Annie Wright School celebrates 125th anniversary
To 17-year-old sophomore Joy Tai of Taiwan, it’s a fantasy-style castle reminiscent of Harry Potter’s world, a place of warmth, camaraderie and scholarship.
To 11-year-old fifth-grader Adam Faccone of Bonney Lake, it’s a haven of acceptance from classmates and attention from teachers.
And to Phyllis Gill, Class of ’49, it’s a foundation for life as strong as the cornerstone laid in 1883 by Charles Wright and his daughter Annie.
Annie Wright School, opened in 1884 to educate the daughters of Tacoma’s pioneers, is celebrating its 125th anniversary. Students, alumni, staff, parents and community leaders marked the milepost this week with prayer amid the stained-glass splendor and solemnity of Raynor Chapel, a tie to the school’s Episcopalian roots.
Some 100 guests broke bread in the Great Hall during a luncheon honoring the quasquicentennial of the private school, which was formed in Washington Territory while Chester Alan Arthur was president. There were two Tacomas then – Old and New, with a population of about 1,000. Gas lamps illuminated unpaved roads.
The private institution still hews to those all-girls roots in ninth through 12th grades. But it’s been a coed school in lower grades for decades.
Even as it honors the past, the school in the Tudor-style brick building on North Tacoma Avenue is embracing the future. Annie Wright received notice last week that it’s officially an International Baccalaureate World School.
Only a handful of independent schools in the United States can claim this distinction, said upper school director Susan Bauska. Members of the Class of 2011 will be the first to take the challenging courses.A World IB degree “can buy up to a year’s worth of college credit at places as prestigious as Harvard,” Bauska said.
A FIRM FOUNDATION
Annie Wright Seminary opened Sept. 3, 1884, with 46 students and 10 faculty members. It fulfilled the dreams of the Right Rev. John Adams Paddock and railroad executive-developer Charles Wright to establish a school for girls and young women.
Wright ponied up an endowment of $50,000; Paddock, the Episcopal missionary bishop appointed to serve Washington Territory, raised $25,000.
Wright wanted the development of joyous young women with broad minds, refined tastes and quiet strength, according to a letter he wrote Paddock.
The original Victorian building that sat across from Wright Park at Tacoma Avenue and Division Street was replaced in 1924 with the more modern but traditional-style brick structure on North Tacoma Avenue.
The school grew from its original 46 students from Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and other Northwest points to its 2009 stature. Today, the preschool-through-12th-grade day school and boarding school has 453 students from 21 nations.
Its graduates are sprinkled around the nation, around the world. They are architects, attorneys, entrepreneurs and more. Rebecca Kirkpatrick, Class of ’97, was ordained an Episcopal priest in Seattle recently. Elizabeth Porter, Class of ’05, will work in North Carolina next year as a volunteer in the Teach for America program. Cynthia Foruzani Rapp. ’90, is CEO of her own company, Prosperity Organic Foods.
Phyllis Gill, a longtime and prolific local volunteer who’s served on many charitable boards, called the school a secure cocoon. But in that small space she learned “that there was a world out there” and how to relate to it. She formed the foundation for her faith there, learned self-discipline, was imbued with lifetime values and forged lifelong friendships.
“I learned to think beyond myself,” she said.
PAST AND FUTURE INTERSECT
There’s an old-school feel to Annie Wright. Notes from a piano and voices in song leak out of the walls, even before you open the substantial wooden doors and step into the 85-year-old building. Boys and girls in Campbell-plaid-style uniforms chatter in the hallways as they head for lunch in the dining hall, just off the regal brick archways of Bamford Commons.
In the corridors and the classrooms stands evidence of an education that’s both low- and high-tech. Third-graders’ interpretations of Northwest animals on construction paper fill corkboards; fifth-graders’ Spanish letters to pen pals in the Dominican Republic line another wall; second-graders research their dinosaur reports online.
Learning takes place in small classes, just as it did in the 1880s. Every student from sixth grade up must have a laptop. An Annie Wright education includes traditional subjects, foreign language, physical education, music lessons.
Not constrained by many of the mandates of public schools, teachers are more free to be creative, said head of school Rick Clarke. The Washington Assessment of Student Learning isn’t required.
“Annie Wright has the ability to construct and build a curriculum that best suits our school and our children,” said Sara Titus, director of advancement. She’s also a mom to two students, preschooler Lily and second-grader Emma.
The acquisition of knowledge isn’t restricted to classrooms – or conventional lessons.
A fifth-grader and a school tech worker recently took hairs from Clarke’s chocolate Lab/German shorthair mix in his office. They employed a “scope on a rope,” or portable microscope, and a computer to produce images for study, Clarke said.
“There’s an excitement, a dynamism here,” he added. “Teachers are free to follow their passion.”
SMALL CLASSES, LARGE FOCUS
Fifth-grader Adam Faccone likes that his classes are small, that he’s involved in a broad range of activities – drama, music, swimming, academics – and that teachers focus on his needs.
“I have a lot more opportunities here than I had in public school” in Bonney Lake, he said.
There’s also a small-world-large-thinking aspect to Annie Wright, where students learn from international classmates.
“We have three girls here from Rwanda,” Clarke said. “One of them stood up and talked about her mother being butchered in front of her when she was 6 years old.”
“We live and work in a global society,” Titus said, “and we have a global society right here.”
An Annie Wright education is a big commitment. Tuition ranges from $10,200 annually for a preschooler to about $38,000 for a high school boarder and is even higher for ESL students. Books and uniforms are extra.
It’s worth the price of admission, said Titus, who picked Annie Wright for her kids after moving to the Tacoma area from the Midwest 18 months ago.
“My husband and I hold education as a value. It’s the best gift that we can give our children,” she said.
Scholarships and financial aid are available. And even in tough economic times, the school’s attendance is holding steady, only about 10 down from last year after three record years, communications director Lynn Enebrad said.
Joy Tai felt like she was walking into Harry Potter’s fictional Hogwarts school when she arrived about 18 months ago.
She’s working on her English and making friends. “Advisers are there to talk to me if I’m sad or happy” or need academic help, she said.
“We are kind of like a family.”
Gill, who graduated 60 years ago, still sees a school that turns out young women who are well-prepared for life and work. They are, she added, “good citizens who feel a commitment to their communities.”
Annie Wright, said Gill, “has endured and never really lost its purpose. It was founded to educate the city’s children – and it still does.”
Kris Sherman: 253-597-8659
About Annie Wright
Opened: Sept. 3, 1884, as a school for girls
Named for: Annie Wright, daughter of Tacoma pioneer Charles Barstow Wright
Enrollment then: 46 students, 10 faculty
Enrollment now: 453 students, about 140 faculty and staff
Tuition then: $350 a year for room, board, laundry service and lessons
Tuition now (2009-2010 school year):
• Preschool and pre-kindergarten: $11,000 to $13,500 (depending on full or half day)
• Kindergarten through fifth grade: $16,650
• Sixth through eighth grades: $17,650
• Ninth through 12th grades, day: $19,700
• Ninth through 12th grades, resident: $39,000
• Ninth through 12th grades, resident English language learner: $44,000
Is Annie Wright coed? To a point. Boys and girls attend from preschool through eighth grade. Grades nine through 12 remain all-girls.
Are Annie Wright and Charles Wright sister/brother schools? No. Although Charles Wright began in 1950 on the grounds of Annie Wright, the two schools are not connected. Charles Wright, which later moved to University Place, considers its founding date to be 1957.
Source: Annie Wright School
