May 16, 2022

Dear Parents and Guardians,

As we head into the final stretch of this 2021-2022 school year, I am glad to be in touch on top of all the various communications you are receiving in the midst of this refreshingly busy spring. We have enjoyed a great deal since returning to school following our Spring Break, and it has been so much fun to see our students in full stride. With just a few weeks to go, we are proud of what we have accomplished and enjoyed during April and the first half of May. We are also excited to have a terrific finish and wonderful Lawn Ceremony and Prize Day at the end of the month.

It would be impossible to capture all we have experienced this spring, but to be fully engaged in our whole program for the first time in three years has been a thrill. We have enjoyed a complete athletic and afternoon program with scores of exciting games and powerful performances on stage. In early April, we hosted our first admission revisit days in three years and were reminded of how impressive our current students are when sharing their experiences with those thinking about joining them. Our community service program has made impressive inroads beyond our campus and in ways that are earning some attention from local media outlets covering the good work they are doing. We had some students attend a climate summit in Andover, Massachusetts, which earned them a grant they will use to restart a garden on the science center’s green roof. We enjoyed Grandparents and Special Friends Day here on campus and were reminded about how much fun it is to see our students share their school across the generations. We are enjoying all sorts of student work that culminates this month — capstone presentations, oratory talks, chapel talks, and the completion of advanced placement exams. The class of 2022 was inducted into the alumni community at a dinner on Thursday of last week — receiving ties and bracelets they will wear on Prize Day. And, of course, the prom and school holiday to start this week allow for a nice break ahead of one final push to the end of the year.

Our growing confidence in our ability to function fully with COVID-19 continuing to linger has also allowed for additional time with alums. I was in New York and Washington in April for some visits and an alumni reception in the nation’s capital — the first event of this sort that I have attended since the pandemic began. In addition, we were able to get to the West Coast and another fun event in Los Angeles just two weeks ago. In both cases, I was reminded yet again about how many Brooks alums continue to support and care for the school in ways that impact the experience students, faculty and staff are having now. With Alumni Weekend on track for June 10-11, we are certain to make up for some lost time and do a lot of connecting and reconnecting with those who were students here at various points over the past 60 years or so.

Looking ahead to these final weeks, we are excited to enjoy the spring musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which will be performed in the theater on Friday and Saturday of this week at 7:30 p.m. On Sunday, we will enjoy Brookstock after dedicating the Class of 2020 Quad earlier in the day with many students and families from that class attending. With hope that the current pattern of living fully with the pandemic in our lives will continue, we are mindful this spring of all the class of 2020 missed when we were forced onto screens and a virtual experience two years ago. To enjoy some time together on campus with them will be fun.

The culminating event this month will be our Lawn Ceremony and Prize Day following a final week of classes and fun activities for the class of 2022. We are proud of how this group has persisted, fostered community, and served as the school’s institutional memory during such a disjointed three years. We are excited to celebrate with them, their families, and the whole school community on the Sunday and Monday of Memorial Day weekend. Great weather has been ordered!

As soon as the school year ends, we will be moving fairly quickly in the direction of the 2022-2023 school year on a number of fronts. Our board of trustees was on campus and screens for our spring meetings, including a fair amount of campus planning discussion in late April, and we are also nearing the end of a robust hiring season with some exceptional people joining the faculty this summer.

Here is an overview of work that is in our sights this coming year:

Center of Campus — If you have been on campus this year, you have borne witness to the work being done in the center of campus on a new admission and head of school office building, along with a rebuild of the head of school’s residence after a lot of demolition work was done to clear the site. This work is on track to be completed by the end of the summer, along with a fully landscaped and pedestrianized Main Street. This will bring to completion a center campus master plan that started with a complete renovation of Ashburn Chapel in 2014.

Wilder Dining Hall and Keating Room —This summer, we are on our way to beginning work on Wilder Dining Hall and an expansion of the Keating Room in that building. This project includes the construction of a new vestibule and center entrance to the main dining area, a larger patio for outdoor seating, and a substantially larger Keating Room to allow for a wide range of school and community functions. A good part of this work will be completed before the school year begins with some of it continuing into the fall.

McVeigh Court — Earlier this month, we shared with some of his friends and family that the school would be naming the varsity basketball court for Associate Head of School for Faculty Affairs John McVeigh. As you likely know, John has led the boys’ basketball program to unprecedented success along a number of dimensions for the past 19 years. He is as worthy of this honor as any coach the school has ever had. Naming the court will be part of a larger renovation and reconfiguration of the gym centered on redoing the floor and more than doubling the seating capacity for spectators in the stands. This work will be complete by the end of the summer.

Tennis Viewing Area — We will be renovating the small building by the tennis courts and beautifying the viewing area with some terraced seating and spectator areas overlooking all eight courts. This should also be complete by the end of the summer.

Boathouse — We are moving forward with our plans to replace Lyman and Holcombe boathouses with a new facility that will house all that the two existing buildings currently hold — and much more. In addition, this facility, which will be as impressive as any facility of its kind, will have substantially more space for community gatherings and events — crew-related and otherwise — on an especially beautiful spot on our beautiful campus. We are planning to have this facility ready by next spring.

Faculty Housing — Once my family and I are able to move into the head of school’s residence over the summer, work will begin on removing the home we have been living in this year in order to build three new faculty homes and some outdoor function space and walking paths on another beautiful part of our campus we are hoping more community members will be able to enjoy. These faculty housing units are scheduled to be ready in June of next year.

Academic Building Task Force — Under Associate Head of School for Academic Affairs Susanna Waters’ leadership, we have extended the thinking we have been doing for some time about all of our academic spaces with an eye on how we might improve and evolve these spaces to better suit teachers and students over time. This is a longer-term proposition and will be a central component of a centennial campaign that will continue to gain focus and scope in the coming year. We are just five years away from completing our 100th year!

Beyond physical plant improvements, we are equally excited about new colleagues who will be joining our school in a number of different capacities. We shared Nina Hanlon’s appointment as assistant head of school earlier in the year, and she will be joined by a dean of diversity, equity and inclusion, an academic dean, two deans of students, a director of library services, and a number of full- and part-time teachers who will bring a fresh perspective and deep experience of their own to our school. As sorry as we are to be losing wonderful colleagues, we are looking forward to introducing this incoming faculty cohort to all of you over the months ahead!

Finally, I do want to comment on our ongoing work and thought regarding COVID-19 and what might lie ahead. In my spring report to the board of trustees, I remarked that it was nice to be in a situation where I was devoting less time and space in my report to updating our approach to the pandemic. We have been in a primarily mask-optional mode since the middle of February, and have been using rapid antigen tests when community members present with symptoms. Along the way, we have had a relatively small and manageable number of positive cases, no serious illness, and all of this has occurred in the larger context of rising case levels in the Northeast. The public health experts we consult with suggest that the ups and downs in case levels will likely continue, and our plan is to stay nimble and adjust in ways that are in step with public health guidelines. We have not yet made any firm plans regarding additional vaccine regimens for 2022-2023, and will plan to share updates as they materialize over the summer. Ultimately, we want to pursue a course of action that gives our community the greatest chance to be healthy and fully engaged in our whole program. If you have questions, please let me know.

I will look forward to staying in touch over the course of the summer. In the meantime, we will hope to see a lot of you on campus over these final few weeks ahead of celebrating with all of you who are parents or guardians of a member of the class of 2022 at the end of the month. Enjoy the spring!

Best,

John R. Packard

Head of School