NEW LEBANON, N.Y. — Two years ago, the Darrow School was on the brink of closing, with its finances in disarray.

The school, founded in 1932, was saved at the 11th hour when many of its 3,000 alums rallied to raise close to $5 million.

Now, with its current enrollment of 100 expected to swell to over 300 students — it was only 70 in 2024 — the school has lined up partners and investors to lease a nearby scenic 890-acre campus in Canaan, N.Y., starting in June, then buying it by mid-December.

It’s a remarkable recovery and growth spurt from a near-death experience for the campus, Head of School Andy Vadnais acknowledged.

The purchase price tag is $15.3 million, he said.

“We’re working with different investors to make this work,” he told The Eagle last week. “We’re going to run two campuses.”

Darrow Head of School Andy Vadnais, a graduate of Mount Greylock Regional School and Williams College, predicts that the college-prep school he runs will thrive with the planned purchase of a second campus in Canaan, N.Y., 2 miles from the historic Shaker settlement where Darrow opened in 1932.

The private, coed college-prep school, just several miles west of Hancock Shaker Village, is designated as a National Historic Landmark.

The original New Lebanon Mountainside Campus at a 1780 Shaker settlement can house up to 170 students. The second campus, to be called the Darrow School Lakeside Campus, can accommodate 130 more.

Although the expansion is fueled by hockey, soccer and basketball players, “we’re not a sports academy,” Vadnais said. “You’ve got to have high-performance academics, otherwise nothing works. We’re a school with a great college list and we’re just switching the model a bit to be considered an affordable boarding school.”

The aim is to begin using the property this fall in order to accommodate the projected dramatic increase in students, which would have the New Lebanon campus bursting at the seams.

The Caanan site, which is just 2 miles away, is known as Together for Youth, formerly the Berkshire Farm Center and Services for Youth residential center.

Vadnais said the pending transaction is in the “due diligence” stage and that the Together for Youth leaders, headed by President-CEO Brian Parchesky, are “great partners and wonderful to work with.” That organization is changing its business model, Vadnais pointed out.

The nonprofit family services agency serves 2,000 young people and their families in at least 50 New York state counties. Its Canaan campus has 33 classrooms, five dormitories, a commercial kitchen, a dining hall, athletic facilities and offices — “a move-in turnkey school,” Vadnais said.

The former Berkshire Farm Center and Services for Youth has athletic facilities, dorms and a dining hall on an 890-acre site in Canaan, N.Y. The Darrow School, 2 miles north in New Lebanon, is poised to buy the campus second campus for $29 million by the end of the year.

The property, with frontage on Queechy Lake, dates back to 1886 when it opened as the Burnham Industrial Farm, a 2,000-acre sanctuary for troubled youth.

After Darrow survived the potential shutdown in June 2024, the school launched an effort to create secure strategic partnerships.

The challenge then was to drive enrollment, then hovering around 70. The “sticker price” for tuition and boarding fees remains at $67,950, with needs-based financial aid going to at least 60 percent of the students, Vadnais said.

“In this economy, the old way of doing it for a school like this was not going to work,” Vadnais said. “Bigger schools with bigger endowments are going to be fine, but the smaller schools like us have to be nimble. We have to be careful and watch every penny.”

Darrow’s vaunted basketball program helped support enrollment and create a national reputation.

Then, a strategic partnership was formed with the Pittsfield-based United Soccer Group (USG), which was seeking an alliance with a private school to create a year-round soccer academy with coaches’ offices at Darrow.

“They draw kids from all over the world for that,” Vadnais said. USG, formed two years ago by coaches Mark Gillon and Rich Powell, caters to players of all ages, genders and backgrounds.

The most recent strategic partnership is with Atlantic Coast Hockey Academy, also based in Pittsfield.

It’s described as “a high-performance program that prides itself on professional coaching, excellent player development and maximum exposure opportunities. Our objective is to prepare student-athletes both athletically and academically for the next level, with the ultimate objective for players to succeed on and off the ice.”

The academy, with a large contingent of international students, has housed its hockey players at Camp Arrow Wood on Richmond Pond and at an unused MCLA dorm in North Adams. It is expected to supply 180 additional students to the Darrow campus.

“They needed a home and we told them, ‘We’ve got one for you,' ” Vadnais said. New U.S., Department of Homeland Security rules require that international students in the U.S. on an F1 nonimmigrant visa must have full-time, in-person classes, he noted.

"This is an exciting and transformative opportunity for Darrow,” he said. “The Together for Youth/Berkshire Farm campus allows us to thoughtfully scale our model while preserving the close-knit, mission-driven community that defines the Darrow experience.”