Trump’s Youngest Son to Attend Maryland Prep School
Trump’s Youngest Son to Attend Maryland Prep School, Barron Trump, the president’s fifth and youngest child, will attend St. Andrew’s Episcopal, a preparatory school in Potomac, Md., in the fall, affirming the first family’s plans to reunite in Washington after living apart since President Trump took office.
Barron, 11, and his mother, Melania Trump, the first lady, have been living in Trump Tower in Manhattan so he could finish the academic year at his Upper West Side private school. Mrs. Trump has expressed reservations about bringing Barron closer to the Washington spotlight, although Mr. Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg News this month that his wife and youngest son still planned to join him in Washington.
Mrs. Trump confirmed the decision.
“We are very excited for our son to attend St. Andrew’s Episcopal School,” she said in a statement. “It is known for its diverse community and commitment to academic excellence. The mission of St. Andrew’s is ‘to know and inspire each child in an inclusive community dedicated to exceptional teaching, learning, and service,’ all of which appealed to our family.”
The choice of St. Andrew’s in suburban Montgomery County is a break from tradition for first families’ school-age children. Many presidential families, including the Obamas, Clintons, Nixons and Roosevelts, sent their children to the prestigious Sidwell Friends, a Quaker school in Washington. Jimmy Carter sent his daughter, Amy, to public school in the city.
The arrangement for Barron should provide relief to the law enforcement agencies that have grappled for months with the demands of protecting a first family regularly divided between two cities. The New York City police alone have spent an estimated $127,000 to $145,000 a day since Mr. Trump took office to protect Barron and Mrs. Trump while in residence at Trump Tower, according to the department’s commissioner. The department did not reply to requests for comment about whether the relocation would lessen those costs.
For the Secret Service, the reunion at the White House would considerably simplify the demands and strategy for protecting the first family. The agency’s New York City field office, which typically also shoulders a large criminal and investigative workload, has been strained by the present arrangement. And the unusually high number of New York-based Trumps in need of protection has required agents from across the country to set aside criminal investigations to fly to the city for two-week protection stints.
St. Andrew’s, a coed preparatory school, is 20 miles from the White House. It has around 580 students in preschool through 12th grade. The school has class sizes of no more than 15, seven students for each teacher, and a 19-acre “picturesque campus.”
Tuition is $38,590 for middle school and $40,650 for high school, in addition to a host of fees, including a $1,000 enrollment fee and $90 in parent association dues.
The school’s demographic makeup is 40 percent students of color and international students. All of its graduates typically go to college.
“St. Andrew’s programs are designed to serve students of varied interests and abilities capable of achievement in a challenging academic environment,” its mission statement says.
And despite the school’s religious affiliation, it proclaims that “it does not mean that we want to ‘make Episcopalians’ out of our students.” The school’s student body is 18 percent Catholic, 16 percent Episcopalian, 23 percent “other Christian denominations,” 10 percent Jewish and 1 percent Muslim.
“The perspective of the Episcopal Church includes respect for other religious traditions and even for those periods of life when a person is not identified with a particular tradition,” the school’s website says, adding that it feels “little compulsion to ‘defend God’ or traditional theological expressions.”
It was unclear when Mrs. Trump and Barron would move to Washington, but the school year at St. Andrew’s begins on Sept. 5.
