Sidwell Friends School is a highly selective Quaker school located in Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, D.C., offering pre-kindergarten through secondary school classes. Founded in 1883 by Thomas Sidwell, its motto is "Eluceat omnibus lux" (English: Let the light shine out from all), alluding to the Quaker concept of inner light. All Sidwell Friends students attend Quaker meeting for worship weekly, and middle school students begin every day with five minutes of silence.
The school's admissions process is merit-based. As documented on the school's website, it gives preference in admissions decisions to members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), but otherwise does not discriminate on the basis of religion. The school accepts vouchers under the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
Described as "the Harvard of Washington's private schools", the school has educated children of notable politicians, including those of several presidents. Both of former United States President Barack Obama's daughters, Sasha and Malia, and former Vice President Joe Biden's grandchildren attend the school. President Theodore Roosevelt's son Archibald, Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia, Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea Clinton, and Vice President Al Gore's son, Albert Gore III, graduated from Sidwell Friends.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
History
Thomas Sidwell started a "Friends' Select School" in 1883 on I Street in downtown Washington, four blocks from the White House. It opened with eleven students, Beginning in 1911 Sidwell began buying property between Wisconsin Avenue and 37th St. At first the new property was used for athletic fields while the campus was still downtown, with students shuttling between the two sites by streetcar. However, in 1923 Sidwell built a building for school dances and other social gatherings on what came to be known as the Wisconsin Avenue campus.
In 1925 the school added a kindergarten, which made it the first K-12 school in Washington. In 1934 the name of the school was changed to "Sidwell Friends School". The school moved slowly out to the Wisconsin Avenue campus with the first five grades taught there by 1933, but by 1938 everything had been moved, and the I Street property was sold.
At the urging of the students the school adopted its dress code in 1955, which included a coat and tie for all male high school students. Again at the urging of the students, it dropped this dress code in the 1970s.
Sidwell became racially integrated in 1956. Before 1956 it was a white-only school.
Since 2005, the Wisconsin Avenue campus has seen the completion of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum Middle School; a new indoor athletic facility; underground parking garage; and two turf fields. A new Quaker Meeting House facility is located in the newly renovated Arts Center.
Thomas B. Farquhar left his position as the Head of School after the 2013-2014 school year. He became the Head of School after the retirement of former Head of School Bruce Stewart at the end of the 2008-2009 school year. Bryan K. Garman, the current Head of School, took office beginning with the 2014-2015 school year.
Academics
In 2005, Sidwell's AP English Exam scores were the highest in the nation for all medium-sized schools (300-799 students in grades 10-12) offering the AP English exam. Sidwell does not offer an AP English course.
All students must acquire at least 20 credits before graduating. Students are required to take four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of history, two years of one foreign language, two years of science, and two years of art. In addition to this, all freshmen must take a full year Freshman Studies course.
Sidwell is a member school of School Year Abroad.
Athletics
Sidwell's sports teams are known as the Quakers; their colors are maroon and gray. The Quakers compete in the Mid-Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAC) for boys' sports (after previously competing in the Interstate Athletic Conference (IAC) until 1999) and the Independent School League (ISL) for girls' sports. Sidwell offers teams in Volleyball, Golf, Boys and Girls Cross Country, Football, Field Hockey, Girls and Boys Soccer, Boys and Girls Basketball, Swimming, Wrestling, Boys and Girls Tennis, Baseball, Boys and Girls Lacrosse, Boys and Girls Track, Ultimate Frisbee, and Softball.
Boys' cross country
Sidwell has a strong tradition in boys' cross country, including winning four consecutive conference championships under Head Coach Bill Wooden from 2006-2009. They produced the area's top runner, 2010 All-Met Athlete of the Year John McGowan '11, who runs for Yale University. In 2015, they won the MAC Championships and ended Georgetown Day School's six year MAC title streak.
Boys' soccer
Over the past decade, the Sidwell Friends Boys' Soccer program has become one of the best programs in the Washington, DC metro area. In fall, 2006, the boys' varsity soccer team compiled a 19-2 record and was recognized as No. 9 in the Washington Post Top Ten soccer schools in the metropolitan area. The 2007 Boys Varsity Soccer team again won the MAAC Boys' Soccer championship and achieved a second consecutive Washington Post Top Ten ranking, reaching No. 3 in the final poll with a 20-2 record. The 2008 team continued their recent success by winning the third consecutive MAAC title, and their 4th in 5 years, with an undefeated 16-0-1 record for the season. Again, the Quakers finished the season ranked No. 3 in the area by the Washington Post and No. 36 nationally by ESPNRise.com. The 2009 squad began the season ranked No. 22 in the country by ESPN. After failing to capture the MAAC tournament trophy in two consecutive seasons, the 2013 team was the first team in Sidwell Friends History to win the MAAC league, tournament, and DC state championships finishing 3rd in the Washington Post Top Ten rankings. In October 2009 the squad achieved a prestigious No. 1 Washington Post ranking. They also ended up ranked No. 47 in the country.
Football
Sidwell Friends has a century-long tradition of playing football, and plays in the MAAC. Players have gone on to play college football at Columbia University, Franklin & Marshall College, Georgetown University, Middlebury College,Kenyon College, Ithaca College Stanford University, and Wake Forest University.
Wrestling
The wrestling program at Sidwell has taken 10th place in the national prep tournament in 2003, and won the DC Classic, a competition among all DC private schools that compete in wrestling, in 2007 and 2008. In February 2008, the Boys Varsity Wrestling Team claimed their 7th "banner" (conference championship) in 9 years of participating in the MAAC. It was also their 4th straight banner. They established clear dominance, winning the tournament by over 100 points, and boasted 8 MAAC champions and one additional All-MAAC selection. In January 2009, the Sidwell Wrestling team had an impressive showing at the MAAC wrestling tournament--having 7 MAAC champions and winning the tournament by over 80 points. In January 2011, Sidwell Wrestling broke the MAAC record for most consecutive championships, previously held by Sidwell Football, by winning their seventh.
Boys' basketball
Sidwell Friends School Varsity Boys' Basketball is coached by Sidwell alumnus Eric Singletary '93. Singletary, now in his fourth year, has led the Quakers to conference championships in the 2009-10, 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 seasons. Other recent program highlights include Sidwell's first conference championship in Boys' Basketball in the 2006-07 season, with a 14-0 conference record.
Girls' basketball
The Sidwell Friends girls' varsity basketball program has a long winning tradition, with numerous conference titles as well as local and national rankings. Head Coach Anne Renninger, a pioneering player at the University of Maryland and one of the youngest Division I college coaches ever (at George Washington University), has led the Quakers to over 400 victories. Over a two-year stretch from 1997-1999, the Sidwell girls' basketball team lost only two games, while winning back-to-back conference championships and achieving both Washington Post Top 10 and USA Today rankings. Former Sidwell girls basketball players have gone on to play for schools such as Duke, NC State, Wake Forest, Stanford, Tennessee, Harvard, Penn, George Washington and William & Mary.
Boys' baseball
The Sidwell Friends men's baseball team has been one of the top squads in the MAC in recent years. With a conference championship in 2006, and 3rd-place finishes in 2007, 2009, and 2010, the Quakers finished second in the league in 2011 and 2012. The Quakers also won the 2011 Washington DC city title with a victory over Woodrow Wilson High School in the Congressional Bank Classic at Nationals Park.
Current profile
- For the 2017-2018 school year, 1,146 students are enrolled.
- 47% of the student body are students of color.
- 23% of the student body receives some form of financial assistance.
- The school employs 155 teachers and 112 administrative and support staff.
- 84% of faculty hold advanced degrees.
- Tuition for the 2017-2018 school year is $40,840.
- The school does not release its SAT average scores or college admission list. However, the school releases to the families of the most recent alumni class a list of which institutions each recently graduated student is attending.
- The school does not rank its students, as this conflicts with the Quaker Testimony of Equality.
Campuses
The Middle and Upper School campus is located at 3825 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20016-2907
- 15 acre (61,000 m²) Wisconsin Avenue campus in the Tenleytown section of Northwest Washington
- Earl G. Harrison Jr. Upper School Building
- Middle School building with LEED platinum certification, designed by architect KieranTimberlake Associates and landscape design by Andropogon Associates. The wood-clad building was designed around a sustainable use of water and energy, exemplified by a constructed wetland in the center of the campus, with many species of plants, as well as turtles and fish, part of a wastewater recycling system designed by Biohabitats. On the interior, the building uses thermal chimneys and louvers that admit diffuse light to limit the need for artificial light and thermal control. Lastly, the building contains a centralized mechanical plant that uses less energy than normal, much of which is produced by photovoltaic banks on the roof. The materials used and the environmental technology are referenced architecturally and made accessible to students, either physically, or by explanatory signs, as an educational feature.
- Kogod Center for the Arts (Scott Weathers Rosenberg '06 Theater)
- Richard Walter Goldman Memorial Library
- Zartman House (administration building)
- Sensner Building (Fox Den Cafe and school store)
- Wannan and Kenworthy Gymnasiums
- Three athletic fields, five tennis courts, and two tracks (one 2-lane indoor track indoor for bad weather and an outdoor 6-lane track for competitions).
- Parking facility with faculty, student, guest and alumni parking (2 floors, 200+ parking spaces), as well as offices for security, IT and maintenance
The Lower School campus can be found at 5100 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, Montgomery County, Maryland, 20814-2306
- 5 acre (20,000 m²) Edgemoor Lane campus in Bethesda (formerly Longfellow School for Boys; opened for the 1963-64 school year)
- Manor House (classrooms, administration, and Clark Library)
- Groome Building (classrooms and multi-purpose room)
- Science, Art, and Music (SAM) Building
- The Bethesda Friends Meeting House
- Athletic fields, a gymnasium, and two playgrounds
Both campuses underwent major renovations throughout the 2005-2006 school year, and construction for the Wisconsin Avenue campus Athletic Center (which includes the Kenworthy Courts) was completed in 2011.
Sidwell Friends plans to move the Lower School to the site of the current site of The Washington Home and Community Hospices, which is adjacent to the Wisconsin Avenue campus. Plans call for the Lower School to the new location by September 2019.
Notable alumni
Notable alumni of Sidwell Friends include:
- Elizabeth Alexander (1980), poet
- Anne Applebaum (1982), journalist and author
- Jon Bernthal (1995), actor
- Ann Brashares (1985), author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series of books
- Oteil Burbridge (1982), bassist for Dead & Company and the Allman Brothers Band
- Setsuko Chichibu (1928), Princess of Japan
- Sonya Clark (1985), artist
- Chelsea Clinton (1997), daughter of President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
- Tricia Nixon Cox (1964) daughter of President Richard Nixon
- J. Bradford DeLong (1979), US Treasury appointee in the Clinton administration
- David W. Dennis (1929), Indiana congressman
- John Deutch (1956), Central Intelligence Agency Director, MIT professor
- John Dickerson (1987), journalist, political commentator, and writer.
- Ezra Edelman (1992), Emmy Award-winning documentary producer and director
- Margaret Edson (1979), Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Wit
- Nick Friedman (2000), entrepreneur
- Dan Froomkin (1981), journalist and Huffington Post columnist
- Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. (1969), Federal Reserve Board Former vice-chairman
- Ana Gasteyer (1985), actress
- Doug Gansler (1981), State's Attorney for Montgomery County, Maryland (1999--2007), Attorney General of the State of Maryland, (2007-2015)nn
- Charles Gibson (1961), ABC World News Tonight anchor, host of ABC's Good Morning America
- Walter Gilbert (1949), Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry
- Paul Goldstein (1994), professional tennis player, 4-time NCAA Champion and All-American at Stanford, 2-time USTA 18 & Under national champion.
- James K Glassman (1965), editorialist, syndicated columnist, and author
- Hanna Holborn Gray (1947 or 1948), historian and Provost of Yale University and later the President of University of Chicago
- Davis Guggenheim (1982), film director, An Inconvenient Truth among others
- William Henry Harrison (1914 or 1915), Republican Representative from Wyoming and great-great-grandson of President William Henry Harrison
- Josh Hart (2013), basketball player, first-round selection of 2017 NBA draft
- Tony Horwitz (1976), journalist and author
- Clara Jeffery (1985), editor of Mother Jones magazine
- Thomas Kail (1995), director
- John Katzenbach (1968), author
- Philip S. Khoury (1967), Ford International Professor of History and Associate Provost, MIT
- Jair Lynch (1989), gymnast, 1996 Olympic Silver Medalist in parallel bars
- Campbell McGrath (1980), poet and winner of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Award"
- Nana Meriwether (2003), 2012 Miss Maryland and 2012 Miss USA Runner-up and 2012 Miss USA
- Daniel Mudd (1976), former CEO of Fannie Mae
- Jeffrey Mumford (1973), composer
- Robert Newmyer (1974), film producer
- Bill Nye (1973), television personality and scientist
- Sasha Obama, daughter of President Barack Obama
- Malia Obama (2016), daughter of President Barack Obama
- Eliza Orlins, contestant on Survivor: Vanuatu and Survivor: Micronesia
- Natalie Randolph (1999), former football coach Coolidge High School in Washington, D.C.
- Archibald Roosevelt (1912?), son of Theodore Roosevelt
- Scott Sanders (1986), director of Black Dynamite
- Ben Shenkman (1986), actor
- Susan Shreve (1957), professor, author and novelist
- Omar Soliman (2000), author and entrepreneur
- Lorin Stein, editor in chief of The Paris Review
- Andrew Szanton (1981), author
- Ed Tapscott (1971), former Washington Wizards interim head coach
- Edward Lazarus (1977), Supreme Court Clerk, author
- Baratunde Thurston (1995), comedian
- Oleg Alexandrovich Troyanovsky, Soviet ambassador to the United Nations
- Alexandra Tydings (1989), actress
- Robert Watson, (1995), computer scientist
- Robin Weigert (1987), actress
- William Zantzinger, convicted killer and subject of the Bob Dylan song, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"
The following notable people attended Sidwell but graduated elsewhere:
- George A. Akerlof, Nobel Prize winner for Economics & current Faculty member at Georgetown University
- Kara Lawson (1999, left in 1996) WNBA player and star at the University of Tennessee, 5th pick of the 2003 WNBA Draft.
- Charles Lindbergh (attended 1913-1915)
- Roger Mason (1999, left in 1996) NBA player for the San Antonio Spurs and star at the University of Virginia, 31st pick of the 2002 NBA Draft.
- Julie Nixon Eisenhower (1966, left in 1961), daughter of Richard Nixon
- John Dos Passos, (attended 1902-1903)
- Nancy Reagan, former First Lady (attended the elementary school 1925-1928)
- Philip Terzian (1961-66) Literary Editor of The Weekly Standard
- Gore Vidal (1943, left in 1936)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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