In the fall of 2026, Greenhills will be welcoming pre-kindergarten to fifth-grade students through the doors of its new lower school campus, which will be housed in what is currently Summers-Knoll school, an “independent progressive preschool through eighth-grade program” on Platt Road. Some operational changes will be underway this upcoming school year, though, with Greenhills overseeing the management of Summers-Knoll to allow for a smooth transition.
Talk of adding a lower school has been ongoing for years, but the partnership with Summers-Knoll materialized in recent months.
“Five years ago, we started talking internally about starting a lower school, so we’ve had this in our master planning for a while,” Head of School Peter Fayroian said. “Their [Summers-Knoll’s] board and our board began conversations with each other this winter, so it happened really quickly.”
With Greenhills looking to expand and Summers-Knoll facing a decline in enrollment, these conversations came naturally.
“Institutions have different points in their history,” Fayroian said. “They change identities, they have enrollment increases, and they have enrollment decreases. The Summers-Knoll board really saw in their current situation an opportunity. Perhaps they were looking to create a program where there were more kids coming to us, and more kids coming to us better prepared for the sixth-grade experience, so when they realized that they had to take advantage of an opportunity to keep their doors open, this was the perfect one.”
The addition of a lower school will not only expand the age groups that are part of the community, but also invite students from a wide range of backgrounds to join.
“Summers-Knoll has a history of caring deeply about the education of young kids and it’s a great location for us,” Fayroian said. “One of our goals is making sure we have kids who otherwise wouldn’t have this kind of preparation because of their educational background, the communities that they live in, whatever resources they have available to them, or just their knowledge of this kind of education. Not every kid can go to King or Angell, or Emerson or Daycroft.”
Fayroian hopes that the new lower school will enable a seamless transition from elementary to middle school.
“I would really like for us to make sure, and we will, that there is a cohort of kids going through our lower school, so that when they enter our middle school, they are at least as prepared, if not better prepared, for our middle school than any other kid coming from any other school.” Fayroian said. “If we could do that with kids who wouldn’t ordinarily have access to this kind of education in lower school, that would be awesome.”
While quality of education is at the forefront of the administration’s mind when thinking about their goals for this expansion, there is also an emphasis being placed on the benefits of growing the Greenhills community.
“I really like the idea of just the little things,” Fayroian said. “We have the senior and sixth-grade buddies. It would be so cool for our eighth-graders to have that with our kindergarteners. Our seniors benefit from having different 11-year-olds on campus. Imagine having 150 little kids in our gym for spirit week. How cool would that be? Imagine knowing, as a kindergartener, that on Mondays you ride a bus to the middle and upper school campuses and use our athletic facilities and participate in our arts. The all-school arts and music events would expand. It’s so fun to think about.”
Billy Rozelle ‘27, who attended Summers-Knoll from first to fifth grade is excited for the impact that this change will have on the Greenhills and Summers-Knoll communities.
“It’s kind of crazy that I will retroactively be a first through 12th-grade survivor of Greenhills,” Rozelle said. “They [Summers-Knoll] were struggling some when I, and a lot of other kids, left, so this will be really good for them.”
While there is a lot to look forward to, Fayroian is aware that this transition, like all others, will not come without its challenges, one of which being the absence of a gym on Summers-Knoll’s campus. A possible solution that administrators are thinking through is the creation of a large motor skills area.
“There’s a really large garage space that we can convert into a large, indoor motor skills and play area,” Fayroian said. “They also have great access to County Farm Park and the playground.”
The school will also have to work to ensure that its values remain consistent across each of its branches.
“We are a middle and upper school, and we have a mission, and it’s not really a challenge in terms of an obstacle, but it’s a really exciting opportunity, which is translating our mission into a lower school,” Fayroian said. “One of the first things we have to do is line up the right people to help us with that. There are some amazing people in this community, and others nationally, who are going to be interested. Even in the local community, people who are lower school educators are going to be really excited about the opportunity to build something.”
History teacher Lauren Yavor, who taught at Summers-Knoll in the past, is looking forward to this shift and to working with former colleagues again.
“It is going to be a fun opportunity to collaborate with other teachers and develop a program of what we want a Greenhills student to be and the skills we want them to have when they graduate from here,” Yavor said. “Being able to build on that going all the way back to kindergarten is exciting.”
In addition to the logistical challenges that will likely ensue, a cultural shift will also occur due to Greenhills’ and Summers-Knoll’s distinct values.
“There are going to be some people who are going to be like ‘Is Greenhills moving in that [Summers-Knoll’s] direction?’ and people might be concerned about that, and there also going to be people who have been committed to that kind of education, who are going to be wondering, ‘Are you [Summers-Knoll] really going to move in that [Greenhills’] direction?’,” Fayroian said. “The reality is, yes, if you’re going to move through our lower school, in order to prepare kids best for our middle school, it will probably be a bit different.”
While Greenhills will effectively absorb Summers-Knoll as its lower school campus, Fayroian does not intend to replace the current faculty with Greenhills teachers.
“Depending upon what design we ultimately have for the lower school program, we may add faculty and there may be faculty and staff who choose not to be part of the new design,” Fayroian said. “Right now, we have no plans [to change] their faculty. They are doing a wonderful job teaching kids.”
