t know about you, but we cannot believe we spent our lives reading history and directing foundations, when all we needed to solve genocide, hunger, and disease is street data!
But even before learning proper street data, NAIS encourages even more self-care.
A few more weeks of zoom school before more fake holidays is no biggie, right?
Pissed off? Join Undercover Mother.
