A VITAL COLLABORATION
Our summer performing arts program is part of an extensive collaboration between Laurel School and The Fairmount Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. This is our first year at Laurel. By bringing our camp to Laurel School, we are expanding our programming and offering our students, old and new, an opportunity to study theatre, dance, singing and other creative arts on two beautiful campuses: 11 Acres in Shaker Heights and 140 Acres just down the street from The Fairmount Center in Geauga County.

THE SCHOOL
Laurel School, founded in 1896, is a nationally recognized, college preparatory, independent day school for girls, K-12, with a coeducational early childhood program for three and four year olds. We offer small classes taught by a distinguished faculty and a rigorous program of academics, athletics and the arts.

Our students delight in intellectual and physical challenges and they develop bonds of friendship that last a lifetime. They are young women who become leaders in their colleges, work places, and communities.

The school has two campuses--the academic campus situated on 11 acres in Shaker Heights (Lyman Circle Campus) and the Fairmount Campus, a 140-acre campus that features extensive athletic facilities and offers opportunities for outdoor education and leadership-building programs.

Laurel School is accredited by the State of Ohio and by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS). It is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), Ohio Association of Independent Schools (OAIS), and the National Coalition of Girls' Schools (NCGS).

HISTORY OF LAUREL
In 1896, Miss Jennie Prentiss established a school for young girls in her Cleveland home. The name Laurel School was selected for the ancient Greek symbol of a wreath of laurel leaves, which signified intellectual achievement. As the student body grew, the school moved into a large brick building which it occupied for 20 years on the famed Euclid Avenue, known as “Millionaire’s Row.”

The arrival of Sarah E. Lyman as headmistress, just after the turn of the 20th century, initiated a new phase in the development of Laurel School. Mrs. Lyman was a strong, self-confident leader with a dynamic personality who possessed the sensitivity and business sense to carry out Jennie Prentiss’ vision.

In the mid-1920s as her students' families moved to the eastern suburbs, she secured property in Shaker Heights and built the impressive Tudor-style building that is Laurel’s current Lyman Campus. Soon after the move to Shaker Heights, Mrs. Lyman retired. She left as her legacy a secure, established, thriving and academically rigorous school for girls that possessed a national reputation for excellence.

Taking the helm in 1931, Miss Edna F. Lake guided Laurel through the dark days of the Depression, World War II and the post-World War era of the 1950s. She added significant requirements to the curriculum, insisted that students perform community service and introduced the mandatory Senior Speech.

During a time of tremendous social upheaval, Daniel O.S. Jennings, who, in the 1960s, became Laurel's first headmaster, initiated the beginning of racial diversity within Laurel’s student body and preserved the academic integrity and traditions of the school.

Under his tenure, and that of his successor, Barbara Barnes, the school contemplated coeducation but after much thoughtful discussion, the Board of Trustees reaffirmed Laurel’s dedication to its mission – to educate girls and young women to become independent thinkers. It was during Barbara Barnes' tenure that Laurel became the first girls’ day school in the country to establish a faculty chair for teaching excellence.

Dramatizing the importance of single-sex education for girls, Leah Rhys became Head of School in the mid-1980s and set to bring national attention to the school, which she did with a joint research project conducted with Harvard University. The five-year study of girls’ learning styles resulted in the 1992 publication of Meeting at the Crossroads.

Helen Rowland Marter, who became the ninth Head of Laurel in 1992, was instrumental in growing the school - both in enrollment and in physical size: Laurel grew with three additions to its Shaker Heights Campus and with the purchase in 1998 of 140 acres of property 20 minutes east of the school. This second campus, known as the Fairmount Campus, offers myriad academic, athletic, leadership building and experiential learning opportunities.

In July 2004, Laurel welcomed its newest Head of School, Ann V. Klotz, who joined Laurel from The Chapin School in New York City.