Doane Stuart School

The Doane Stuart School ("Doane Stuart") was founded in 1975 as the result of a merger between the Roman Catholic Kenwood Academy (founded by the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1852) and the Episcopal St. Agnes School (founded 1870).[2][3] The name "Doane Stuart" was chosen to honor the first Episcopal Bishop of Albany, the Right Reverend William Croswell Doane, and Roman Catholic educator Janet Erskine Stuart.[2] Doane Stuart's first home was the campus of the old Kenwood Academy in Albany, New York.[4]

Doane Stuart was established as an ecumenical Christian school,[4] but later became an interfaith school.[5] In 2007, the School offered to purchase the former Kenwood Academy from the Society of the Sacred Heart for $7.2 million. The Society rejected the offer.[6] In March 2008, the Board of Trustees of Doane Stuart announced it had decided to end its affiliation with the Network of Sacred Heart Schools[7] due to religious differences.[3] At about the same time, the Society of the Sacred Heart notified the school it would not renew its lease of the former Kenwood Academy.[7] On May 20, 2008, Rensselaer, New York voters approved the proposed sale of the former Van Rensselaer High School to Doane Stuart;[8] Doane Stuart purchased the building for $4 million in September 2008.[9] After a year-long renovation and restoration effort,[4] Doane Stuart opened on September 16, 2009, at the School's new location.[9]

The Doane Stuart School building in Rensselaer, New York was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.[1] As of April 2016, the School's 22,000-square-foot "green roof" was reportedly the largest vegetative roof in the Capital District.[10] The school is co-educational and college preparatory, and educates students from Early Childhood through Grade 12.[11]

On March 23, 2023 the former, "Kenwood Academy" school building in Albany was destroyed by a massive fire.[12]

The School hosts an Irish American Exchange program, begun in 2003, which brings together Protestant and Catholic students from Lagan College (a secondary school in Belfast, Northern Ireland) to spend a year at Doane Stuart and live with local families. According to the Albany Times Union, as of 2014, 22 exchange students from Lagan College had spent a school year studying at Doane Stuart, while approximately 100 Doane Stuart students had made one-week visits to Lagan College.[13]

• Paul Carey - White House Special Assistant to U.S. President Bill Clinton and 77th Commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission.[14]
• Joan Vollmer (St. Agnes School) - prominent female member of the early Beat Generation circle.[15]
• Lurana White (St. Agnes School), co-founder of the Society of the Atonement
• Alice Morgan Wright (St. Agnes School) - American sculptor, suffragist, and animal welfare activist. She was one of the first American artists to embrace Cubism and Futurism.[16]
• David Yezzi - American poet, editor, actor, and professor at Johns Hopkins University.

• Official site