School changes hands: Olivet Academy buys Kildonan

AMENIA — Olivet Academy, the kindergarten through 10th grade private school formerly housed on Olivet University’s Wingdale campus, has moved to Amenia. The academy just bought the former Kildonan school campus, located at 425 Morse Hill Road, well past the North East (Webutuck) Central School District campus on Haight Road.

Kildonan was a private boarding and day school using the Orton-Gillingham method of teaching primarily dyslexic students. Kildonan, which taught grades two through 12 as well as post graduates, was started by education pioneer Diana Hanbury King in 1969 and closed this year due to declining enrollment. Kildonan parents had hoped to resurrect the school with a last-ditch effort to increase enrollment after news leaked out of its impending closure, but failed to do so. The sale of the school now puts an end to any lingering hopes of reviving the much loved educational institution.

Olivet Academy touts itself for using “the best practices of parochial, progressive and preparatory education,” according to its website, www.olivetacademy.org. It’s a part of Olivet University, an evangelical Christian university based out of San Francisco, Calif. The university bought the site of the former Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center in Wingdale in 2013. It subsequently purchased an additional 23 properties in the town of Dover, which includes the hamlet of Wingdale. Its campus now stretches across 1,000 acres.

The Kildonan campus, according to Olivet Academy Director of Communications Gerald Helguero, adds another 120 acres to Olivet’s assets.

“The school where we were didn’t have enough room,” said Helguero, noting the academy was previously integrated into Olivet University’s Wingdale campus. “We needed more room, and thankfully the opportunity came from not too far away from where we were. It’s only about 25 minutes from Wingdale. It was a good chance, a good opportunity.”

Olivet bought Kildonan in the middle of October, and has already moved the academy’s classes to Amenia. Like most schools in the area, Olivet Academy’s school year runs from September through June. 

While Helguero said he “prefers not to get into the purchase price,” he said the buy was well timed.

“The space is well suited for what we need right now,” he said. “I think we’re thankful and excited to have moved on to the campus and we hope to be good neighbors here in Amenia, and North East as well.”

Most of the roughly 110 students enrolled in Olivet Academy live in the town of Dover, according to Helguero.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less