| Milton Academy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Location | |
170 Centre Street , Massachusetts 02186 United States | |
| Information | |
| Type | Independent,boarding andday |
| Motto | Dare to be True |
| Established | 1798; 227 years ago (1798) |
| Head of School | Alixe Callen '88 |
| Faculty | 127 (Upper School) |
| Grades |
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| Enrollment |
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| Campus size | 125 acres (0.51 km2) |
| Campus type | Suburban |
| Colors |
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| Song | Jerusalem |
| Athletics | 25 interscholastic sports |
| Athletics conference | Independent School League |
| Team name | Mustangs |
| Rival | Noble and Greenough |
| Alumni | List of Milton Academy alumni |
| Website | milton |
Milton Academy (informally referred to asMilton) is aco-educational,independent, andcollege-preparatory boarding and day school inMilton, Massachusetts, educating students in grades K–12. The Lower School (grades K–8) educates day students and the Upper School (grades 9–12) educates a roughly even mixture of boarding and day students.
Milton'slist of notable alumni includes Nobel laureateT. S. Eliot, Attorney GeneralRobert F. Kennedy, U.S. SenatorTed Kennedy, and Massachusetts GovernorDeval Patrick.
Milton Academy was founded byEdward Hutchinson Robbins, thespeaker of theMassachusetts House of Representatives,[1] after theGeneral Court of Massachusetts set up a committee to study options for secondary education for residents ofNorfolk County.[2] Although the committee considered putting the academy in Braintree, Roxbury, Quincy, Dorchester, and Milton, it chose Milton;[2] Speaker Robbins was a Milton resident. Other founding members of the board of trustees includedFisher Ames,Nathanel Emmons,Thaddeus Mason Harris,Joseph McKean, andEbenezer Thayer.[2]
According to the official town history, the early Milton Academy, like many other old New England academies, was initially "a state-chartered and partially subsidized institution which, in effect, served as a county high school."[3] In March 1798, the Massachusetts legislature granted the academy a corporate charter and a state-funded endowment (three square miles of land in Maine).[4] However, the academy did not actually open for business until 1807,[5] due to protracted disputes about whether the campus should be located in the center or outskirts of town.[6] In 1807, the academy opened in the center of town with 23 students.[7] Most students were locals, although some out-of-town students boarded with local families.[8]
Few records of the early academy survive.[7] Alumni of the early academy include Major GeneralEdwin Vose Sumner, who commanded Union troops atAntietam andFredericksburg.[9]
In 1866, the town of Milton effectively bought out the first Milton Academy. It openedMilton High School, a tax-funded, tuition-free public school, and hired the academy's principal to lead it.[10] In response, the academy's board of trustees shut down the academy and sold the campus to the public school.[11] From 1866 to 1884, Milton Academy survived as a paper entity, with a board of trustees but no teachers, students, or campus.[10]
In 1879, at the urging of Harvard presidentCharles Eliot, Milton Academy's board began preparations to re-establish the academy as a fully private school.[10] This was accomplished in 1884, when Milton resident and railroad magnateJohn Murray Forbes re-established Milton Academy on a new 125-acre site.[12] The academy claims the history of the 1798 institution, and celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1948.[13]
Milton Academy re-opened in September 1885 with four teachers and roughly 40 day students.[14] John Forbes' sonWilliam H. Forbes (president ofBell Telephone Company, the predecessor ofAT&T) was elected president of the board of trustees.[14] The academy reopened its boarding department in 1888.[15] Although Milton originally educated both boys and girls, in 1901 the Upper School divided into separate boys' and girls' divisions, each with its own faculty and campus.[16][17] The boys' and girls' schools reunited in 1981.[18]
The new Milton attracted an affluent clientele and became a notable college-preparatory institution. From 1906 to 1915, Milton sent 179 students toHarvard College, making it Harvard's fifth-largest feeder school, afterBoston Latin,Phillips Exeter,Cambridge Latin, andNobles.[19] In 1996, 33% of Milton graduates went on to Ivy League colleges, second-highest among New England boarding schools.[20] In 2002, Harvard's student newspaper reported that in some years Milton has produced as many as 25% of the students admitted to Harvard through the so-called "Z-list," a set of students who are promised admission to Harvard after taking a gap year; students on the Z-list often havelegacy connections to Harvard.[21][22]
Although Milton was nonsectarian, it traditionally educated large numbers ofUnitarian students, in contrast to the many ProtestantEpiscopalian boarding schools founded at the turn of the 20th century.[23] (In the nineteenth century, the town of Milton was one of the few towns in Massachusetts where Unitarians may have outnumbered trinitarians.[24]) Unitarian Miltonians include poetT. S. Eliot (who later converted to Episcopalianism)[23][25] and architectBuckminster Fuller.[26] In 1901, several Milton friends and alumni (including William Forbes's sonCameron and Milton trusteeNorwood Penrose Hallowell) helped establishMiddlesex School, another formally nonsectarian prep school with a large and wealthy Unitarian clientele.[27][28] Some prominent Catholics were also drawn to Milton's relative lack of Protestant influence.Robert F. Kennedy attended Milton afterRose Kennedy withdrew him fromSt. Paul's (due to what she believed was SPS' anti-Catholic atmosphere),[29] and his brotherTed also went to Milton.[30]
In November 1948, T. S. Eliot '06 visited Milton to give a lecture to the students; during this visit, he learned that he had won theNobel Prize.[23] AcademicRichard Livingstone spoke at Milton's 150th anniversary celebration; his talk was published, in abridged form, in the November issue ofThe Atlantic Monthly.[31] Other notable guest speakers include Scottish statesmanJohn Buchan, the politiciansNewton D. Baker,Bill Clinton.[32] andFranklin D. Roosevelt, and the diplomatSumner Welles.[33]
In 1984, Milton purchased the Mountain School, a 418-acre campus and working farm inVershire, Vermont. Milton operates the Mountain School of Milton Academy as a semester-long program for high school students from around the country.[34][35] In 2022, author and educatorAlex Myers was appointed as director of the program.[36]
In 1991, Milton appointedNeedham High School president Edwin P. Fredie as headmaster. According toThe New York Times, this made Milton "the first major American boarding school with a black headmaster."[37] Fredie served until 1999 and was succeeded by Milton's first female headmaster, Robin Robertson, who served until 2007.[38]
From 2015 to 2020, Milton conducted a $182 million fundraising campaign, which included $48 million for student financial aid and funded upgrades to Milton's science, art, drama, and athletic facilities.[39][40]
In the 2022–23 school year, Milton's Upper School accepted 13% of applicants for approximately 140 openings.[41] Graduates of the Lower School are automatically accepted to the Upper School.[42]
In a typical year, the Upper School enrolls 100 freshmen, 25 incoming sophomores, and 15 incoming juniors.[43] The Lower School enrolls 24 kindergarteners, 8 incoming fourth-graders, 13 incoming sixth-graders, and 10 incoming seventh-graders.[42]
In the 2023–24 school year, the Upper School educated 717 students, of whom 316 (45%) were boarders. 52% of Upper Schoolers identified as students of color.[44] Milton has an unusually small contingent of American boarding students by New England prep school standards, as boarders are a minority of the student body and just under half of Milton's boarders (19%) are international students.[44]
In the 2021–22 school year, the Lower School educated 317 students.[45]
In the 2023–24 school year, Milton's Upper School charged boarding students $73,950 and day students $63,950. 35% of students were onfinancial aid, and the average financial aid grant covered 75% of tuition.[46]
In the same year, tuition at the Lower School ranged from $42,950 for kindergarteners to $62,550 for middle schoolers.[47]
Milton's financial endowment stood at $408 million as of June 30, 2021.[48] In itsInternal Revenue Service filings for the 2021–22 school year, Milton reported total assets of $483.5 million, net assets of $411.8 million, investment holdings of $394.2 million, and cash holdings of $7.8 million. Milton also reported $65.4 million in program service expenses and $16.2 million in grants (primarilystudent financial aid).[49]
Milton offers 15 interscholastic sports for both boys and girls each, as well as seven intramural teams.[44] Its athletic teams compete in theIndependent School League and the New England Schools Sailing Association division of theInterscholastic Sailing Association.
Milton's athletics rival is theNoble and Greenough School ofDedham (colloquially "Nobles"). The two schools began playing an annual football game in 1886, and contest thefifth-oldest high school football rivalry in the United States.[50] In 2020, Milton and Nobles were the two largest feeders to Harvard'svarsity athletic teams; Milton supplied nine Harvard athletes and Nobles supplied fifteen.[51]
In February 2017, the academy announced the results of a nine-monthsexual misconduct investigation by T&M Protection Resources. The firm interviewed 60 alumni, parents, current and former staff and came to the conclusion that four former employees had engaged in illegal sexual conduct with students in the 1970s and 80s. The most egregious abuse came from a drama teacher named Reynold Buono who had abused at least 12 male students between 1975 and 1987, when Milton fired him.[57][58] After extradition from Thailand, Buono was indicted by the Norfolk County District Attorney. Following an appeal to theMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court,[59] Buono pleaded guilty to two counts of rape of a child with force in 2022.[60]
In 2005, the school expelled five members of the boys' varsity ice hockey team for obtaining oral sex from a 15-year-old female student on three separate occasions.[61] Following an investigation by the Norfolk County District Attorney, all five expelled students were indicted for statutory rape.[62] The DA dropped the charges against the three older students in exchange for an apology, 100 hours of community service, and two years of probation.[63] (The two younger students were indicted in juvenile court, where fewer details are disclosed to the public.[61]) The female student was placed on administrative leave and eventually transferred to a different school.[64] One of the expelled students later sued the academy, but his suit was dismissed in 2007.[63] Two Milton graduates used this story as the inspiration for a book,[64] which was later adapted into a movie.[65][66]
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