Dear Lamplighter Community,

We are pleased to share an update regarding the Head of School search and the process we will employ over the coming months to ensure our search is as successful as possible. 

Lamplighter has retained Carney, Sandoe & Associates (CS&A), an internationally recognized education recruiting and consulting firm, to partner with us in the search for our next Catherine M. Rose Head of School. CS&A brings deep knowledge of independent schools acquired from nearly 50 years of experience guiding schools through their searches for first-rate heads of school, senior administrators, and faculty. We look forward to partnering with our consultants, Kim Peeples and Marsha Little, and are confident that our collaboration with CS&A will result in an exceptional search outcome for our School and its community.

The Board of Trustees has assembled a Search Committee whose members will work closely with our consultants throughout this process. Those Search Committee members, listed below, represent a wide variety of Lamplighter community members, including alumni, current and past parents, current and past trustees, life trustees, and members of our faculty. The Search Committee will screen a comprehensive selection of candidates, interview and evaluate them, and make a recommendation to the Board of Trustees. Following this thorough vetting process, the Board of Trustees will then hire the best fit for our School.

Later this month, Kim Peeples and Marsha Little of CS&A will be on campus in person to meet with a wide variety of community members. We will share updates from their visit in the coming weeks. In addition, we hope that members of the Lamplighter community will share their feedback about the work ahead and help us develop a leadership profile for Lamplighter’s next Catherine M. Rose Head of School. We invite you to contribute to our search process by filling out this brief, anonymous survey no later than Wednesday, June 25, at 8:00 p.m. CST.

As we prepare for our next steps, please note that our CS&A team has advised we remain flexible with respect to the search timeline, given the extremely competitive landscape of leadership recruitment. We will communicate as the search process unfolds and endeavor to balance transparency with the confidentiality necessary to recruit and interview the most talented leaders.

We have created an email address, headofschoolsearch@thelamplighterschool.org, where you are welcome to share any additional thoughts and/or questions with the Search Committee. We will also keep the community informed through periodic updates on the Head of School Search page of Lamplighter’s website.

Sincerely,

Liz Cullum Helfrich ’90 and Thomas Morton

Lamplighter Search Committee Co-Chairs

Members of the Search Committee:

Dave Beran, past Trustee, P ’20, ’22, ’25

Liz Cullum Helfrich ’90, Trustee, P ’18, ’21

Margaret Johansen Hirsch ’89, Chair, Board of Trustees, P ’23, ’26

Ham Lee, past Trustee, P ’20, ’22, ’26

Whitney Lewis, Trustee, P ’27, ’30

Jed Morse ’82, past Trustee, P ’19, ’22

Thomas Morton, Vice Chair, Board of Trustees, P ’21, ’22, ’25

Jake Peden, Kindergarten Teacher

Lakeshia Peters, Second Grade Teacher, P ’12

Alex Sharma, Life Trustee, P ’13