From the Head
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Polar Bears
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From the Head of School:
Dear CDS Families,
Our students and teachers are engaged in a school-wide theme of “Now and Long Ago.” Through various activities our students are learning about ancient things - including dinosaurs and vinyl records.
I would like to spin this theme slightly and, rather than look backward as our classrooms are, take a moment to quickly look where we are now and where we are going.
There is nothing more joyful than watching individual CDS kids transition from one stage of social and academic development to another. It is similarly exciting to see CDS itself evolve from a collection of ideas, to a proposal, to a passion of our board of educators, to a new school, to where we are today and where we will be tomorrow.
We are now 142 children led by 24 educators. We are a financially self-sustaining independent school with the ability to offer both affordable tuition and competitive pay and benefits to outstanding teachers. We are guided by our mission to provide an excellent education in accordance with proven, progressive education philosophies. Our kids were born in at least four different continents. They are the children of teachers, doctors, carpenters, professors, electricians, nurses, musicians, business owners, dentists, an EMT, artists, an accountant, a yoga instructor, coaches, a lawyer, executives, full-time moms, salespersons, and an economist.
Next year, we will grow our upper elementary school and will have sixth graders attending our school. Ultimately, we plan to have students graduate from Eighth Grade at CDS. For next fall and beyond, we envision a preschool of a similar size and structure as this year. We will have waiting lists in most, if not all, of the preschool classrooms. It appears that demand to enter our kindergarten and early elementary programs will also lead to waiting lists for next year.
When making enrollment decisions, CDS will, of course, continue to favor current school families, including siblings of those already here. Our philosophy and vision is to never grow into a large school. Instead, we seek incremental growth and, ultimately, a ceiling ensuring that our administrators and educators have a relationship with each child who enters our campus. We believe these relationships are necessary to sustain an environment where children feel safe to make creative and independent choices during the school day.
As a non-profit entity, we are now positioned, like other private schools, to seek community and parent financial support for long-term planning. Most specifically, we seek to establish a scholarship fund to ensure that CDS is available to families who might not otherwise afford it. We will also seek contributions to assist CDS expand and improve our physical facilities. With these objectives in mind, we will have two fundraising events in the spring. We will have a dinner auction where parents, grandparents, and friends are strongly encouraged to attend. We will provide details soon but, in the meantime, give some thought to items and services that you or your businesses could make available for auction ( e.g ., vacation condos, professional services, etc.) We will also have a Spring Run for ourselves and the outside community. At this event, toddlers will have a chance to dash, older kids will run a half-mile and adults can run or walk a 5K. Because of the generous support of three area businesses (Smith Barney, Lee Insurance, and Petit Bebe), this event is already on track to be a fundraising success. Again, details will soon follow but keep this in mind and, if you are so inclined, start training!
We can confidently look to our future because of the hard work of many volunteers and others who believe in our school. We could write a book, rather than a newsletter, on this topic but for now we should all be grateful for the parents who have volunteered their time, skill, and hard work to various tasks and activities.
We also must give a big “thank you” to our I.T. Specialist, Lauren Moriarty, for updating CDS's website. It has improved by leaps and bounds in the last few months. Please use it regularly to stay abreast of school happenings. Last, we are fortunate to have the group of teachers who joined us this year. CDS attracted the amazing teaching talents of Karin Reed, Erin McDermott, Patty Peterson, Betsy Grinnell, Susan Talbert, Barbara Boehm, Erin Lawson, Amy Buddington, and Devonda Burton. They are each doing an amazing job and we are grateful that they saw what our teachers were doing and then decided to join them as colleagues.
Our current school-wide theme is giving our kids an early hint that change is inevitable (except from vending machines). CDS was born, in part, out of a recognition of this truth. Our educators recognize that teaching methods must change and improve in order to meet the unique challenges that this generation of children will face. We are well ahead of the curve in this regard and we intend to stay there. As the school matures and grows, we are dedicated to having the courage to not rest on our current or past successes but instead continually challenge and evaluate the best practices in educating and nurturing children. Regardless, we will execute our curriculum and strategies within a comfortable and loving community. We have such a community now and look forward to expanding upon it as we grow together.
Sincerely,
Stacey Bruns
Head of School
November, 2007
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Newsletter Archive
+ October 2007