The Waterford School began on the Sandy campus as the Lower Schools with the intention to add a school (Middle School) and then a class each year, completing its growth by 1993. Its location in the fast-growing Sandy, Utah area was a mixed blessing. Southern SaltLakeCounty had a growing population of young families who were dissatisfied with public education, but it was also an area without a strong tradition of private education. The leadership of the Head of School and a core group of dedicated faculty was vital to this earliest phase of the School. They set the standard for excellent teaching and school leadership and energetically developed curriculum, and they dealt with the uncertain future of the School with as much patience and grace as could be humanly mustered. In addition, the School benefited from a core group of dedicated families. Parents sought in Waterford an extension of their family life and enjoyed involvement in many aspects of the School. The School opened in Sandy with the benefit of several years’ experience on a separate campus in Provo, Utah. This earlier campus opened in 1981 and closed in 1989, and was formed as a non-tuition research school associated with the Waterford Institute, a nonprofit research foundation dedicated to building software for computer-assisted instruction. Nancy Heuston, who served as Head of School, founded the School. It closed in 1989, having exhausted the resources made available to it through WICAT, a for-profit offshoot of the Waterford Institute. The Provo campus experience was seminal in the founding and direction of Waterford/Sandy, with Mrs. Heuston overseeing both schools during the three years that both were open. The models of school growth, curriculum, expectations, policies, and administration were established first at the Provo campus. Indeed, when Waterford/Sandy opened in September 1986, it was conceived as a replication, although at a distance, of the school model that had been developed during the previous five years in Provo. The original Waterford/Sandy campus was a ten-acre rectangle running south from its frontage on 9400 South. The first building, constructed during the summer of 1986, included a front office and reception space, administrative offices, sixteen classrooms, two computer labs, a science lab, library, gym, and an apartment for the head custodian. Playing fields still stretch to the south of the original building, with striking views to the east of the WasatchMountains. A more visually dramatic setting for a school campus would be hard to find. The basic look and feel of the original building—a one-story red- brick structure with minimalist tendencies—has been the touchstone for all subsequent architects’ visions for the buildings built in the four major expansions of the 1990s.
So establishing a rigorous academic program that could provide that core, that focus, was the School’s first priority. The School believed that the best way to build curriculum was to depend upon the initiative, independence, and intelligence of its own faculty. Teachers at Waterford have the responsibility of constructing the curriculum for each of their classes; frequent Department meetings ensure that an individual class’s curriculum is in harmony with the Department’s larger program. Indeed, the School believes in traditional, classical education. All teachers should have the benefit of working with both a knowledge of their own curriculum and an overall sense of the power and wisdom of a liberal arts education. In this vein, the School instituted a Liberal Arts Program for the faculty in 1999. In the first two years, the Liberal Arts Program presented lectures and offered classes in Classical Greek studies. After a one-year sabbatical to allow Lower Schools teachers time for revising their teaching of mathematics, the program will resume with offerings in Western civilization, Department studies, and educational leadership. From the beginning, Waterford’s academic program has been balanced by robust athletic and fine arts offerings. From their first years at Waterford, students are introduced to habits of lifelong physical fitness. In Middle and Upper Schools, the School has provided the finest coaches in soccer, basketball, track, volleyball, skiing, and lacrosse. These coaches work to ensure that students learn the fundamentals of their sports as well as a high level of sportsmanship. Many of Waterford’ s students have excelled in these areas. Waterford’s devotion to the fine arts was also present from the beginning in the School’s hiring of practicing artists and musicians for even the youngest children.
The School has always believed that rich and demanding curriculum offerings must be complemented by instruction in important and enduring values: the dignity of hard work, integrity, respect, kindness, and generosity. Students learn these values primarily by the example of their teachers’ deportment in the classroom, of course, but these values are also explicitly addressed through student leadership, assemblies, and individual student meetings. The goal of the School has been to articulate to students a high standard of ethical culture, and then require students to discipline their own behavior to match that standard. In addition to the growth of the program, the School’s first decade was concerned with the growth of the physical plant. During the years 1991 to 1996, the School was able to acquire an additional thirty acres of land, add another wing to the existing building, and construct three classroom buildings, a second gymnasium, and the Dining Hall. The completion of the Humanities Building in 1996 formally marked the end of the first phase of the Waterford School’s growth. At that time Waterford had 850 students, 105 faculty, a robust academic program, and growing experience. While the growth of the School was dramatic during these years, it was necessary in the first six years for the Waterford Institute to contribute significantly to the School’s annual operating costs. While that amount became smaller every year—by 1992 the School began to approach the break- even point—the total amount contributed over the first five years was more than $3 million. |
