On opening day of this school year, AFS welcomed 115 new students, a 25 percent increase in new students compared to the year before and the largest number of new students in a decade.
But that’s only part of the story. The School also had the largest percentage of returning students in recent history.
Together, that added up to a student enrollment on opening day of 550, meeting an ambitious strategic goal set last fall to begin steady growth of the student body in all divisions of the school.
“This is good news,” Head of School Rich Nourie said. He cited several benefits to increasing the enrollment, starting with expanding the School’s reach into the community.
“We’re here for a very valuable purpose,” he said, “And we want people to know we are here as an extraordinary educational alternative.”
He also said growth in enrollment would benefit students socially by providing a larger pool of friends and classmates; allow us to offer the full curricular and extracurricular program we envision, and provide a strong financial footing to ensure our well-maintained campus and competitive faculty compensation.
Who We Are Now
The new students are an academically strong and well-rounded group, who have expressed interest and shown talent in the arts and music and passions for science, math and athletics.
These new members of our community hail from 43 zip codes, with a strong representation from Mt. Airy, East Falls and Abington. Seventeen of the new students are siblings of current AFS students, and eight of the newcomers — five freshmen and three sophomores — are international students from China.
There are signs of growth in each of the School’s three divisions. AFS welcomed 14 new students to kindergarten, a record high over the past few years. The Middle School enrollment grew by 19 percent. Meanwhile, the ninth grade welcomed 32 students, bringing the total to 63 students. Just as important, the majority of new ninth graders are girls, bringing a nearly 50/50 gender balance to the class.
Our new students hail evenly from public and private schools in Philadelphia, Bucks and Montgomery counties.
Overall, 41 percent of the members of our student body self-identify as people of color.
