A slight extension has been announced in the past days along with information that further reveals the financial troubles of the Harlem School of the Arts. A message sent out to the student's families in the past couple of days advised that the iconic institution had not closed permanently this past Wednesday since "the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (requested) to wait a week before making a decision to close the School forever, the Board instead temporarily suspended classes and lessons and furloughed the School’s staff and faculty for the week of April 3 through 10. During this furlough, the Board has been actively engaged in searching for new funds."The interim board also advised in the letter that not only will "one or more prominent individuals" need to step up to save the institution financially but they would also need someone to step up and "adopt" the cause of saving the organization and commit to a work with the School to develop and carry out a 3-5 year business plan.
Commitments of new funding to permit continued operations would include $500,000 to finish the school semester, $400,000 additional to enable to hold the summer program and $1.8 million additional to support operations through June 2011. The interim board has also stated that the absolute final decision concerning the fate of the school will be announced on April 24th.
To make the situation even more bewildering for all involved is the fact that HSA originally had about a couple of million in surplus funds as recently as five years ago but poor management and lack of fund raising has placed the nonprofit over a million in debt. The CEO was fired in 2009 and the school's controller was ousted in recent months. In our opinion, this would be a great cause for the Mayor or the city to adopt and turn around since a large dip in charitable donations is the ultimate cause of the school's financial crises. Read more about it in today's NY Times: LINK. Read all HSA related stories in our past post: LINK. Photo by Ulysses
Such a shameful misfortune that these kids are the victims of poor management, greed and zero oversight. Music education and arts is the heartbeat of this town and due to underfunding so many of these types of programs were already on life support. But the idea of allowing a 50% pay raise and not scale down expenses when there was nothing coming in? To many of these children it was not only a dream in the making but a safe haven from negative urban influences. Criminal, just criminal.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the guilty are already set up in their huge mansions and nice cars. This sort of thing seems to happen time and time again without any sort of justice. As you say, it is the kids who always end up suffering. Greedy b******s.
ReplyDeletethis is such a great non for profit organization. it has a better college placement record than most of the schools out there so why hasn't anyone stepped in to save it?
ReplyDeleteI wish I had a couple of Millions to share and knew and amazing, magical, inspirational CEO in need of a job. Anybody??? This school is so wonderful and meaningful to the community! It is a shame.
ReplyDeleteactually... a well defined plan for the future and a big Paypal button on their homepage and they would have my share in a sec.
ReplyDeleteIf no big donors want to step in....pass the hat.