Building the SPS we need for the 21st century.
BY DAVID SCULLY ‘79, P’21, SPS BOARD OF TRUSTEES PRESIDENT
Our long-term investment strategy for the endowment has enabled St. Paul’s School to offer generations of students a transformative experience at one of the few remaining 100% boarding high schools in the United States. Now we seek to carry forward our unique values and community ethos to position SPS as a 21st-century destination for student leaders preparing to pursue careers in service to the greater good. The question of how to fund the School’s ongoing needs has become pressing. Rising costs and aging buildings create an even greater sense of urgency. Our School community has met this challenge before, and I am confident we will do so again now.
“It is not a question of whether the School is operating at a deficit or holding its own, but whether or not it has the resources to do the job it thinks it should and must in the years ahead. Right now, St. Paul’s is dead center financially, and to the extent that its destiny depends upon educational and physical development, its financial resources must be augmented.”
— Campaign statement
1956 Centennial Fund for SPS
In FY23, the total annual endowment draw was $32.2 million — with 36%, or $11.6 million, going to financial aid that was awarded to more than one-third of the student body. The average award was nearly 90% of tuition. The balance was spent on faculty support and academic programs, and general operating expenses such as insurance, utilities, dining and facilities — in essence, all the costs involved to sustain our 2,000-acre campus community with 540 students, 325 staff and 119 buildings and residences.
The SPS endowment is a huge competitive advantage for the School. In recent years, many high schools have experienced tremendous strain on their operating budgets, compelling them to raise tuition well above the rate of inflation.
The actual cost of educating a student at SPS is $130,000 per year — St. Paul’s is really a high-tech campus masquerading as a bucolic New England village. The strength of our endowment combined with generous annual support from alumni and parents have enabled SPS to hold tuition at nearly half this cost ($68,353 for fiscal year 2025). To put this in context, several of our peers with less financial means have already seen tuition levels rise above $80,000.
“Will the work still live? Will the flame of this sanctuary still be kept up?”
— Dr. Henry Augustus Coit
25th Anniversary Sermon, 1881
First Rector Dr. Coit made these remarks with his students in mind, for the community they were building together. One year later, he offered the beginning of an answer, tasking a committee of alumni to raise funds for a new chapel, because the original Chapel of St. Paul was already too small for the growing student body. Six years later, Rector Coit sat in the new Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul for its dedication, surrounded by “a crowd of alumni … the most numerous that had ever returned to the school at one time,” according to St. Paul’s historian August Heckscher II ’32.
Our peer schools have made significant investments in facilities to expand their offerings in performing arts as well as math and science. SPS is fortunate to have the Lindsay Center, a state-of-the-art facility for STEM disciplines that opened to students in 2011. Our last major investment in performing arts occurred nearly 50 years ago with the construction of the dance and music buildings in 1980, and Memorial Hall is nearly 75 years old. Our dining staff operate in Coit, working in kitchens that are more than 60 years old.
As the School approaches its 175th anniversary in 2031, we are actively planning how best to continue nurturing “the flame of this sanctuary.” The current Strategic Plan, released in November 2022, outlines a set of Guiding Principles enabling the mission to “educate students to build purposeful lives in service to the greater good.” Since fall 2023, the Board of Trustees and Rector Kathy Giles have been developing a comprehensive campus plan for St. Paul’s School with Philadelphia architectural firm KieranTimberlake. Once completed (anticipated January 2025), the plan will outline a comprehensive 25-year framework grounded in tradition, aligned with core values, and flexible enough to adapt to an evolving future. In short, it will guide us on what to tear down, what to renovate and what to build new.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of the endowment’s support of excellence at St. Paul’s School. With 92% of the endowment made up of gifts with principal values of less than $1 million, the power of the community’s generosity over time has been extraordinary. This is also a testament to the effect of compounding. The endowment is worth $747 million today. Acorns really grow into oak trees.
As we look to the future and think about our capital needs, it is important to recognize the endowment is doing all that it can. The annual draw (typically 4% to 5%) is fully allocated to the operating budget, and we do not want to eat into its principal to pay for new investments, reducing its permanent stream of income.
We are excited to share the new comprehensive campus plan with alumni and parents. We will need to raise new money to bring it to life, and this will be a big lift. We will need the generosity of alumni and parents to source major gifts. We are also keen to leverage crowdfunding techniques to enable all alumni and parents, regardless of means, to help us reinvest in excellence at SPS. We are all in this together, and we need everyone to grab an oar and help pull.
The Board of Trustees and I are honored to lead this effort in partnership with Rector Giles and her administrative team, and on behalf of every student and adult who is a member of our special SPS community. SPS is thriving, and its best days are ahead! Onward!