The Boston Globe
Suffield Academy is reeling from the removal of its longtime headmaster amid a purported tax investigation.
The Connecticut boarding school has hired a crisis public relations agency and assured board members the school’s own finances are not under investigation, according to current and former board members and public communications.
Parents and alumni, meanwhile, have largely been left in the dark since the school announced on Oct. 22 that Charles Cahn III, who had led Suffield for 22 years and was set to retire next summer, had been placed on leave, effective immediately, after the school learned of “an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service involving [Cahn].”
One of the highest-paid boarding school leaders in New England, Cahn was widely regarded as a transformational figure at Suffield, a nearly two-century-old school of about 420 students near the Connecticut River between Springfield and Hartford. Just days before the announcement, the school had hosted a celebration in his honor during parents’ weekend. Other plans to fete Cahn — and continue his legacy of fund-raising success — were in the works.
“Everyone loved Charlie,” said one parent of recent Suffield graduates (the parent, like others interviewed for this article, did not want to be named in an article about the investigation).
Since the announcement of Cahn’s removal, the school has said almost nothing about what has happened. An Oct. 27 email to the school community from the new head of school, Cahn’s previously-named successor Casey Bobo, did not even mention Cahn or the purported IRS investigation. The school has declined to answer any questions from the Globe. On campus and in alumni circles, wild rumors are filling the void.
Behind the scenes, school officials have told board members that the investigation concerns only Cahn’s personal finances, not the school’s, according to board member Tracy O’Keefe. The board, she said, has been told that the school “is cooperating with the IRS and providing information.”
Reached by phone, the chair of the board, Frederic B. Powers III, who signed the original Oct. 22 announcement, said, “It’s a private matter. … I can’t comment.” He and others said the school has retained a crisis PR firm to handle the fallout.
Cahn did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the IRS.
Until his sudden removal, Cahn was a revered figure at Suffield, where he, his wife, and their children were like the school’s first family. Their names are on buildings and scholarship funds. Their family photos are used in marketing materials.
His fund-raising prowess contributed to a transformation of Suffield’s 350-acre campus, including new athletic centers, a dining hall, and academic buildings. The school has said it invested $120 million in construction and renovations during Cahn’s tenure.
He traveled in the United States and abroad for fund-raising events. Before the announcement of his leave, Cahn was due to appear at alumni events in Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, San Francisco, Boston, and New York City over the coming months.
Last year, Powers and a former board member announced that Suffield’s endowment had surpassed $100 million, double its value from just six years earlier. Growing the endowment, Powers and trustee emeritus Daniel R. Tisch said, was “a central area of focus of Head of School Charlie Cahn and our Board of Trustees.”
Annual tuition for boarding students is $79,400. About two-thirds of Suffield’s students are boarders, and about one-fifth come from abroad.
Cahn’s pay reflected his fund-raising success and campus stature. In 2014, he was one of the highest-paid boarding school heads in New England. Since then, his pay has more than doubled, and total compensation topped $1 million each year from 2020 through 2024, according to the school’s publicly available tax returns. That’s more than the heads of the most elite New England boarding schools such as Andover, Exeter, Deerfield, and Groton.
Cahn announced early last year that he planned to retire at the end of the 2026-2027 school year.
Cahn came to Suffield in his 20s as an English teacher and lacrosse coach, and he quickly climbed the ranks. He served as head of admissions and dean of the faculty, and in 2004 became head of school at age 34.
Along the way, he married a fellow Suffield teacher, Hillary Rockwell. She was a Suffield lifer. The daughter of a longtime teacher, she was raised on the school’s campus. During Cahn’s tenure, she continued teaching and coached the ski team. The couple raised their two children on campus and sent them to Suffield.
Aside, perhaps, from his youth, Cahn looked the part of the head of a traditional New England boarding school. He wore plaid blazers and had a floppy, side-parted hairdo. But parents and alumni said he seemed like a savvier business executive than some of his predecessors, who had a more academic air.
He was known to virtually everyone as Charlie and sought to embody Suffield’s identity as a friendlier alternative to New England’s most elite private schools.
His few detractors wondered whether too much of a cult of personality had built up around him.
The school’s board, in any case, exerted itself to keep Cahn. They struck a retention agreement that boosted his pay and elevated his salary into rarefied air. They even created an endowment called the Charles Cahn III Head of School Chair, “honoring Charlie Cahn’s historic impact.”
Indeed, until the Oct. 22 announcement that he was on leave, there was no sign of the school souring on its longtime leader.
The school had continued to prominently feature the Cahn Scholars Fund, a scholarship program for lower-income students, in its marketing and fund-raising materials.
Cahn, his wife, and their children helped select the applicants who would receive scholarships from the fund. It was a way, the school said, to continue the Cahn family’s legacy beyond Charles Cahn’s planned retirement.
