SuziQ is quite right to point out that some of you seem to get all of your information from the blogs of disgruntled people who do not want the university to end up in FL.
Dr. Rice is a great man. He was never the dean at ND or Ave. He was a visiting prof and he sat on the board of directors. I do not like the way he was removed from the board and wish he was still on the board. He did not support the move to FL and was vocal about it. The board of directors - all upstanding moral people with inpeccable reputations - approved a new by-law which term-limited him off of the board. Not pretty, not prudent, but not exactly immoral, either. As an alum I have been privy to many details and even recieved emails as an alum from the dean and Dr. Rice to explain their version of what happened.
As for the 4 elementary schools: every project he began was told from the start that the idea was to become self-sufficient eventually. As projections showed that goal to be way way off, he invested tons of cash to DOUBLE the capacity of two of the schools, and he closed the other two. The local parish that is most closely associated with his philanthropy ended up with one closed school 9whcih is adjacent to the parish). And all the schools were within the same general are of Ann Arbor, so no student ended up without the ability to stay at these great schools. My kids went to the schools until 2003 and we keep in touch with many friends who are still at the schools.
I forgot: Dr. Rice remains on the Ave faculty!!!!