Pingry School

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Pingry School in New Jersey has a boys' swimming team that won thirteen consecutive state titles from 2008 to 2020. No other team in the state has strung together a longer streak. Swimming is only one corner of a private school with an uneven and often surprising past. Pingry has moved, merged, changed its leadership many times and reinvented who it teaches. This documentary asks how a small academy for boys became a coeducational school spread across several campuses. It asks who has led the school, who has walked its halls, and what the school's students and neighbors learned when part of its history came to light in 2016.

  58575614

• 2. Wartime Founding

  ›

  In 1854, a Presbyterian minister named John Francis Pingry opened the Pingry Select School for Boys in Roseville. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, enrollment at that academy dried up. Around the same time, Pingry learned that the only professional educator in Elizabeth, New Jersey, had decided to enlist in the Union Army. After hearing this, he moved to Elizabeth and founded the Pingry School. His aim was to give boys both scholastic training and a moral education.

  Proverbs was one of the subjects of the talks Pingry gave to his students, and he used the Bible for instruction. Even so, the school has never been affiliated with any church or denomination. The minister's faith shaped the lessons, but it never became the school's governing body.

  The year 1893 brought two changes. The school left its Elizabeth schoolhouse for a campus on Parker Road, and Pingry himself died. A succession of headmasters with relatively short tenures then held his position. The Elizabeth schoolhouse and the Parker Road campus were only the first of the school's addresses.

  1415207

• 3. Campuses on the Move

  ›

  A new facility in Hillside, New Jersey, built at a cost of $1.6 million, became the school's home in 1953, when it left Elizabeth. The old Hillside grounds are now used as a campus of Kean University. Thirty years later, in 1983, the school moved again, this time to Martinsville, a rural area in the Watchung and Somerset Hills.

  In 2013, the Martinsville location was renamed Basking Ridge. The reason was practical. The new name made it easier to find the campus with automated mapping tools. Today the Middle School and Upper School share that campus in the Basking Ridge section of Bernards Township. The Lower School, covering kindergarten through fifth grade, sits in the Short Hills neighborhood of Millburn.

  The school's campuses are approximately 25 minutes apart. Both are close to the New York metropolitan area, which provides outside resources to supplement the classroom.

  In February 2021, Purnell School announced that it would cease operations when the 2020-2021 academic year ended. Later that year, Pingry paid $5 million for Purnell's 82-acre campus in Pottersville, in Somerset County. The Pottersville campus is used for experiential learning. It extends the existing campuses and does not replace either of them.

  1820212627

• 4. Leaders and Loans

  ›

  C. Mitchell Froelicher served as headmaster from 1917 to 1920. His successor, Charles Bertram Newton, focused on the Country Day School philosophy and stayed until 1936. Then E. Laurence Springer took the post and held it until 1961. His tenure was the longest in Pingry's history.

  Early in the 1970s, the school began its transition to coeducation. The first female students graduated in 1976, and young women now make up half the student body. In 1974, Pingry merged with the Short Hills Country Day School and became a school with grades from kindergarten through grade 12. David C. Wilson and H. Wescott Cunningham each served as headmaster across about twenty years of this period.

  John Hanly became headmaster in 1987 and served until 2000. His name now belongs to the Hanly Lecture on Ethics and Morality. John Neiswender followed him until 2005. Nathaniel Conard then led the school from July 2005 to mid-2019. Since Pingry's own day, the school has had 16 headmasters.

  In late 2018, the school announced that Matt Levinson, of University Prep in Seattle, would become Head of School after Conard retired. Levinson's early tenure included a public controversy. In April 2020, the school received an unspecified amount in federally backed small business loans through the Paycheck Protection Program. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tweeted that schools should return the money. Levinson said Pingry was keeping it, despite an endowment of more than $80 million. He pointed to the "significant challenges to our ability to serve our community" caused by the pandemic.

  In June 2022, Timothy Lear became headmaster. He was an alumnus, the head of college counseling and a cross-country coach.

  1617192223

• 5. Inside the Numbers

  ›

  The school is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. It also holds accreditation from the National Association of Independent Schools, the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools and the New Jersey Department of Education. It is a member of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

  The school currently enrolls 1,129 students. Of these, 288 attend at Short Hills and 841 at Basking Ridge, including 270 in the Middle School and 571 in the Upper School. Those students come from 100 area communities in twelve counties and from over 90 municipalities in New Jersey.

  In the 2017-18 school year, the Middle and Upper Schools had 118 classroom teachers on a full-time-equivalent basis. That gave a student-teacher ratio of 7.1 to 1. The student body that year was 48.5 percent White, or 408 students. Another 22.0 percent, or 185 students, were of two or more races. Asian students made up 18.1 percent, or 152. Black students made up 9.0 percent, or 76, and Hispanic students 2.1 percent, or 18.

  In 2022, the middle 50 percent of students scored between 1290 and 1540 on the SAT. Their ACT scores ranged from 30 to 34. The ranking site Niche placed Pingry first on its 2023 list of the best private K-12 schools in New Jersey. It placed the school second among private college prep high schools in the state. Over the years, Niche has frequently ranked Pingry in the top three in New Jersey and in the top 1 percent nationally.

  The school itself claims an acceptance rate of 12 percent across all of its grades.

  123912

• 6. Champions

  ›

  Pingry fields 33 varsity teams and more than 70 teams in all for students in seventh through twelfth grade. Its teams are known as the Big Blue. They compete in the Skyland Conference, which includes public and private high schools in Essex, Morris and Somerset counties. Before the 2010 realignment, they played in the Colonial Hills Conference. The facilities include a 25-meter indoor pool, two full-court gymnasiums, 12 tennis courts and 212 acres of grounds. The Miller A. Bugliari Athletic Complex, which opened in 2017, adds eight squash courts, two basketball gyms and a weight room.

  Miller Bugliari has coached Pingry soccer for more than 60 years, and a field for soccer and baseball carries his name. Through 2011, he had won 765 games, the second-highest total for a boys' soccer coach in the nation. In 2018, he entered the National High School Hall of Fame, recognized for a 58-year record of 850 wins, 116 losses and 75 ties. That field has hosted World Cup practices for the Italian national team in 1995, the United States team in 2002 and the Ecuadorian team in 2013.

  His boys' team won the Non-Public Group B state title in 1995, beating Bishop Eustace in the final. It won again in 1996 against Wildwood Catholic High School and in 2014 against Hawthorne Christian Academy. In Non-Public A, it took titles in 2001 and 2006, both against Christian Brothers Academy, and in 2008 against St. Augustine Preparatory School. The 2006 team finished 16-2-2 after a 1-0 final win over Christian Brothers. Along the way it beat Don Bosco Prep, Delbarton School and Seton Hall Prep. Together with Christian Brothers, those opponents had accounted for the team's playoff losses in each of the previous four years. In 2007, the team climbed to fifth nationally.

  The girls' soccer program has 10 state titles, ranked fourth in the state. In 1996, it shared the Group I championship with Glen Rock High School, and it beat Glen Rock outright in 1998. The most recent title in that list came in 2019, against DePaul Catholic High School.

  In 2000, the field hockey team finished 25-0. It won the Group I title with a 4-0 victory over Gloucester City High School, a team that had lost only once all season and had not been shut out. The program won Group I titles again in 2001-2003 and 2004. The girls' tennis team won its 2003 final 5-0 over Red Bank Catholic without losing a single set. In 2016, it won the Non-Public A title with a 3-2 win over Kent Place at Mercer County Park. The program's seven state titles are tied for tenth-most in the state.

  The girls' outdoor track and field team won seven straight Non-Public Group B titles from 2001 to 2007. That seven-year streak is tied for the second-longest in the state. The boys' cross country team won the Non-Public Group B title in 1989-1992, and again in 2003, 2005, 2006-2012 and 2013. Its nine state titles are tied for sixth-most.

  The boys' swimmers earned 16 state titles overall, ranked fifth in the state. They won in 1995-1997, before the long streak began. The 2013 team won all 11 events at the Non-Public B finals and beat Newark Academy 131-39. In 2015, the team beat Gloucester Catholic High School 119-51 in the final. The girls' swimming team won titles in 1997, 1998, 2010-2014 and 2015.

  The boys' fencing team was overall state champion in 1989. A total of 11 Pingry fencers have won individual state championships, the second-most in the state. Two of them won in foil, six in sabre and three in épée. The girls' fencing team won the épée team title in 2020.

  In 2013, the Middle School squash team won the national title. A year earlier, its best finish had been sixth. It won its first two rounds 5-0, then beat the second-seeded Haverford School A team 3-2 in the semifinals. The final pitted it against Brunswick School, the top-ranked team in the country and the defending champion. Pingry won the championship by the same 3-2 margin. The boys' ski team won the state title in 2024, the latest championship in the source.

  3534365857

• 7. Graduates and Faculty

  ›

  William Halsey Jr., who lived from 1882 to 1959, rose to become a Fleet Admiral in the United States Navy. Richard Tregaskis, who lived from 1916 to 1973, was a war correspondent and wrote Guadalcanal Diary. The 1943 film of the same name starred William Bendix, Richard Conte and Anthony Quinn.

  Mark Donohue, class of 1955, won the 1972 Indianapolis 500 and the 1973 Can-Am Championship. Frank Chapot, an equestrian, competed at six Olympic Games from 1956 to 1976. In his last Games, he won two silver medals in team show jumping. Fencers Dan Kellner and Lee Shelley both competed at the Olympics, and Shelley did so in 1984 and 1988. Swimmers Nic Fink and Matthew Fallon also reached the Olympics, Fallon in 2024.

  Michael Chertoff served as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009. Thomas Kean Jr. is a member of the United States House of Representatives. The judges include John D. Bates, a senior judge in Washington, and Michelle Friedland of the Ninth Circuit. N. Gregory Mankiw chaired the Council of Economic Advisers and teaches economics at Harvard. Howard Georgi, class of 1964, is an emeritus professor of physics at Harvard. Two brothers, Thomas N. McCarter and Robert H. McCarter, each served as New Jersey's Attorney General in the early 1900s.

  The arts and entertainment list includes the actor Andrew McCarthy and the filmmaker Todd Solondz. Paul W. Downs won an Emmy and played Trey Pucker on the Comedy Central series Broad City. Buzzy Cohen is a Jeopardy! champion who later guest hosted the show. Jon Sarkin, class of 1971, is a self-taught artist and stroke survivor. The list also includes Billy McFarland, a convicted felon who founded the fraudulent Fyre Festival.

  The list of notable faculty is short and mixed. It includes Stephen Kovacs, a sabre fencer and coach who lived from 1972 to 2022. He was charged with sexual assault and died in prison. It also includes George B. Moffat Jr., who lived from 1927 to 2024 and was an author and a world champion sailplane pilot.

  9098999387

• 8. A Reckoning

  ›

  On the 29th of March 2016, the Pingry School sent a letter to parents of current students, the entire alumni body and the school trustees. The letter said the school had recently learned from a few alumni that students were sexually abused by Thad Alton. Alton had worked at Short Hills Country Day School from 1972 to 1974. After the merger of the two institutions, he worked at Pingry from 1974 to 1978. The letter said Pingry had hired a security firm to investigate. It was signed by Headmaster Nathaniel E. Conard and Jeffrey N. Edwards, the chair of the board of trustees.

  The law firm Crew Janci LLP, which specializes in suing schools and youth organizations over negligent handling of sexual abuse, said it had been investigating Alton's time at Pingry for over a year. Its investigation was credited with persuading the school to launch its own. The firm made clear that its work for the victims would continue.

  On the 1st of April 2016, The Star-Ledger revealed court documents showing that Alton had previously been convicted of sexually abusing Pingry students. A school spokesperson responded, "I'm afraid such a conviction is news to us." The spokesperson added that the current administration had only recently learned about the situation in the 1970s.

  A news article published on the 8th of April 2016 traced where Alton went next. In 1978 he moved to The Peck School in Morristown, 10 miles away. The Peck School told its alumni that he arrived with nothing but positive job references. After leaving Peck in 1979, he worked as an educator at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. He was arrested in December 1989 in connection with his sexual abuse of more than 50 children.

  On the 27th of April 2016, The Star-Ledger ran a report based on interviews with several of the victims. The next day, a group calling itself the Pingry Survivors posted an open letter to the Pingry community. Its members were people who had been sexually abused as children while at the school. They set out three goals. The first was a complete and accurate disclosure of the extent of abuse, including the school's response then and since. The second was for the school to acknowledge each victim's suffering and make meaningful amends. The third was for the school to ensure that this history could never be repeated, with an independent review of its policies, practices and culture. They hoped to find a collaborative path toward healing and reconciliation.

  Over the following year, the scandal appeared in national reports on private schools with sexual abuse in their pasts, including coverage by Vanity Fair and The New York Times. On the 28th of March 2017, the school announced that its independent investigation had concluded. It posted a Report to the Pingry Community on a website separate from its official page, called pingryresponse.org. It is unclear whether the school received a more comprehensive investigative report.

  The report substantiated 27 victims of child sexual abuse by Alton, who had been a teacher and assistant Lower School principal. It also found abuse by other former faculty and staff. It revealed that at least one school board member learned of Alton's activities in 1979. The school, however, never shared that information with its faculty, alumni or the families of its students. In its letter, the school acknowledged that the culture, structure and policies of the school had allowed such atrocities to occur. It said it was deeply sorry for the pain the survivors had suffered and grateful to them for coming forward.

  In the days after the report, victims went to the media with their stories and described the impact on their lives. The Pingry Survivors asserted that their school knew what was going on at the time. Alton has never been criminally prosecuted for his abuse of most of the Pingry victims. He lives in Manhattan and is a registered sex offender in the State of New York.

  On the 4th of December 2017, The New York Times published a front-page article about the school's attempts to invoke the statute of limitations to avoid compensating former students who were victims. The article placed the question of compensation, and the school's reliance on that legal deadline, before a national audience.

  7273777986