| Kent School | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Address | |
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1 Macedonia Road , Connecticut 06757 United States | |
| Coordinates | 41°43′37″N73°28′56″W / 41.7269°N 73.4821°W /41.7269; -73.4821 |
| Information | |
| Type | Private day and boarding school |
| Motto | Temperantia, Fiducia, Constantia (Latin for 'Simplicity of Life, Self-Reliance, Directness of Purpose') |
| Religious affiliation(s) | Episcopal Church |
| Established | 1906 (119 years ago) (1906) |
| Founder | Frederick Herbert Sill |
| CEEB code | 070330 |
| Head teacher | Michael G. Hirschfeld |
| Faculty | 75 |
| Gender | Coeducational |
| Enrollment | 520 |
| Student to teacher ratio | 6:1 |
| Campus size | 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) |
| Campus type | Rural |
| Color(s) | Blue and gray |
| Athletics conference | Founders League |
| Nickname | Lions |
| Rival | Loomis Chaffee |
| Publication | The Cauldron |
| Newspaper | The Kent News |
| Website | kent-school.edu |
Kent School is a privatecollege-preparatory day andboarding school inKent, Connecticut. Founded in 1906, it is affiliated with theEpiscopal Church. It educates around 520 boys and girls in grades 9–12.
Kent was one of the first schools to provide tuition discounts based on what a family could afford to pay. The school'slist of notable alumni includes philosopherJohn Rawls, Secretary of StateCyrus Vance, and three winners of thePulitzer Prize.
Kent School was founded byAnglo-Catholic Episcopal priestFrederick Herbert Sill in 1906.[1][2] It arrived at the tail end of the wave ofBritish-style boarding schools set up at the turn of the twentieth century.[3] Sill admired England and wanted to spread English influence within the United States.[4] The school was originally associated with the AnglicanBenedictineOrder of the Holy Cross,[5] but gained its independence from the Order in 1943.[2][6]
Although Kent has occasionally been categorized withinSaint Grottlesex, a group of boarding schools with traditionally upper-class student bodies,[7][8] the school advertises itself as "an elite school, not a school for elites."[9] Under Sill, Kent's culture was egalitarian for its day. When Kent was founded, theGilded Age had ended, and the New York elite that Sill expected to fund his school were either unwilling or unable to bankroll another prep school.[1][5]
Sill realized that many of his students would have to come "from families of moderate means who could not afford the tuition fees at the then established boarding schools of the [Episcopal] Church."[10][11] To accommodate those families, he introduced a "sliding-scale tuition model," a forerunner of today'sfinancial aid system, under which poor parents paid only what they could afford, and rich parents were asked to cover the difference.[1][12][13] In 1927, the average tuition fee was $800, with parents contributing anything from $0 to $1,500.[14] By contrast, that year, the St. Grottlesex schools all charged between $1,200 and $1,400.[15]
Under Sill, all students, rich or poor, were required to help pay their own way by working on the school farm or doing school chores.[16][17] Sill also discouraged rich students from flaunting their wealth, explaining that "we [do not] object to fur coats as such, but to see school boys sporting fur coats ... strikes us as rather ostentatious."[10] Kent was also said to have been "more accommodating to those students who were drawn to creative pursuits than some of Kent's counterparts."[18]
Despite its humble beginnings, Kent established a strong reputation. Due to Sill's desire to limit the student body to 300 students,[13] the school's waitlist became "unmanageably long."[19] To meet increasing demand, Sill establishedSouth Kent School in 1923.[14][20] He retired in 1941 after a paralytic stroke, and died in 1952.[1][21]
Following Kent's 1943 disassociation from the Order of the Holy Cross, the school retained its broader affiliation with the Episcopal Church. However, in the 1950s, it began allowing Catholic students to attend Sunday Mass in town.[22] Today, attendance at Kent's Episcopal Sunday chapel service is voluntary.[23]
In 1954, Kent admitted its first African-American and Asian students.[24][25] In addition, the school offered a scholarship to a black South African student in 1955. However, theapartheid-era South African government refused to grant the student a passport, causing an international incident.[26][27]
The school established a coordinate girls' school in 1960,[12][28] over a decade before the other St. Grottlesex schools adopted co-education. However, until 1992, girls occupied a separate campus nearly five miles away.[29][30] When Kent began admitting girls, it dropped the sliding-scale tuition model and shifted to a more conventional financial aid system.[13]
Richardson W. Schell '69 became headmaster in 1981 and led the school until 2020. When he arrived, Kent was in a period of transition. Under Sill, the school had been reliant on tuition (and Sill's policy of simple living) to make ends meet. With the cost of education spiraling upwards, Kent ran budget deficits for much of the 1970s. In addition, Kent spent much of its financial endowment building the new girls' campus. When Schell took over, Kent's endowment stood at $3 million ($10.4 million in May 2024 dollars).[31]
Schell improved Kent's financial position by raising a large endowment, which stood at $87 million in 2017.[31] He also attracted wealthy international students; at Kent, international students typically pay full tuition, although some scholarships may be awarded.[32] Under Schell, the percentage of international students at Kent increased roughly fourfold, doubling to 15.5% by 1996 and doubling again to 30% by 2015.[25][33] As of the 2023–24 school year, Kent does not disclose its percentage of international students, but it states that its students come from 30 U.S. states and 34 countries.[34][35] Although Kent's increased revenues generally allowed the school to offer more robust financial aid to domestic students, the percentage of students on financial aid has fluctuated in recent years, shifting from 22% in 1999 to 43% in 2013, 29% in 2019, and 35% in 2023.[36][37][38][32]
In 2020, Michael Hirschfeld was appointed Head of School. He was previously Kent's assistant director of admissions in the 1990s, and most recently served as rector ofSt. Paul's School in New Hampshire.[39] The student body shrunk during theCOVID-19 pandemic, dropping from 580 students in 2020 to 504 in 2021.[40][41] Since 2022, enrollment has held steady at 520 students.[42][34] The school's strategic plan states that its near-term priorities are to "move toward 50% of students on financial aid," to maintain the boarding student population at 470, and to improve the school dormitories and faculty housing.[43]
In the 2021–22 school year, Kent enrolled 80 freshmen (in school jargon, "Third Formers"), 125 sophomores ("Fourth Formers"), 149 juniors ("Fifth Formers"), and 150 seniors and post-graduate students ("Sixth Formers" and "PGs"), for a total enrollment of 504 students. Of these 504 students, Kent reported that 289 were white (57.3%), 134 were Asian (26.6%), 24 were black (4.8%), 24 were Hispanic (4.8%), and 33 were multiracial (6.5%); the survey did not allow Kent to classify students in two or more categories, or to distinguish between domestic and international students.[41]
Kent follows atrimester system in which a school year is fall, winter, and spring terms. Classes are held from Monday to Saturday, with Wednesdays and Saturdays being half-days to accommodate athletic contests and other after-school activities.[44] The school has announced that it intends to phase outAdvanced Placement classes and to replace them with Kent-designed "Advanced Studies" classes.[43]
Kent grades students on an unweighted 4.0 GPA scale, but does not rank students or calculate a student's cumulative GPA. Students in the Class of 2023 had an averageSAT score of 1313 and an averageACT score of 28.1.[34]
In the 2023–24 school year, Kent charged boarding students $73,450 and day students $54,600, plus other optional and mandatory fees. 35% of students received financial aid, which covered, on average, $54,000.[32]
In itsInternal Revenue Service filings for the 2022–23 school year, Kent reported total assets of $214.9 million, net assets of $167.4 million, investment holdings of $132.2 million, and cash holdings of $17.8 million. Kent also reported $38.5 million in program service expenses and $6.8 million in grants (primarilystudent financial aid).[45]
Kent offers 22 interscholastic sports with 50 interscholastic teams from the thirds, Junior Varsity, and Varsity levels. More than three-quarters of the student body participates in interscholastic sport. Kent is a member of the Founders League, a competitive athletic league composed ofNEPSAC schools.[46] Its mascot is the Lion, although it once was the Fighting Episcopalian. DespiteHotchkiss School's location in the same county, Kent's rival isThe Loomis Chaffee School and the two schools have a day dedicated to competing against each other, historically called Loomis Day.
Fall[47] | Winter | Spring
|
The Kent School Boat Club was begun at Kent in 1922 with the encouragement of Father Sill. Sill was the coxswain of the Columbia crew which won the first ever Poughkeepsie Regatta.
Kent competed for the Thames Challenge Cup in 1933 with the support of PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt who sent a letter to Sill offering his "good wishes for a successful trip" and commenting on how "the presence of a crew of American school boys will be helpful in strengthening the ties between good sportsmen of the two countries."[48] That year, Kent won the Thames Challenge Cup.The Times in Britain wrote, "Kent School were almost certainly the best crew that ever rowed in the Thames Cup."[citation needed] Kent competed at Henley 32 times and won 5 times, most recently in 1972. The school was featured twice inLife magazine, once in May 1937 and again in June 1948. Stuart Auchincloss '48 was featured on the cover of the latter publication. Kent Boys Crew also won the New England Championship Regatta 25 times since 1947.
The girls team began in 1973. They won Henley in 2002 and two National Championships in 1986 and 1987. They have also won the New England Championship Regatta seven different times, including four of the first five times, it competed for it.[49]
In 2006, Kent Boys Crew won the New England championship and became the first American crew to challenge for the recently establishedPrince Albert Challenge Cup at Henley. In 2010, Kent Boys Crew won the New England points trophy and placed 1st at Youth Nationals. The team traveled to Henley and were the runners-up for the Princess Elizabeth Cup, losing toEton College.
Football at Kent competes in the Housatonic Valley League. In the past 17 years, the team has earned seven league championships and two New England Championships.[50]
In 2021–22, the Kent Boys' squash team won its first boys national title after a 4–3 final against three-time defending champions Brunswick.[51]
Following the 1999 premiere ofSeth MacFarlane (class of 1991) animated TV sitcomFamily Guy, Kent headmaster Richardson Schell urgedFox Broadcasting Company's advertisers to cancel their advertising with the show. He called its brand of humor "obnoxious" and said that some of its jokes were racist.[52] He also questioned whether the name of the show's dysfunctional Griffin family was a personal insult to his secretary, who was also named Griffin.[53] Reportedly, Schell helped persuade companies likeCoca-Cola,Philip Morris,KFC, andSprint to withdraw their advertising from the show.[54] MacFarlane's mother, who had worked at the school for 22 years, resigned in protest.[53] In 2022 (two years after Schell's retirement) Kent awarded MacFarlane its alumni achievement award.[55] To commemorate the occasion, the school commissioned a Kent student to create a video in which MacFarlane's friends and family recounted episodes from his childhood.[56]
In 2017,The New York Times reported on a lawsuit alleging that Kent School failed to report alleged sexual misconduct by a faculty member toward a 15-year-old student in 1987 and 1988.[57] The report came on the heels ofThe Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team revealing decades of alleged sexual abuse at numerous New England prep schools and alleged retaliation for student complaints. The reporters noted faculty alleged as abusers being relocated to different schools, including Kent.[58][59]
