Kent was one of the first schools to provide tuition discounts based on what a family could afford to pay. The school's list of notable alumni includes philosopher John Rawls, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, and three winners of the Pulitzer Prize.
Although Kent has occasionally been categorized within Saint 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, the Gilded 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's financial 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 established South Kent School in 1923.[14][20] He retired in 1941 after a paralytic stroke, and died in 1952.[1][21]
Development
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, the apartheid-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]
Present day
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 of St. Paul's School in New Hampshire.[39] The student body shrunk during the COVID-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]
Academics
Kent follows a trimester 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 out Advanced 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 average SAT score of 1313 and an average ACT score of 28.1.[34]
Finances
Tuition and financial aid
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]
Endowment and expenses
In its Internal 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 (primarily student financial aid).[45]
Facilities
Academic and administrative facilities
Administration Building (Head of School's office; other administrative offices; Theology department)
Rev. Richardson W. Schell '69 House (offices for admissions, alumni relations, and fundraising)
RAD House (offices for class deans)
Schoolhouse and John Gray Park '28 Library (mathematics, language, and classics classrooms; individual and group study spaces; Academic Resource Center; other admissions offices)
Foley Hall (humanities classrooms, including History and English)
Dickinson Science Building (science classrooms and laboratory spaces; Dickinson Auditorium; greenhouse)
Howard and Judith B. Wentz Center for Engineering and Applied Sciences (engineering department; school solar car, rocketry initiative, and NASA rover competition team; dance classes)
Mattison Auditorium (theater and musical departments)
Music Center (music classrooms; concert and individual practice rooms)
Field Building (visual arts classrooms, art studios, and photography facilities)
St. Joseph's Chapel is a Romanesque church located in the center of campus. All school meetings and Formal Dinner, Tuesday, and Sunday chapel services are held here. The Chapel is home to a bell tower with ten bells made by Whitechapel bellfoundry, installed in 1931, and a Hook & Hastings organ. Students can join the Bell Ringing Guild as an activity and learn to play the organ through the Music department.
Six dormitories (Field, Hoerle, Case, Borsdorff, North, Middle Dorm South)
Athletic facilities
Magowan Fieldhouse (two basketball courts, a short-course (25yd) pool, gym, indoor golf facilities, and sports medicine facilities)
Sill Boat House and Benjamin Waring Partridge '62 Rowing Center, which hosts to the school's rowing trophy room
Nadal Hockey Rink and Springs Center
The Bourke Racquet Center (eight squash courts; outdoor and indoor hard tennis courts).
Michael O. Page Equestrian Center
South Fieldhouse (ropes course, bike maintenance shop)
Playing fields (turf football field, baseball field, soccer, field hockey)
Cross-country course
Mountain biking trails
Athletics
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 of NEPSAC schools.[46] Its mascot is the Lion, although it once was the Fighting Episcopalian. Despite Hotchkiss School's location in the same county, Kent's rival is The Loomis Chaffee School and the two schools have a day dedicated to competing against each other, historically called Loomis Day.
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 President Franklin 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 in Life 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 established Prince 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 to Eton 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]
Squash
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]
Controversies
Following the 1999 premiere of Seth MacFarlane '91's animated TV sitcom Family Guy, Kent headmaster Richardson Schell urged Fox 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 like Coca-Cola, Philip Morris, KFC, and Sprint 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 of The 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]
^ ab"Kent School". The Episcopal Church. Retrieved June 25, 2024.
^Baltzell, E. Digby (1987). The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (Paperback ed.). New Haven, NH: Yale University Press. pp. 127–29.
^Bradley, Hugh; Brooks, John; Ross, Harold (June 23, 1933). ""Father Sill"". The New Yorker. ISSN0028-792X. Retrieved June 25, 2024.
^Karabel, Jerome (2006). The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Revised ed.). New York: Mariner Books. pp. 562 n.6.
^Livermore, George G. (July 1934). "Hats Off to Kent!". Boys' Life. Boy Scouts of America. Retrieved January 27, 2012.
^Williams, Peter W. (2016). Religion, Art, and Money: Episcopalians and American Culture from the Civil War to the Great Depression. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. p. 172.
