Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining. – Judge Judy Sheindlin
How many entities have endured for 185 of Kane County’s 188 years? Come to think of it, how many entities anywhere in this country have persisted for almost two centuries? But Elgin Academy managed to do just that!
Founded in 1839, the school is older than the city for which it’s named. Martin Van Buren was president when the first students walked through the doors of that stately building. The Blackhawk War chased the last Native Americans out of Illinois just seven years before. 153 of its administrators, teachers, and students served in the Civil War.
The school survived the Panic of 1857, the Long Depression of 1873 – 1878, the Panic of 1893, the Great Depression, and two world wars. It made it through the cholera outbreak of 1866, the Spanish Influenza, the Polio epidemic, and 1968’s “Asian Flu.”
Elgin Academy predates Illinois State University, the state’s oldest college, by 18 years. But it was COVID that finally did them in? I ain’t buyin’ it.
Prior to the pandemic, institutions like the Academy were slowly becoming obsolete, but that all changed when private schools refused to resort to the abject failure we called “remote learning.” As a result, according to the Cato Institute, 50 percent of private facilities saw an increase in enrollment with just 20 percent seeing a decline. Fifty percent of those that experienced an upturn had more applicants than available spaces.
Then there are innumerable Net articles describing the persistent post-COVID shift from a public to a private education. So, how did Elgin Academy lose out on the marketing opportunity of the century? How did they completely fumble the ball on that one?
The school has enjoyed the kind of reputation that drew students from all over the area including Lake Forest, Barrington, and other exotic wealthy locales. Their enrollment bottomed out at 85 students in 1973, but through a consistent effort, it rebounded to 425 in 2012. Then it fell back to 200 in 2023. So, what happened?
Unlike the City of Elgin, one can’t FOIA a private entity which makes getting to the bottom of this conundrum a much more difficult undertaking. But through talking to a number of sources and applying some fascinating due diligence, I believe I’ve come up with two answers, one borne of the other.
Resorting to Internet reviews is always a perilous proposition, but if, as it is with Olympic figure skating judges, you eliminate the extremes and only consider the more thoughtful posts from students, parents, and grandparents, they start to paint a consistent picture of a reactive entity sacrificing their once lofty standards in a futile effort to stave off their seemingly inevitable demise.
Those reviews spoke of deteriorating buildings, greatly reduced behavioral expectations, and trading grades for five-figure parental donations. Letting the facility go, the typical knee-jerk reaction to persistent fiscal woes, always seals your fate. There’s a very good reason they talk about “curb appeal” when putting a house on the market. In the same vein, their stores became so dirty, dingy, and dark, I refused to shop at Dominick’s in their final years.
Though it’s a slower death, selling your mission statement soul for gold typically means the end of the line, too. But here’s the kicker! None of that would’ve been a problem if Elgin Academy had a reasonable endowment of any kind.
The average Illinois private school endowment is $10 million, and that includes Catholic elementary schools which don’t rake in the big donation bugs. But the Academy’s endowment is just a paltry two million dollars. Meanwhile, Lake Forest Academy, founded 18 years later, boasts $56 million.
That’s quite a difference.
To put that $2 million in perspective, had EA put $100 a month into a certificate of deposit bearing an average 5 percent interest rate for those 185 years, it would amount to $210 million today. That’s the power of compound interest. Better yet, investing that same cash in the equivalent of an S&P 500 fund would’ve netted a $600 million endowment.
So, the fact they have a paltry $2 million is a failure of foresight, reasonable financial planning, errant spending, and a fundraising catastrophe of epic proportion. You mean to tell me, with their alumni list, EA couldn’t get half of Lake Forest’s endowment over the course of two flippin’ centuries?
Citi offers an account with a 5 percent return on a minimum 10 grand balance, which means the annual interest on a $28.5 million endowment would be a cool $1.5 million. That would go a long way towards building maintenance, a reasonable marketing campaign, and scholarships – all of which would attract more students.
And that would be the ultra-conservative investment strategy.
So, per our opening quote, Elgin Academy’s demise has nothing to do with COVID. The pandemic should’ve been a boon. It has very little to do with “…our model of an independent preschool through 12th grade school is no longer sustainable in Elgin,” either, because it worked for 185 years. With any reasonable endowment, they wouldn’t have had to compromise their facility and principles to survive. They could’ve weathered this storm as they’ve done dozens of difficult times before.
Though they certainly had one helluva run, in the end, Elgin Academy was doomed by the too-typical human frailties of pride, arrogance, and mismanagement. And that’s always the end of any story.
