From the Head of School

Catherine S. McGehee

Dear Foxcroft Community,

Two years ago this fall, Foxcroft set out to envision priorities for the next five to seven years that would build upon the successes of our 2016 Strategic Plan: Her Future is Our Future. We embarked on an intentional process that involved gathering information and ideas from the entire community; researching trends, demographics, and data; and reviewing key planning documents and critical areas such as our Campus Master Plan, deferred maintenance, campaign feasibility, and financial projections. We convened several task forces to synthesize the data, help us shape our vision, and articulate four key priorities with supporting goals around teaching and learning, our campus, our community, and sustainability.

Then in the spring of 2020 — the same spring our Board of Trustees approved our strategic plan — COVID-19 hit and any talk about the long-term vision for Foxcroft came to a screeching halt. Or so it seemed.

We had no idea if we could safely open the School in a few months, much less launch a campaign to renovate Schoolhouse. Administrators were focused on positivity rates, dorm cohorts, and other COVID-19 protocols to keep our community safe. Our faculty had to reinvent their entire curriculum to be able to deliver instruction in a hybrid in-person/online model. Our Board had to assess the impact of lost revenue and unplanned expenses on our bottom line.

And yet, even though the pandemic posed challenges to Foxcroft, it was an accelerant towards advancing our strategic priorities. The future and the vision became our now as faculty honed their curriculum to focus on skills over content and created assessments to demonstrate students’ progress towards mastering those skills. As a school, we had to upgrade our educational technology to support our students on campus and online. And community wellbeing became an important priority.

We expedited some of the renovation called for in the Schoolhouse project to create larger classrooms and meeting spaces to promote student health. Thus, the Music Building is almost completed and several small classrooms on the second floor of Schoolhouse have been enlarged by removing walls.

The focus on racism in our nation, our communities, and our School, which coincided with the pandemic, hastened our goals to make Foxcroft a more inclusive and equitable place of learning for all students and their families. And strategies for engaging and providing access for our entire community of students, parents, and alumnae — no matter where they are located — were implemented, showing us what is possible for Parents’ Association meetings, Reunion, speakers, and more.

The strong position of our School, the expert leadership of our Board and administrators, and the knowledge and commitment of our outstanding faculty meant we never really took our eye off the long-term direction for our School, even as we responded to the crisis of the moment. The work was hard and still is, and we are stronger for it. Our North Star, our students, sit at the center of our priorities, always.

This issue of Foxcroft magazine is dedicated to outlining our four strategic priorities and our progress to date. I hope you will enjoy learning about the inspiring vision we have laid out for our future. More importantly, I hope you will think about your role in making this future come to life to ensure that Foxcroft remains strong for generations of girls to come.