I am delighted to welcome you to the 2016-2017 school year, the 320th for Abington Friends School. I hope that summer has been a time of reconnection for your family, renewal and refreshment. It is this renewal of spirit that so enlivens a new school year and I can’t wait to welcome you back to campus!
For Robin and me as parents, this was our 27th and last (!) back-to-school fall as we took our youngest, Sarah, back to college in late August for her senior year. Even with a 22 year-old, back to school is somehow the same for us as parents — shopping for supplies, talking about course choices and, like you, looking ahead with our daughter to the promise of a new school year. It is the sense of potential, the openness of a new school year that beckons so beautifully. Each new grade at AFS holds fresh promise, challenges children in new ways and brings such growth in sense of self, knowledge and ability to navigate the world. This is what makes life in schools so exciting for me and for the faculty and why the opening days are so thrilling to us as the hallways fill with summer-fed energy and lively conversation.
We open the year with lots of positive energy:
Our school will be energized by more than 110 new students, representing a more than 20 percent increase in new students over the past year, coupled with exceptionally strong retention among returning students. This planned growth extends the reach of the AFS mission in the surrounding community, enables a wider social experience for all students and enhances our ability to offer the richest possible curricular and extracurricular program.
We open the AFS Center for Experiential Learning with Rosanne Mistretta, longtime Lower School science teacher and leader of the AFS Outside program, as its inaugural Director. Rosanne will be developing partnerships and connections to the outside world that will expand the landscape of learning beyond the classroom, a key objective of our strategic vision for 21st century education. She will be leading our innovative advising program that matches students with transformative learning experiences both in and outside of school, expanding the distinctive cohort mentoring program that began with MedEx this past year and collaborating with faculty throughout the school to continue to “make the walls of school thinner” in our resource-rich world. Matching an outstanding classroom academic program with initiative and fluency in the larger world well before college provides a distinctly powerful education for the 21st century and we are eager for the expansion of this vision with the new Center.
We are excited, too, to open the Headwaters Discovery Playground, for grades 1-8. The extraordinary new facility is a key part of AFS Outside, our recognition of the essential place of natural experience in the lives of children today. Featuring an extensive tree canopy climbing structure, water play areas, a physics playground and a dramatic physical landscape for all sorts of learning and play, the HDP will be dedicated on Friday, September 9, at 3:30 p.m. I am grateful to Rosanne Mistretta and an intrepid committee of professional parents, faculty and staff who have worked with the entire community over the past few years to plan and implement this new addition to campus.
We welcome an exceptionally talented group of new faculty and staff who are drawn by a professional culture that is creative, intellectually alive and rooted in a deep respect for children and the idea that “there is that of God” in each one of us.
Also on Friday, September 9, we will kick off the school year with our First Annual Back-to-School Family Barbecue from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Plan to join with the entire community for good food, entertainment, fun and games for a joyful end to the first week back.
In other news, we are excited about new leadership and some redesigned leadership roles following key retirements last spring:
- We welcome Dominique Gerard as new Upper School Director and Rusty Regalbuto to his role as Acting Middle School Director.
- Toni Graves Williamson, in her expanded role as Assistant Head of School for Equity and Inclusion, will convene the Division Directors group, guide professional growth schoolwide, oversee student life in the Upper School and continue to lead our inclusion and equity initiatives.
- Renie Campbell, longtime Upper School Dean of Students, is our new Director of Student Support, overseeing our extensive program of learning support and counseling throughout the school, in close collaboration with families, outside professionals and faculty in grades 8-12. She will collaborate with Dan Taboada, new Director of the Wilf Learning Resource Center, and oversee support of our international students as well. We also welcome Dr. Michael Cassano to the Student Support Team as our consulting psychologist.
- Martha Scache, our Director of Business & Operations, is also expanding her role this year to include oversight of our physical plant in addition to her current management of human resources, finance and operations. Note that the Business Office has moved to the main campus, just off the Stewart Lobby.
- The move of the Business Office allows for all members of our Institutional Advancement team (Admission, Development, Communications and Marketing), under the leadership of Assistant Head of School Devin Schlickmann, to work together in Tyson House toward our strategic goals of enrollment growth, enhanced communications and capital fundraising efforts in support of major athletics and arts campus improvements quietly under development.
And so the fresh energy of a new year and the wonderful sense of possibility that comes with it draw us together for a joyful start after Labor Day. Against the backdrop of a troubled world, I am grateful for the idealism of our community. Here, focused on the needs and growth of children and their families and inspired by their wonder for the world around them, we share an incredibly important common purpose.
Here, deepened by the spirit, encouraged to imagine the best in each other and enabled by the extraordinary gifts and talents of teachers and students alike, great things happen every day, things that should indeed make us hopeful for the future. The full range of human accomplishment unfolds every day in a great schools like AFS, in the arts, in literature, in writing, in the science lab, in deep and true relationships. Here, mind, heart and soul are grown and nourished as they should be, creating a pattern and example that will power the rest of your children’s lives.
This is what we are called to create together — families, faculty and staff. What a great opportunity we have in this incredible endeavor of schooling at its best. Thank you for being a part of the AFS community. Here’s to a great new year together!
All the best,
Rich Nourie
Head of School
