The Loomis Chaffee School | |
---|---|
Location | |
Windsor, Connecticut United States |
|
Information | |
Type | Private, boarding, day |
Motto | Ne Cede Malis |
Established | 1914 |
Head of school | Sheila Culbert |
Faculty | 160 |
Enrollment | 680 |
Average class size | 11 students |
Student to teacher ratio | 5:1 (4:1 boarding student-to-residential faculty) |
Campus | 300 acres (1.2 km2) |
Color(s) | Maroon and gray |
Mascot | Pelican |
Endowment | $175 million |
Website | loomischaffee.org |
Coordinates: 41°50′24.17″N 72°38′25.96″W / 41.8400472°N 72.6405444°W
The Loomis Chaffee School (LC or Loomis) is an independent school, or college preparatory school, for boarding and day students grades 9–12, including postgraduates, located in Windsor, Connecticut. Loomis Chaffee is a member of the Ten Schools Admissions Organization.
The school was chartered in 1874 by five siblings who had lost all their children and were determined to found a school as a gift to the children of others.
The roots of Loomis Chaffee run as far back as 1639, when Joseph Loomis and his family first settled at the confluence of the Farmington and Connecticut River. Several generations later, the inspiration for the school was born out of family tragedy, when, in the early 1870s, four Loomis brothers and their sister had outlived all their children.
As a memorial to their own offspring, and as a gift to future children, they pooled their considerable estates to found a secondary school called The Loomis Institute to educate young persons, "hoping and trusting that some good may come to posterity, from the harvest, poor though it be, of our lives." The original 1640 Loomis Homestead was chosen as the site where their dream would become reality.
James Chaffee Loomis, Hezekiah Bradley Loomis, Osbert Burr Loomis, John Mason Loomis, and Abigail Sarah Loomis Hayden planned a school that would offer both vocational and college preparatory courses. (Vocational offerings were discontinued during the later development of the school.) The institution would have no religious or political admission criteria. Boys and girls would be given as free an education as the endowment would allow. The Loomis Institute opened its doors in 1914 to 39 boys and five girls. In 1926, their girls’ division broke off to focus more closely on girls’ educational issues and became The Chaffee School.