A Message from the Headmaster
St. Johnsbury Academy is the preeminent high school in Vermont and one of the finest independent schools in New England a
nd the nation. For 158 years, we have served with distinction the educational needs of young people from the Northeast
Kingdom, northern New Hampshire, and resident students from across the nation and around the world. We have consistently
had an excellent faculty, a responsive curriculum, and a number of rich and fulfilling traditions - the freshman sing, the
Lyndon Institute game, Winter Carnival, Last Chapel, graduation on the first Monday of June, and many others.
One of our most important traditions is that of our alumni/ae and friends coming to our assistance, sometimes eve our
rescue, when we have had capital needs to expand or renovate our campus. They gave us Colby Hall when South Hall burned.
They gave us Ranger Hall and the Alumni Memorial Gymnasium when North Hall burned thirty years later. They gave us the
Field House when our athletic needs exceeded the gym's capacity. They renovated Fuller Hall for us, gave us a new track,
a new roof and new basketball floor in the gym, and literally a dozen other expansions and renovations. As a result, every
stick, every brick, every square foot of land that we own was provided by our own alumni/ae and friends. Not a penny of
amortization has ever been charged to our tuition, and that makes it possible for us to offer a superior education at one
of the lowest day school tuition costs of independent schools in the nation.
We are at a similar juncture, now. Our arts program has come of age with a new department structure that is focusing on
the interests and needs of a broadly expanded arts curriculum and enrollment. IN a parallel maturing of growth and
curriculum, our library cannot meet our needs any more. It is too small and its technology, in this accelerating
technological world, is too primitive.
We need a home for our arts programs and department, and we need to expand our library's size and bring its technological
and information services up to date. That's what this campaign is all about. We want to continue to offer a superior and
complete education at the lowest tuition cost possible. We need an arts facility and an expanded and improved library. I
ask you to support our project by continuing our 158 years of tradition of those who went before providing for those who
come after. I am confident that you will, because you have always done so. In advance, and for the whole Academy community,
I thank you.
Very sincerely yours,
Bernier L. Mayo, '56,
Headmaster
