(Bloomberg) -- The Wheeler School, where heiress Gloria Vanderbilt attended, is joining other elite private schools in taking on debt to spruce up its campus on a farm in Massachusetts. 

The Massachusetts Development Finance Agency, an agency that sells debt on behalf of nonprofits, sold an $11 million tax-exempt bond for the school to build a new eight-lane pool, an outdoor splash pad and a nature-based early learning center at its campus in Seekonk, Massachusetts, according to a statement by the agency on Thursday. 

It is the latest elite school to sell debt in an effort to enhance their campuses with bells and whistles. In Connecticut, Loomis Chaffee School sold bonds for campus projects in December, and the Brunswick School issued debt in the fall. Curtis School, a private school catering to wealthy Los Angeles residents, tapped the municipal market earlier this year.

Founded in 1889, the Wheeler School has a campus in the College Hill neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island, as well as an 120-acre farm in Seekonk. The farm campus currently has eight athletic fields including an organic turf field, a 32,500-square-foot fieldhouse, eight tennis courts, a conference center, and “ample acreage for a biological and ecological field laboratory,” the statement says. 

Kathy Wilson, Wheeler’s chief financial officer, said in working with MassDevelopment the school has “successfully paved a pathway into the future.”

“Our 120-acre farm in nearby Seekonk, MA provides students with state-of-the-art athletic facilities,” the school’s website says. “It’s a pastoral counterpoint to our urban campus—and is a living, hands-on laboratory for a range of unique programs.”

Tuition at the Wheeler School for the 2024-25 school year will be as high as $43,515 for kindergarteners, first and second graders, according to the school’s website.

Boston-based Berkshire Bank purchased the bond, which lowered the school’s cost of capital, the statement said.

The late Vanderbilt helped the school raise money for a theater in the 1980s, according to the school. Other notable alumni include Josh Schwartz, the developer of Gossip Girl, a popular television show that focuses on an elite school in Manhattan. 

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