Alumni group raises $500,000 in push against admission of girls at The Kiski School

Some alumni of The Kiski School have been raising money in an attempt to get the all-boys boarding school in Loyalhanna Township to reverse course on welcoming girls in fall 2024 — ending a storied 136-year tradition.

Joseph Garcia, a 1985 alumnus, is the chairman of the Friends of Kiski Prep, which is the nonprofit behind the fundraising.

“We weren’t going to sit back and let them do this,” said Garcia, 56, of Green Tree. “There’s a place for Kiski in the world, and we’d like to see to it that it stays that way.”

Garcia, the director of operations at SmartRoof Solar, said he credits his success in life to his family and to The Kiski School, a private school spread across 350 acres along the bank of the Kiski River. He spent 10 years serving on the Kiski Board of Visitors, a nonvoting board, as well as class captain.

He said he believes more can be done in terms of fundraising, and there are a lot of “very generous, very wealthy alumni” who would be willing to contribute.

Because the Friends group has raised over $500,000 in three weeks, Garcia said, the administration should “pause” its decision and give them time to raise more money.

Head of School Christopher Brueningsen, who has been at the helm since 2002, said there were two key factors that went into the decision to welcome girls for the upcoming academic year: challenges associated with the pandemic and declining interest in single-sex boarding schools.

Related:

• The Kiski School will welcome girls after 136 years of all-boys boarding school education
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• From 2019: Kiski School to lower tuition by more than 20 percent in 2020-21

The Kiski School sent a letter to all alumni and other constituents in June, detailing the enrollment task force’s job to ensure the school’s financial stability. Alumni then received a letter Oct. 4 informing them of the board’s unanimous decision to go co-ed.

John Jacob, Kiski board chairman and member of the board of trustees since 2010, said in recent years, “significant fundraising efforts have been required to maintain Kiski as an all-boys boarding school.” Kiski launched a “For the Boys” campaign in 2020, which raised over $3.5 million, he said.

“Our pressing financial needs were communicated in dozens of donor appeals to alumni,” Jacob said. “It became clear that fundraising at this pace was not sustainable.”

Varied reactions

Across campus and among other alumni, reaction to the news has been met with mixed emotions.

Senior Zak Silnutzer said he and his fellow classmates were given the news during a school meeting.

What followed was silence.

“You could hear a needle drop,” said Silnutzer, 17, of Monroeville. “Everyone was kind of expecting it, I think, (but) when the news was actually said, everyone was feeling a lot of different emotions.”

Sophomore Nathaniel Winter, 16, of Forest Hills, said he was shocked by the news.

He first heard about the possibility in an email his parents received, but he didn’t think becoming co-ed would actually happen.

“It seemed like a very outlandish idea,” he said.

Some might say the decision is destroying Kiski’s tradition, Winter said, but for him, he doesn’t know “if that’s entirely true.”

“This community — it’s really hard to compare it to any place else, so I understand why people say that,” Winter said.

Many seniors are saying they don’t care about the decision, Silnutzer said, while others are conflicted, as they’re part of the last class of students graduating in the all-boys model.

“We’re at this breaking point where we don’t know if we’re ready to graduate, ready to leave the all boys school or if we (feel) the need to experience the co-ed Kiski as it’s going to be,” Silnutzer said.

The Kiski School’s board formed its enrollment task force last fall to explore various options for its future, and following “a lot of analysis and financial modeling” and consulting industry experts, opening enrollment to girls ended up being the right answer, Brueningsen said.

Tuition for 2023-24 is $52,500, he said, and the national average for boarding schools is creeping up on $70,000 per year.

Since the boarding school opened in 1888, daughters of faculty members have been allowed to attend — despite the all-boys model — Brueningsen said, and in the 1950s or early 1960s, he said there were female day students for a brief period.

Alumnus David Conrad said though he has no argument against co-ed schools, he believes the announcement felt like a business decision.

Conrad, 57, of London is a 1985 graduate of Kiski, and he said his problem is with the methodology of the decision — especially how the details seemed to be “hidden” by administration and then announced quickly.

Conrad, who is an actor, a writer and TV and film producer, said he initially heard the decision was brewing in the spring, but he believes the school wasn’t transparent ahead of time about its financial state.

Over the past couple of years, The Kiski School’s tuition revenue has dropped $1.5 million, and it wasn’t just from the pandemic, Brueningsen said.

In a June letter letter from the school, officials said Kiski “is not in financial peril now or in the near future.”

“But it is essential that we explore our options proactively in order to ensure that Kiski will be positioned to perpetually grow and thrive,” the letter said.

Conrad said he understands the financial situation now that he’s aware of it, and he believes the educational benefits of the school will be fine with girls added.

Kelly Pidgeon of Indiana, also a member of the class of 1985, said he felt the same way.

A voice-over actor and producer and the son of the former headmaster, Pidgeon, 57, lived on campus his entire life until he graduated from the school.

He said he wasn’t shocked by the decision, but he was “really disappointed.” Though the school doesn’t have to consult with alumni, he said Kiski does “sort of have an obligation” to be “upfront and honest.”

“Alumni should at least be given the chance to rise to the challenge,” Pidgeon said.

He said he felt it was “a bit disingenuous” to cite finances as one of the main reasons when alumni were being told there was no financial peril.

Jake Zeigler, Class of 1962, also grew up on the campus, as his father taught at Kiski and started the wrestling program in the 1930s. He believes the decision to move to co-ed is a smart move.

“I thought it was about time,” said Zeigler, 79, of Lancaster.

Though he doesn’t foresee Kiski changing that much by adding girls, he said the first group of girls will be very important.

“They’re going to need some support,” Zeigler said.

Female point of view

Samantha Ponzetti is one of the few girls who graduated from Kiski as a faculty daughter.

Ponzetti, 26, of Jeanette is a Class of 2015 graduate, and she’s now a counselor at Propel Schools in McKeesport. She said she wasn’t upset by the decision, but her biggest concern lies with alumni who are not accepting it.

“Being a girl that wants to go there … and you’re excited about this, and then you start to read the things that are all over the internet right now — it would feel that you’re not welcomed there,” Ponzetti said.

Bo Buran, who started teaching at Kiski in the 1980s, was the former head football coach and is the chair of the science department, agreed with Ponzetti that the changes over the years at Kiski have largely been good.

“It’s definitely changed with the times, and appropriately so,” Buran, 60, of Saltsburg, said. “Change doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it can be difficult to go through.”

Most of the changes going co-ed will bring will be “for the positive,” he said.

“I feel like the most necessary thing would just be for people to kind of accept it and move on,” Ponzetti said. “Just embrace that this is happening.”