After parents launched a petition to stop Sandy Spring Friends School (SSFS) from closing, the school announced that it would stay open through the 2027-2028 school year. Over 1,000 people signed the petition in support.
Sandy Spring Friends School is a private pre-K-12th Quaker school founded in 1961 by S. Brook Moore in Sandy Springs, Md. Currently, there are 150 students enrolled in the Lower School, 150 students enrolled in the Middle School and 310 students enrolled in the Upper School.
On April 14, the school announced that it would close due to significant financial instability. According to a letter sent by the Board of Trustees, the school would require an additional $14 million to $16 million in revenue to remain open for the next three years. A message on the school website noted that “more work will be needed to ensure the long-term financial stability of the school.”
Craig Parker, the parent of an eighth grader who was planning to attend Sandy Spring Friends’ high school shared his disappointment with the failed communication of the school, and stated how he gets “a lot of information from [SSFS]” and was completely “unaware” and “shocked” by the “dire financial situation.”
Many members of the SSFS community mirrored this reaction and were disheartened by the news. Alumna Alina Zhukovskaya said that “it was just like a jab in your heart. It was just really sad because it honestly was the best school.”
As soon as the closing was announced, alumni, parents, and students began to fight for a way forward for the school. Susan Donnelly, whose child is a junior, formed a petition and gathered “a few people who felt the same way” about keeping the school open until 2028.
A group called “The Friends of SSFS” was created to reach Sandy Springs’s financial goal. “The Friends of SSFS” raised about $9 million in the first two days. Shortly after the original $9 million, the group raised another $6 million for a total of $15 million.
The petition requested the board and school leadership to consider the Quaker values it was founded on: “community, integrity, equality, stewardship, and peace, — by engaging with the community in open dialogue.”
Furthermore, the petition also discussed the parents’ wishes for students to learn, grow and stay connected to the strong-knit community built over the years. Donnelly told Bethesda Magazine that it would be particularly hard on the juniors “who are now facing their senior year without the school they’ve called home.”
The petition also expressed concern for the faculty, who have contributed to the student’s academic experiences and would face sudden unemployment if the school closed. As the petition stated, “[the teachers] deserve time, support, and transparency to transition to new opportunities, and we as a community want to advocate for their well-being just as we do for our students.”
More than 1,700 people were able to sign the online petition created, and there are currently over 1,000 coalition members of the Friends of SSFS. The petition’s progress was noted on April 21, when Donnelly announced that they raised over $15 million within 72 hours, and hoped that the school would take the support into consideration.
Nine days after Sandy Spring Friends School’s closure was announced, the Board of Trustees stated that it had received “substantial funding guarantees” that allowed it to remain open until the 2027-2028 school year, when current freshmen will graduate.
In addition, they also apologized, expressing how they “take full responsibility for the sense that there was no other path forward at the time” and were “deeply heartened by the generous and passionate responses from across the SSFS community, which reflect the deep love and care for the school.”
