Celebrating 40 Years of Coeducation

celebrating Years

he early 1970s was an era when single-sex schools across the country were merging or becoming coeducational in order to remain sustainable. Fountain Valley School, too, needed to address concerns over potential declines in enrollment and the reality that students, not parents, were beginning to make the decision about where they would go to school. T

It wasn’t without a fight that Fountain Valley went co-ed in 1975. The president of the board resigned because of it. Trustee Jon Patten ’60, who was faculty at the time, was also opposed to coeducation but quickly changed his mind. “As soon as the girls arrived, I saw that this was a better place.”*

Thirty-five girls became FVS students in September 1975.

In the summer of 1976, after the first year of coeducation was history, Headmaster Lew Perry Jr. wrote in the Bulletin magazine:

“No one of us…could possibly have imagined all the great things that would be brought about by the arrival of an attractive, talented, wonderful group of

OF COEDUCATION!

girls…There are three things they have done for us: First, civilization has been upgraded; everyone dresses a little less uncarefully. Second, perhaps because many of these girls came to us through scholarship competition, the academic posture of the School as a whole has improved. Third, since the end of March, the admission picture… is fifty percent ahead of where it was a year ago… Nothing will quite match, to me, anyway, ‘the year the girls came.’” To honor the 40th anniversary of coeducation, the Bulletin profiles three alumna entrepreneurs who display the School’s values—and value—in their chosen pursuits.

Photo from the 1977 Alumni Winter Bulletin by renowned Southwest photographer, Myron Wood, in the style of the times. FVS women have confidently stepped forward into leading roles in the years since, evinced by the inspirational entrepreneurs you’ll meet in the following pages.