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Lark Palma looks ahead to 2015

Happy New Year! I hope you and your children enjoyed a restful and healthy winter break.

I look forward to 2010 with optimism and enthusiasm for our school. Recent hard times (that continue for many) have taught us that Catlin Gabel is resilient. Our community of learners, teachers, parents, and alumni demonstrate by enrolling and donating that what we do for students is important, right, and good.

Your commitment allows us to look toward the future with confidence. Earlier this year the board of trustees established four task forces to guide our plans for the next five years. The task forces are focusing on faculty-staff compensation, tuition and financial aid, buildings and grounds, and development.

Briefly, here is what each task force is studying.

Compensation Task Force
Our faculty and staff are the backbone of the school. Their salaries and benefits account for about 80 percent of the school budget. Yet, our faculty-staff compensation is below that of benchmark independent schools and local public schools. The compensation task force is studying salaries, tuition benefits, medical and dental benefits, cost of living and merit adjustments, and retirement plans. In addition, they are discussing other staffing goals including new teacher mentoring, faculty evaluations, and the potential for improving the fledgling wellness program.

Tuition and Financial Aid Task Force
Tuition is Catlin Gabel’s primary source of funding. Annual fundraising and interest income from the school’s endowment make up the remaining 15 percent of expenses that are not covered by tuition. Annually, the board of trustees must balance market influences with our commitment to reasonable salaries and benefits for teachers and staff members. Our dependence on tuition and the rising cost of tuition are escalating concerns. In the last five years, we have focused on increasing the school’s economic diversity, expanding our accessibility, and maintaining the high academic quality of our student body.

The tuition and financial aid task force is looking at the wide range of issues related to affordability and financial aid. Their topics for consideration include non-tuition expenses such as laptops and books, financial aid distribution by grade and award size, tuition rate structures between divisions, class size and its influence on tuition, and alternate funding sources such as gifts to endowment.

Buildings and Grounds Task Force
Miss Catlin’s philosophy guides our work on behalf of the campus. She wrote about the importance of maintaining a school with “healthful, comfortable, cultural, simple and beautiful surroundings.” The buildings and grounds task force is studying future projects as well as the here and now. They are establishing recommendations for securing reserves for plant maintenance, operations, and facilities equipment to sustain our treasured campus. They are developing guidelines to govern the use of operating surpluses and for future property acquisitions. (Over the years, we have acquired adjacent properties when they became available in order to protect the campus from encroaching development.) The buildings and grounds task force is also developing a long-term capital plan that will guide our considerations for new buildings and campus projects.

Development Task Force
In this arena, the scope is narrow and the outcomes are wide reaching. After reviewing Catlin Gabel’s fundraising history and considering the costs of fundraising to the school, the development task force will establish a baseline for annual fundraising needs and define capital fundraising goals.

The task forces are charged with presenting their findings and recommendations to the finance committee and the board of trustees in the spring. This summer we will consolidate the work of the task forces to develop a five-year financial model for the school. As we enter a new decade, it is exciting to think about what Catlin Gabel will look like in 2015.

Congrats!

Senior Kevin Ellis won a Best of Category award in computer science at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2009 in Reno, Nevada. Intel presented Catlin Gabel with a check for $1,000 in recognition of Kevin’s outstanding achievement. The funds are intended to further support excellence in science, math, or engineering education at Catlin Gabel.

Senior Lauren Edelson’s op-ed, “Taking the Magic Out of College,” was published in the New York Times.

Sophomore Megan Stater placed first in the recent Oregon Music Teachers Association Classical Piano Festival.

Lauren Reggero-Toledano’s Spanish V Honors students presented their research project, "The Hispanic Presence In Oregon: From the Great Depression to Today," to the Latin American studies program at Lewis & Clark College. Kudos to seniors Sam Bishop, Kalifa Clarke, Abby Conyers, Becky Coulterpark, Lauren Edelson, Eddie Friedman, Ollie Garnier, Molly Hayes, Leslie Nelson, and Leah Weitz, and junior Josh Langfus.

Seventh grader Conner Hansen received his second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

All five Middle School robotics teams came home from the league tournament with trophies. Three teams are advancing to the state championships on January 17. Veteran 7th grade team the Green Dragons won the Champions Award, the top award at a local tournament. This award recognizes the team with the best overall score covering robot performance, robot design, research project and presentation, and teamwork. Green Dragons Maddy Bunnenberg-Ross, Claire Fitzgerald, Sophie Paek, Jillian Rix, and Chloe Smith are headed to state.

The other veteran 7th grade team, Team Delta, scored 305 points on the course (the highest of any Catlin Gabel team) and was the first runner up Champions Award winner. Max Armstrong, Evan Chapman, Conner Hansen, and Elliot Lewis are on their way to state as well.

First-time 6th grade Team Echo members Julian Baynes, MacGregor Beatty, and Jake Hansen pulled off the Young Team Award, which qualifies them for the state tournament.

The 6th grade Screaming Eagles with Harry Alterman, Anna Dodson, Alex Richardson, and Calissa Spooner won the robot performance award for the team with the highest scoring robot that didn’t qualify for state. The 6th grade team Catlin Gabel Champions with Nicolas Bergen, Jack Bishop, Justin Tung, and David Vollum brought home the Research Project award for the team with the best research project that didn’t qualify for state.

Congratulations to recent 6th grade Poetry Box winners Lauren Kinnucan and Hayle Meyerhoff for their poems Courage Is and Lonely respectively. (Click on poem title to read or listen to the winning poems.)

Twelve Lower School chess players participated in the annual Ridgewood Elementary fall invitational. Avi Gupta, 3rd grade, took second place in the overall tournament ratings. Grade level prizes were awarded to 5th grader Lila Reich–second place, 4th grader Ben Karp–second place, 3rd grader Avi Gupta–first place, 2nd grader Evan Karp–first place, and 2nd grader Jimmy Maslen–third place.

Fifth grader Claire Rosenfeld, 3rd grader Layton Rosenfeld, and 2nd grader Will Attig were among 50 winning contestants from all of Oregon whose art pieces were selected for the “Super Hero” exhibition in the Jordan Schnitzer Art Museum in Eugene. There were well over 400 contestants. The winning art is on display at the JSAM through May.

Thanks to a generous anonymous gift from a Catlin Gabel community member, the entire 7th grade class attended a presentation by activist Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea. The class began the year by reading the young adult version of Mortenson’s book. Elayna Caron was inspired to write, “After reading Three Cups of Tea, I was really moved, but not as much as I was last night. Greg is one of the most amazing people out there. How he dedicated his whole life to changing these people’s lives — I don’t see how he can do it, but at the same time, it made ME want to go out and change the world. He was talking about the soldiers being more afraid of the children’s pens than of bullets. It really makes sense to me now, why they would be scared. This was an amazing, amazing experience.”

IT support technician Johny Nguyen completed CompTIA certification, the industry standard for computer support technicians. The international, vendor-neutral certification proves competence in areas such as installation, preventative maintenance, networking, security, and troubleshooting.

All Kinds of Minds named Catlin Gabel a School of Distinction.

What’s Next?

Before winter break Lark sent you an e-mail invitation to the What’s Next? community workshop on Saturday, January 23, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. RSVPs are required by January 8. Don’t forget to sign up if you are interested in helping the school figure out what’s next after Rummage.

Talk amongst yourselves

Check out the online forums! You might find what you are looking for. Or maybe you can start a discussion. Exchange ideas about Viewfinder films, community-building, carpooling, and more. Help us keep the conversations going!

Website tip: home page photos

The home page photos have some features you may not have discovered. Hover your cursor over the icons below the home page photo to find out what’s what. The first button on the left takes you to a gallery of previous photos that made the home page. They are sorted by month. The numbers running below the main photo show pop-ups of each photo in the current rotation. The plus and minus symbols take you back and forth between individual photos in the current rotation. The right and left-facing arrows take you back and forth between groups of photos in the current rotation. The right-facing triangle plays a slideshow of the photos in the current rotation. And the last button, a box with an angled arrow, allows you to see the photos in full screen mode. Have fun exploring!

Minimalist art show coming soon

Minimalist works from the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation will be exhibited in the Cabell Center foyer gallery in January. The exhibition will feature prints by renowned artists including Joseph Albers, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, and Frank Stella.

Exhibition dates were not firmed up as we went to press. Look for information in upcoming division newsletters and on the website.