A new nonprofit group backed by about 1,500 alumni and donors is working to reopen St. Margaret’s School, an Episcopal boarding and day school for girls in grades 8-12 and postgraduates in Tappahannock, Virginia. The river town is 45 miles from Richmond.
The 104-year-old institution was shuttered over the summer by the Church Schools in the Diocese of Virginia (CSDV), citing financial and enrollment challenges that had persisted for at least a decade.
According to its website, the Foundation for St. Margaret’s School will raise funds, hire staff, and manage resources “for an all-girls’ school in the Episcopal tradition.” It hopes to launch a “reorganized St. Margaret’s School” on the same campus by the banks of the Rappahannock River.
“We are saddened, and there is grief that any of our institutions have come to a point where they are no longer viable,” the Rt. Rev. Gayle Harris, Assistant Bishop of Virginia, told The Living Church. “St. Margaret has served the church and this country well for several generations, and we are blessed and enriched by the learning and the opportunity, the experience that so many young girls had at the school.”
Established in 1921, St. Margaret’s was envisioned by Bishop William Cabell Brown, the fourth Bishop of Virginia, who longed to create a network of Episcopal schools across the commonwealth. The land where it sits was sold to the diocese by a Confederate veteran whose daughter-in-law later taught there. CSDV was created by the diocese in 1919 to own and operate a school network.
Dr. Elizabeth (Sissy) Crowther, class of 1975, leads the foundation. In a letter shared with supporters on September 5, she said the organization’s leaders will serve as the governing board for the reopened school. A majority of the board members are alumnae.
At least two of the foundation’s leaders, Sissy Crowther and Brooke Trible Weinmann, are from St. Margaret’s Class of 1975. | Brooke Trible Weinmann
Crowther served for 15 years as president of Rappahannock Community College—a ten-minute drive from St. Margaret’s. Two colleagues share similar expertise: Brooke Trible Weinmann, her classmate, co-founded an all-girls school in Atlanta, and Sarah Dillard Pope, class of 1986, is an executive at a community college.
All credit their alma mater for their achievements and continued commitment to the school and to the town—the seat of Essex County—where it was founded.
“We as alums lived through a tradition of the leadership preparation that St. Margaret’s provides,” Crowther told TLC. “The particular sisterhood, as we call it, is sort of a glue that keeps us together, forever, really. We are still as close today as we were when we were back there.”
Crowther listed alumnae professions over the years—“judges, attorneys, doctors—great doctors … all kinds of legislators.” She said, “I don’t think [they] would have quite the gumption or the preparation if it weren’t for St. Margaret’s.
She added: “We see a lot of value for the single-sex environment still, and I think particularly in a world where there’s backsliding in the gains of women and minorities.”
Weinmann agreed in a separate interview: “Essex County needs this school. Virginia needs this school. And I would argue that our nation needs this school.”
A 2018 study by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California–Los Angeles found that graduates of all-girls schools have a clear edge in academic achievement, community involvement, and self-confidence in the sciences compared to their coeducational peers.
The report, commissioned by the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools, also noted that alumnae of such institutions “are more active in volunteerism and more interested in community development compared to graduates of coeducational schools.”
Pope said that St. Margaret’s adds value to a community with significant needs. Essex County’s poverty rate is 8.5 percent higher than the state average. A 2023 Virginia Health Department Economic Opportunity Profile lists the county as having a “Very Low” or “Low” opportunity ranking.
An Ethical Responsibility
A 2023 resolution passed by Virginia’s General Assembly commending St. Margaret’s highlighted key milestones. Within its first decade, the number of boarding students grew from 20 to 70. In 1991, it became one of the first boarding schools in the southeastern United States to establish a program for international students.
During its centennial year, St. Margaret’s college preparatory course was enhanced to “expand our academic and recreational use of the river.” In 2022, the school’s annual publication Thistle announced a new dock and classroom being built for the program.
But enrollment continued to decline. The Rappahannock Times reported that during the 2024–25 school year, the student population was nearly half what it had been 15 years earlier. The pandemic and what CSDV described as “a societal shift away from the kind of education St. Margaret’s exemplifies” contributed to the decline.
Sandra Mitchell, who leads a group called Save Our St. Margaret’s (SOS) and served on the school’s board of governors from 1994 to 2002, also cited a nearby diocesan school’s decision to begin admitting girls as another factor. Crowther has chaired the current board of governors since 2019, which advises the trustees who control the school.
Henry Broaddus, president of CSDV, said that “the two boards work in coordination to support and advance each of the schools.”
To attract more students, St. Margaret’s discounted tuition, which led to lower revenue and larger deficits, according to a story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Late in 2024, CSDV informed the school that it would need to raise $2.6 million by January 1 to reopen in the fall. The school missed the deadline.
“St. Margaret’s has been financially in distress for several years,” Harris told TLC. “The board has tried hard over several years to give them time and to have the ability to raise funds, but it was clear at the beginning of this year that there were not enough financial assets and resources to pay for the staff, the faculty, and the cost of having a school.”
“It would be unethical for us to give the illusion of opening the school in September knowing that there was not funding to see the school through the academic year,” Harris added.
According to CSDV, the school’s endowment and reserves had covered St. Margaret’s annual operating deficits for the past 15 years, but those funds are nearly depleted.
After the January deadline was missed, alumni and donors responded with a surge of donations as SOS dumped up awareness. By February, pledges reached the $2.6 million target. CSDV authorized St. Margaret’s to issue enrollment and employment contracts for the next school year.
But in May, trustees expressed concern “about whether the school was financially competent” to operate in the next year—a move that SOS said was “without warning” and “shattered trust, destabilized progress, and put the school’s future in serious jeopardy.” Both enrollment and fundraising goals were extended to June 30, with notice from CSDV that failure to meet them would result in closure.
“We met and exceeded all of our pledges and fundraising,” Crowther said. “We believe that we could have had a really good year this year … because, again, there’s lots of momentum around the programs at that school right now.”
In a letter, CSDV described school leaders as “unflaggingly optimistic” about meeting both fundraising and enrollment goals. Tensions mounted between those wanting to keep St. Margaret’s open—including the board of governors and many alumni—and the trustees.
In June, Mitchell began raising funds for legal defense to “initiate immediate legal action to stop the closure,” which Broaddus said was done despite assurances that no legal action would be taken against the school network.
After the June deadline, the board of trustees made a final decision on July 10. Pope and Crowther hoped they would decide to keep the school open. But the vote came in and felt like a “gut punch,” Pope said.
“My stomach dropped,” Pope added. “It was horrible, and it was unexpected. We felt very confident going into that meeting that the school would be open another year because we had met our fundraising goal. We had collected all of our donations. We were on a trajectory to have the number of students that we projected for the fall.”
After the vote, Crowther told Mitchell’s team, “We really have to have communications through you,” and urged increased fundraising for legal defense. She also told a donor, “We need to reestablish our school independently.”
The next week brought a multimillion-dollar pledge to help purchase the school property. By the end of July, the Foundation for St. Margaret’s School was formally established. Mitchell has since joined its board.
It has rented a space across the now-closed St. Margaret’s and begun offering academic and sports programs to the community, and even hired a former faculty member as one of its staff. A lawsuit is pending involving several plaintiffs against CSDV concerning the events that have unfolded.
Weinmann is optimistic about their efforts to reopen her alma mater. “We’re gonna give it our very best to go because the way the school closed was not fair,” she said. “It wasn’t fair to the faculty, it wasn’t fair to the students, it wasn’t fair to the alums, and it wasn’t fair to the families of the students.” Her fellow alumnae, Pope and Crowther, agree.
Harris and Broaddus are aware of the foundation and its goals, including its desire to operate the reestablished school on the old campus. What to do with the property “is not even being discussed by the board,” Harris said.
“If that becomes feasible in the future, that would be an outcome that we would celebrate,” she added.
“At this point, we do not see it, but perhaps there is the possibility. We are a people who believe in resurrection, aren’t we?”
Caleb Maglaya Galaraga is The Living Church’s Episcopal Church reporter. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, and Presbyterian Outlook, among other publications.
