For-Profit Private School Is Calling Its Own Shots

Jenny Anderson:

Here are a few of the ways that Ronald P. Stewart, co-founder and headmaster of the York Preparatory School, thinks his school is different from other New York City private schools:

It has no board of directors ("why would I hire someone who could fire me?"). It accepts more than half the students who apply ("we do not seek to be the most exclusive school in Manhattan"). And after York takes $36,000 or more from parents each year, Mr. Stewart has no qualms about telling them to back off. "The student is our client," he says.

Even the school's origin is evidence that it is a different species. While many schools have century-old histories that began with educational or religious visionaries, Mr. Stewart, a British barrister who once defended Charles Kray, an infamous London mobster, founded the school with his wife because they wanted to work together and have their summers free to spend at a camp in Maine.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 30, 2012 1:25 AM
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