After 140 Years, A Haverford Elementary School Has Switched To Pre-K

Correction: A previous version of this article listed an incorrect neighborhood on one reference to the school.

HAVERFORD, PA — After 140 years of elementary education, a private school in Haverford has switched to preschool and kindergarten, citing "long-running" enrollment trends in the area.

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This school year, Friends School Haverford (FSH) will begin a new era as an early-childhood education center serving ages 1 through kindergarten. The 2025-26 school year was the Quaker institution's last to offer Grades 1-5.

Announced last fall, the FSH school committee says this shift stemmed from longtime educational trends in the area. More local families are enrolling elementary-age children in public schools, while demand for early-childhood education has grown, the school says.

Considered the Main Line's oldest Quaker school, FSH sits on a 2-acre wooded campus on Buck Lane. The school has been there since 1885.

To guide the shift, the FSH school committee spent months seeking a new head of school. Dr. Kimberly Blake, an administrator with two decades of experience facilitating school transformation, took the helm July 1.

Before joining FSH, Blake was a regional superintendent for Mastery Charter Schools in Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey. She was also the founding principal of Molina Lower Elementary, a Mastery school in Camden that enrolls Grades K-2.

"We are fully embracing our new identity as a safe haven for early learners," Blake said in a statement, "and we're rallying our entire school community around our exciting transition showcasing just how much we truly exemplify what an excellent school for early childhood education should look, feel and sound like to families with young children."

With a month until the new school year, FSH says it has already surpassed its fall enrollment numbers from recent years. At the end of July, 77 students were enrolled for the upcoming school year. Fall enrollment in the prior three years stood at 71, 64 and 70.

There are 12 remaining spaces for student enrollment, which FSH feels confident it can fill. The school already has waiting lists for the 1-year-old class — its youngest — and the PreK program serving ages 3 and 4.

The upcoming school year begins Aug. 31.