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Lionheart Landlord Promises to Make Good on $1 Million Donation

Miami real estate mogul Ophir Sternberg cares so much about education that he founded Lionheart Classical Academy in Peterborough, N.H., according to his company biography.

“Sternberg’s dedication to education led him to found The Lionheart Classical Academy, a chartered public school in New Hampshire. He is passionate about providing quality education to young learners. Sternberg’s notable titles and accomplishments, including his commitment to philanthropy through the Lionheart Academy, exemplify his entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to making a positive impact in his community,” the biography states.

But that’s not quite accurate. Sternberg did not found the school alone, and he is not among the handful of dedicated Monadnock area residents who worked together for months to launch the charter school. 

Instead, Sternberg is the landlord, the owner of the Sharon Road commercial property Lionheart rents for $38,000 a month. He also has the naming rights for Lionheart, named after his investment firm Lionheart Holdings, a currently publicly traded company. He won the name in exchange for a $1 million pledge that has not gone as planned, so far.

The charter school is pushing back on concerns of financial problems expressed by founder Fred Ward and parent Kevin Brace. The school’s board recently announced a $5 million endowment from an anonymous donor. Additionally, the board says it anticipates an audit report showing it is already on good financial footing, and operating at a surplus of more than $1,000 per student. The board is also denying claims it has met outside posted meetings. 

Sternberg’s connection to the school and former Board Chair Barry Tanner are among the issues made public recently. The entrepreneur began contacting the press this week to tell his side of the story in response to inquiries. Sternberg told NHJournal on Wednesday he cares deeply about the school and its mission.

“They are serving a real need for the community,” Sternberg said. “I hear great things about the school and the education the students are receiving there.”

Asked about the “founder” claim, Sternberg said Tanner and other people in the founding set consider him a “founding partner.”

“I was called the founding partner for my contribution to help get the school going,” Sternberg said. 

On Saturday, Sternberg provided NHJournal screenshots from several emails in which Tanner thanked Sternberg for his generosity.

“And Ophir, I want to personally thank you for partnering with us, supporting LCA with incredible generosity and friendship,” Tanner wrote in one email about the lease.

Sternberg also said Saturday he would change his company biography to reflect he did not found Lionheart Academy alone.

While Tanner is no longer on the board, he’s the one who negotiated the lease and the naming agreement pledge with Sternberg in 2021. Tanner and Sternberg also attempted to go into business together.

Sternberg acknowledged he and Tanner tried to buy the Hancock Inn in a partnership when the historic bed and breakfast went on the market a couple of years ago. The venture was never disclosed to the Lionheart community, but Sternberg said it had nothing to do with the lease and naming agreement. The Hancock Inn did not come up for sale until a few months after the Lionheart deals were done, he said.

Tanner declined to talk about his one-time potential business partnership with Sternberg when contacted last week. It’s since been learned Lionheart Academy’s board lost all copies of the signed conflict of interest statements board members like Tanner would have signed.

As for the $1 million pledge, Sternberg said the original agreement was for 10 annual payments of $100,000, with the first payment made in 2021. But, the following year, Sternberg and the board agreed to change the donation from cash payments to stock in one of his businesses. The stock, valued at $1 million, would not be accessible by the school for a year. By the time the school could sell the stock last year, it was virtually worthless.

“Publicly traded stock is always speculative,” Sternberg said.

If the company’s fortunes fared better, Lionheart Academy could have ended up with more than $1 million through the stock gift. Sternberg is adamant he will cover the donation balance, though he hasn’t made any more payments yet. The plan for the stock donation always carried his backstop guarantee to pay any difference if the stock was valued at less than $1 million.

The plan right now, Sternberg said, is to renegotiate the Sharon Road lease in order to give the school its donation through lower payments. 

Lionheart paid no base rent for most of the first year it leased the building in 2021, only paying $6,600 a month in maintenance expenses and taxes. But starting in the fall of 2022, the school made monthly base payments of $24,000 on top of maintenance and taxes. The base payment has been rising every year as the school expands and it is currently set to go to more than $29,000 a month on Oct. 1, with close to $9,000 more a month in maintenance and taxes. 

Lionheart isn’t the only tenant in the Sharon Road property. While the school will pay a total of $15.08 per square foot starting next month, Sternberg acknowledged the other tenant pays about $8 per square foot. 

“They’ve been there for many, many years before I got the building,” Sternberg said. 

Sternberg lives in Miami, but he spends summers in Peterborough, where he has a second “equestrian” home. Sternberg bought the Sharon Road property a few years ago and has no plans to sell, nor does he intend to give the property to the school where he’s a founding partner. He expressed surprise when asked if he would give the building to the school.

“I put the space up for a lease, and I agreed to make it as long-term as they would want,” Sternberg said.

The rent schedule attached to the lease Sternberg and Tanner signed runs through 2036, when Lionheart will be paying more than $60,000 a month. 

But among the concerns Ward has raised is the issue Lionheart Academy is now locked into perpetual fundraising, largely in order to pay large sums of money to founding partner Sternberg.

“I don’t really understand the controversy,” Sternberg said. “There are a few naysayers trying to create some controversy.”

State Ed Board Delays Vote on PragerU Content, But Approval Appears Likely

In a battle between educational content and political rhetoric, it appears content may have won the day at the State Board of Education Thursday.

At issue is a video course on financial literacy offered by PragerU that the board is considering adding to the curriculum of the state’s Learn Everywhere program. Board chairman Drew Cline said the content “has a lot of value” and is suitable for the flexible, self-directed education that is part of the non-traditional Learn Everywhere model.

Critics, like Deb Howes, president of the New Hampshire chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, had not watched the videos and were not familiar enough with the content to discuss it. Instead, they objected to the source of the content — PragerU, a politically-conservative nonprofit founded by media personality Dennis Prager.

Asked by Cline if the 15-video course met the appropriate educational standards, Howes, the head of the second largest teachers union in the state, declined to answer and appeared not to have viewed any of the content.

“I cannot speak to whether it goes into depth enough; I am not a financial literacy teacher,” Howes said.

State Rep. David Luneau (D-Hopkinton) bashed the board’s handling of the application and called PragerU a “racist propaganda mill.”

“I find it outrageous and unacceptable that this board would take a controversial subject and slip it into a meeting on Aug. 10 when hopefully nobody’s watching,” Luneau said.

However, when asked about the specific content, Luneau also appeared to be unfamiliar with it and pointedly refused to say if he watched any of the videos under consideration about the board.

Some critics, however, had taken the time to review the materials. Mark MacLean, executive director of the New Hampshire School Administrators Association, watched all 15 videos in the “Cash Course” series and said there is plenty of good material in the class.

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with the videos I watched,” MacLean said.

But MacLean did express concerns about the depth of the content and whether or not it is sufficient to be an accredited high school class. PragerU’s proposal sought to have students who took the class earn a half credit.

“The content is good; I just don’t think as a standalone it’s enough to provide students with a comprehensive financial literacy unit,” MacLean said.

But elected Democrats and progressive activists who attacked the board’s consideration of the content weren’t interested in the course but rather the source. They denounced PragerU and expressed concerns that curious students might become intrigued and begin exploring other content from the conservative nonprofit.

“Students and parents who view the first video in PragerU’s financial literacy course are one mouse-click away from a ‘Parent Action Guide’ that urges scrutiny of any public official who parents suspect is involved in topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” the left-leaning Boston Globe warned.

Both Democrats running for governor in 2024, Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig and Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington, have announced their opposition.

Via social media, Warmington urged the board to reject what she called “radical & unaccredited PragerU into New Hampshire schools,” though she has also not indicated what part of the proposed course is objectionable.

And House Democratic Caucus Leader Matt Wilhelm (D-Manchester) claimed PragerU has content “that suggests slavery was ‘no big deal,’” and “peddle anti-LGBTQ+ hate.” Despite repeated requests, Wilhelm declined to provide any examples to bolster his claims.

Ultimately, it appeared the solution may be technology, not politics.

Brandon Ewing, with PragerU, told the board Thursday that the organization planned to create a separate website for the New Hampshire Cash Course class, one that was not linked to the wider PragerU site. It was a detail the board had not been made aware of.

“We’re working through the format details on the technical end,” Ewing said.

Cline said removing the Cash Course class from the PragerU main website would allow families to view it without concerns over the rest of PragerU’s content.

“We heard a lot of testimony that the content is strong, but a lot of concerns about the context. Having it as a standalone entity could change the whole conversation,” Cline said. Cline also asked Ewing to show the board more of the materials that will be used to access student progress in the course.

Ultimately, the board voted unanimously to table the application until next month, when it can see the proposed website and review additional materials.

“This is good financial literacy content, and we need to make sure that all of our young people have that skill going forward in life,” said Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut told WMUR after the board meeting. “I think that it got overly politicized, and I think there was some interest in doing that, and I’m disappointed that this is where we ended up.”

Confusion Surrounds School Science Standards in Concord, Local Communities

For one of Frank Edelblut’s first acts as education commissioner, he wanted the state Board of Education (BOE) to reconsider the state’s science standards, but they unanimously voted to reject his proposal. It’s expected to be the first of many issues that Edelblut and the BOE clash on throughout his term, highlighting the differences between pro-school choice Edelblut and public school advocates.

Last year, the board adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) as the state’s standards after a lengthy two-year review process. The NGSS standards were developed by a consortium of 26 states and by the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Research Council, and the nonprofit organization Achieve.

Several New Hampshire school districts had already adopted the NGSS, even though they aren’t bound by the state’s standards. Nearly 20 states have also implemented the NGSS across the country.

Reviewing the science standards was not an issue several board members were ready for at a BOE meeting on April 6.

“Why on Earth are we doing science?,” asked board member Cindy Chagnon. “What are we trying to give our schools and teachers whiplash or something?”

Edelblut said the review was his idea.

“So we in this state are aiming for high standards. And that’s really what we want. And I don’t know if the review was done prior to the adoption of this board or subsequently shortly thereafter, but those [science standards] have been evaluated by a third-party reviewer and rated as a ‘C’ standard,” he said.

The third-party reviewer Edelblut is referring to is the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a think tank that released a 2013 report giving the standards a “C” grade and told states to look elsewhere if they want to overhaul their standards.

“I don’t want to be the guy who’s responsible for a ‘C’ standard,” Edelblut said. “We want to have ‘A’ standards.”

Board members weren’t convinced though, since the state spent two years reviewing the standards and they had just been adopted in November. Reviewing them again would confuse schools and teachers who are starting to implement the standards.

“This would create chaos. This would create extra money spent. This would be ridiculous,” Chagnon said.

One board member suggested voting on a motion to make the board’s intentions clear that they wouldn’t touch the standards.

“I would hope that this board would support a commissioner who was interested in making sure that we have standards that represent the most contemporary, the most cutting-edge opportunities for our students,” Edelblut said.

Democrats were quick to point out that during Edelblut’s confirmation hearing in January, he assured Executive Council members and the public that his personal beliefs wouldn’t get in the way of his position, and he was largely “the implementation guy” for executing policy that the board, not him, largely decides.

The board ultimately voted unanimously not to review science standards until 2022.

The Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, also weighed in on the controversy of New Hampshire of possibly looking at reviewing NGSS, calling the standards “disgracefully low” and “mediocre.”

“Our general take is that high performing states like Massachusetts and New Hampshire shouldn’t be adopting low quality standards,” said Jamie Gass, education policy director for the Pioneer Institute. “Unfortunately, that’s what we’re seeing more and more. Compliance with the D.C.-based outlook of K-12 is not in the educational best interest of the states.”

NGSS is not the same as the Common Core State Standards, which focus on math and English standards. Also, unlike the earlier roll out of Common Core, states have no federal financial incentives from grants to adopts the NGSS, so it’s completely voluntary. (The Every Student Succeeds Act, passed by Congress last year, removed those earlier financial incentives, though most states have chosen to keep the higher Common Core standards rather than revert). Specifically in New Hampshire, local school districts also aren’t forced to implement BOE policy.

“States should be developing their own standards,” Gass told NH Journal. “There’s no reason why New Hampshire couldn’t develop standards better than NGSS standards.”

However, even the discussion of reviewing the science standards is leading to ambiguity in cities and towns about the BOE’s commitment to the standards, said board member Helen Honorow at the meeting.

The Department of Education circulated a draft document about the status of the science standards, which was not approved by the BOE, leading to confusion in her city of Nashua, she said.

The Nashua Board of Education voted Tuesday to greenlight a pilot of the science standards in their schools, instead of delaying implementation while the state debates the issue.

Board President George Farrington called the delay a form of “political maneuvering.”

“For the last 18 months, I’ve heard, ‘Concord can’t tell us what to do,’ and now we have a change in leadership in Concord and we have to wait for the ‘white smoke’ up there to see what we can do,” he said. “The teachers are here tonight, and they’re saying, ‘This is what we want to do,’ and we’re saying, ‘We need to check it out because we’re better informed about it.’ “

The Nashua board passed a motion to allow a pilot program for the 2017-2018 academic year and the school would not formally adopt the standards until the conclusion and evaluation of the pilot.

Over 90 percent of New Hampshire school districts reported in November that they were already on the path to implementing NGSS.

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