Furious father removes his kids from NYC’s $62k-a-year Browning School after spat over $1 million donation and claims it has ‘degenerated into a morass of dysfunction, misfeasance and unfairness’

A father who has sent his sons to New York City’s Browning School for years has withdrawn in fury and accused the school’s woke new leadership of trying to stiff him out of an extra $60,000 in donations. The parent sent an outraged email to the Board of Trustees in which he resigned and fumed about the leadership. He also suggested that the school retaliated against his sons with baseless disciplinary actions when he withdrew his charitable giving. The Browning School has not yet responded to his claims. In his email, the father said: ‘After an aggregate 25 years of three boys attending the school, seven years of board service and more than $1.5 million spent on tuition and donations, we are sending our sons elsewhere and discontinuing all ties. Browning has degenerated into a morass of dysfunction, misfeasance and unfairness. Those are serious words, and I use them carefully – as a parent and fiduciary.’

He claims that in the fall of 2022, after pledging $1 million to the school, he tried to give the remaining $651,400 after already gifting $348,000 the previous year. The school’s leaders told him that he in fact owed $710,000, according to the father, who has not been named publicly, but whose email appeared on NYC Private School Watch – an Instagram page which chronicles the escalating issues in Manhattan’s most expensive and elite institutions. When he raised the issue with head of school John Botti (pictured), the father says Botti assured him he would follow up ‘right away,’ but that he heard nothing afterwards. He says he decided to withdraw his financial support there and then out of concern for the school’s ‘poor bookkeeping.’

In the months that followed, he claims the school launched unwarranted disciplinary action against his sons, who had never been in trouble before. When the family tried to investigate the matters, he claims Botti refused to meet with them and instead insisted on communicating via attorneys. ‘We understand we are among several Browning families this year, spanning multiple grades, who had to hire attorneys. This is due, in part, to a disastrous inability to hire, retain or supervise competent heads of, at least, the middle and upper schools,’ he said.

It is the latest issue in a string of episodes for Browning. The famously all-boys school was founded in 1888 to educate brothers Percy and John D. Rockefeller. Now, it is facing criticism for changing its policy to allow children ‘who identify as boys’ to apply. ‘As a school that proudly celebrates and affirms boys at every stage of their lives, we acknowledge that the many ways in which gender can be lived and expressed are vastly different now than at our founding in 1888,’ a recent letter to parents read. Read the full story: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12292361/Outraged-NYC-father-rails-against-NYCs-Browning-School.html?ito=msngallery

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