August 21st 2010
Dear Derryfield School Parents,
I write this letter on a cool morning after a hot summer, and that change alone helps make the transition to the welcome routine of our school.
Last week many of our upper school student athletes began to practice fall sports on campus. This upcoming week the faculty and staff reassemble, furthering a climate of New Years celebration. We all look forward to you and your children returning the following week. With an enrollment of 381 students, our school remains full, vibrant and very strong.
We have had a very productive summer, leaving me with the joyful challenge of describing some of the highlights. Before brief introductions of our new people, your awareness of and participation in the themes of the year will enhance our school-parent partnership, and help us to be our best. The themes are three-fold, as follows –
1. Our Core Value Exploration: Derryfield uses six core values to further our mission, and we “deep dive” into two of them each year as a way to deepen our learning, and keep our mission vital. This year we will lift up Character and Community, which we define as follows –
Character: We actively cultivate respect, integrity, compassion, and perseverance in our community members.
Community: We seek a diverse community defined and sustained by close relationships, social interdependence, and service.
This will play-out in the lives of your children, for example, at a Parent-Teacher conference where your child will be asked to reflect on what they have learned about these values. Beginning these discussions at home, and encouraging them along the way, helps our partnership.
2. NEASC: As an independent school, Derryfield gets re-accredited every 10 years by NEASC (New England Association of Schools and Colleges). The ambitious re-accrediting process begins with a year of school-initiated self-study further to 13 Standards that NEASC prescribes (Ex. “Mission: There is a congruence between the school’s stated mission and core values and its actual program, policies, planning and decision-making at both the operational and governance levels” or “Communication: The school maintains effective systems of external and internal communications and record keeping that inform all constituents and facilitate participation where appropriate.”). The purpose of the exercise is to encourage reflection in the continual pursuit of independent school improvement. Our faculty and staff have already begun this process and, again, the reflection, learning and planning will be a theme of the year.
When the NEASC Visiting Team arrives in October 2011 I every reason to believe they will embrace an inspiring school, always seeking to improve on behalf of its students.
While the entire community will be engaged in the process it will be led by Mary Carter, our Dean of Faculty and Academic Programs, Dennis Holland, our senior faculty member, and me. At various times we will seek the opinions of you and your child - my hope is that you will take the time to offer your thoughts, knowing that they will help chart our course.
3. The Gateway Building: We are moving ahead with our plans to replace The Art House (the present Admission house that fronts River Road) with a lovely, functional, energy-efficient building that provides an inspiring first impression to those visiting our campus. The new building, placed on the same site, will reflect our values by enhancing the space for our Breakthrough program, provide enhanced teaching and learning space, and allow for more efficient space for administrators – in particular, our Admission and Advancement offices.
Constructing The Gateway Building will be a theme for the year. The related, transient inconveniences (you will be astonished at the way we have absorbed all the people and office space from that building into our campus) allow our community an opportunity to model cheerful problem-solving, made easier by the knowledge that the short-term challenges are more than worth the improvement to our school.
While every major project has some unanticipated speed-bumps, we have assembled an exceptional team of professionals including Lavallee Brensinger (architects) and ProCon Construction (construction managers) to deliver the project. We expect demolition to be in late October, and construction to begin shortly thereafter. I expect we will begin using The Gateway Building next (2011-2012) school year – therefore, we will also spend a portion of this year considering the detail of how students, faculty and others will use the new 8,000 s/f space.
The enclosed rendering gives you a sense of the front (River Road side) of the building – respectful of the neighborhood, appropriate in scale, and simple in design. From visiting 5th graders and their parents to returning alumni, the impression will be warm and inviting. From the ravine side, the building will be bold, engaging and dynamic. You can imagine the excitement in designing a building that furthers our excellence, and I look forward to keeping you advised during the year.
Our fundraising efforts gathered momentum over the summer when we received notice from The Community Development Financing Authority (“CDFA”) that our application for $450,000 in support of The Gateway Building had been approved. On the heels of a successful annual fund, fundraising success is breeding fundraising success.
Finally, you should know that I recently wrote 57 of our neighbors and “abutters” inviting them to campus next week to hear about our construction plans. Using the same respectful process of communication from constructing the Turf Field and installing the lights on it, we remain determined to be good neighbors and community members throughout the process.
Moving from our three themes for the year, I’ll introduce our new people –
- David Barragan comes to us from Westminster School and he has extensive experience teaching Spanish in boarding schools. He and his wife Kristen (also a Spanish teacher) lived in Ecuador for five years and have two sons, including Zach who will join us in 9th grade this year.
- Steve Batchelder will work part-time in our technology department primarily serving faculty with their classroom technology equipment, thereby enhancing our ability to serve students.
· Allison Keough is a Vista Volunteer (an AmeriCorp program that places college graduates in
non-profit organizations for a year of service). She will spend half her time on service learning, and
half her time with Breakthrough. Allison is a 2010 graduate from Marquette University with a degree in English writing. - David Lewine will be teaching chemistry and technology, and coaching robotics teams for the MS & US. He will also be leading our Tech Lead teachers. David, his wife and two daughters moved to Hopkinton from the New York area.
- Chris McNeil returns to Derryfield after three years. He has been traveling the country performing freestyle motorcycle shows for BMW. His responsibilities will include teaching Latin in the upper and middle schools, and coaching assistant varsity basketball.
· Annette Peters is our new Human Resources Manager. Her HR duties include administering benefits,
payroll, recruitment, and a variety of related responsibilities. She lives in Francestown, NH.
- Ying Xia Peterson will teach every level of Chinese, and lead a MS & US activity group. She has two children, and her youngest is off to college this year.
A few other changes, also in the realm of personnel:
Derryfield has two key administrators pursuing their Ph.D’s, and both of them will be at school four days a week. Mary Carter (whom I referenced above), will be present Tues-Friday, and Brent Powell (our Upper School Division Head) will be on campus Mon-Thursday. I am so pleased we will get the benefit of their commitment, intelligence and leadership as they pursue their education.
You should also know that over the summer we had a planned-for change in the leadership of our Board of Trustees. David Lockwood, our new Chair of the Board of Trustees, has succeeded Steve Burke, who so skillfully served our Board for more than ten years. Not unlike our ability to attract great teachers and administrators, Derryfield continues to have extraordinary volunteer leadership – from the Parent-Faculty Association through class parents to our Board, we have an exceptional group of people helping us to deliver our mission. David is both a past and current parent, and he brings substantial experience on school boards to his role.
A final thought: while the last days of summer call you may battle an occasional sense of being overwhelmed with the communication that begins to pour forth from our school. My exhortation: stick with it. Give it the time. From our re-designed website to the professionals in place to serve you, you will find that we have a lot to communicate about our passion for educating your children. At the same time, our message is clear and coordinated – The Derryfield School inspires bright, motivated young people.
We look forward to your return.
Sincerely,
Craig N. Sellers
Head of School
PS – A brief reminder about the Clough State Park Triathlon on September 11th. The relatively modest distances of 250 yard swim, followed by a 4 mile bike and 1 mile run could be a great introduction for your child. Registration for the event closes September 3rd. Check out http://www.concordymca.org/index.php?page=13th-annual-triathlon.
