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The Oakwood School is a PK3, PK4, K-12, coed, non-sectarian independent school setting the bar for a 21st Century education teaching the whole child through hands-on, experiential learning.
- Staff Directory
Staff Directory - At a Glance - The Oakwood School
- Calendar
Calendar - At a Glance - The Oakwood School
- Leadership
The Oakwood School is a PK3, PK4, K-12, coed, non-sectarian...
- Admissions Process
Admissions Process - At a Glance - The Oakwood School
- Staff Directory
After four decades of leadership and service to Oakwood School, Headmaster Jim Astman retired from his role on June 30, 2019. We are fortunate to have been led by someone with a personal connection to Oakwood’s founders and who brought their original vision to life in innumerable ways. Always placing the Statement of Philosophy at the center ...
- The History of Oakwood
- The Founding Families
- Final Note
In the beginning...
A small group of parents decided to create a school where their children could flourish as thinkers, as artists, as athletes, and most of all, as human beings. By the fall of 1951, the school they had named Oakwood opened in Jessica and Robert Ryan's backyard. Three years later, those pioneering parents, including the Ryans, Sidney Harmon and Elizabeth Schappert, Wendy and Ross Cabeen, and Charles and Emilie Haas bought and built the elementary school campus on Moorpark Street. Since then Oak...
The First Backyard
Oakwood began in the hearts and minds of a small group of parents who had three things in common: 1) one or more of their children attended the same nursery school; 2) they were equally disturbed by post-war overcrowding in the public schools; and 3) they disagreed about almost everything else! At the suggestion of her pediatrician that she "do something - start your own school!" - Jessica (and Robert) Ryan hosted several meetings at their North Hollywood home, in the spring of 1950. At those...
The Elementary School - Innovative Beginnings
In 1951, Oakwood purchased its present elementary campus with personal guarantees from Robert Ryan, Sydney Harmon and Ross Cabeen. Those early years were pretty rough and in the spring of 1954 the founders had voted to give the school away. But they decided to give it one more try and Elizabeth Harmon departed for the east coast in search of a new director. As fate would have it, Marie Spottswood, then Director of New York's Ethical Culture Fieldston School, was looking for a change. It was M...
Jessica and Robert Ryan
Jessica Ryan was tall, handsome, bright, full of talent and humor, somewhat shy, spoke infrequently but always to the point. She came from a Quaker background, and found the first Director of Oakwood, Bryson Gerard, at a Quaker school in Pasadena. Robert Ryan had a wry twist to his expression suitable for villainous film roles which he was reluctant for his children to see. He had no "actor's ego," was down-to-earth, intelligent and willing to work for any cause he saw as important. When Oakw...
Elizabeth and Sidney Harmon
Elizabeth Harmon was small, gentle, and had attended Fieldston, a progressive school in New York where, in 1954 during an Oakwood crisis, she found Marie Spottswood and convinced her to become the third and most significant head of Lower Oakwood. Later Elizabeth Harmon made another decisive contribution: $50,000. as down payment on the present secondary school campus. Sidney Harmon was an independent film producer. In his early twenties, he became a "boy wonder" when he produced Kingsley's "M...
Wendy and Ross Cabeen
Ross Cabeen was a conservative among liberals, a Republican among Democrats, a businessman among artists, an open-minded gentleman who had fallen among friends with firm opinions about almost everything. A petroleum engineer with his own exploration company, his hair was red, his complexion ruddy, his expression nearly always amused, and he could sell ice to the Eskimos. It was visits from Cabeen and Ryan which convinced our Moorpark neighbors that what they most wanted next door was a school...
When the founding fathers finished cleaning the toilets and washing the floors of our first home on Chandler Boulevard, they built the cupboards in the front buildings at the elementary school. John Sturges, the film director, lent his table saw, and he and Charles Haas took turns supervising other fathers who had never built anything with their ow...
Oakwood is a strong college preparatory school whose students are particularly attractive to colleges and universities because of the balance we provide between academics, the arts, and athletics. All Secondary Campus students are required to take a minimum of three years of visual and/or performing arts.
The Oakwood School. Private • PK-12 • Greenville, NC. The Oakwood School is a private school located in Greenville, NC. The student population of The Oakwood School is 299. The...
