Milton S. Hershey, creator of
The Hershey Company, was a chocolate industrialist and had founded the town of
Hershey, Pennsylvania. On November 15, 1909, he and his wife,
Catherine Hershey, signed over a piece of farmland, forming the Hershey Industrial School. The first four boys were admitted in September 1910. In 1918, following Catherine's death three years earlier, Milton put most of his fortune—including his share of the company's stock—into a trust for the school, valued at $60 million altogether. and 1034 boys in 1937. In 1934, a junior-senior high school building was opened at the site with a capacity for 1500 students. By then, the school had acquired about 10,000 acres of land. The school's name was changed from
Hershey Industrial School to
Milton Hershey School in 1953, reportedly to eliminate the possibility of "industrial" connoting a
reform school. The school's student selection broadened in the 1960s and 70s. Following a 1968 decision upheld by the
U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered the racial desegregation of
Girard College, Milton Hershey School admitted its first non-white student. School official James E. Bobb, however, stated that the decision to admit racial minorities was unrelated to the ruling. In 1976, the school expanded its definition of orphanhood to include "social orphans", those with single or divorced parents. In November of that year, the school successfully petitioned the Dauphin County Court on allowing girls based on their charter. The first eight girls arrived in March 1977. by September 1978, female students made up 10% of the 1300 students. Cyndi Jacobsen wrote in 1989 in
The Sentinel that "students chafe under the rules, the lack of privacy and individuality, and the anachronistic dairy barns ... [b]ut graduates tend to look back at their experience as a survival test". She said that house parents varied widely in their treatment, with some "rigid and authoritarian" and others "warm and affirming." Later that year, the school's longtime tradition of requiring all grade 9–12 students to milk cows, twice daily, was rescinded, with strong approval from students and the board. Director of secondary education John Storm justified the change, stating that "the school revolved around the milking program, when in fact we wanted it to revolve around educational opportunities". In 2002, the school had about 1,500 students; over the next two decades, it grew to about 2,000. In late 2011, a 13 year old was denied admission to the school because he was
HIV-positive. While the school initially defended its decision, citing safety concerns, an anti-discrimination lawsuit filed by the
AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania led to a settlement of $700,000 for the boy's family and a reversal of the policy. In 2014, alumnus Pete Gurt became the president of the school. In 2016, 11 former students sued the school for invasion of privacy, alleging that an employee had hidden a camera in a bathroom used by senior male students. The employee admitted to filming the boys' showering and was sentenced to a year in prison. In 2016, renovations began on Founders Hall, the school's 50-year-old administrative center. The hall includes a fountain designed by
Aristides Demetrios, one of the largest domes in the state, an auditorium chapel seating 2,640, and a dining room seating 1,700. In 2017, the Law, Public Safety and Security program at Milton Hershey School was recognized as the Advance
CTE National Program of Excellence. The school received its first accreditation from the
Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) for its campus security. Also in 2017, former student Adam Dobson sued the school after the school expelled Dobson for attempting suicide. Dobson later stated that he was forced to watch a religious gay-conversion video. A court dismissed the lawsuit in 2020. In 2019, Milton Hershey School's elementary innovation lab instructor received the
Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. In 2020, Milton Hershey School received its second CALEA accreditation, recognizing the school's Central Monitoring staff for excellence in Public Safety Communications. == Governance ==