Gianna Trala ‘23
Margaret Lo ‘23
Stephania Calastri ‘23
Beginning last year, EA’s administration, working with other leaders in the community, has been creating a strategic plan for EA. The plan emphasizes five key initiatives: improving the health and well-being of students, expanding financial aid, enhancing the curriculum to incorporate life skills, introducing more professional development of teachers, and increasing student and faculty diversity, and is to be in place for the next ten years .
Paul Sanders, Assistant Head of School, states that the process of creating the new plan involves “studying where we are now, studying what our history is and what our values are, listening to different people in the community and saying our big goals.” A leadership team, including Head of School T.J. Locke, Sanders, Head Chaplain Tim Gavin, CFO Larry Capuzi, the various division heads, and the board of trustees, formulated ideas for this strategic plan. The plan is expected to be finalized before the end of the school year. The team looked for ways to incorporate student and faculty input. Sanders says “We did three focus groups last April or May with groups of six or eight students. We had an outside facilitator come in, who led those students through some conversations [about the initiatives].”
In order to improve the health and well-being of students, the plan focuses on issues of mental healthPart of the plan involves teaching skills that can help students better manage their mental health concerns. Sanders emphasizes that EA is considering whether they want to “hire new people, change different requirements, or add programming in the morning.” in order to achieve this goal. Yvvy Chen emphasizes the importance of getting this initiative right, “The important thing is that they’re implementing it in a way that actually reaches the students…. We’ve had seniors who talk about mental health, but I don’t feel like just talking about it helps. There are hundreds of kids in the chapel at onceIt doesn’t feel personal. It doesn’t hit close to home.”
Another focus of the strategic plan is expanding EA’s financial aid. Michael Letts, Head of the Upper School, says that EA is “trying to make sure that we can provide this opportunity to as many kids, no matter their socioeconomic status.” A central aspect in increasing the financial aid budget is fundraising. Sanders explains that “because of the generosity of a lot of folks over the years at this school, our financial aid budget is healthy.” Although EA doesn’t offer strict scholarships, they are very willing to help deserving prospective students. Sanders says that EA “wouldn’t decide to give out all full or all partial scholarships” but rather try “to figure out how much money we can give, and then allocate it to people in the fairest way we can.”
EA also plans to thoroughly review the academic programs. Letts questions, “We are preparing the students well academically, but are we also preparing you with life skills to go off into the larger wider world and be successful that way?” The leadership team plans to have EA teach practical life skills like resiliency and ethical decision making. Likewise, EA wants its curriculum to stay relevant as the world continues to evolve. For example, Sanders states, “Last year, we added the computer science department. This offering was a product of the school taking some time, about a year basically, to study what really good universities and what really interesting companies are doing in the digital space, and what we need to do to prepare young people for that environment.” Alyson Kurz, Freshman Class Dean, echoes this sentiment saying, “I think teaching those life skills, like resiliency, grit, and mindfulness are really important.”
Additionally, EA wants to increase the professional development opportunities provided to its teachers. Sanders says that EA will be “teaching teachers to be even better at what they love and attracting the very best teachers to the school.” The school established a Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), beginning last year. Sanders says that “teachers have access to the CTL if they want to learn a new idea or a new approach or have a problem they could use some help with. That’s an unusual thing that we’re really proud of.” Sanders also discussed how “we [EA] have healthy budgets for professional development. When there’s outside expertise that we need to get, we can send teachers to trainings or we can bring experts to campus to work with our teachers.”
Finally, EA plans to increase the student and faculty diversity. Sanders expands on the importance of a diverse environment, “I hope we can all recognize that learning is improved when you’ve got a wide range of different kinds of people involved in the learning process.” He adds that when students “go out into the world ten years from now, after college, wherever you [the students] are working is pretty likely to be a very diverse, complex place.” The leadership team wants to incorporate cultural diversity, socioeconomic diversity, and diversity of thought. The emphasis on diversity also applies to the faculty hiring process Alexander Jimenez, an Upper School English teacher, agrees on the importance of diversity, “I think that it’s good to bring in different types of students, whether that be differences in their socioeconomic class or race or gender or athletic ability.”
There has been some criticism of the fact that sustainability is not one of EA’s main initiatives. Sanders says that because the plan is not final, sustainability could still be added as a priority. He says, “If there isn’t a part in this strategic plan about sustainability, that doesn’t preclude prioritizing sustainability… We are going to be doing lots of things that aren’t in the strategic plan… Several folks throughout the process of forming the plan have expressed that that should be a priority for the school.”