The Old New Thing

Education entrepreneur Chris Whittle is out of work again. Ousted last year from Edison Schools, where he spent sixteen years and upwards of half a billion dollars trying to turn a profit running public schools, the Channel One founder and former Esquire publisher recently cleared out his Midtown Manhattan office at Nations Academy, an international chain of elite private schools that he launched 18 months ago with Dubai businessman Sunny Varkey.

Insiders say that the deep-pocketed Vakrey poured money into the venture after Whittle struggled to find outside investors in the wake of the financial markets’ collapse, and that Varkey demanded a big role in the running the company in return. Whittle, who had spent his last years at Edison under the thumb of new company owners, balked, sources say.

Varkey, who runs an expanding network of proprietary schools in the United Arab Emirates, Great Britain, Australia, and his native India, has pulled the plug on Nations’ first two schools—hundred-million-dollar projects on far West 57th Street and in Bethesda, Maryland, that were scheduled to break ground next year.

But he’s reportedly sticking with the Nations upscale school model and he also wants to open less toney private for-profit schools in the U.S. He has hired Manuel Rivera, twice superintendent of the Rochester, New York, public schools and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s education advisor, to scout deals.

Whittle is reportedly planning a new for-profit private school company.