John Burroughs School
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Founded in 1923, John Burroughs School (JBS) is a private, non-sectarian preparatory school with nearly 600 students in grades 7-12. Its 47.5-acre (192,000 m²) campus is located in Ladue, Missouri (USA), an affluent suburb of Saint Louis. It is named for U.S. naturalist and philosopher John Burroughs. John Burroughs School is regarded as one of the top 50 preparatory high schools in the country as well as one of the top few in the Midwest.
Campus facilities include a main classroom building, an auditorium, a library, a science building, a sports and performing arts center, and a fine arts facility.
The faculty includes about 80 full-timers and 32 part-timers; the headmaster is Keith E. Shahan.
All 96 graduates of the Class of 2003 went on to four-year colleges, including a substantial number to Ivy League schools. The school's Web site claims more than 6,000 living alumni. Admission is based on school records, recommendations, entrance examination results, and a personal interview. The primary admission level is grade seven, but applicants are considered for grades eight through twelve as openings permit.
In 2004, according to the site, tuition and fees cost $15,440. The school budget was about $12.5 million, of which about 15 percent came from the $32 million endowment and nearly $1.4 million in gifts. The school disbursed $1.1 million in financial aid; about 20 percent of the students received grants, loans, or both.
The school is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS).
It has athletic rivalries with nearby Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School and Kansas City-based Pembroke Hill School. The varsity sports teams are named the "John Burroughs Bombers."
Alumni
- Christine Bertelson: editorial page editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper.
- William S. Burroughs, '59: novelist, Naked Lunch.
- Sarah Clarke, '89: actress, 24.
- Leo Drey, '35: timber magnate, conservationist, philanthropist. Was Missouri's largest private landholder until 2004, when his $180 million gift of land to a conservation foundation made him the U.S.'s sixth-most generous benefactor. [1]. Leases land to JBS for outdoor education.
- Joe Edwards, '64: owner, Blueberry Hill restaurant and bar in U. City.
- Edward T. Foote II: president, University of Miami (1981-2001); helped design St. Louis' desegregation plans.
- Martha Gellhorn: combat journalist, novelist, and Ernest Hemingway's third wife. He dedicated For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940) to her; she called him her Unwilling Companion in Travels With Myself And Another (1978).
- John Hartford, '68: Grammy-winning folk musician, Gentle On My Mind.
- Walter L. Metcalfe Jr., '56: lawyer; chairman of Bryan Cave, one of the world's 35 largest law firms; chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
- Gordon Philpott, '51: chief of surgery, Jewish Hospital in St. Louis; professor emeritus of surgery, Washington University medical school.
- Jane Smiley: Pulitzer Prize-winning (1992) novelist, A Thousand Acres.
- John Stix, '38: theatre-movie-television director (1983's "Family Business"), Juilliard professor, Actor's Studio member.
- Thomas H. Stix, ca. '42: Plasma physics pioneer (wrote 1962's seminal The Theory of Plasma Waves), Princeton professor.
- Katie Wheeler: New Hampshire state senator in the 1990s.
Faculty
- Marion Rombauer Becker: JBS art department director (1929-32) and co-author (with mother Irma S. Rombauer) of American cookbook The Joy of Cooking (1936).