He said they made the decision late Thursday after learning that a critical financing deal had been delayed.
The decision leaves students, teachers and staff in Washington scrambling just weeks before the next school year.
“It is devastating to me to report to you this news …” Whittle wrote in a letter to families. “I know the commitment all of you have made to the school in the past four and a half years since we announced our opening here; the immense inconvenience this entails for your families; and how patient everyone has been as we have all suffered through this terrible time together. Similarly, the Whittle team has invested 7.5 years since the day we began planning the Washington campus and this comes as a severe disappointment to them too.”
He said by phone Friday that they would work to find other schools for students in Washington, and jobs for staff members either overseas or domestically. They also hope to have some Washington-based summer, evening, weekend and other programs separate from the full-time school.
The Whittle School launched with a September 2019 opening in the Chinese coastal city of Shenzhen, followed days later by the debut of a Northwest Washington campus in a neighborhood full of embassies and private schools. The school on Connecticut Avenue hoped to one day serve 2,000 day and boarding students, ranging in age from prekindergarten through high school, with a tuition of more than $40,000 a year.
It ended this school year with fewer than 130 students and 14 graduating seniors.
Whittle said the endeavor was upended by the coronavirus pandemic, as travel, in-person learning and cultural exchanges were suspended and financing faltered.
The school also faced what Whittle called regulatory drama in China, with changes to the way private schools are organized and funded.
Whittle has said the pandemic derailed or delayed other expansion efforts, resulting in the school losing $100 million in investments — more than a third of what he had been counting on.
Days before Christmas of last year, with the school late in sending paychecks to employees, Whittle asked for emergency financial help from investors, friends and families. Parents helped to cover the payroll.
Others pulled their children out of the school, tired of the uncertainty.
Whittle told The Post earlier this spring that $30 million in loans and investments had kept the D.C. campus running.
Still, the financial problems continued. In the letter to families, Whittle said the decline in the stock market and rising interest rates, “delayed transactions to replenish our capital position,” in Washington. “Any single one of the above challenges could have pulled the DC campus under but the combination of them has simply proved too much for us to navigate here in DC,” he wrote.
In the past month, legal troubles further complicated its financial outlook. Washington Business Journal reported that owners of the Van Ness building sued in June to evict the company for allegedly failing to pay millions of dollars in real estate taxes and rent.
When the Whittle School launched, officials envisioned a common faculty serving students in multiple cities worldwide with a curriculum focused on experiential learning and foreign languages. Whittle talked of opening 36 campuses in 15 countries in the years to come.
Whittle’s campus in Shenzhen will remain open, and they plan to launch another campus in China in the fall, he said, as well as work toward a future campus in Europe.
He said officials hoped to generate revenue to repay parents at the D.C. school.
“Parents have been very helpful in the last several months as these financing efforts were delayed,” he said in a phone interview. “Parents helped us a great deal.”
He wrote that “all of us are sad beyond words about this result.”
Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report.
Read More:Whittle suspends operations at D.C. school after financial problems
2022-07-09 02:26:00
