A private Quaker school in Maryland has received a reprieve from unexpected closure after friends and family generated $15 million in pledges in three days following the school’s surprise announcement it was broke. 

Sandy Spring Friends School has been operating in wealthy Montgomery County since 1961. The pre-K through grade 12 school serves 615 students whose tuition ranges from $26,900 to $45,350 per year, with 33 percent receiving financial aid.

The school announced last week that it could not surmount an additional $14 million–$16 million it needed over the next three years to remain open. It cited operating losses, debt service, repayment of a mortgage on the 140-acre property, and the need for major maintenance repairs.

“We can chalk up the school’s financial picture to a number of factors – the lingering impacts of the pandemic on enrollment and giving; our aging facilities and capital needs; the absence of strong philanthropy from which other schools benefit. But, in the end, it was no one factor. The school’s financial picture simply became unsustainable,” the school wrote in an email message to parents sent out on April 15.  “Regrettably, despite an immense effort to shore up the school’s financial foundation, we simply do not have the financial wherewithal to meet our obligations next year.”

The prospect of the Friends school closing at the end of the school year shocked students and their parents, many of whom had already registered their children for the fall semester and had missed the window to apply elsewhere. 

In response, a coalition of parents, alumni, and friends sprang into action, securing $9 million in 48 hours and identifying an angel donor to guarantee the money up front to keep the school afloat for three more years. By Friday night, the coalition had raised $15 million. On Wednesday, the group announced that it had the closure decision reversed and the school will remain open until at least 2028.

“I know nothing about campaign funding … but I am told by the experts that this kind of fundraising happens over years,” wrote the coalition’s co-leader and 2000 graduate, Heather Jackson, who is a pediatric occupational therapist by trade.

With immediate closure at bay, coalition leaders can now look past saving the school from the brink, but also how the leadership got the school into its financial predicament. 

“We will not blindly hand over pledges with how things are currently done and without significant governance leadership changes at SSFS,” Dr. Jackson wrote in an update to parents. “The coalition is committed to supporting the school’s future while being clear that our vision necessarily includes significant board leadership renewal. Our financial support is explicitly tied to these governance changes.”

Dr. Jackson added that the end goal will also include an endowment “that can ebb and flow with the world’s inevitable changes and the needs of its students and community.”

“We have large goals beyond saving SSFS from the brink of being turned into a golf course or mixed-use development,” she wrote. 

The school board did not respond to a request for comment.