By now, I hope all of you are well into enjoyable summers and much more time with your family than we are able to find during the school year. The middle of July always seems to arrive a bit earlier than any of us would like, yet here we are, seven weeks away from the day when students arrive for early athletics to begin the 2016-2017 year. The time does move quickly!
Before sharing some thoughts about the summer we are having here on campus, I would like to begin by welcoming all of the new parents receiving this letter. We are thrilled to be on the verge of getting to know your daughter or son, and to have the opportunity to do the same with all of you. At this point, I suspect you are swimming in emails and registration forms of one sort or another, and we do hope you will reach out to us if we can be helpful. I will add to the correspondence you receive from the school through the year with these letters, in an effort to share my own thoughts on the many ups and occasional downs that are part of any school year. I do hope that you will feel free to be in touch with me directly with thoughts about something I have written, or with anything else that is on your mind and you would like me to be aware of. The success we have working with your son or daughter depends a great deal on being in touch with you routinely and in ways that share with you as much of the school's life as we can. It is my hope that these letters prove useful to all of you in this regard. I look forward to staying in touch.
A number of you know through your own experiences that our campus is extremely busy during the summer months. Between our day camp and a series of additional adult and student programs of one kind or another that come and go during June, July, and August, there is a lot going on. Beyond hosting this slate of terrific programs, we also aim to do as much work on the physical plant and program as we can. At this point in the summer, the following work has been completed, is underway, or is on the agenda for the balance of July and August:
- The biggest project this summer involves swapping the Health Center and Business Office. For those of you who are returning parents, you know that our Health Center has been located above the admission office and my office in far too cramped of a space. After some brainstorming and work with clever architects, we have been able to move our Business Office personnel to what was the Health Center. The work on converting what is now the former Business Office to a state-of-the-art Health and Wellness Center is underway. We are anticipating this project will be completed in about five weeks and will be up and running when students return. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges, our accrediting body, recommended that we address this facility weakness during our last reaccreditation. To be doing so this summer will have a dramatic impact on our ability to take even better care of our students through the year.
- We are getting closer to breaking ground on the remembrance garden that will be constructed with the Anna Trustey Memorial Fund gifts making this project possible. The space has been designed beautifully, the granite we will use in the garden has been delivered, and we are well into final design choices. It is our hope to begin the project in the second part of August, which would allow us to complete it by about October 1. We will look forward to sharing more detail when we are in touch in August.
- While we are still a ways away from shovels going into the ground, we continue to move forward with the design development phase of the arts facility and theater we have been working on. This extraordinary facility will transform the center of our campus in ways that will build on the good work we have already completed with the Ashburn Chapel and pedestrianizing our Main Street. You can learn more about this exciting facility at www.thecampaignforbrooks.org. Take a look!
- We are continuing to focus on the skill and competency components of our curriculum. Associate Head for Academic Affairs Lance Latham is working with some colleagues new to academic affairs, but not to Brooks: Susanna Waters (Academic Dean), Mary Jo Carabatsos (Dean of Teaching and Learning), and Lisa Saunders (Director of Administrative Computing; Registrar). This group and others joining them in the effort have already attended some conferences and have started some internal committee work. There will be more to report as the year moves along.
- Associate Head for Student Affairs Andrea Heinze has been working with her team for some time on the development of our Self in Community minor course sequence, which we will unveil in the fall. The hope is to bring what have been somewhat disparate minor courses into a more cohesive and age-appropriate sequence running from the third form to the sixth form. The opportunity to explore health and wellness, mindfulness, spirituality, healthy relationships, ethics, citizenship, and leadership, while ensuring a routine opening for conversation each week, is what we have in mind.
I hope that all of you have opted to join your daughter or son in this year's all-school read.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is this year's selection and Laura Hajdukiewicz and the Science Department are leading the way with the effort. I am well into the book at this stage and it is a terrific read. For those of us who grew up in the 1980s, it is particularly interesting with all kinds of 1980s popular culture references. A trip down memory lane! Beyond that, the opportunities we will have to use the book as the foundation for conversation about living digitally at and outside of school are substantial.
With a summer in the United States and world that has been filled with an especially heavy load of unspeakable violence and tragedy in the midst of a charged presidential election year, we are anticipating a need to be prepared to support students who might be struggling once the school year begins. While answers are elusive, we want to do what we can to hear and help students and one another in the midst of such challenging times. I would certainly welcome thoughts any of you have regarding these matters as the summer wears on. In the meantime, we all will hope the violence the country and world are enduring subsides.
Before closing, I want to thank all of you for the support you gave this past year's Brooks Fund. We exceeded our goal of $2.2 million, due in no small part to your generosity. As we work hard to earn more support for
The Campaign for Brooks, we are acutely mindful of the need to have a hearty and robust Brooks Fund to ensure that the school operates in the way that we plan to each year. Our annual giving program is critical to the school, and we simply would not be able to deliver the program we deliver without your support. Many, many thanks.
We enjoyed a lovely reception in Southampton, New York, this past week, and are looking forward to another event in Bar Harbor, Maine, in early August. It has been nice to see some of you at these events and here and there through the summer.
Again, if there is anything we can do to be helpful as the summer continues, let us know. I will look forward to writing my next letter in the middle of August with the beginning of the school year coming into view. Until then, please feel free to be in touch with me at any point.
Enjoy the summer!
