On the evening of February 13, I presented my annual Town Hall to the community. Thank you to those who were in attendance. For those of you who were not able to make it, below is a brief summary.

The theme of this year’s town hall was Community Here, Now, and in the Future. 

Community Here

When I sat down last summer with Director of Marketing and Communications Mary Beth Lambert to talk about our theme for the school year, we quickly landed on community. We realized that UPrep’s community was going to evolve with the opening of the new building across the street and that change is inevitable. The question for UPrep was how we were going to embrace this evolution while maintaining the feeling of belonging and inclusivity that is a hallmark of our school.

Who and what makes up the UPrep community? We are students, faculty, staff, parents, guardians, and volunteers. We are curious, collaborative, familiar, and fun. We are athletes, academics, musicians, dancers, poets, writers, historians, scientists, linguists, and mathematicians. And we are growing. We are diverse in culture, in race, in ethnicity, in religion, in thought, and in background. Once we walk through those doors, we are UPrep.

Community Now

In January, our Upper School students moved into the ULab, and they are exploring all of the spaces, picking their favorite rooms and getting used to the feel of a larger campus. With the opening of the new building, our class sizes in the 6th and 9th grades are increasing. Even as we grow as a school, we will continue to make this a place where all students are seen and heard. We are also continuing the journey to define the words “educational excellence” in our vision statement by redefining some of our intensive and semester course offerings. For example, Biology and Geometry are now only semester courses because our educational team thought that our students needed to delve deeper into these curricula than they could do in three weeks during intensives. UPrep will also continue to develop leadership from within our walls by providing professional development for our faculty and staff.

Community into the Future

As we prepare for the not-too-distant future, a small school committee is considering our daily schedule. A sub-group of this committee is working on the what ifs and implications of possible changes and will be ready to share it with the larger community this fall. Our Marketing and Communications and Admission Teams are thinking about ways to better define who we are in the competitive Seattle independent school landscape. And finally, as we prepare to celebrate UPrep’s 50th anniversary in a few years, we have begun the work to establish the official UPrep archives.

As we prepare for the next 50 years, I will be focusing on three strategic areas: the future of teaching and learning; the world’s rapidly changing use of technology; and financial sustainability. What will our students need to know as they enter a new workforce and how can we keep UPrep financially sustainable without making tuition untenable?

Thank you for supporting my leadership and thank you to all of you who asked questions during the Town Hall. I reminded the audience that I am always available should you have any questions or concerns. I look forward to hearing from you and getting to know each of you better.

Read about 10 noteworthy features of the brand-new ULab building.