State School
Charlotte Latin
To the Charlotte Latin community—
This year will mark the 55th anniversary of Charlotte Latin School. We wanted to update you on where the school stands and how we’re positioned as we stride into the next 55 years.
Two years ago, the Latin Leads Strategic Plan summarized our vision for the school this way: “Charlotte Latin School develops courageous, honorable leaders, fueled by intellectual curiosity and guided by a commitment to excellence, who can navigate and thrive in a complex global society.”
That holds true today. From Transitional Kindergarten through senior year, our students spend their days with teachers who know the whole child and help them become the best versions of themselves. On our beautiful 128-acre campus, the overall mood, as always, is cheerful achievement.
The world outside Latin, however, has changed a lot. And the rate of change is accelerating.
Our goal, every single day, is for our students to be ready for the 21st century. That doesn’t mean they all need to learn to write code, although many of them do. It means they need to be ready for a fast-changing world. Whatever profession or field they enter, it’s going to change a lot between 2025 and 2035 and 2045.
So our students need the intellectual curiosity and the mental discipline to learn about new developments, to synthesize them, and to improve on 20th-century models. They need the leadership skills to chart a path through choppy seas and uncertain times. Inspired by our mission and our Core Values, Latin’s faculty and staff work tirelessly every day to foster those skills and illuminate the future for our students.
Our work manifests itself on many fronts, most of which interact with each other. So in this report, you will find summaries of our efforts in reinforcing leadership, in teaching and learning, and in fostering wellness. You will see how those efforts inform our redesigned daily schedule, just as the finances of the school frame the work we are able to do in athletics, in arts, and with scholarships.
The state of Charlotte Latin School is strong — because of all the thoughtful contributions from every member of our community, including students, parents, teachers, administration, and alumni. Thank you for being an essential part of that community.
Warmly,
Chuck Baldecchi Head of School
Finances
The finances of the school remain sound. We currently educate 1,540 students and employ 345 faculty, staff, and administration members. Our endowment stands at $58 million, having grown over $15 million in the past five years due to prudent investments and the generosity of the Latin community.
Revenue Expenses
While we are investing in our physical plant to maintain the beauty of our campus and to provide an excellent framework for our students to learn in, our greatest investment every year is in the employees of Charlotte Latin. Our compensation package is the strongest in the region, and is bolstered by competitive benefits and many opportunities for professional development. The positive work environment on campus allows for high employee retention and, across the years, continuity in the care of our students. $50,500,000
The growth of the Latin Fund and the school’s endowment over the past five years is a success story that has allowed us to innovate and to maintain the school’s excellence.
$3,000,000
Latin Fund
$2,000,000
$1,000,000
$55,000,000
$50,000,000
$45,000,000
$40,000,000
$35,000,000
$30,000,000
Endowment
Note that the endowment increased from $53 million on June 30, 2024 — the close of the fiscal year — to $58 million in November 2024.
Leaders in Leadership
Leadership is an abstract but essential quality. “We’re demystifying the attributes of leadership,” says Dr. David-Aaron Roth, Director of Student Leadership Development, “and letting people know how we observe it in practice.” So the Portrait of the Latin Leader lays out six qualities that Latin strives to foster in its students: Curious Learner, Dynamic Communicator, Conscientious Thinker, Humble Collaborator, Courageous Advocate, and Resilient Navigator.
While these attributes are particularly emphasized in classes on Leadership and Social Responsibility, they permeate Latin’s classroom time. They are further
reinforced with Lower School take-home initiatives such as the Curiosity Cards and Latin Bingo, both of which are cross-disciplinary efforts from the school’s departments of Leadership, Wellness, and Global Studies.
These six qualities complement the Core Values of Charlotte Latin School, and are not intended to be endpoints: curiosity, for example, acts as a catalyst for engaged learning, in and out of the classroom. All of the school’s work relies on the one-on-one human relationships among members of its community, further undergirded by the importance of listening to each other.
Dr. David-Aaron Roth meeting with students
We have also fundamentally reshaped our approach to service and community engagement, emphasizing that Latin is foremost a school. “We want our service to focus on learning and growth, not counting hours,” Roth says. Membership in the Senior Service Society no longer requires a set amount of volunteer time, but instead hinges on students writing meaningful reflections about how the community work they have done illuminates different aspects of leadership. This mindful approach allows Latin students to establish deeper connections with the practice of volunteerism.
To that end, Latin has phased out a scattershot approach to worthy causes in favor of long-
term relationships with organizations that share the school’s values, such as Habitat for Humanity and Baby Bundles.
Surveying Latin’s peer schools nationwide, Roth observes that Charlotte Latin is already outpacing them with our approach to service: Latin students are forming deeper connections with the world outside the campus and acquiring the skills to change that world for the better. Latin’s approach, which makes the school a leader in leadership, is already drawing keen attention from other schools. “We aim to be the national model for community-engaged learning in independent schools,” Roth declares.
Curiosity Cards
Hawks Soaring Higher
State of the Curriculum
Teaching and learning are the foundation of the Charlotte Latin experience. The school’s success can be measured by many metrics, like our 170 Advanced Placement Scholars with Distinction from 2022 to 2024. We’re not content with the status quo. We recently embarked on a thorough review of the Lower School curriculum, with an eye toward greater consistency from one classroom and one grade level to the next, so that teachers can rely on all their students starting the school year with similar skills and background knowledge.
One result: we are redoubling our emphasis in the Lower School on both writing and science. In the 2025-26 school year, the Lower School will have a dedicated science teacher and students in Grades 3–5 will benefit from hands-on laboratory time. A Lower School task force is working to
Curious Learners
Part of the way our teachers awaken curiosity is by building on individual students’ interests: when a teacher knows, for example, that a biology student cares about art but has previously been indifferent to science, the teacher can spotlight the areas where art and science overlap.
identify avenues we can use to improve writing instruction. We have also been steadily increasing the number of full-time assistant teachers, further improving our student-teacher ratio.
Lower School teachers have continued their development as educators with yearlong professional learning communities, ranging from “Educating for Global Competence” to “Differentiation and the Brain.” Curiosity is an essential value for our faculty, not just our students.
Our efforts to strengthen the foundation of the Latin educational experience are underway; our examination of the Lower School curriculum is ongoing. We will also extend our review to the Middle School and then the Upper School; we continue to seek opportunities to update and enhance all our curricula.
“We give students information but leave gaps where they need to think,” says Middle School Engineering Teacher Angela Horstman. When students have a challenge, she doesn’t walk them through a step-bystep solution: she provides tools and prompts them to find their own answers. She then bears witness to students becoming curious about the high-powered tools in the Fab Lab, finding new and creative uses for them, and solving problems.
The Road to Wellness
Charlotte Latin School prioritizes the mental, emotional, and physical health of its students, both by caring for them and by educating them on how to better care for themselves. Latin is the only independent school in Charlotte with a director of wellness: Michele King, the school’s first-ever Director of Student Support & Wellness, who has now been on the job for a year. Her tenure so far has included educational programs for students (on topics such as sleep and caffeine) and for parents (an ongoing series about social media).
An important change behind the scenes: the school’s counselors, Director of Learning Resources, and nurses now meet regularly as a team. This allows them to better coordinate on strategies for students’ comprehensive well-being and reduce the possibility that anyone falls through the cracks.
At the forefront of the school’s wellness efforts is elevating Latin’s approach to advisory time. The Middle School advisory program has grown substantially in the past year, incorporating principles of social and emotional learning to improve students’ mental health and academic success. When the Upper School advisory program relaunches in the fall, students will similarly benefit from a new curriculum (guided by Michele King and Upper School Psychology Teacher Powell Paguibitan) that emphasizes principles of wellness.
Although the Upper School’s recent policy change with cell phones (prohibiting student use during the school day) was implemented to increase community among students and sharpen their mental focus, it also promoted greater physical and emotional well-being. Latin will continue to make decisions that prioritize our students’ health.
Purpose and Belonging
Isa Stokes, Director of Academic Transition & Student Success, has been working to ease the transition of new students from non-independent schools when they arrive at Latin. His office provides support, guidance, and structure, such as affinity group meetings — especially crucial for students who begin Latin in academic years other than 6th grade and 9th grade and can struggle to adjust. Even academically gifted students require some time to adjust to the rigors of a Latin education; we want to make sure that we’re maximizing the chances of success for all newcomers.
To make for a smoother academic transition, Charlotte Latin has begun offering a summer bridge program, ensuring that new students start their first day at Latin familiar with its expectations and ready to succeed.
In the Middle School, an optional ten-month program for new students achieved 100% participation, easing the adjustment for students of all educational backgrounds and resulting in dramatically higher rates of retention. A similar strategy in the Upper School, pairing new students with peer mentors, had 89% participation. Latin is further expanding its use of mentors with initiatives such as the Young Women’s Leadership Program — which pairs alumnae with the women in the Class of 2025 — an effort led by Upper School History Teacher Whitney Duquette.
A New Schedule
Dr. Sonja L. Taylor, Associate Head of School, and Todd Ballaban, Head of Middle School, led a task force on the daily schedule that solicited feedback from hundreds of Latin community members on how to improve the structure of the school day, finding ways to better serve students and faculty.
Every schedule decision has far-reaching consequences; every choice can reinforce the fundamental values of the school. While the 2025-26 schedule has not yet been finalized and more information will be coming soon, some decisions have been made:
Classes will be on a “waterfall” schedule.
Our students have a full range of biological clocks: some are more intellectually engaged in the morning, others later in the day. When a class meets at the same time every day, there can be a mismatch between student and schedule. For better balance, classes will now rotate through the periods of the day. Also supporting the focus and the well-being of students: fewer classes each day, along with more short breaks built into the day, so students can reset between subjects.
Upper School and Middle School schedules will be synchronized.
This will allow more opportunities for the two divisions to share resources, and in some cases, classes. It will also allow the entire Upper School to have lunch together, building greater fellowship among students.
Standard class time will expand from 45 minutes to 50 minutes. This growth gives our teachers more opportunities to engage with students each class period, awakening their curiosity and strengthening their intellectual skills.
Advisory time is prioritized.
The schedule will include regular advisory sessions with a structured curriculum, allowing students to build meaningful relationships with a trusted adult outside of the classroom and providing parents with access to a staff member who can offer insight into their child’s overall school experience. In addition, advisory sessions promote student wellness. Giving our students essential life skills not only safeguards their physical and mental health, it allows them to achieve at the highest level.
Class time is protected.
To minimize disruptions to regular classroom time, community meetings and special assemblies will have a specifically designated slot on the schedule.
Extended-length classes allow for deeper dives.
Each subject will regularly have an extended-length class. While this is especially useful for science classes that involve lab work, students in every subject will benefit from opportunities to immerse themselves more deeply in projects.
Promises Kept
Honor & Glory
Arts and athletics at Latin enhance the lives of our students on multiple fronts — leadership, wellness, purpose and belonging — in addition to bringing our community together to celebrate their performances. We emphasized two successful arts initiatives in 2024: the renovation of Thies Auditorium and the establishment of the Lillie Cowan Endowment for the Arts. This year spotlights the future of athletics.
Working in concert with the Athletics Task Force, the Honor & Glory campaign is designed to increase the scheduling flexibility of student-athletes across as many sports as possible and to expand the opportunities for athletic programming from Transitional Kindergarten to 12th grade. To that end, the campaign is working to fund three pieces of athletics infrastructure: lights for the turf field, the conversion of two grass fields to artificial turf, and an auxiliary gym attached to the Strength Center. The campaign has already raised $3.6 million of the necessary $7 million, ensuring future Hawks will fly high — and be well-illuminated.
Access and Affordability
To ensure that the Charlotte Latin experience is available to deserving students regardless of financial need, the school is increasing the number of comprehensive scholarships that cover not only tuition, but auxiliary costs such as books, lunch, and athletics fees. For example, Sunny’s Scholars (with an endowment of $5.7 million) can support one student per year from Grades 6 through 12 (seven students at a time). The school is working to grow this endowment so it can support two Sunny’s Scholars per grade, doubling the impact.
Those efforts are complemented by the Plus Fund, which covers auxiliary costs for students receiving the highest level of tuition assistance. The Plus Fund, financed by both individual donors and the Latin Fund, provides essential assistance to many worthy Latin students who make our community stronger.
The Future
The Latin Leads Strategic Plan, launched in January 2023, established five goals as priorities for Charlotte Latin School over the following five years: The Latin Leader, Teaching and Learning, Community Wellness, A Community of Purpose and Belonging, and Access and Affordability. As documented in this status report, the school has made substantial progress on all those goals in the past two years. We endeavor to make sure that our students become the best possible versions of themselves; we are working equally hard for Charlotte Latin to be the best possible version of itself.
The world keeps changing, which means that Charlotte Latin can’t stand still — we never have.
The school is already doing preliminary work on a campus master plan for the next decade, addressing basic needs in our physical plant and considering fundamental questions such as the optimal size of our student body. The collaboration between all members of our community — students, faculty, families, staff, trustees, and alumni — will allow us to thrive together.
