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Comment by mrguyorama | Hacker News Reader

If you think private schools actually punish the kids whose parents directly pay them, I have a bridge to sell you.

There's paying, and then there's "paying... and a donor". They absolutely kick out the former if they feel like it, or, in lesser cases, simply fail to invite them back. The latter, I dunno, maybe not.

This is quite true; I was also speaking to selective private schools. Around here the admissions ratio for many private schools is crazy low, indicating that they are turning away plenty of qualified students and that they can recoup the lost tuition by admitting another pupil at will.

In that situation it starts to approach "is there something on campus with your last name on it" levels of donations if you want to avoid getting kicked out...

Yeah, the ones around here have wait lists, and they're not impressed by daddy and mommy Mr. and Mrs. VP and MD, paying list tuition price. There are a dozen more where they came from. If they think a kid might make a few other families think twice about enrolling next year, and some reasonable attempt to make things work out falls through, that kid's gone. Maybe not immediately (though, sometimes), but they won't be back next Fall.

Can confirm, went to a school like that but without a namesake building. They can either always admit someone else, or more often, just not bother because educating kids is an expensive loss leader for the endowment even with full tuition. It definitely seemed like there needed to have already been a family building or two before you got to campus if you expected much immunity because of that...

Sufficiently misbehaving kids, not being properly handled, will drive away paying customers when their peers want to transfer out - or if they stop short of transfering out, merely shit talk the institution and it's failures, driving down it's reputation and turning away future business.

If you think private schools won't act on those pressures - either by getting the kids the help they need, or by kicking them out - I have a tunnel to sell you.

From my experience, they would still punish sufficiently disruptive misbehavior. But they would let minor things slide like ignoring uniform policy or poor grades if you were a high donator. One incident I remember was someone bringing a camera in to the change rooms which resulted in the student being immediately expelled. That kind of stuff they still punish because its harmful enough to outweigh the benefits of the donations.

It depends. They have more discretion in most cases. The public schools are stuck with more stringent adherence to procedures, specifically about getting police involved.

Exactly. I've seen chronically tardy students be "not invited back" at the end of the school year at private schools, which is a de-facto expulsion.

One of the most prestigious private all boys schools in the country asked my cousin to leave because he was causing too many discipline problems. His classmates were bullying him because he's gay.

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