School News

End of the Year Reflections

Courtney Quinn, Board President
The end of the school year is always a time of reflection: for students, certainly, but also for the Fayerweather Board, as we take a moment to look back over our work this year and consider our work for the next.
That spirit of reflection was greatly aided by all the folks who participated in our community survey this year. All of us on the Board appreciated so much the opportunity for a deeper understanding of how the strategic and operational decisions of the school’s leadership were experienced by our families. 
What we heard from you was inspiring, gratifying, and challenging. We heard that you feel we are living our values and mission through the programs we offer, especially around our commitment to helping students understand issues of bias and social justice. We heard that you see the literacy and social/emotional development aspects of our program as particular strengths, and that those are highly valued by you. We heard that you feel connected to our community, and grateful for the hard work the school has done in a difficult year. We heard that we have room for growth, too, in aspects of our curriculum that matter to you like math and science - and in communicating the good work your students are doing.

This feedback is consistent with the priorities that we’ve been working on as a school for the past three-plus years as part of our 2017-2022 Strategic Plan. The Board took a look back at the strategic plan this year, and it feels important to give our entire community some visibility into that discussion. 

Our Strategic Plan (here’s a link, if you’d like to read the original document) was an important piece of work - one that drew perspective and input from all the possible categories of Fayerweather stakeholder, and engaged the entire community through survey and focus groups.  Once the plan was complete, the school’s leadership team was empowered to act in response, and they have. But we as a Board haven’t always been active in making clear for our community just how closely connected the school’s decisions and the goals of the strategic plan are!  

However, when the Board dug into the question this year, it was clear that the consensus the strategic planning effort generated on our school’s most important priorities has been the key factor driving decision-making over the years since.  Even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the priorities and trade-offs we’ve made have been intimately connected to the goals we set in 2017.

Guided by these goals, we’ve seen many substantial developments over the last three years:
  • Deeper and more intentional implementation of project-based learning
  • Many focused investments in curricula and assessment programs in response to the ongoing work on curriculum mapping 
  • Increased investment in professional development
  • Maintaining competitive pay packages for our exceptional faculty
  • The Let It Shine campaign, which paid down the mortgage, converted our school to solar energy and increased the endowment, from which we draw 4% yearly toward the operating budget
  • Tighter connections of faculty and staff to the broader progressive education and independent school landscape
  • Renewal of the Alum League to solidify relationships with FSS alums around the country
  • New partnerships with SummerArts, and deeper partnerships with local organizations and the City of Cambridge
Maybe most importantly, we’ve built organizational and operational capacity that allowed this work to take place, and critically, allowed for a coordinated response to the COVID crisis. Our communication to the community around hybrid learning, health and safety protocols, and testing would not have been possible without the investment in a strong marketing and communications function on the Advancement team. The strength of our Advancement model likewise gave us agility when it became clear that development would be crucial to getting through the immediate crisis - and continued to drive the enrollment that we know is critical to our long-term financial sustainability. 

As we move forward into next year, and into the post-COVID landscape, we know there’s work remaining on the goals of our strategic plan, and also big questions, about what we will need to amplify as our next set of priorities. 
  • Children need key proficiencies in reading, writing, communication, math and science - and more complex, adaptive skills like self-awareness,  critical thinking, risk-taking, and the ability to forge relational bonds across identities. How can we best ensure that our progressive education continues to support these two types of learning - and that we’re communicating clearly to both our own community and the outside world the meaning and value of a Fayerweather education?
  • To meet both our enrollment imperative and our mission, we must seek ways to make Fayerweather financially accessible to more families. How can we best innovate our tuition strategy and model to make sure we’re maintaining socio-economic and other diversity in the face of rising costs and demographic shifts?
  • The neighborhood of North Cambridge continues to grow and change around us. How can we best deepen our relationships with the community to make sure Fayerweather is meeting our own needs, the needs of our neighbors, and the needs of our students to engage with, partner with and serve their broader community?
All these questions also speak to our mission. We on the Board have all been intensely conscious of the ways in which - even under the most difficult of circumstances this year - our mission has been brought to life in the classroom - virtually, in person, and everything in between. It’s always felt to me like a kind of miraculous alchemy the way that Fayerweather’s mission translates into practice at Fayerweather - but it’s not magic - it’s the result of a lot of hard, deliberate, and thoughtful work by our extraordinary teachers and staff, and by Kim and our school’s leadership team.

Of course, for the mission to translate into practice, the mission statement - the values and vision that we articulate for ourselves and the world -  needs to be something that inspires, that resonates, and that speaks to what makes Fayerweather unique. Accordingly, the Board will be working through a review of our mission, vision, and values in the next year. Periodic mission review is an important best practice among independent schools, and an opportunity to make sure that our mission most clearly and compellingly reflects the power and potential of a Fayerweather education.  

We'll partner closely with Kim and the school leadership team and we'll be looking to engage the entire Fayerweather community - our staff, our parents, our alums, and our students - because we know what a difference it makes when every member of our community participates! It's an important foundation for Fayerweather’s future: for our next round of strategic planning, for strengthening our understanding of the Fayerweather brand, and for guiding our decision-making as we move into the post-COVID world.

Look for more from your Board on this subject in the coming months. In the meantime, we wish you a restful and refreshing summer - and we thank you for the partnership that’s made this difficult, complicated, and ultimately wonderful year possible.

Courtney Quinn
Board President
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    • Board President, Courtney Quinn, addressing the Class of 2021.

Fayerweather Street School | 765 Concord Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 | 617-876-4746
Fayerweather is a private PreK, kindergarten, elementary and middle school. We engage each child’s intellect.