To the Editor:

I am on the mailing list of Poughkeepsie Day School (PDS), and as such, I received an open letter from the Board of Trustees which delivered some sad and alarming news. In short, it announced that the PDS would not be opening this fall because of their dire financial situation and that the school’s overall future is in doubt. The letter went on to say that a valiant attempt will be made under new direction to find a way to reorganize and try to continue in the future.

This notice reinforced my belief that the premise of having privately funded day schools is a very precarious endeavor. I can personally attest to the superior education and experience obtained at PDS by relatives of mine. I have no issue there.

Citizens of moderate means could not and would not afford the full cost of sending their children to quality private schools. Society will have to acknowledge that there is a value and need to finance a higher standard of education than can be provided by the public schools. In fact, I believe such an extension of public schools would be strongly in the national interest. Financing an individual’s attendance would likely have to come in the form of scholarships funded by industry or government or privately endowed to provide for intellectually elite students.

But absent this, the perceived need to provide a higher standard of education invites entities that are not well qualified to attempt to start and run such institutions to put together ill-prepared or conceived financial plans to do so. Many of these shoestring plans are doomed to fail in the long run because the true, sustainable cost of providing this level of education is hardly bearable by the ultimate consumer.

Here’s an idea for the future. Society should abandon the political parties because their record of late is that they cannot come up with electable candidates for office at any level that have the needed education or intellectual capacity to make good, important decisions. We have many elected officials (you can name many of them) who are obviously in it for their own wealth, power, or simply, ego. Witness those that have openly rejected the entire scientific and intellectual community’s opinions, proven knowledge, and advice, and embraced, instead, the “shopping generation” in their quest for voting endorsements. Instead, we might take a sizable portion of the money spent on political campaigns, and redirect it to financing the adequate education of our future intellectual resources (and candidates?). Just an idea...

I wish the Board at PDS and many other private schools the best of success in coming up with viable plans for staying in existence and urge them to make their financial plan to be the most important aspect of their endeavor. The education plan at PDS in the recent past seems to be spot on, in my view.

Harry Schmus

33 Woods Lane, Newtown July 6, 2020