Wikipedia

The Boston Latin School is a public exam school in Boston, Massachusetts. Established on April 23, 1635, it is both the first public school and oldest existing school in the United States. The Public Latin School was a bastion for educating the sons of the Boston elite, resulting in the school claiming many prominent Bostonians as alumni. Its curriculum follows that of the 18th century Latin-school movement, which holds the classics to be the basis of an educated mind. Four years of Latin are mandatory for all pupils who enter the school in 7th grade, three years for those who enter in 9th. In 2007 the school was named one of the top twenty high schools in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. As of 2012, the school is listed under the gold medal list, ranking 62 out of the top 100 high schools in the United States (21,776 public high school from 48 states and the District of Columbia were analyzed) by U.S. News & World Report. The school was named a 2011 Blue Ribbon School of Excellence, the U.S. Department of Education's highest award.

The school's first class was in single figures, but it now has 2,400 pupils drawn from all parts of Boston. It has produced four Harvard presidents, four Massachusetts governors, and five signers of the United States Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin and Louis Farrakhan are among its well-known dropouts.

The school was modeled after Boston Grammar School in Lincolnshire, England, from where many of Boston's original settlers derived. Current students assert with pride that Harvard College, founded a year later in 1636, was created for Boston Latin's first graduates. Whether or not that is true, Boston Latin has been a top feeder school for Harvard, and has consistently sent large numbers of students to Harvard, recently averaging about twenty-five students per year. More than 99% of Boston Latin's approximately 400 annual graduates are accepted by at least one four-year college.

Latin School admitted only male students and hired only male teachers from its founding in 1635. The school's first female student was not until the 19th century. Helen Magill White was the school's first female graduate and first American woman to earn a doctorate. However, soon after White's graduation in 1877, Girls' Latin School was founded. For nearly a century, all qualified female students would attend the all-girls institution. It was not until 1972 that Boston Latin would admit its first co-educational class.

Female teachers predated female students at Latin. In 1967 the school appointed Marie Frisardi Cleary and Juanita Ponte as the first two women in its academic faculty.

Cornelia Kelley, the school's first female headmaster, served from 1998 until her retirement in 2007, after which Lynne Mooney Teta was selected to become the school's 28th headmaster. Mooney Teta is a 1986 graduate of Boston Latin and was formerly an assistant headmaster at the school. Under Teta, Boston Latin School removed all honor classes within its curriculum. However, there is an option to take accelerated courses of Algebra 2; Geometry; Pre-Calculus; and Latin 4 that do not give the .5 GPA boost.

First Boston Latin School House was a series of homes of each head master beginning with Philemon Pormort 1635 to 1638 and his successor Daniel Maude's home from 1638-1643. Ezekiel Cheever, I was an early head master of the Boston Latin School. He taught for seventy years, the last thirty-eight as master of the Boston Latin School. A formal single storey was the school's first permanent home from 1745 to 1812 to replace last temporary building which was demolished in 1745 to make way for King's Chapel expansion.[31] Site was later used for Suffolk County Courthouse from 1810 to 1841, converted as City Hall until it was demolished and replaced by Old City Hall in 1865.