For anyone who hasn’t opened their email for the past couple of months, I regret to inform you that the very institution that owns this website was recently subject to a write-up by the infamous New York Post, a tabloid known for its rather unfortunate headlines like “Doomed: Pushed on the subway track, this man is about to die.”
Recently, our very own school was featured in an article titled “Elite NYC private schools are owned by ‘Chinese Communist Party-linked boss.’” As the first sentence reveals, the article claims that elite NYC schools are owned by a Chinese Communist Party linked-boss, which means “A group of elite private schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn are owned by a company headed by an executive who has been named as a one-time senior member of the Chinese Communist Party who keeps close ties to it.” As someone who passed a fourth-grade English class at one of the very institutions to whom this quote is referring, I am struck by the expert use of punctuation in this sentence every time I read it. When put in comprehensive English, this sentence is telling us that the company that owns the schools, Primavera Capital, is headed by such an executive, not the schools themselves.
After casually mentioning our school was ranked among the best college prep schools in private school rankings, the article establishes that a spokesperson for the Primavera Capital Group denied the allegations being made and specifically states that “the schools do not acknowledge the communist link.” The article then added that a source with knowledge of the schools said “there is nothing covert or clandestine” about them, and that “Primavera does not set the curriculum.”
After the Post reporter provides some background on a movement against two seemingly unrelated schools in Florida by Governor Ron DeSantis’ education department, which is also known for banning sexual orientation and gender identity in the name of ‘parental rights’, the grand connection to the New York BASIS Independent Schools is revealed: “In New York City, Mandarin is on the curriculum, and was before the Communist-backed purchase.” Additional damning evidence is provided: “Students participate in Lunar New Year celebrations, learn Chinese calligraphy and painting and analyze Chinese movies.” So, to recap the evidence: the schools are owned by a company headed by an executive that denies all claims, Florida Governor DeSantis went after two schools owned by Primavera entirely unrelated to the New York BASIS Independent campuses, and the BASIS Independent Schools themselves teach the second most spoken language in the world while also celebrating other world cultures — and have been doing so before any affiliation with Primavera Capital. Truly, evidence so concrete it rivals even the rock-solid proof that the earth is flat.
They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, and as of reading this article, I agree. The general feedback on the post is mostly people defending our BASIS Independent Schools, although I’d be remiss not to mention the intermittent conspiracy theories that plague the comments. All in all, my greatest takeaways are that they specifically called us one of the top private schools, and the very title of the article says BASIS is “Elite”, so this is a win in my books.
