Whittle School & Studios opened to students in D.C. with an incomplete building in 2019. Now, that building is complete, but empty.
That’s because the District’s newest private school at 4000 Connecticut Ave. NW started off the year with virtual instruction, like many of the region’s academic institutions navigating the coronavirus pandemic. But Whittle is shooting to reopen the now-finished physical building in mid-October assuming it’s safe, said Chairman and CEO Chris Whittle.
The prospect of welcoming students in person comes after harsh effects from Covid-19 — to school operations, construction, capital raising, its enrollment strategy and in-person events, Whittle said. At its D.C. location — one of four between the U.S. and China — the pandemic prevented a quarter of its international students from coming, so they’re enrolled at the Shenzhen location for this first semester.
“It’s six months I never want to live through again,” Whittle added.
It carried a silver lining, however: more time. After delays that led Whittle School to open in an unfinished space, the extra few weeks enabled construction to be finished. Whittle School tuition started at $42,000 per year for the 2019 school year.
Though, more work on the site could continue down the road, depending on how many kids come on board from overseas. The project, which includes 400 beds in its dormitories, is ready to accommodate students for a couple of years. It also has capacity to increase to 800 beds, but that space could also become classrooms depending on where the need lies between local, regional and international demand. “So we’re going to monitor that over the next year or two and then we will decide whether we increase that number,” Whittle said.
Coronavirus also threw a wrench in fundraising, on the heels of a $200 million Series C round Whittle closed in November. The organization had two smaller raises scheduled for the spring, $40 million and $30 million, “and they got totally upended,” Whittle said. Some investors in the prior round also had to pull out, he said. “All in, we had about $100 million we had to replace," he said. He and his team have since had discussions over Zoom to secure new investments with both existing and new investors — and that's going well, he added.
The company instituted pay reductions among its headquarters employees. It maintained the majority of its staff and faculty at its campuses; furloughing 23 team members, 10 of which are set to return now. Whittle plans to restore the rest in October before school resumes, he said.
The pandemic's impacts reverberate across the organization, including its schools under construction in New York and Suzhou, China. Both had construction delays and the New York school’s financing was interrupted, so “we had to completely redo it,” Whittle said.
In Shenzhen, that campus experienced “huge operational complexities” early in the pandemic, after several hundred students and staff traveled for the Chinese New Year and could not return during the pandemic’s height. So the organization was running a virtual school with children and staff “all over the world,” Whittle said. That site just opened for the fall semester, with enrollment up to about 50% and more than 1,000 kids coming to school.
That experience helped prepare Whittle School to bring students into D.C. as the pandemic continues to afflict the U.S.
“In many ways, that prepared us. It also exhausted us, but it prepared us,” he said of the experience in China. “We have had the experience of going through it, if you will, full cycle, in China, and that is helpful.”
When it opens, the D.C. school will install partitions into dining rooms, implement a mask policy, manage visitors and check temperatures, among other protocols. “There’s a long list of things that we will do,” Whittle said.
He’s also moving to D.C. for the next few years, planning to spend about four days a week here as opposed to commuting from New York or China for weeklong periods. “I feel like if we’re going to be the great school I want us to be, that I’ve got to really increase my time and energy in Washington,” he said.
