Saint Sebastian's School is an independent, all-boys Catholicsecondary day school located in Needham, Massachusetts. The school enrolls around 380 boys in grades 7–12.
St. Sebastian's is the only Catholic school in the Independent School League. Its athletic teams have produced a number of professional athletes. The ice hockey team has produced 6 NHL first-round draft picks and 31 draft picks in total.
History
St. Sebastian's was founded in 1941 as St. Sebastian's Country Day School by William Henry Cardinal O'Connell, who served as Archbishop of Boston from 1907 to 1944. O'Connell's policy was to encourage the establishment of Catholic private schools outside the parochial system.[2] He purchased the old Newton, Massachusetts campus of the Country Day School of Boston, which had merged with The Rivers School the previous year.[3] The school opened with 21 ninth-graders and six teachers, all of whom were Catholic priests,[4] and charged $350 a year in tuition ($7,239 in March 2024 dollars).[5] The first students graduated in 1945.[6]
Although St. Sebastian's is not a parochial school, it is a Catholic school, and the Archbishop of Boston (Richard Henning) chairs its board of trustees.[7] The foundation of the school reflected the increasing affluence of Boston's Irish Catholic community. One alumnus from the 1950s said that the school provided "a regimen of tough academics, fierce sports teams, and a cadre of Catholic Irish city kids mixed with new after-the-war Irish suburbanite kids."[8] Today, the school states that it accepts both Catholic and non-Catholic students, but that "the majority of students come from the Catholic faith."[9] The Archdiocese of Boston lists the school as a "related organization," meaning that the Archdiocese either sponsors the school or has the right to elect or appoint school officers and/or members of the board of trustees.[10]
In 1982, the school moved to its current 26-acre campus in Needham.[11][12] It currently educates boys from 68 towns in Massachusetts.[13] St. Sebastian's claims a student-teacher ratio of 7:1, with an average class size of 10.[12]
Birmingham Academic Building. St. Sebastian's Chapel is on the right.
Campus and playing fields
Tuition
Tuition and financial aid
In the 2023–24 school year, St. Sebastian's charged students $58,200.[14] 30% of the student body is on financial aid.[14]
The school's policy is to meet 100% of an admitted student's demonstrated financial need. Based on the school's $4.5 million financial aid budget, the average aid grant is roughly $39,500, or 68% of tuition.[14]
Endowment and expenses
St. Sebastian's does not file publicly accessible Internal Revenue Service disclosures.[15] Its financial endowment is separately incorporated.[16] In its IRS filings for the 2022–23 school year, the St. Sebastian's endowment reported total assets of $88.1 million and net assets of $74.9 million.[17]
In 2023, a consulting firm retained by the school disclosed that St. Sebastian's annual operating budget was $21.5 million.[13]
Athletics
St. Sebastian's offers 13 sports.[18] Its teams, nicknamed the Arrows, compete in the Independent School League, a group of day and boarding schools in Greater Boston.[19] St. Sebastian's is the only Catholic school in the ISL, and is not a member of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference; its student body is roughly half the size of most Catholic Conference boys' schools. In 2022, St. Sebastian's hired away Jon Bartlett, who had served as the athletic director at Boston College High School for the previous 21 years.[20]
The school's athletic facilities include a hockey rink, two basketball courts, six squash courts, six tennis courts, a two-mat wrestling room, artificial turf fields for football, lacrosse, soccer, and baseball, and one grass multi-sport field.[21]
