Nora School

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The Nora School is a small college preparatory high school in Silver Spring, Maryland. The school currently enrolls 60 students in grades 9-12, and employs 12 teachers. The curriculum is college preparatory with a focus on students who have previously been frustrated in school.

[edit] History

Founded in 1964 by Swiss educator Leon Eberhard as The Eberhard School, it has changed names and locations several times. In 1968 Eberhard moved the school from Dupont Circle to the new Washington Ethical Society building on 16th Street, where it remained until 2000. Eberhard left the school in 1975 to found the Acton School in northern Virginia, and the school was taken over by the Ethical Society and renamed Washington Ethical Society School.

The school fell on hard times financially, and had only 12 students when Sally Fisher from Sandy Spring Friends School was hired as Head of School in 1981. Fisher restored the school to academic and financial health over the next decade. In 1988 the school was renamed Washington Ethical High School, as it no longer had a formal affiliation with the Ethical Society. David Mullen was hired as Head of School in 1991. The school gained its first accreditation from the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools in 1994.

Due to the space and enrollment limitations of the Ethical Society building, the school began searching for property in the mid-1990's, culminating in the purchase of land in Silver Spring, Maryland. With a donation from former faculty member Beau Kaplan and his wife Linda, the school built a new building and grew enrollment by 50% in 2000. That same year the school was renamed The Nora School in honor of the Kaplan's late daughter.