Knowing Stanford, it's probably per child...
Crystal Springs, after 75 years, their most notable alumni... Patty Hearst. Hmmm. That's what comes of an aristocracy masquerading as a meritocracy.
Meanwhile, at Menlo School,
Posted by in the know
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on May 16, 2014 at 3:08 pm
Menlo is going through a huge transition right now, after a period of very rapid growth from its roots as a folksy boarding school for the scions of the old Atherton ruling class to a highly competitive first-tier college prep school. The recent former leadership had serious flaws, and the influence of these flaws permeated the institution. For a while, teacher morale was quite low. There is at least one case of a mid-to-senior level manager being promoted to a truly Peter-Principle-level of incompetence after a decidedly checkered history as a teacher (if you think the Phil Winston affair was tawdry, this one would knock your socks off). There is/was no transparency in the salary "scale" (meaning there is not actually a scale, unlike Sacred Heart, which has a totally transparent scale), and instead salary negotiations with teachers were used as a bargaining cudgel and a weapon. There were several cases of very well-liked and highly respected veteran teachers being run out of a job based on political bickering and petty personal revenge tactics by senior management. (In several cases lawsuits were brought but immediately settled with total confidentiality in order to avoid bad PR.) Certain parents who were wealthy enough wielded inordinate influence with the administration and were able to shield their children from any consequences for truly reprehensible behavior, which in one case led to at least one staff member resigning in disgust. In other cases summary "judgment" was delivered against students based on hearsay and rumor, without regard to the actual facts of the situation. Other students and parents saw this and the message was clear - money talks, ethics walk, influence is everything, and politics is king. A great role model for young people. That model will take some undoing, which may be happening now. There is a new head, who is evidently instituting a new regime, and time will tell whether the overall climate at the school improves.
Sounds like a true ameritocracy
