Fay School, founded in 1866 by the Fay sisters, is an independent,

coeducational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to ...

day A day is the time rotation period, period of a full Earth's rotation, rotation of the Earth with respect to the Sun. On average, this is 24 hours (86,400 seconds). As a day passes at a given location it experiences morning, afternoon, evening, ...

and boarding school located in Southborough,

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

History

Founding and early years

Fay School was founded in 1866 by sisters Eliza Burnett Fay and Harriet Burnett in a former

parsonage A clergy house is the residence, or former residence, of one or more priests or ministers of a given religion, serving as both a home and a base for the occupant's ministry. Residences of this type can have a variety of names, such as manse, pa ...

of the Unitarian church, across from St. Mark's School, where Fay students traditionally attended secondary school. In its first school year, the school had only seven students: five day students and two boarders.

Expansion

Under Eliza Fay's son, Waldo B. Fay, the school grew sizably, adding a new dormitory, school room, and library. In 1922, the school was officially incorporated, and the ownership of the school was transferred from the Fay family to the newly formed

board of trustees A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

. The school became fully coeducational in 1977, having previously implemented a

pilot program A pilot experiment, pilot study, pilot test or pilot project is a small-scale preliminary study conducted to evaluate feasibility, duration, cost, adverse events, and improve upon the study design prior to performance of a full-scale research ...

for girls in 1972. Girls had previously attended the school as day students through the late 19th century. The Root Academic Building, the main academic building of the campus, was constructed in 2001. Fay opened its Primary School (pre-K to 2nd grade) in 2010 and moved its 6th grade into the Lower School program (now 3rd to 6th grade) in the 2012–13 school year.

Headmasters

Campus facilities

The school is situated on a 30-acre main campus, with a 36-acre athletic campus 1.5 miles away in Marlborough. Apart from the Root Academic Building, there are multiple other buildings at Fay: the Center for Creativity and Design, the Picardi Art Building, the Reinke Building, and the Harris Event Center, which contains the theater. Below the theater is the Harlow Gymnasium, which contains the locker rooms, four basketball courts, an indoor rock climbing wall, and a fitness room. In addition, there are six soccer fields, four tennis courts, two swimming pools, a football field, and the multi-purpose MacAusland Field. For meals, students go to the Camp Family Dining Hall, which is currently operated by SAGE Dining. There are currently seven dormitory buildings: two boy dorms and five girl dorms, housing its 150 boarding students from 7th to 9th grade. File:Fay School - Southborough, MA - IMG 0710.JPG, Root Academic Building File:Fay School - Southborough, MA - IMG 0709.JPG, Harlow Gymnasium File:Fay School - Southborough, MA - IMG 0719.JPG, Dining Hall File:Fay School - Southborough, MA - IMG 0697.JPG, Steward Dormitory File:Fay School - Southborough, MA - IMG 0707.JPG, Primary Building

Notable alumni

* Doug Brown '1979,

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

right winger, 1986-2001 * Stephen Chao '1970, entrepreneur and media executive, former president of Fox Television, 1992; former president of

USA Network USA Network (or simply USA) is an American basic cable television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Media Group division of Comcast's NBCUniversal. It was launched in 1977 as Madison Square Garden Sports Network, one of the first national sports ...

, 1998-2001 * Victor Chapman '1903, first American pilot killed in

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

* Eric Chou '2010,

Mandopop Mandopop or Mandapop refers to Mandarin popular music. The genre has its origin in the jazz-influenced popular music of 1930s Shanghai known as Shidaiqu; later influences came from Japanese enka, Hong Kong's Cantopop, Taiwan's Hokkien pop ...

singer, songwriter *

Michael D. Coe Michael Douglas Coe (May 14, 1929 – September 25, 2019) was an American archaeologist, anthropologist, epigraphy, epigrapher, and author. He is known for his research on pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, particularly the Maya civilization, Maya, an ...

'1941, archeologist,

Mesoamerican Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...

scholar *

Robert Daniel Robert Williams Daniel, Jr. (March 17, 1936 – February 4, 2012) was an American farmer, businessman, teacher, and politician from Virginia who served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican Party (United States), Re ...

'1949, US Representative of

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

, 1973-1983 * Tarah Donoghue Breed '1997, deputy press secretary to First Lady

Laura Bush Laura Lane Welch Bush (née Welch; born November 4, 1946) is an American educator who was the first lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009 as the wife of George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States. Bush was previously the fir ...

* Hamilton Fish III '1900, US Representative of New York, 1920-1945 *

Peter Fonda Peter Henry Fonda (February 23, 1940 – August 16, 2019) was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. He was a two-time Academy Award nominee, both for acting and screenwriting, and a two-time Golden Globe Award winner for his a ...

'1954, actor * George Foreman III '1998, boxer and entrepreneur * Glen Foster '1944,

1972 Summer Olympics The 1972 Summer Olympics (), officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad () and officially branded as Munich 1972 (; ), were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from 26 August to 11 September 1972. It was the ...

sailing Sailing employs the wind—acting on sails, wingsails or kites—to propel a craft on the surface of the ''water'' (sailing ship, sailboat, raft, Windsurfing, windsurfer, or Kitesurfing, kitesurfer), on ''ice'' (iceboat) or on ''land'' (Land sa ...

medalist *

Topher Grace Christopher John Grace ( ; born July 12, 1978), known professionally as Topher Grace, is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Eric Forman in the teen sitcom ''That '70s Show'' (1998–2005) and Eddie Brock / Venom in Sam Raimi's s ...

'1994, actor * C. Boyden Gray '1956,

White House counsel The White House Counsel is a senior staff appointee of the president of the United States whose role is to advise the president on all legal issues concerning the president and their administration. The White House counsel also oversees the Off ...

, 1989-1993, US Ambassador to the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

, 2006-2008 * Prince Hashim Al Hussein '1996,

prince A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. The ...

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

* Princess Iman bint Hussein '1998,

princess Princess is a title used by a female member of a regnant monarch's family or by a female ruler of a principality. The male equivalent is a prince (from Latin '' princeps'', meaning principal citizen). Most often, the term has been used for ...

* Heyward Isham '1940, US Ambassador to

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

, 1974-1977 * James Simon Kunen '1962, journalist, lawyer, writer, author of '' The Strawberry Statement'' * Bruce Lawrence '1955, scholar,

Duke Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of Royal family, royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and above sovereign princes. As royalty or nobi ...

professor of religion * David McKean '1972, US Ambassador to Luxembourg, 2016-2017 *

Nicholas Negroponte Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is a Greek American architect. He is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). Negroponte ...

'1958, founder and chairman emeritus of the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

, founder of One Laptop per Child * Robert E. Sherwood '1909, four-time

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

-winning playwright * James Jeremiah Wadsworth '1918, US Ambassador to the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

, 1960-1961 *

Damian Woetzel Damian Woetzel (born May 17, 1967) is an American choreographer. Woetzel was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, where he performed from 1985 until 2008. He also frequently performed with companies like the Kirov Ballet and Amer ...

'1981,

principal dancer A principal dancer (often shortened to principal) is a dancer at the highest rank within a professional dance company, particularly a ballet company. A principal may be either gender. The position is similar to that of ''Soloist (ballet), solois ...

at the

New York City Ballet New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company's fir ...

, 1989–2008; seventh president of the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a Private university, private performing arts music school, conservatory in New York City. Founded by Frank Damrosch as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, the school later added dance and drama programs and became ...

* Ying Rudi '2014, professional

KHL The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL; ) is an international professional ice hockey league founded in 2008. It comprises member clubs based in Russia (20), Belarus (1), Kazakhstan (1), and China (1) for a total of 23 clubs. It was considered in ...

ice hockey player, Chinese representative in the

2022 Winter Olympics The 2022 Winter Olympics, officially called the XXIV Olympic Winter Games () and commonly known as Beijing 2022 (2022), were an international winter multi-sport event held from 4 to 20 February 2022 in Beijing, China, and surrounding areas wit ...

* Efrem Zimbalist Jr. '1931,

Golden Globe The Golden Globe Awards are awards presented for excellence in both international film and television. It is an annual award ceremony held since 1944 to honor artists and professionals and their work. The ceremony is normally held every Januar ...

-winning actor

References

External links

Official Website
*
Entry
in Boarding School Review {{Authority control Private elementary schools in Massachusetts Private middle schools in Massachusetts Educational institutions established in 1866 Schools in Worcester County, Massachusetts Southborough, Massachusetts 1866 establishments in Massachusetts Private boarding schools in the United States