George F. Baker High School
Address
NY 17 Tuxedo , New York 10987 United States
Coordinates	41°11′18″N 74°11′06″W / 41.18833°N 74.18500°W / 41.18833; -74.18500
Information
Funding type	Public school
School district	Tuxedo Union Free School District
Principal	Roy Reese
Staff	9.80 (FTE)[1]
Grades	6-12
Enrollment	100 (2018-19)[1]
Average class size	18[2]
Student to teacher ratio	10.20[1]
Language	English
Campus type	Suburban
Colour(s)	Red, white, and black
Athletics	Men - soccer, basketball, wrestling, baseball; women - soccer, volleyball, softball, rowing
Athletics conference	Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association
Mascot	Tuxedo Tornado
Rival	S.S. Seward
Communities served	Towns of Tuxedo
Feeder schools	George G. Mason School
Website	George F. Baker High School

George F. Baker High School is the public secondary school educating students in grades 6 through 12 in the Tuxedo Union Free School District. It is located on NY 17 in Tuxedo, New York, United States, near the gates of the village Tuxedo Park.

It educates students from the town of Tuxedo and the village of Tuxedo Park. Northern parts of Tuxedo however send their students to Monroe Woodbury. Greenwood Lake had sent their students to George F. Baker for nearly 30 years with that agreement ending around 2015 leaving Tuxedo with a difficult decision to keep the school open or tuition its students to surrounding towns. Greenwood Lake left largely due to the cost per student at Tuxedo v. lower bids to do the same from Warwick, Goshen and Chester. This led enrollment to drop by over 200 students leaving the full school around 80 students. It also created a $2.5M shortfall in an operating budget without the Greenwood Lake tuition. At the end Greenwood Lake provided all options other than Tuxedo to their residents and Tuxedo decided to keep the school open despite lower enrollment as it was determined that they would only save between 6-12% by tuitioning students to other schools including Suffern, Ramsey or Northern Highlands.

Also in 2015, the school's principal and superintendent resigned their positions.^[3]

The school itself was a gift to the town by Tuxedo Park resident George Fisher Baker, an American banker and philanthropist. The school was built in 1931. Baker was known as the "American Dean of Banking" and was a cofounder of the First National Bank of the City of New York, which was the forerunner of today's Citibank N.A.. By the time of his death, Mr. Baker had amassed such a fortune in banking and railroads that he was estimated to be the third richest man in the United States, after Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. The George F. Baker High School building is modeled after the Harvard Business School's Baker Library and putting the buildings side by side gives a remarkable resemblance. Baker provided much of the initial funding for Harvard Business School with a 1924 grant of $5 million, for which Harvard gave him an honorary doctorate and named the library after him. The high school imposed a demanding all-Regents curriculum on students before the New York State Education Department began requiring it.

While the school was built in 1931, it was not a typical public high school with large classrooms with extra tall ceilings, marble, granite and ornate decorations in the main auditorium and details such as chair rails in classrooms. The building has stood the test of time and is beautiful in detail inside and out.

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References