Fairmont Private Schools
Fairmont Private Schools (Fairmont) is the largest and oldest secular, co-educational preschool - 12th grade private school in Orange County, California, United States. Fairmont consists of five campuses: Fairmont Preparatory Academy (9 - 12th grade), Anaheim Hills Campus (preschool - 8th grade), North Tustin Campus (pre-kindergarten - 8th grade), Historic Anaheim Campus (preschool - 8th grade), and San Juan Capistrano (preschool - 12th grade) which together aim to teach a consistent program from preschool through 12th grade. History 1953 Fairmont was founded in June 1953 by Kenneth Holt, an educator who pushed for greater instructional autonomy than the public school system would allow for. What is now Orange County's oldest and largest secular, co-educational P-12 private school first began as a summer school program, which run out of Mr. Holt's Anaheim home. It was popular with its families, who convinced Mr. Holt to remodel his house and open a new school in September of that same year. The school was founded in 1953 by a former public school teacher, Kenneth W. Holt after seeing a need for smaller class sizes and phonics approached teaching. The original campus still exists today and serves as the Fairmont Schools Historic Anaheim Campus. 1955 Word quickly spread and the demand for what Fairmont was offering led the entrepreneur to take a risk and purchase a larger space – the Carroll Estate on Mable Street in Anaheim. The new location, which is now known as Fairmont Historic Anaheim Campus, welcomed 65 K-8 grade students that September. In 1959, Mr. Holt and his new wife Helen expanded Fairmont, making additional enhancements in phonics and other programs. The school's enrollment grew to over 500 students by 1979, when Mr. Holt turned over the leadership to his stepson, David R. Jackson, another entrepreneur. Today, the Historic Anaheim Campus offers two International Baccalaureate Programmes spanning preschool through 8th grade. 1985 Mr. and Mrs. Jackson saw the need to expand Fairmont's geographic reach and to extend its very successful personalized and highly academic education to preschool children. Searching for the best existing preschool they could find, they traveled all across Southern California until they found and purchased the Town & Country Preschool in Yorba Linda. Over the next several years, Fairmont's first preschool grew to include elementary grades, necessitating a move in 1993 to a larger location — what is now the P-8 Fairmont Anaheim Hills Campus. 1993 David Jackson decided to open "Fairmont High School" (now Fairmont Preparatory Academy]) in 1993. The inaugural freshman class of 45 students occupied a newly constructed building on the Historic Anaheim Campus. The following year, the school moved to its current location on the Philip A. Stanton Estate on Sequoia Avenue in Anaheim. Each year, another grade level was added, necessitating the purchase of additional parcels of land along the way. Today, students from all over the world come to "the Prep" for its sports and arts programs, as well as college counseling. 1998 Fairmont expanded in 1998 when Mr. Jackson acquired Edgewood