August 5, 2025

Dear Parents and Guardians,

With these early days of August now upon us, and the beginning of the school year coming into sharper focus, I am glad to have this chance to touch base with all of you. I hope your summers have been terrific with a lot of family fun still in store over the coming weeks. Here at school, the pivot into this final summer month brings with it some ramping up of plans aimed at getting what will be the 99th Brooks School year off to a great start. With what follows, my hope is to add to the steady stream of communications we have shared with you over the course of the summer. At this time of year, we want to do all we can to answer any questions you might have well ahead of your students arriving in early September. We are looking forward to getting off to a great start!

Before sharing some thoughts and updates, I want to begin by welcoming the many of you who are Brooks School parents and guardians for the first time. There is a difference between getting to know one another through the admission process, revisit days, and so forth, and actually getting started full-

time when school begins. If I were limited to just one message I hope to convey with this letter, it would be to emphasize that we could not be more excited about getting started with all of you. For me, the hardest part of beginning a school year is waiting to get underway with so many who are new to the school and certain to add so much to our community. So, please know we can’t wait to have your student on campus, in and out of classrooms, and digging into Brooks School life in ways all their own. To do all we can to ensure a smooth transition is our hope.

And, to those of you returning for a second, third, fourth, or some number of years larger than that in the case of many who have had multiple children at Brooks, we are looking forward to this next year in your student’s experience. While you are all veterans at this point, each year brings its own particular wrinkles and we hope to do all we can to help you sort them out. We will look forward to being in touch.

In terms of summer news and updates pertinent to the coming school year, I would like to follow up in some areas I have noted in earlier letters, and amplify some of what you have already received from others at school. We have updated some policies, are finalizing plans for opening days, and are further

along in planning to get an exciting capital building project started in early 2026. There is a lot involved in moving from one school year to another!

With some time to contemplate the cell phone and smartwatch policy from the past year with both student surveys and faculty debriefing sessions in hand, we are going to make some modest changes in 2025-2026. You can find the policy here. In sum, we will be moving the start of our “bell-to-bell” policy to 7:30 a.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Similarly, we will move the start time to 8:30 a.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays – 30 minutes earlier than was the case one year ago. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, we will extend phone-free time to 12:30 p.m. on both of these days in order to enjoy lunch without phones getting in the way. In addition, we will be more explicit about designating the theater as a phone-free space during performances and events of all kinds, and Ashburn Chapel will be phone-free at all times. The benefits of time together without phones in and out of the classroom was palpable this past year. We are looking forward to the ways in which these tweaks to the policy will enhance those benefits.

In addition to cell phone and smartwatch policy updates, we have also made some modest changes to our weekend policy, which you can find here. In this case, we have tried to respond to student hopes for a few more community weekends this year by growing that number to five when all boarding students will be required to remain on campus. We will allow 11 weekends away from school over the course of the year and the few longer weekends we have throughout the year will not count towards that total. We all benefit from having more boarding and day students on campus during weekends throughout the year and these policy shifts are intended to serve that purpose.

I noted in June that we would be thinking some more about the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) with an eye on addressing our growing concern about misuse, along with our desire to lean into leveraging these resources more effectively. This work will be ongoing, no doubt, but we will again spend some time in our opening faculty meetings learning more and growing our collective AI competency as the year begins. To help our students steer clear of misuse while discovering and learning about ways in which AI can enhance their learning is the goal.

I also made reference in June to our plans to construct an Academic Commons space on the main and upper floors of Luce Library. These plans have advanced impressively over the summer and we remain on track to get that work underway early in 2026 with our sights set on having it complete for the 2026-

2027 school year. As was the case in June, and will remain the case heading into the coming year, Director of Institutional Advancement Gage Dobbins and Director of Family Engagement and Giving Mary Merrill would be glad to talk with you about supporting this exciting undertaking. We will look forward to sharing the plans with all of you as the school year begins.

Looking ahead, here are a few calendar items I hope you have caught in an earlier communication. If not, we certainly hope we will have a chance to catch up with you at some or all of these events as the school year gets underway:

Tuesday, August 5 – We will host a Winter Term virtual meeting at 7 p.m. for students and parents to learn more about this year's Winter Term offerings.

Monday, August 18 – We will host a new parent and guardian webinar at 7 p.m. to give you a bit of a head start on hearing from key school leaders equipped to answer any and all questions that might be on your mind.

Monday, August 25 – We will hold a new family welcome reception on campus from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. with hope that an early chance to meet some fellow new students, parents and guardians will help all of you ease into this experience and the many new relationships that lie ahead.

Tuesday, September 2 through Thursday, September 4 – We have shared the arrival days schedule with you in earlier communications and all students will be expected to arrive on one of these three days. If you are unclear about your arrival day, please let us know.

Friday, September 5 – Our first day of classes will begin in Ashburn Chapel at 8 a.m.

There is a lot to try to keep track of as the beginning of school opens, so do keep in touch with any questions that surface.

Two final thoughts: First, if some of you are in the Long Island area and are looking for one more Brooks School event to be a part of, please join us in East Hampton, New York, on Friday, August 22, for a reception with alums and some fellow parents. We had a nice gathering in York Harbor, Maine, in July, and this will be a similar event – fun, casual, and summer still in the air!

Second, I am nearing the end of The Last Beekeeper and am finding it harder and harder to put down. We are looking forward to finding ways to weave this terrific book into the school year with our students. I hope some of you have had a chance to read it, as well!

We will look forward to seeing all of you, new and returning parents and guardians alike, on screens and in person over the second half of the month as opening day draws near. Until then, enjoy the balance of summer.

Best,

John R. Packard

Head of School

Brooks School • 1160 Great Pond Road, North Andover, MA 01845