As I read this story Sunday, I kept flipping back to the front page to make sure I was reading the Business section of the NY Times and not The Onion. The story has the tone of deadpan absurdity perfected by The Onion’s faux news. Yep, it was the Times. The story is written by Robert Frank, who is the CNBC wealth editor (really, that’s his title). He also wrote “Richistan,” which exposed the ways of the wealthy, so maybe he had tongue planted firmly in cheek as he wrote this seemingly laudatory story. Or maybe not.
I recommend you stop reading this post, link to the story, A High School Where a Student Might Letter in Polo, and read the whole thing. Honestly, I can’t do it justice. But let me give it a try.
William I. Koch, the sports/playboy billionaire brother of the famed David and Charles “Koch Brothers,” put up $60 million to open a private high school so his children had a school they could attend near his Palm Beach, Florida, home. (Thoughtful dad. How people are willing to pony up $60 million for their children’s educations?) Tuition is a hefty $25,000 a year, though I’m guessing if William was asked about increasing spending for public schools, he’d say money doesn’t matter and complain about people who want to “throw money at schools.”
Here’s a wonderful stat from the story about the growing education spending gap.
High-income families now spend, on average, seven times as much each year on education as lower-income families, up from four times as much in the 1970s, according to one study. From 2007 through 2011, while the broader economy was weak, enrollment at private schools with tuition averaging $28,340 jumped 36 percent, according to federal data.
Polo wasn’t part of the original curriculum. It began as an attempt to serve the needs of one student who was a competitive polo player. The school started the program so he wouldn’t have to miss so much school. Really, isn’t that what a good education is all about, meeting the needs of your students?
And please, don’t call the polo program elitist. About 40 percent of the school’s students get some financial aid— though the story doesn’t say how much—and a third of the high schoolers are “students of color”—though it doesn’t say what color. School administrators have a ready answer to counter the “elitist” charge:
And contrary to the image of polo as the rarefied pastime of global playboys, with Champagne-soaked matches on the lawns of the Hamptons or Saint-Tropez, and $100,000 ponies, school officials say Oxbridge’s polo team will serve as a great democratizer, bringing children of different economic backgrounds together in an effort to expand the sport.
“The perception is that polo is only for the elite,” said Oxbridge’s president and chief executive, Robert C. Parsons. “It’s not that way at all. It’s really about helping kids discover passions they never knew they could have.”
According to the school, the sport isn’t especially expensive, especially compared to the 1,500 seat, $1.2 million dollar football stadium on campus which has “the same synthetic turf used in the Buffalo Bills’ stadium.” (Meanwhile, the local school district had to postpone buying school equipment and fixing the roofs because of budget problems.) Polo helmets may cost $500 each, and boots $500 a pair, but the school uses off campus facilities for the training. The place where the students learn “basic riding, hunting, jumping and dressage,” is called Wall Street farm.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2015.
I can certainly see how the ability to competitively play polo and learn to care for polo ponies is an important part of learning how to run major international corporations. I wonder how many of the “students of color” were born in the U.S.A. or have parents who are/were diplomats. The rich are very different from the rest of us. One of those $500 helmets is probably good for the local kids playing football also. (snark)
These same brothers are funding every governor in the U.S. who is gutting public education. I think it is pretty clear what the Koch brothers are all about.
Does Arizona spend $10 billion a year to educate K-12 students? If yes, how is that gutting?
So what? What does Salpointe cost?
Does Salpointe have polo fields yet?
Here is a summary Grandma Suzy of the budget. The simplest I can tell you is the whole Arizona budget is 9.1 billion, so 10 billion for education is not even close. K-12 netted -112. million (close… extreme lack of transparency from the governor so hard to be exact) . We spend a lot on tax cuts for the wealthy, and private prisons. Education is not a priority for this governor. Here is the budget for your perusal. http://www.arizonaea.org/home/572.htm
We are 50th in the nation in what we spend on education. There are many links to find that.
Gee, does Salpointe have polo fields? No, but what it DOES have is families like many other families who have chosen the cost of a private education while still paying into a public education fund through taxes. The same for the other prep schools in the area and around the nation. But most of that is lost on people who only see the stupid headline and don’t look beyond.
Somewhere in the US there is a state, county or community that is the last at something. But are we/they the last at everything? What is our graduation rate despite our ignominious funding position? Are we making the best of what we have or continuously whining about what we DON’T have? If you’re whining how are you helping the problem?
I guess having money and playing a sport like polo is a mortal sin…..shame on us. Let’s all default to football, basketball, soccer and baseball. Political correctness uber alles.
PS David, why don’t you simply advocate seizing the horses and selling them to dog food companies? Obviously it’s a sin to have money and that money should be confiscated by the state and spent by bureaucrats in the best interests of other bureaucrats.