Buckley, Chaminade among schools given thousands in PPP loans

Rose Weldon
Chaminade High School in Mineola is one of the Catholic high schools on the North Shore that will require prospective students to take an entrance exam taken online. (Photo courtesy of Google Maps)

Numerous private schools across the North Shore were granted loans via the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), according to data from the Small Business Administration.

The SBA’s information, released last week, did not specify the exact amounts of the loans, but did place them in a series of ranges, with loans between $150,000 and $5 million available for businesses struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic who seek to pay their employees. The loans are mostly refundable, according to the SBA.

The information includes every business in the country that was approved for a loan over $150,000 by June 30.

Buckley Country Day School, which lists itself as being in Roslyn but is located in the Village of North Hills, was listed as receiving a PPP loan between $1 million and 2 million, which Headmaster Jean-Marc Juhel confirmed in an email without further comment.

According to a letter written by Juhel in the school’s annual report for 2019, Buckley at the time possessed a $7,190,000 endowment and was in the process of a $5 million capital campaign to expand campus buildings, add classrooms and add parking spots.

“The purpose of the endowment is to serve as a rainy-day fund,” Juhel wrote. “We do not use income from our endowment in our operating budget because our goal is to grow it to at least the size of our annual operating budget of $10 million.”

Mineola’s all-boys Catholic institution Chaminade High School is listed as having received a loan between $2 million and $5 million.

Chaminade’s 2019 annual report states that a little over $3 million was contributed to the school’s Torch Fund, which reduces the cost of tuition for each student. The school does not state  the amount in its endowment on its website or in literature, but a 2018 tax form sent to the Internal Revenue Service states that the Chaminade Development Fund, a 501(c) connected to the school which said its mission is to “provide Catholic education through financial support for Chaminade High School,” had $54,937,255 in net assets at the end of the 2018 tax year.

Efforts to reach Chaminade for comment were unavailing.

The Viscardi Center in Albertson said in a statement that its loan, which fell in a bracket between $350,000 and $1 million, did not go to the Henry Viscardi School, which serves students with disabilities, but for programming provided by the center and another of its business units, Abilities Inc.

Tiegerman Middle School in Glen Cove, which the SBA states received a loan between $2 million and $5 million, said in an email to Blank Slate Media that it would not comment.

The SBA said these organizations each received loans between $1 million and $2 million: North Shore Hebrew Academy and its high school, both in Great Neck; Vincent Smith School Lutheran High School Association of Nassau County, which runs the Glen Cove-based Lutheran High School and Lutheran Middle School; and Solomon Schecter Day School of Nassau County in Williston Park. Effort to reach them for comment were unavailing.

Efforts to reach the Long Island Hebrew Academy in Great Neck, which the SBA says received a loan between $150,000 and $350,000, were also unavailing.

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