By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-14 12:50:59 | Updated at 2024-12-14 16:52:49
4 hours ago
A couple who shelled out more than $1.1 million to send their three daughters to a posh Upper East Side private school that counts Jennifer Aniston among its alumni were aghast when administrators had the gall to hire public school teachers — and are demanding a refund.
The Rudolf Steiner School made “multiple false promises” according to a suit filed by parents Deighn and Ying Eliason, who enrolled their kids in the East 79th Street school more than a decade ago — and then yanked them because the specialized education they paid for was allegedly not delivered.
The $56,000-a-year school “knowingly hired public school teachers who had no Waldorf education certification or Waldorf education background, and never served as assistant teachers for the minimum two years as promised,” the couple alleged in their Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.
A Waldorf-style education emphasizes the arts, limits the use of technology in younger grades and pledges the same teacher will follow students from elementary to eighth grade.
About 1,000 schools in 60 different countries offer a Waldorf education, according to the Sunbridge Institute, the Chestnut Ridge, NY facility which helps certify Waldorf teachers. The educational philosophy was launched nearly a century ago by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner.
The problem of non-Waldorf certified teachers at the Manhattan school was worse in nursery and kindergarten, where the school “knowingly hired its own students’ parents . . . to be lead teachers, contended the Eliasons, who appear to work in the fashion industry.
“This problem became so pervasive that on at least one occasion the School’s executive director had to intervene when it involved her own child’s class,” claimed the Eliasons.
With one of their daughters in the same class, the couple watched as one non-Waldorf qualified teacher left, only to see a second one installed before the director finally replaced them with a Waldorf-certified educator, they said.
The expensive school costs more than $55,000 a year. Helayne Seidman“By then, however, the students were extremely far behind,” according to the couple’s court papers.
The couple was quick to insist that they don’t “challenge any of these teachers’ abilities to teach generally.”
“However, the Eliasons agreed to pay the school over a million dollars based on specific representations about the credentials and qualifications of the girls’ teachers,” they said in court papers.
They pulled their children from Steiner before the 2023-2024 school year and demanded a refund — but not only did the school refuse, administrators demanded a $64,000 payment, the couple said.
“Out of respect for the legal process and the privacy of our students, families, faculty, and staff, we are unable to comment on the specifics of this case at this time,” the school said in a statement. “We can share that we strongly disagree with the assertions made in the complaint and are fully committed to vigorously defending against these claims.”
