The problem that 19 Meetinghouse in the hushed up close to Union Square is the Quakers if the Church and school, came for 225 years, formally possibilities should part.
There are legal advantages to a split. But some church members are pushing for the separation, because they say the school is no longer really Quaker. Among other complaints they say the school $32,870 lessons, selective admission and private school culture fly to the signature Quaker credo of simplicity, openness and equality.
"There are a number of Quakers who are affected, who believe that the school over the years has become a rich kids school," said Michael Schlegel, the leader of the Board of Trustees of the New York quarterly meeting of the religious society of friends, the town of chief Quaker body.
Other secular schools in the city have relations with religious institutions, but that seminar are Quaker meeting or congregation and friends above all in the vicinity. They share the building, some members of the ruling Committee of the school come from the meeting, and at least for now, they are legally defined.
In the last three decades, meetings of the country a number of Quakers have separated from their schools, often liability reasons. Brooklyn friends school did so last year.
Perhaps the most famous Quaker School in the country, school in Washington, where students are Sasha and Malia Obama, has been the Sidwell Friends alone for more than 75 years, but the majority of the schools is Quaker trustee.
Friends Seminary, founded in 1786 used several picturesque houses 15 streets for children of the Quakers, as also the Quaker meeting hall in Rutherford square between East.
Quakers are today only a small fraction of the 700 students at the school, which runs from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. But the school contains some Quaker practice in the curriculum, including a weekly silent adoration in the Meetinghouse and required.
The differences are however hard to miss. In the Meetinghouse, pillow worshippers sit on benches with horsehair. In the Office of the school director is a velvety Jonathan Adler sofa.
"The tuition excessive,", said Eliezer Hyman, Chairman of (or "clerked," in the Quaker usage) was a Committee that monitored the session properties. "A Quaker institution should not, be fees."
"A friends school," Mr. Hyman continued, "by the way of his name, teaching explicitly and implicitly certain values should."
"I know it is not the case," he said.
Some members of the session, as also Bo Lauder, Rector of the school, saying that it in the twenty-first century too easy to say that cachet and Quakerness each other. And many argue that the school is still the Quaker way.
"It incomprehensible that people have opinions that reflect the reality," said Mr Lauder. "We live the Quaker values every day in many ways."
Irene McHenry, the Managing Director of the Council of friends of education, a national organization of schools, said that friends seminar of the Council criteria for a Quaker School, meets the worship include; Statement or "Testimonies" in Quaker values. and community service. Sidwell Friends met the standard, to, she said.
"Simplicity, about how we live," said Mrs McHenry. "It does not say whether we inner and exterior plumbing can have in our homes."
And with a number of Quakers constantly back - Quakers have only about 520 members meeting in New York City, and according to the Association of religion data, 1,000 were archives 1980 - the school is the Quaker probably most prominent advertising for the lay community.
This is one reason why some Quaker oppose separation. "If friends all, doesn't that schools, in friends appreciate" Mrs McHenry said, "they have this valuable form of outreach and they are undervaluing it."
As a practical matter, involving the school as a distinct entity has advantages for the session. When the school needed money, the session as the borrower must act now. Fall because it has the honeycomb-shaped building which used school, and the meeting is, when should a student after class and support a violation of. And Mr. Schlegel said manage a school "the worship distracts us from our purpose is."
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