For the past decade, Paul Rossi has worked in education, but in the past year, the 53-year-old Queens resident has been getting some niche requests. Well-off private school parents are coming to him for advice on how to navigate the city’s increasingly woke schools.
Families pay him $150/hour for help finding private schools with what he calls “traditional, individualistic values.”
A dad moving to Illinois sought out Rossi’s services earlier this year when searching for a school for his two kids where the emphasis would be on critical thinking, not blindly adhering to supposedly liberal ideas about diversity and identity. Rossi analyzed mission statements for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts, examined health and sex ed courses, looked up teachers’ backgrounds and examined school websites.
“Are they talking about implicit bias — about how students have implicit bias — and are they expected to examine the bias?” Rossi said of his methods. “That’s a red flag.”
As private schools become increasingly focused on identity politics, some skeptical parents are paying thousands of dollars to hire private consultants to find institutions that are more in line with their values, or to help them communicate effectively with administrators about thorny issues and divisive topics.
“Kids are feeling like they can’t speak openly about their views and parents are noticing the toll it’s taking,” another education consultant and admissions coach, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Post. “They don’t agree with the ideologies being forced down their children’s throat,” said the consultant, who works with families in Manhattan and the tri-state area and charges up to $3,000 for a project fee.
“They’re teaching their kids certain values at home and they’re taught a different set of rules at school,” the consultant said, adding that clients have found them on a word-of-mouth basis.
It’s not just conservative white families who are seeking out these professionals. A parent of a black child enrolled in an elite private Manhattan school recently hired Rossi. The parent needed help navigating a conversation with administrators about not using their child for what Rossi said the parent called “woke tokenism.”
“The parent was concerned that their child’s blackness or black identity was going to be formed by the school in such a way that their child was going to develop an oppressed identity that was going to be part of their character,” Rossi said, noting the client was able to address these concerns with the school, and the child remains there.
One Manhattan mom of three said she hasn’t sought out consulting services, but can understand the need. She’s been unhappy with her third grader’s private school curriculum, which, she said, is riddled with books that promote ideas about “systematic oppressions.” While visiting high schools for her older son, she was uncomfortable about how introductions were handled.
“Every kid has to say their name and their pronouns. They talk incessantly about DEI and they don’t even talk that much about critical thinking,” said the mom, who asked for anonymity. “It’s frustrating.”
Rossi comes to his work with a personal tie to it. For nine years, he taught at the independent Grace Church School in the East Village. Last year, he was suspended and his contract was not renewed after, he said, he spoke out about about the school “indoctrinating” students. (Grace Church School did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.)
While Rossi sees his consulting work as needed, he readily admits that “these are upmarket problems.”
And, he said, parents don’t always want to hear what he has to say.
“I’ll be frank with them,” he said. “I’ll say I know their child is going to be better off and healthier at a smaller religious school where they’re not going to have to deal with this, than some prestigious brand where they’re going to get these luxury beliefs.”
But, with college admissions always a concern, sometimes parents decide it’s worth it to stay at a school that espouses different beliefs from their own.
Rossi said: “[As a private school parent], you’re basically paying for your child’s education three times — public school taxes, private schools and paying to deindoctrinate them.”