Mutually Assured Construction

Nashville's private schools are undergoing new construction, expansion and facelifts of such proportions that newcomers on many local campuses could mistake their surroundings for universities. From wireless networks to natatoriums (those would be indoor swimming pools), private schools are raising the bar for facilities and programs while setting new expectations among students and families.

Some observers have dubbed the local private school construction boom an "arms race," an I'll-see-your-middle-school-and-raise-you-a-science-wing competition of educational empire-builders vying for the best and most privileged of the city's students. But when asked about their own expansionist tendencies, principals and headmasters diplomatically refer to strategic plans and educational missions. Far from an arms race, they say, the ambitious development on the educational landscape is a timely response to changing demands in demographics, technology and pedagogy.

Big Man on Campus

The most visible recent expansion project, and one that has urged many players on the private school field to quietly review their own goals and strategies, is Ensworth High School's sprawling new campus along Highway 100. In 2001, Ensworth School, a tony kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school on Woodlawn Avenue, began a $60 million project to expand its middle school and to build a separate high school campus from the ground up. Headmaster Will Moseley says that two main influences have driven the enormous plan. First, the board had set a strategic goal to lower the student-teacher ratio in the classrooms, which could only be done by adding more space. Construction of a new academic building for grades six through eight allowed the school to reduce class size from an already-low 21 to 16 kids per room. Second, a demographic study of the area projected population growth in Williamson County and the Bellevue corridor that would more than support a new entrant in Nashville's education matrix. Ensworth High, which opened in the fall of 2004, introduced a co-ed, non-denominational, country day option for many families who previously felt channeled into the urban setting of University School of Nashville or the single-sex environments at Harpeth Hall and Montgomery Bell Academy.

While the emergence of Ensworth has left many a headmaster scratching his or her head about the potential impact on student applications, the established high schools haven't been letting grass grow under their facilities' feet. "Ensworth has reminded us all to sharpen our pencils, but it hasn't made us change direction," said University School of Nashville Headmaster Vince Durnan, who has been working to get USN's landlocked facilities along 21st Avenue up to the level of its educational programs. Since 1998, USN has raised $12 million for improvements, including a new visual arts center, an expanded middle school, a new library and an annex of athletic fields in the Bordeaux area.

Similarly, Harpeth Hall has been transforming its all-girls campus over the last five years, undertaking a $42 million capital campaign to bring the campus more in line with its well-built, all-male counterpart, Montgomery Bell Academy. With a new library, visual arts center and middle school building, the school has expanded to allow higher admissions at the middle school level, where it had previously been forced to turn down many qualified candidates. "To stay competitive, you do have to have good facilities, but ultimately, facilities do not make the program," Head of School Ann Teaff says.

Campuses of the Future

To stay competitive, the majority of private schools have been engaged in some amount of expansion or modernization over the last few years, including Brentwood Academy, Battleground Academy, Saint Cecilia Academy, Akiva School, Oak Hill School, Harding Academy, St. Paul Christian Academy and Franklin Road Academy, which recently announced a $6 million land acquisition that will likely be included in the master plan for its new upper school and library. Meanwhile, new private schools have risen from the ground up, including Currey Ingram Academy, which expanded the personalized learning program at Westminster Presbyterian Church to a greenfield campus on Murray Lane in 2002, and Pope John Paul II High School, the Catholic school opened the same year in Hendersonville.

Interestingly, much of the improvement in plant and equipment among the private campuses is coming in the form of august new libraries. Last summer, USN opened the $4.5 million Hassenfeld Library. Harpeth Hall recently inaugurated the Ann Scott Carell Library, and Father Ryan completed the Neuhoff Library as part of an $8 million building project that included a new center for the arts. "The role of the library has changed," Father Ryan principal Jack Langton says of the new, wired universe. "Now it's more of a resource for every subject matter." Far from the old book depositories, today's school libraries are hubs for electronic research and study that must accommodate students who demand a new set of resources—from wireless LAN's to video-conferencing—to get their work done.

Call it a sign of the times, call it keeping up with the educational Joneses: Nashville's private schools are setting lofty standards, and they are pushing themselves—and each other—to reach them. "There's no question it's an arms race," says Father Ryan principal Langton. "And there's no question that the winners are the kids."