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State of the School
Paula McGlarry: Introduction and Welcome
Doug Brophy: A Classroom Story
Doug Brophy: Programmatic Highlights
Doug Brophy: Long Range Planning Updates
Doug Brophy: Town Alumni/ae are Excelling
Paula McGlarry: Board Governance
Jamie Odell: The Fiscal Health of the School
Doug Brophy: Closing Remarks

Paula McGlarry: Introduction and Welcome

Good morning, everyone. I’m Paula McGlarry, Co-Chair of Town’s Board of Trustees. My Co-Chair, Jamie Odell, and I would like to welcome you to this year’s State of the School. 

This school year marks my 14th year as a Town School parent. I have a daughter Fiona who is in 7th grade. And a daughter Maura who was here Kindergarten through 8th grade, graduating in 2020, who then went on to Hackley for high school and recently wrapped up the first semester of her Freshman year at Amherst College. 

Those of you who have heard me speak before know that I have been in love with the Town School since my husband Rob and I first toured Town in the fall of 2010.  At the time, I was overwhelmed by how impressive this school is.  And now over 14 years later, I continue to be in awe of this place.  A place that is academically enriching and produces graduates who are ready for the challenges that will face them in high school and beyond.  And also a place that is warm and nurturing, with a beautiful physical space at the end of a lovely cul-de-sac.  And a place that prioritizes excellence in its faculty and staff, where professional development of faculty is a priority and all adults in the building come together to provide an engaged, supportive community for our children. 

Now that I have a 7th grader once again, I am reminded of how challenging those 7th and 8th grade years can be.  I am grateful that Fiona is able to experience those challenges in the safety of these walls.  But also profoundly grateful for the many ways this challenging experience will prepare her for high school – and college.  Having seen Maura and her friends go from Town to high school and then on to college, I can see the true value of an N-8 Town School education.  Maura and her peers landed at their respective high schools fully prepared for the challenges ahead of them.  Town taught them to be independent and creative thinkers, resilient problem solvers; children who are able to work well in groups, confidently present and perform, and advocate for themselves; and high schoolers who are leaders in their school communities.  

During my time at Town, I have truly enjoyed being able to give back to the school.  This is a place where the parent community is able to be involved in so many ways.  Serving on the Board has been one such experience for me. This is my seventh year on the Board of Trustees, and my second in the Co-Chair role. It has been a great privilege to serve the school in this capacity, working alongside Jamie and our Vice Chair, Zainab Miller, and the full group of our incredible Trustees, all in partnership with our Head of School Doug Brophy. 

The Town School is incredibly fortunate to have Doug as our Head. There is no better person for this role. Doug is tremendously passionate about – and dedicated to – this school. He has a clear understanding of, and vision for, what The Town School needs to be successful now and into the future.  And he works tirelessly to achieve it.  He grounds his work for this school – and for our children – in the mission and purpose of the school and the school’s strategic plan for the future. It has been a pleasure to work together with him on school governance here at Town. 
 

Now I will give you a little road map for the morning: First, Doug is going to speak to us about the happenings at Town and the school’s plans for investing in our students’ futures. I will then come back up here and share a bit more about our Board governance. And then Jamie will provide detail about the fiscal health of the school, including details about our budget, our expenses and our endowment. We are going to cover a lot of material, but we will endeavor to keep this crisp and concise. I hope you leave here with three things: One, an understanding of academic excellence at Town.  Two, an understanding of our Board governance.  And three, a clear understanding of the state of our school’s finances. We won’t have time to take questions at the end, but if anyone leaves here with questions about those three things – or anything else –  I encourage you to please reach out to Doug, Jamie or me directly. And now I will turn things over to Doug. 

Doug Brophy: A Classroom Story

It remains such a privilege to be leading Town in my seventh year. A privilege I embrace as Head of School, teacher and parent, as I lead and love our school every day. As Paula said, this morning I’ll discuss how Town is thriving and how we will continue to do so. I’ll share a recent classroom story; discuss new programmatic highlights and an update on our long-range plan; and celebrate the ultimate impact: how Town graduates are excelling in high school and beyond. 

A  classroom story: We regularly hear how Town alumni are such strong readers, writers, and speakers, and that they credit their Town education as the essential foundation.  Along these lines, our fourth graders have been hard at work crafting realistic fiction stories. Each student created a relatable main character, facing a typical school-aged challenge, and they brought their creativity and problem-solving skills to life through their writing.

When I recently visited Ms. Mendez and Ms. Eve’s 4South writing class, the students had brainstormed ideas, planned their narratives on a story arc, and drafted their stories. The young writers then revised their stories by incorporating a balance of action, dialogue, internal thought, and description to create more engaging and dynamic narratives. They reviewed samples as a whole class; revised their work with a partner; and continued refining their craft over subsequent classes. Last week, I had the opportunity to read several of the students’ completed stories and loved how captivating they were…and so well written. This student experience highlights much more: Town’s hallmarks of academic excellence. 

Productive struggle: Developing strong habits of mind, including questioning, perseverance, and flexible thinking. For those fourth graders, strengthening their writing took a lot of time, care and effort. As we know, it’s in the struggle that learning sticks! And when a child’s teacher complements that productive struggle with support, love and hands-on experiences, that’s “joy in learning.” 

Group work and hands-on learning: Encouraging students to teach and learn from one another, collaborate and cooperate...skills not necessarily easy for adults!  The 4th graders not only gave one another essential guidance through peer review but each student also incorporated the clear and thoughtful feedback into their writing.

Through “academic excellence,” Town students are always challenged, engaged and wanting to learn more; and they then emerge as scholars, citizens and leaders, developing both a strong sense of self and a lifelong love of learning.  

 

Doug Brophy: Programmatic Highlights

Here are some ways that such excellence is continuing school-wide:

Health & Wellness. We’ve discussed in recent years the increasing importance of health and wellness for our students. Last spring, we began a partnership with the Institute for Social Emotional Learning (IFSEL) to build out our Health and Wellness program.  And this year we are implementing SEL lessons and activities across the program, appreciating how doing so is also central to our students’ academic achievements.

Civic Engagement. We are continuing to expand our 7th/8th grade Civic Engagement program, with new community partnerships. 

And last June we designed a new, culminating 8th grade trip to Maine, where our soon-to-be graduates complemented their focus (food insecurity) with related activities and a visit to Acadia National Park!  

Sustainability. We built our new Ecology lab during Summer 2023. And we now have an ecology program at all grade levels, including cross-grade partnerships, and civic engagement connections for our 7th and 8th graders. And in November, our 6th graders joined ExoLab, where they grew legume seeds identical to those recently delivered to and planted on the international space station, partnered with 60 schools and science centers across the planet, and followed together space station video updates. This unit consolidated sustainability, space agriculture and global partnerships; and it concluded for our students with a biological and genetic analysis on why our students’ seeds grew more productively than those on the space station.

And we continue to refine all aspects of our program, from mathematics, literacy, technology, the arts and beyond; and we will continue to regularly update you through our targeted curricular coffees and follow-up email-summaries.

Let me pause to acknowledge one important thing: All of these updates exemplify how Town continues to be the best Town, being true to our mission and boosting your children’s achievements. And these exciting, programmatic initiatives exist alongside what is most essential: Continuing to ensure that we always have superb teaching to deliver our program.

Doug Brophy: Long Range Planning Updates

Each year, we enhance our hiring practices, striving to appoint the most qualified teachers. And so that Town faculty always remain at the top of their teaching game, we’ve strengthened our expectations around faculty professional development and formal evaluations. The context for these new protocols is Town’s Long Range Plan, now in its fifth year and focusing on Teaching Excellence, Learning Excellence, Community Connections, and Sustaining our School. As always, I will share a comprehensive, year-end, Long Range Planning update at my May coffee. 

 

Now, let’s take a step back: At Town, we do not simply charge our graduates to go out in the world and make a difference. From hands-on sustainability and ecology to civic engagement and all of the ways that Town lives its values, we guide our students, we expect them, to do good now. And that’s why we strive to foster a school environment where all children, families and employees feel included, and where Town students possess the cultural competency, and care and empathy, to navigate their worlds. Having that sense of purpose—living Self, Others and Surroundings—is central to a Town education. 

The world…certainly NYC! continues to notice how Town is thriving. Our enrollment remains strong, our kindergarten classes are packed, and this year’s application numbers remain excellent!

And we will continue to build on our program’s strength and reputation in new, exciting, mission-based ways. We are complementing our long range planning by continuing to secure philanthropic funding for new learning spaces, building on the big success of our Ecology Lab.

We will soon renovate the 5th/6th grade wing, aligning its design with the educationally superb 7th/8th grade wingAnd we will continue to invest in Technology and Media Literacy, because we know that scholarship increasingly requires the skills to discern among information sources: what’s an excellent research source, what is not. We will  therefore enhance our beautiful, beloved library and our adjacent Tech Center, by funding shared spaces in each, focused on the interconnected skills of technology, research, and media literacy. Imagine with me spaces for new media—literacy stations, video recording, and podcast projects, greater space for our award-winning robotics teams, and more, with more detail to come soon.  

All that I am sharing with you results from the wisdom, discernment, steadiness and tireless efforts of Town’s leadership—from divisional and academic oversight, finances and operations, technology, office, maintenance, security and kitchen teams all in turn providing the foundation for what’s most important: for Town teachers to do their great work, with as much dedication, care and success as ever.

And parents, thank you: Thank you for your partnership in your children’s education and for your commitment to Town more broadly. From the opening ceremony in the cul-de-sac, your participation in many events and all of your volunteering and support, your partnership/our community are central to our success and to that of our students, now and for their futures.

Doug Brophy: Town Alumni/ae are Excelling

I’d like to conclude by talking about our students’ futures. The experiences that Paula shared about her older daughter and her friends are not unique.  It is always heartening to hear how our alumni continue to apply what they learned at Town—using their voice, their skills, and their experiences. Here are two examples:

After graduating from Town in 2003, Marlena Slowik went on to Taft, University of Chicago and Stanford Business School; and she currently advises private equity clients in maximizing efficiency. Marlena shared that Town’s cultivating independence of thought and clear written and oral communication remain key to her success. In this spirit, I know that Marlena will appreciate our 4th graders’ recent writing, as well as our renewed focus on media literacy.

A more recent alumni update: After graduating in 2021, Mouhamed Touré and Lucas Choe went on to Dalton, where they drew from their Town community-engagement experiences and co-founded Feed the People NYC, a non-profit whose mission is to combat food waste and hunger, working with local organizations and food pantries. 

And did you know…that Lucas, Mo and their Town classmate, Noah Khalid, are three of the five current starters on Dalton’s Varsity basketball team?!

Town’s greatest strength remains how we honor our history, mission and values, while leaning into and embracing what’s most educationally relevant so that our school is both stable and dynamic and that Town is always at its best, continuing to offer an outstanding education for your children. 

Town is where our students become who they subsequently are. And our alumni’s accomplishments repeatedly show that they draw from their Town experiences as they continue to become their best selves.  

And here’s where Town graduates are thriving in high school and college: 

 

 

Parents, as we are looking over these lists, let’s appreciate why they are so compelling: such highly competitive schools; strong, smaller liberal arts colleges; tech and art schools, all reflecting the superb scholarship and range of interests that define the Town student body, representing themselves and their Town education so well. What success! So much to be proud of.

Central to Town’s sustained success is our school’s outstanding governance. For a discussion on the essential role of Town’s Board of Trustees, I’ll now turn things back to our Board co-Chair, Paula McGlarry.

Paula McGlarry: Board Governance

I am now going to give you a window into the role and work of the Board.   

Delivery of Town’s exceptional educational experience is achievable only with the hard work and dedication of Doug, the school’s leadership team, each and every faculty member and each and every staff member, all in continued strong partnership with all of you, our Town families. And ensuring that Town’s educational experience remains exceptional tomorrow and into the future requires a well-managed, fiscally healthy institution with strong Board governance and thoughtful and strategic stewardship.

Stewardship of Town is a partnership between the Head of School and the Board of Trustees. Doug’s role as Head of School is one of leadership and management. The Board’s role is one of governance. 

The Board is an advocate for Town, helping ensure that resources are in place for short- and long-term success and that Town is delivering on its mission for students today and into the future. The Board’s work can be broken down into three big jobs, which as you’ll see are quite distinct from the job of Head of School.

  1. We hire and annually review the Head of School. We also provide support to the Head throughout the year.  And we ensure accountability to Town’s mission and strategic goals. 
  2. We also set the budget in advance of each school year, and provide oversight and guidance throughout the year as needed.
  3. And we engage in long range financial and strategic planning, to ensure the continued health and sustainability of the school into the future.

Town’s Board is composed of 25 trustees, representing current parents, parents of graduates, Town alumni, Town faculty, and other independent school educators. For those Board members in the room today, thank you for your Board service. 

The Board brings considerable combined expertise in law, non-profit governance, strategic planning, communications, education, diversity equity and inclusion work, and finance. Somebody asked me recently what prompted me to serve on the Town Board.  My initial reaction to the question was that I just have a hard time saying no to things. But also I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to give back to this school through my Board service.  And it has been a truly rewarding experience.  This group is deeply invested in the important role of the Board. It is a highly engaged, well functioning and hard working Board.  

We execute our governance role by investing time and energy in robust discussion; by considering the issues facing the school; and by serving as thought partners for—and a review and challenge body to—Doug, in support of his leadership and management. 

A significant portion of that governance time and energy is focused on the school’s fiscal health. I am very happy to welcome Jamie up to give you an overview of the school’s, finances and budget. 

Jamie Odell: The Fiscal Health of the School

Good morning, everyone. My name is Jamie Odell, and I am honored to serve alongside Paula as Co-Chair of Town’s Board of Trustees. This is my fifth year on the Board and my second in this leadership role.

My wife, Lauren, and I have two children at Town—our daughter, Harper, who is a sixth grader, and our son, Brooks, who is in the fourth grade.

Harper and Brooks joined Town in Nursery 3, so this is our ninth year as members of the Town community. It has been an extraordinary journey, not just for our kids but for Lauren and me as well.

Let me begin by sharing an important update: Later today, you’ll receive enrollment contracts for the upcoming school year, which will reflect a 4.5% tuition increase. 

To provide some context, I’ll walk you through how Town’s budget is established, how we approach tuition decisions, and the critical role our endowment plays in supporting Town’s long-term success.

Guided by the expertise of Town’s Finance Team and the Board’s Finance Committee, every dollar in the budget is strategically allocated to maximize the educational experience for your children. 

 

 

We remain grateful for the partnership between the Board, faculty, and parents in support of our students—an essential aspect of what makes Town truly unique. This collaboration not only ensures that we provide an exceptional educational experience, but also enables us to add more value to our families. Over the past year, we have worked to offer a more comprehensive solution for our families, introducing new services to support your children from 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at no additional cost. This has included expanding our bus lines, offering breakfast to students, providing an expanded lunch service for our youngest learners, and offering free Clubhouse to ensure a well-rounded experience for our students and peace of mind for our families.

As you’ll see in the pie charts, Town’s budget is relatively straightforward. The majority of our income comes from tuition, and our largest expenses go toward our most valuable assets—our faculty and staff.

When setting the budget, we start with what’s necessary to fulfill Town’s mission: supporting our people, programs, infrastructure, and financial aid.

Town’s Head of School, Director of Finance, administrative team, and the Board’s Finance Committee work closely to determine the expense base required to deliver our program. The Board then sets tuition to ensure we meet these needs while maintaining a balanced budget.

Under Doug’s leadership and with the support of the Board of Trustees, Town has taken significant steps to strengthen its budget and ensure the school’s financial health. 

Applications and enrollment remain robust, allowing us to make meaningful investments in innovative programmatic initiatives, community partnerships, and capital projects. 

Town’s financial strength is a cornerstone of our ability to deliver an exceptional education while keeping tuition as low as possible.

We have no debt, full ownership of our building, and a $58 million dollar endowment—a testament to the school’s prudent financial stewardship and long-term planning.


 

Let’s now take a closer look at Town’s revenue and expense structure.

Starting with expenses for next year, the largest share is allocated to salaries and benefits for our faculty and staff. This reflects our deep commitment to attracting and retaining outstanding educators, who are at the heart of the Town experience.

Other categories include:

  • Program and Support: Covering textbooks, professional development, technology, and class trips, including visits to the Farm and the 8th-grade trip to Washington, DC
  • Maintenance and supplies for our wonderful building
  • Administrative Costs, covering insurance, publications, office supplies, and events
  • And Food Service.

Now let’s turn to the income side. The three smaller slices to the left in this pie represent: 

  • The endowment, which provides a vital source of ongoing support
  • Annual Giving and the Parents Association fundraising
  • And other income, including auxiliary programs, and a small amount of funds from New York State. 

The remainder, as you’d expect, comes from tuition, which makes up the largest share of revenue. 

Here’s how Town’s tuition compares to other schools in the current year. These figures are significant, but we are pleased to be able to offer a tuition that is highly competitive in this landscape.

We know that even with careful budgeting and Town’s continued attention to managing costs, expenses are rising. 

Indeed, tuition for all schools has risen more or less in line with salaries over the years.

We understand that this is a significant investment and approach tuition increases with great care and deliberation. The Board, working We know that tuition is a significant investment for all of you and we approach tuition increases with great care and deliberation. The Board, working closely with Doug and his team, regularly reviews ways to manage costs thoughtfully and ensures that we use our resources wisely.
 

 

A few words on Town’s endowment: The school’s financial reserves exceed recommended standards, which suggest maintaining capital at least double the annual budget.

And a portion of the endowment — 4.75% — is applied to support operating expenses.

This careful draw aligns with best practices for nonprofits and ensures that we preserve the endowment’s long-term spending power.

The endowment is critical not only for keeping tuition affordable but also for enabling continued investment in Town’s excellence and ensuring we are prepared for future challenges.


 

I hope today’s overview has given you insight into how Town’s leadership and financial strategy support the remarkable education the school provides.

Town is more than a school—it’s a community rooted in care, integrity, character, and the highest academic standards.

Lauren and I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of this community. I’m continually reminded of just how much Town shapes our children. Over the winter break, our family was playing a game of Trivial Pursuit, and I was genuinely amazed when Harper and Brooks drew on their education to answer questions that we, as parents, couldn’t. It was a small but powerful reminder of how their learning extends beyond the classroom.

And it’s not just in academics. I had the privilege of watching the sixth grade girls basketball team play on Monday, and I was so impressed by the heart and passion they showed on the court. They had improved so much since last season, but more important was the way they supported each other and showed such sportsmanship. It said so much about the character Town fosters in its students—both on and off the court.

Town is shaping our children into strong, compassionate individuals, prepared to meet challenges with resilience and kindness.

Thank you for your trust, partnership, and support.

And now, I’ll turn it back over to Doug.

Doug Brophy: Closing Remarks

Thank you, Jamie. And thank you, Jamie and Paula, for all of your leadership. And parents, thank you for all the ways that you entrust us with your children’s education and for your partnership in support. We will always hold these commitments dear.

We typically invite Q&A at parent gatherings. But this morning many of your children are waiting for you in the classrooms! So, reach out with any questions and I also look forward to engaging your questions at our February 4 in-person PA meeting and at my early-March roundtable on zoom.

Thank you and have a good morning!