Each year alumni, parents, faculty, and friends make gifts to ensure that the FVS experience remains world-class and one of a kind. And while gifts to FVS provide the School's leadership with the ability to immediately fund areas of greatest need, we encourage you to give from your heart. Thank you.
Our School
Fountain Valley School is a coed independent college preparatory school that offers day and boarding programs for students in grades 9-12. FVS was established in 1930 and is located on an 1,100 acre campus in Colorado Springs, Colo., which is 70 miles south of Denver. Colorado's mountain ski resorts are two hours to the west, and the School has a 40-acre Mountain Camus near Buena Vista, Colo., that provides abundant opportunities for year-round recreation and experiential education programs.
Our Mission
Fountain Valley School of Colorado provides a transformative curriculum in a supportive environment where students are challenged to think critically, become leaders, and live by our core values: Courage, Compassion, Curiosity, Self-Reliance, Open-Mindedness.
Our Values
Francis Froelicher, the School's founding headmaster, believed that Fountain Valley School should prepare students "to write their own history." To empower them to do so, the School seeks to nurture all students in their pursuit of excellence and strives to develop in all students the following core values:
• Open-mindedness
To be aware of the richness and depth of all human experience.
• Curiosity
To value lifelong pleasure in intellectual exploration and discovery; to receive the consequent satisfaction of achievement and excellence through focused, creative effort.
• Courage
To embrace challenge intellectually, physically, emotionally and spiritually as a pathway to insight and self-understanding; to stretch and see beyond one's perceived boundaries.
• Self-Reliance
To be responsible; to exhibit initiative and accountability, working independently and collaboratively.
• Compassion
To demonstrate care and service to others, and to live a balanced and healthy life, enjoying the harmony of work and play.
History
Fountain Valley School of Colorado was founded in 1930 by Elizabeth Sage Hare, a wealthy New York native who moved to Colorado Springs in 1927 in hopes that the fresh air would help heal her husband's tuberculosis. Mrs. Hare dreamed of creating "a great progressive school in the West" in the tradition of prestigious boys boarding schools in the East. With the help of Colorado Springs entrepreneur and philanthropist Spencer Penrose, she convinced the school's first headmaster, Francis Mitchell Froelicher to come West to start the school. The renowned John Dewey, a major voice for progressive education, was on the original board of trustees. The site chosen for the School was a large ranch southeast of Colorado Springs belonging to the Bradley family, and the school's first building was their spectacular 1927 home designed by Adison Mizner. Fountain Valley School of Colorado opened as a boarding school for boys in September 1930, and in 1975, it turned co-educational. Today, FVS is both a boarding and day school for grades 9-12 serving approximately 230 students. Fountain Valley has had only nine headmasters in its 95-year history. The current head of school is Megan K. Harlan.
Organization name
Fountain Valley School of Colorado
other names
FVS
1930
Tax id (EIN)
84-0423922
Category
Education
Organization Size
Large Organization
Address
6155 Fountain Valley School RoadEl Paso County, CO, US