From the Head of School

Dear Frederick Gunn School Community,

Did you know that in 1922 you could buy a share of stock in our school? Frederick and Abigail Gunn gave the school, then known as The Gunnery, to their son-in-law, John Chapin Brinsmade (1862), and their daughter, Mary Gold Gunn, in 1881. Mr. Brinsmade served as Headmaster for 41 years when, in 1922, a group of alumni, parents, and local friends of the school offered the Brinsmades a buyout. The school, including its assets and liabilities, belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Brinsmade as a private institution. His leadership coincided with transformative moments in our history (including the installation of the telephone and electricity, and the outbreak of World War I) along with the evolution of the school outside of the original family home (with the construction of the first Schoolhouse, a gymnasium, and dormitory), and the expansion of the curriculum to include labs to meet the competitive demands of college entrance exams.

It is the nature of institutions to change over time, just as it is the nature of all things to change. (I tried to find a counterexample but came up empty.) The nature and quality of change at an institution, however, is neither inevitably good nor bad. All things, including institutions, eventually succumb to the forces of entropy, unless those responsible for them make deliberate efforts to create a better future than that to which entropy leads.

It was just such an effort that The Gunnery Reorganizing Committee was making in 1922, when they initiated the buyout and installed W. Hamilton Gibson (1902), then a teacher at Berkshire School, as the school’s third Headmaster. After 72 years as a familyrun enterprise, enterprising people connected to the school wanted to ensure that its future would be bright. The history is rich and complex. I encourage everyone to spend time learning more about this and all phases of this extraordinary school’s life. The short and medium-term results were mixed. Much of Mr. Gunn’s founding principles, practices, and ethos was lost amidst the well-intentioned attempts to modernize the school and put it on firmer footing. The school endured and here we are today.

A remarkably positive future

There are two primary and absolutely essential types of deliberate effort that the leaders of an institution like The Frederick Gunn School must practice in order not only to withstand the forces of entropy, but also to give the institution its best chance at a remarkable — and remarkably positive — future. For reference, we’ll use this definition of entropy: “a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder.” Neither type of effort is more important than the other, though the first often can be undervalued because it is less By locating our inherently exciting than the second, and they are linked inextricably. The Entrepreneurship Program first is the work of maintenance/ and the Center for Citizenship stewardship with the long term in and Just Democracy in mind. The second is the work of this new building, we are creation/evolution. Maintenance/ both architecturally and stewardship are essentially conservative — having to do with conserving and programmatically connecting preserving — while creation/evolution the work our students will are essentially progressive — having do in math, science, and to do with creating a future that is technology to questions of in some way different, and presumed public purpose and active to be progress, from the present. The generative interplay of the two is an citizenship, and doing so at ideal toward which every institution the heart of campus. ought to strive. In 1968, the school took a significant creative and evolutionary step when we constructed the original Science Building. Prior to that building, math and science (lab sciences in particular) were taught in classrooms, often in basements, retrofitted as labs. To create one building that brought together all of these classes and provided the lab sciences with the latest tools for high school teaching, as well as an amphitheater, was the right next step for the school. To locate the building at the center of campus and choose a late-Modern, Brutalist design was a bold risk. (Some readers — alumni who began in the fall of 1966 and graduated in 1968 or 1969 — may remember the experience of campus before the Science Building and after it arrived.) In the half century since the Science Building’s construction, the school has maintained it and has helped it to evolve. The forces of entropy have not been kind to the building and teaching in the sciences,

math, and technology has accelerated quickly. We have known that it was time to help the facilities dedicated to these subjects catch up as well as to make sure the facility itself was operationally sustainable. It was in this spirit that planning for a renovation and possible addition to the Science Building began.

Jon Tisch ’72 and his wife, Lizzie, helped us see that, in tackling this project, we have an opportunity to do more than catch up on deferred maintenance. Instead, with thanks to their vision and generosity, we are creating a future for the school that is better in every way than where our original sights were leading us. The Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship will accomplish a comprehensive range of strategic goals with one amazing project (see page 4). First, we are creating best-in-class learning spaces for teachers and students in science, math, and technology — classrooms and labs that incorporate what teachers need today, and are flexible enough that we can adjust as teaching in these disciplines evolves in the future. Second, we are creating a beautiful jewel of a building at the center of campus, one that will be welcoming to students, teachers, and visitors, and integrated with the inherent natural beauty of our campus (see page 13). Third, by locating our Entrepreneurship Program and the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy in this new building, we are both architecturally and programmatically connecting the work our students will do in math, science, and technology to questions of public purpose and active citizenship, and doing so at the heart of campus (see page 15). Taken together, it is an extraordinary step for our school.

We must attend to and celebrate maintenance and stewardship — of our people, our place, and our program. While we celebrate the news of Lizzie and Jon’s extraordinary generosity and the transformative project it makes possible (see page 10), we also celebrate the investments we have been able to make in our teachers through significant recent gifts to our endowment. This year, we instituted transparent salary bands for all classroom teachers as the first step in a long-term effort to ensure that not only are we equitably compensating the incredible people who work with our students day and night, but that we are competing to retain them and to attract the next generation of faculty to steward our school and our students (see page 19).

The single greatest force essential to enabling an institution, and particularly a school, to counteract the forces of entropy is alumni rallying around their alma mater and investing in it generously, consistently, and over the long term. We are seeing that happen at The Frederick Gunn School today. It is exciting to watch and will set the school up for an incredible future. I hope you will all come to visit campus soon so that you can see this future take shape in person.

Go Gunn!

Peter Becker Head of School