Message from the Head of School

Dear Kent Place Alumnae, Parents, Trustees, Families, and Friends:

This Report of Gifts is likely one of the most memorable that will be presented while I’m Head of School. As I look through the pages before they go to print, I’m transported back to moments during the 2020–2021 school year that called for big decisions and brought forth strong emotions, and for which few of us had been trained. For every independent school, there is a framework of leadership and support from the Board of Trustees and other advisors and supporters that often garners little more than a passing thought from much of our community in typical school years. What we all know to be true is that September of 2020 began a profoundly atypical year. As Head of School, I was acutely aware of the risks that reopening the campus could bring to Kent Place families, faculty, and staff. And as a lifelong educator, I also understood the loss our students would experience if they were not able to learn inperson, in community with their teachers and fellow students. I’ll always remember asking for the Board of Trustees’ support, in that fraught summer of 2020, to make in-person learning possible and their unwavering agreement to work with me to make it so. And work they did. I’m indebted to Alex Crispo P ’14, now our Emeritus Board Chair, and the other members of the Board, who each week spent dozens of hours on Zoom meetings to prepare. In September, when — thermometers in hand — we welcomed our students back to campus, it was a joy made possible by our incredible Trustees. Six months later, on Founders Day (see p. 10), I was walking from Norwood House to campus. As I turned into the driveway, I was greeted by music, an enormous banner over the entrance, and an exuberance that lifted me. It had taken me six months to believe. In that moment, my shoulders finally relaxed and my eyes filled with happy tears. We had done it! I tell you this because in both my moments of doubt and my moments of hope, all of you were there. You were with me all summer and you were with me on the first day of school. Whenever a small glitch appeared, you were there to fix it. You were there. Every one of you named in this report reminds me of the extraordinary solidarity of our community. Thank you for your generous support of our treasured school. To all the exuberance ahead!

Jennifer C. Galambos

Head of School