Priscilla Sands to step down at SCH Academy

Priscilla Sands, the longtime top administrator of Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, announced Wednesday that she will step down at the end of this academic year to become head of a private school in Los Angeles.

After 19 years in Chestnut Hill, Sands said, she is leaving to lead the Marlborough School, a school for girls in seventh through 12th grades.

Sands became head of Springside in 1996. When Springside merged with Chestnut Hill Academy, the adjacent boys' school in 2011, she became president of the coed school.

"So many highly visible facility upgrades have occurred over our 62-acre campus that it is difficult to list them al1," Dick Hayne, chairman of the trustees, said in a statement. He added that Sands' greatest achievement was the staff she assembled to carry out her educational vision.

In a letter to the school community, Sands wrote, "Our faculty and senior leadership team have been the guiding force behind our wonderful accomplishments. They have taken the challenge to be bold, innovative, and daring, and to teach our students for the ever-evolving world that awaits them."

Under the school's unusual model, students have single-sex classes in the lower and middle grades and coed classes for ninth through 12th.

The school has achieved national attention for its Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, which gives students experiences to help prepare them to become innovative leaders and imaginative problem-solvers.

Springside Chestnut Hill Academy enrolls 1,102 students. Annual tuition ranges from $18,750 for prekindergarten to $31,670 for high school.

The trustees have formed a committee that will work with a national search firm to find a replacement for Sands, who holds a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Pennsylvania.