Palm Beach billionaire developer Stephen Ross helped to lure the prestigious Pine Crest School to open a third campus in West Palm Beach with an eye-popping nine-figure commitment.
The Fort Lauderdale-based private school announced that Ross’ gift to the school totaled $100 million, a figure that the school called “extraordinary.” The donation is being made through the Stephen M. Ross Foundation.
“We are profoundly grateful for the Foundation’s generosity,” the school said in a statement. “Stephen Ross’s belief in education, in the next generation and in the importance of a strong educational ecosystem for the region’s children and families is deeply meaningful.”
The school announced in June that Ross had made a significant contribution to the
school but the amount was not revealed at the time.
The $100 million figure appears to make the donation among the largest philanthropic gifts ever made to a single K-12 school.
A 2007 donation of $128 million to a Pennsylvania prep school by a former student was believed at the time to be one of the largest, if not the largest, such donations in history.
In 2021, a private high school in Claremont, California received a $100 million gift from an anonymous donor.
Locally, Palm Beach billionaire Bill Koch donated $50 million in 2011 to found Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches in suburban West Palm Beach.
The donation came shortly before West Palm Beach city commissioners tentatively agreed in July to sell 57 acres of undeveloped land to Pine Crest for the creation of its third South Florida campus.
The school will buy the land along Roebuck Road near Florida’s Turnpike for $6.6 million under the tentative agreement, where it will construct what would be its largest campus. The other campuses are in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton.
“This gift is a meaningful endorsement of our mission and the educators and students who bring it to life, as well as a catalyst for an exciting new chapter in our School’s history,” the school said.
The donation is the latest, and largest, of Ross’ string of charitable donations to support major institutions expanding into West Palm Beach. In recent years he donated $50 million to Vanderbilt University and $50 million to Cleveland Clinic.
Separately, he contributed $13 million to create the Stephen M. Ross Emerging Scholars program, which provides scholarships for 1,000 students at Palm Beach Lakes and Forest Hill high schools in West Palm Beach to attend Palm Beach State College.
Ross said in a statement that Pine Crest’s opening of a campus in the city “speaks to the momentum this city has built.”
“I believe in West Palm Beach's future, and my commitment to Pine Crest reflects my long-term belief in this city,” he said. “World-class education is foundational social infrastructure for a growing community, and I am committed to supporting public, private and charter education for residents.”
Andrew Marra is a reporter at The Palm Beach Post. Reach him at amarra@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Ross' $100M gift to Pine Crest among largest ever to a K-12 school
