St. John's Military School, located in Salina, Kansas, was a private boardingmilitary school for male students from grades 6 to 12. It aimed to develop students' academic and leadership skills in a "military environment" overseen by a President, Academic Dean and Commandant of Cadets. It has the capacity for approximately 220 students. After numerous lawsuits and investigations regarding its culture of physical and sexual abuse going back decades, the school announced it will close on May 11, 2019. St John's was normally one of the highest ranked JROTC programs in the United States. Because of its high ranking in the Annual Formal Inspection, the school was allotted up to fifteen recommendations to the U.S. Military Academies. The school year ran from late August to early May. Honors classes are offered in English, Biology, and Social Studies. Advanced Placement classes for college credit were offered in English, Pre-Calculus, Chemistry, U.S. History, Government, and Computer Science. The school also had a comprehensive set of elective courses for students entering the work force upon graduation.
History
St. John's was founded in 1887 by the Bishop of Kansas, Elisha Thomas, as an Episcopal boarding school for boys aged 8–18; it was preceded by Phillips Military School, which had been started by Colonel William Phillips, a founder of Salina. Salina Troop 1, one of the oldest Boy Scout troops in America, was organized on January 21, 1910, by F. John Romanes, an instructor at St. John's who reportedly knew Lord Baden-Powell, the British founder of Scouting, and also founded Scouting in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The school's original building, Vail Hall, was completed in 1888 and enlarged in 1904; it was destroyed by a fire in November 1978. Since 1979, the annual graduation ceremony includes a traditional passing around of the building's front door handle, retrieved from the fire wreckage. The school was used in the filming of Up the Academy, a Mad magazine spoof about military boarding schools. The 1980 movie was filmed entirely in Salina, mostly on the school's campus. A wide range of abuse claims were filed against St. John's in a federal lawsuit in March 2012. An amended complaint was filed by six sets of parents on behalf of cadets from California, Florida, Tennessee, Colorado, Texas and Illinois. The lawsuit was settled with undisclosed terms in March 2014, just before the trial was to start. According to court records, as of 2012 St. John's had settled fourteen previous abuse-related lawsuits filed since 2006. A March 2013 report found been 339 complaints of beatings, hazing, harassment, and abuse over five years, including of students being branded. In December 2018, St. John's was ordered by an arbitrator to pay $369,175 to the family of a student who was 11 years old in 2014 when he was bullied and sodomized by another student; the arbitrator found that in addition to inadequate and inappropriate management of students, the school had relaxed admission standards in response to declining enrollment.
