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The Florida Ruffin Ridley School, formerly known as the Coolidge Corner School and the Edward Devotion School or Devo, is a public
K-8 school K8 or K-8 may refer to: * K-8 (Kansas highway), two highways in Kansas, one in northern Kansas, one in southern Kansas * K-8 school, a type of school that includes kindergarten and grades one through eight * K8 telephone box, designed by Bruce M ...
located at 345 Harvard Street,
Brookline, Massachusetts Brookline () is an affluent town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States, and part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area. An exclave of Norfolk County, Brookline borders six of Boston's neighborhoods: Brighton, Boston, Brighton ...
, United States. It is a part of Public Schools of Brookline. The school was founded in 1892 on land formerly owned by Edward Devotion (1621-1685) and later by his grandson, another Edward Devotion (1667-1744). The land was purchased by the town from a later owner. The Devotions' 18th-century house is preserved by the Town of Brookline and managed as a house museum by the Brookline Historical Society and stands amidst part of its original gardens in the school's forecourt.


Demographics

The school is attended by over 800 students from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade, and is the largest of eight public elementary schools in Brookline. The school emphasizes diversity, with English being a second language to over one third of the student body, among which about 40% are English Language learners. Roughly 37% of students are non-white or multiracial.


Student life

The school has a Parent Teacher Organization supporting activities including
field trip A field trip or excursion is a journey by a group of associated peers, such as coworkers or school students, to a place away from their normal environment for the purpose of education or leisure, either within their country or abroad. When ar ...
s, "Arts Council," a
science fair A science fair or engineering fair is an event hosted by a school that offers students the opportunity to experience the practices of science and engineering for themselves. In the United States, the Next Generation Science Standards makes ex ...
,
Math Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
night, and an International Night.


Renovation

The school was reconstructed and enlarged (completed in August, 2018). For the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 academic years, the student body was split between two temporary buildings, termed ''Lower Devotion School'' (grades K-4) and ''Upper Devotion School'' (grades 5-8). The principals of Lower Devotion were David O'Hara and Jennifer Buller, and the principal of Upper Devotion was Monica Crowley.


History

Built in 1892, the school was named for the second Edward Devotion, who decreed in his will that any money left over after the payments of his debt and funeral expenses be given to the town for use "towards Building or Maintaining a School as near the Centre of the said Town as shall be agreed upon by the Town." Although the money was long gone by the time school was built, the school was apparently named for him in recognition of his original request, although no records from the 1890s survive discussing the naming.
John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the first Roman Catholic and youngest person elected p ...
attended the school from 1922 to 1924. Until 2005, the school librarian was award-winning author Norman H. Finkelstein, who wrote the book ''The Other 1492'' (not to be confused with the similarly named professor
Norman Finkelstein Norman Gary Finkelstein ( ; born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist and activist. His primary fields of research are the politics of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Finkelstein was born in New York Cit ...
). In 2018, a citizen-led movement endorsed by Brookline's Town Meeting and School Committee began the process of renaming the school, recognizing that the estate of Edward Devotion sold for his bequest included a slave. In May 2018 the name was changed to the Coolidge Corner School pending a new name. The name was changed to the Florida Ruffin Ridley School as of September 2020, following the vote of Town Meeting in November 2019.


Notable alumni

* Ada Korkhin (born 2004), Olympic pistol shooter


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ridley, Florida Ruffin School Educational institutions established in 1892 Public elementary schools in Massachusetts Public middle schools in Massachusetts Public K–8 schools in the United States Schools in Norfolk County, Massachusetts 1892 establishments in Massachusetts