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Thornton Academy (often abbreviated as TA) is a co-educational, independent boarding and day school serving grades 9–12 located in Saco, Maine. Thornton Academy also opened a full-time, private junior high school on its campus, named Thornton Academy Middle School, which serves grades 6-8 for Saco, Dayton and Arundel students.
Thornton Academy was first established in 1811, under the name Saco Academy in response to a petition by citizens of southern Maine, most of them from Saco, to the Massachusetts legislature, which passed, in both houses, a bill founding the school in February 1811. The founding legislation also granted, as was common, one half a township or 18 square miles in northern Maine (most of what is currently the southern part of Greenville) as an endowment so long as the trustees named in the founding charter raised US$3,000 in funds. After successful fundraising and construction, Saco Academy officially opened on January 4, 1813.
The school was plagued for years by financial difficulty. The name was officially changed to Thornton Academy in 1821 in gratitude for the gift of $1,000 by Dr. Thomas G. Thornton, also the marshal for the Maine territory, which put the school on solid financial footing. Depending upon the economic indices used, the gift was worth about US$20,300 in 2018 dollars.
The academy was destroyed by fire on July 28, 1848, in what was concluded to be arson, although no culprit was ever found. Almost all records were lost in the fire, and the academy was closed indefinitely. Although the board of trustees continued to meet and discuss the school's future, serious efforts to rebuild the school were not taken until 1884, when investments by trustee James W. Bradbury had more than quintupled the academy's financial endowment.
In 1886 8 acres of land were purchased by the board at the corner of Main Street and Fairfield Street in Saco as the future site of Thornton Academy. On July 27, 1886, Thornton Academy became a legal corporation. The plans for the new school building were designed by H. G. Wadlin. It officially re-opened on September 6, 1889 and began its school year three days later with a class of 108 students. Today the original building is referred to as the Main Building.
Over the course of the next fifty years, several buildings were added to the grounds: the Charles Cutts Gookin Thornton Building in 1903, the headmaster's home in 1905, the George Addison Emery Gymnasium in 1913, and the Main Building Annex in 1931. Starting in the late 1950s and continuing to the early '70s, additional buildings were added because of enrollment increases related to the post-WWII baby boom: the John S. Locke Building, the William Linnell Gymnasium, the Edith Scamman Science Building, and an Industrial Arts Building. In 1996, 54,000 square feet were added, linking the Main Building with the Scamman Science Building, and adding the Mary Hyde Library, the Helen Atkinson Dining Commons, the Harry Garland Auditorium, six arts classrooms and six math classrooms. Because the academy has grown to nearly 80 acres and the buildings listed, it more resembles a university campus than a traditional American high school.
In fall 2006, Thornton Academy Middle School was opened on campus in the completely renovated footprint of the Fine Arts Building. The middle school houses grades 6–8. Free to children from Dayton, as well as Arundel because of a contract with that community, children from surrounding areas can pay a tuition to go to the middle school.
In the fall of 2009, Thornton Academy welcomed dozens of students from around the world in a brand new international boarding program. The school built a dormitory on campus which housed more than 40 students and several dorm families. The new dorm was named James E. Nelson Hall. In the summer of 2011, Thornton Academy built and opened a second dormitory, which is called Carl and Barbara Stasio Residence Hall, after the previous headmaster and his wife. Nearly 100 students will live in the dorms, split by gender. In the fall of 2017, a third large dormitory opened on campus, called Trojan Hall. 52 male students live in the dorm, bringing the overall total of residential students at Thornton Academy to more than 200. There is also a homestay program at Thornton Academy which enlists community host families to take in students for the school year. More than 20 countries are represented in the program each year.
The academy is privately owned and governed by a board of trustees. Since 1889 the trustees have, like several other of the oldest academies in New England, contracted with local communities to serve their needs for education, as well as accepting students who do not live in these communities and whose parents pay tuition. Currently the trustees have contracts with the communities of Saco and Dayton to educate all their students in grades 9–12 and with the community of Arundel for educating grades 6–8. Arundel currently allows high school choice for grades 9–12 students and many of these students also attend Thornton Academy. The current headmaster of grades 6–12 is 1988 Thornton Academy Alumnus, Rene Menard. He is only the eighth headmaster since 1889, when the academy moved to its current location. He succeeded Carl J. Stasio Jr. following the 2011–2012 school year.