Posted on 03/28/2015 10:39:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Even Mother Teresa might have been tempted by this kind of property bonanza.
A group of nuns wants to boot 55 tots from one of the city’s oldest preschools so they can cash in on the facility’s $20 million Chelsea real estate, according to a lawsuit by fuming parents.
More than 50 moms and dads of kids at Nazareth Nursery Montessori claim the Sisters of St. Francis — who bought the West 15th Street facility for $5,000 in 1901 — want to sell the school’s two brick brownstones and hoard the money.
“It's clear that the defendants plan to close the school, stop providing education to the children of working mothers, sell the school’s property and transfer the money to the Sisters of St. Francis to use for other purposes, none of which is to educate children,” the Manhattan civil suit says.
The school was started at the dawn of the 20th century to fill a need that is still vital — to provide low-cost child care for working mothers in Manhattan. Originally, it served single moms who worked in the Meatpacking District.
Now it serves students ages 2 to 6 and employs 14 lay teachers overseen by the sisters.
The $10,000-a-year tuition at the school — which was accredited as a Montessori school in the 1980s — makes it by far the cheapest Montessori school in the borough.
But recently the school announced that it would close in August, surprising parents, who are seeking an injunction to stop closure.
The parents claim in the lawsuit that the nuns at first gave no reason why the school was closing — but then school officials claimed the facility “was losing $100,000” and that “the building structure is precarious.”
But the suit says that no building violations were recorded with the city
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
And if all this is true, why can’t nuns close a school if they want to?
“Well I’ll be damned if you do what you want with you own property. You work for me and do as I tell you!” -New York City Liberal
And whose school is it?
Thought so.
I think the parents are going to lose this lawsuit.
It’s just bad PR for the Catholic order, that’s all.
What kind of law says they can't sell it?
So?
Perhaps their order is growing and they need more housing for novices and postulants.
The more I think about this more annoying this story is. We have way too many people thinking they have the authority to tell other people what to do. This all stems from a large government that does just that to placate different voting blocs. It’s annoying to no end.
Nothing wrong legally with what the Sisters of St. Francis are doing.
But would St. Francis approve?
I wonder how old these nuns are? Are they past retirement age? If so, I can understand why the church would sell the property.
the Sisters of St. Francis — who bought the West 15th Street facility for $5,000 in 1901 — want to sell the school’s two brick brownstones and hoard the money.It's theirs, they should be able to do what they want with it.
But sadly the nuns will lose and they are about to reap what they sow.
RE: But sadly the nuns will lose and they are about to reap what they sow
One compromise is to delay the closing of the school until all of the kids have finished the school year.
I know nothing first hand about this. But I would guess that this is one more group of nuns who turned liberal post Vatican II. What was once a Catholic School is now a Montessori school, would seem to be an indicator.
I would also guess that if they are a liberal order, they are probably getting no new recruits into their order, and are all growing older. They need the money to provide for nursing homes and healthcare, the kind of job that younger nuns in the order would once have done.
It’s their school. They have a right to sell it. I suspect that the whole business is a sad one.
um - I would think that. with @0 million, they cold take a small portion and set up the school in another location????
people are so self-centered...
TWENTY Million
“The deal you once found acceptable but now, no longer do; I’ve decided unilaterally that it’s perpetual and cannot be cancelled”
It's a preschool for the children of struggling single mothers, you see.
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