December 15, 2023

Dear Parents and Guardians,

In a number of ways, it feels like I was just writing to wish all of you and your families a pleasant Thanksgiving break. Yet, here we are heading into our Winter Break after an action-packed few weeks. With our students and your children now on their way home, I am glad to have this opening to touch base one final time before Winter Term and 2024 take hold.

The pivot from the fall to winter brings with it a number of changes in our daily routine. Between this shorter stretch, Winter Term to start the new year, and then the second half of winter running from late January to early March, we find ourselves starting and stopping a lot more through these colder months. The breaks and different learning modes we are in at this time of year are quite different from what we experience in the fall and spring, and your children have done well at managing this first winter wave. With early round college decisions arriving for members of the class of 2024, and all students taking EOLs and completing final academic assessments, there is a lot to carry at this time of year. This is situated in the midst of two fun weekends, winter afternoon programs beginning in earnest, and terrific concerts and art exhibits giving all of us plenty of ways to catch our breath with so much on our plate. Our Lessons & Carols service and evening together last night was a nice way to bring the semester to a close. We are ready for the break ahead!

Among the events I have enjoyed over the past two-plus weeks were two occasions where we had a number of you into our home for drinks ahead of having dinner together in the Keating Room. At both of these events, I made reference to the weekend surveys we invited all of you to complete going into Thanksgiving break. We also administered this survey to students on Tuesday of last week. While there will be more to report in 2024, I did want to take this opportunity to share some of our thoughts about weekends.

The challenge we are facing is that we have experienced a substantial increase in the number of boarding students taking Saturday overnights off campus since emerging from the pandemic. In the current year, we are running at slightly more than double the number we experienced prior to the pandemic. While the reasons for this shift are somewhat elusive and many in number, the outcome has been far more students leaving for Saturday overnights than we would like and have grown accustomed to over the years. Our community weekends have been obvious exceptions to this rule, but there has been a cascading effect when students begin to signal to one another that they will be going home or elsewhere on a Saturday night.

We are planning to engage in trying to reverse this recent trend in a couple of ways:

• While we appreciate that taking weekends from time to time is both healthy and necessary for personal and family reasons, we are going to move in the direction of restricting the number of weekends students may take each term in the second semester after the conclusion of Winter Term. This was our practice prior to the pandemic. In this way, students and families would have greater ability to determine when they would like to take the limited number of Saturday overnights off campus they are permitted. We have not yet worked out the particulars, but we are planning to do that ahead of the last weekend in January when the second semester is underway. Our goal is to ease into this change ahead of the 2024-2025 school year in a way that allows us to return to the average numbers of off-campus overnights we experienced prior to the pandemic - roughly 20 to 25 percent of the boarding student population.

• We are committed to stay active in our pursuit of planning engaging, fun weekend activities and intend to work with students to encourage their participation. Both the parent/guardian and student surveys underlined that we have enjoyed a number of great weekends this year, and we know what fun and engaging Saturday nights at Brooks look and feel like. To move in directions that build on those experiences more routinely will be a focal point.

Finally, I do want to express my concern at a growing number of reports and rumors about off campus parties that some of our students attend on Saturday nights. Aside from our preference that they spend more Saturday nights here on campus with one another, the notion of unsupervised off campus parties with the potential for alcohol and drug use concerns us a great deal. There are obvious health and safety risks in such circumstances, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has very clear social host laws outlining additional liability concerns. Our hope is that this change in our approach to weekend life at Brooks will create an opportunity to engage in doing what we can in partnership with all of you to keep students safe on and off campus. 

In the course of an ordinary Brooks School week, there are always numerous occasions where I step back and marvel at something I have seen or experienced. This is one of the many benefits that comes from working at a school with so much enthusiasm for sharing the many gifts and talents our student body possesses. On two occasions over the past ten days, I was one of many who were privileged to take in Winterfest last Tuesday and our Winter Concert this past Sunday. The former was a rousing rock concert in the Black Box that revealed all sorts of vocal and instrumental talent that drew faculty members and students out of their seats and into the air, literally, as they took it all in. The latter involved nearly 25 percent of the student body, too many beautiful pieces to recount, and the entire group performing Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You to wrap things up. In both cases, the talent and passion for music was palpable, nurtured beautifully by our faculty, and performed brilliantly by our students. It was such a treat to be at both events.

I hope you all enjoy the holidays and have a lot of fun in store with family and friends over these next few weeks. As always, if you have any questions or thoughts you would like to share with me, please be in touch. We will look forward to getting 2024 off to a great start!

Best,

John R. Packard

Head of School 

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