The Pingry Plan
THE PINGRY PLAN
The Pingry Plan is a different type of strategic plan, made to respond to the realities of education today.
It has become clear over the past few years that schools must be nimble institutions, able to respond to new opportunities and emerging challenges while staying true to their values. This balanced approach— both grounded and dynamic—is a familiar one for our community. Since 1861, our enduring principles, expressed today through our mission and Honor Code, have guided us while adapting the way we teach and learn to prepare students to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
The Pingry Plan is designed to meet six central priorities, each committed to encouraging connection, cultivating a care-centered environment, and developing
character. Working together, we will realize these priorities through a series of immediate and long-term initiatives that address the most pressing issues and our community’s most exciting opportunities. If the world shifts in ways that require us to respond accordingly, we have designed our initiatives to accommodate important adjustments to meet our priorities.
The Pingry Plan is our collective answer to what’s next. Shaping and responding to known and unknown challenges energize our entire community to be curious, thoughtful, and united. Join us in meeting the moment that will define our school, our community, and who we are.
OUR DIRECTION
A Statement from Head of School Tim Lear
What’s next? These words came up repeatedly during our strategic planning process, and with good reason. Together, they’re a great question and the start to a great answer—a forwardlooking vision for our shared future. On behalf of all who worked on this plan, we’re excited to share it with you.
Throughout our intensive strategic planning process, I kept returning to a favorite poem of mine, “To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy. She writes:
The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
The poem goes on to share the joy of being with “people who submerge in the task,” who “move in a common rhythm” as they work together.
These characteristics define our students, faculty, staff, and community. They are what keep drawing me back to Pingry as an alum, as a teacher, and now as Head of School.
So many of the people I love the most are here, and we wanted to place them firmly at the center of The Pingry Plan.
Our six priorities are focused on strengthening our school by strengthening our people. That means elevating our faculty and staff, thinking long and hard about how to build and nurture connections, and determining how we can best prepare students to meet the challenges of today— and tomorrow.
Preparing for the future brings us back to what’s next. We will remain both agile and flexible, as well as deeply committed to excellence and honor, our timeless mission, and an enduring sense that Pingry is a place that nourishes the heart and embraces opportunity.
OUR PROCESS
The plan in front of you is the culmination of a process that began with approximately 50 community listening sessions throughout the Summer and Fall of 2023. We heard from over 400 members of our community, including trustees, parents, alumni, faculty, staff, and students. The conversations we had in these listening sessions represented the best of who we are; they were in-depth, honest, inspiring, and profoundly thoughtful.
After the listening sessions concluded, the Board of Trustees, along with Head of School Tim Lear, took the collective insights and contributions of the community and developed six priority areas that provided the framework for inquiry and discussion that would guide the work of the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC). Focus areas included Honor and Excellence, Success and Disappointment, Well-Being and Belonging, Developing Transformative Relationships, Our Outstanding Community of Educators, and Cultivating Connection Across Our Campuses.
The process continued throughout 2024 and was the focus of much energy as the SPC took on the responsibility of examining and prioritizing the information emerging from
the listening sessions. The SPC supplemented this with articles, outside research, emerging trends in independent schools and the private sector, and further discussion with key stakeholders. The SPC also reviewed all of this information within the context of Pingry’s mission statement and Honor Code.
Over the course of these many months, the findings and work of the SPC have been distilled into a series of initiatives and objectives addressing each of the six key priority areas. Embedded in each of these priorities is The Pingry School’s abiding commitment to a mission that fosters academic excellence, personal growth, and a commitment to the greater good. These bold commitments will guide our path in the coming years.
As our planning concludes, our work intensifies. The Pingry Plan represents the culmination of the first phase of the process. Our priorities are clear, but many decisions are yet to be made. Funds must be raised to enable some of these initiatives to come to fruition. The Pingry Plan is intended to spur discussion as we make refinements and set the course for the next several years.
OUR PRIORITIES
The following six priorities focus on our shared work in the coming years.
Learning and Living with Honor
In a world that can feel confusing and chaotic, Pingry remains steady. Every generation faces its challenges. Today’s young people are inundated with conflicting media reports, corrupted data, AI-generated multiverses, and social media temptations. Traditional role models continue to disappoint the public, falling short of expectations and fostering cynicism rather than idealism. Pingry will raise students with the utmost integrity to pursue, accept, and share truth and honor in everything they do. Our highest ambition remains our most essential ambition—to prepare students to be good people.
Our Commitment
We will educate students to be kind, live honorably, and work for the common good.
In our pursuit of excellence—in all forms—we focus on the soul of Pingry: the Honor Code. It is a constantly renewable source of energy and optimism. It is where our diverse community finds individual and collective inspiration, success, and belonging. At Pingry, excellence is only possible through honor. It’s why we work together for the common good, encouraging every community member to engage and contribute as good stewards and citizens of our world. Every priority and initiative in this plan is designed to reinforce our mission, which “places the highest value on honor and respect for others.”
Strategic Initiatives
Reinforcing ethical decision-making in our curriculum: We will ensure the enduring relevance of our Honor Code is experienced firsthand by our students across academic disciplines and divisions.
• Integrate the Honor Code and ethical decision-making into classroom lesson plans across all disciplines (e.g., business ethics, bioethics).
• Create new opportunities for students across divisions to spend time together sharing about their specific Pingry experiences in order to help our older students understand their role in creating an ethical community through direct role modeling.
• Ensure our programs connect to real-world events and issues, ensuring good citizenship while eliminating distractions and outdated practices.
Upholding the Honor Code: We will hold in great respect adherence to the Honor Code.
• Identify and build communal opportunities to bring all students and faculty together to advance character development.
• Introduce new, recurring, and meaningful opportunities for the Head of School to address students directly.
Strengthening Well-Being
We do our best work when we are healthy, balanced, and grounded in a deep sense of belonging. Throughout the planning process, this common theme emerged. At Pingry, a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment fosters a sense of well-being and connection. When these elements are aligned, teaching and learning thrive and engagement deepens. We recognize that, as a school and as a community, we play an essential role in helping our students create and develop competencies, skills, and healthy habits. These are the building blocks of well-being and success in school—and in life. Our success is defined not only in scholastic terms but also in the development of lifelong habits and sustainable commitments.
Our Commitment
We will create an environment in which students can pursue excellence without sacrificing their mental health and well-being.
Because well-being has many facets, strengthening students’ well-being requires a communitywide approach involving teachers, families, and peers. This shared commitment to the transformational potential of well-being exemplifies the kind of school Pingry is and aspires to be. We strive for excellence in all that we do, and we recognize that our achievements are most meaningful when they are supported and enhanced throughout our community.
Strategic Initiatives
Designing an intentional blueprint for individual and community well-being: We will develop a common language for, understanding of, and approach to well-being.
• Convene departments and programs centered on wellbeing (e.g., Health and Physical Education, Center for Performance and Leadership, Advisory, Peer Leadership) to align ideas, concepts, terminology, and practices and build intentional scaffolding across the K–12 experience to provide consistency and compound impact.
• Create communication structures and programming encouraging parents and guardians to reinforce the school’s commitment to establishing healthy, lifelong habits of well-being.
• Enhance our tuition assistance program to better support the full student experience, regardless of families’ financial circumstances, and foster school-wide inclusivity, belonging, and connection.
Embracing a direct and relational approach to student behavior: We will approach student discipline in a manner that emphasizes productive feedback, relationship-building, accountability, reflection, and growth.
• Refine student discipline processes to advance an understanding of personal development.
• Launch community-wide training and partnerships to ensure every adult actively participates in the building of this new relational approach.
• Educate all students—at the appropriate developmental level—about setting year-to-year goals, ideals, and expectations for their growth.
Building a balanced school day: We will align our daily schedules across the Lower, Middle, and Upper Schools, ensuring mission-driven alignment and making time for focus, reflection, exploration, and commitment.
• Define “the Pingry day” to create a more consistent framework and supportive flow to each day for all three divisions.
Managing Success and Disappointment
Today, the only constant is change—the only certainty, uncertainty. The pressure to perform—in school, in college, in careers—can feel relentless. At Pingry, we understand that success is not about perfection but rather about progress fueled by passion. That success includes both risk and reward—and we challenge the belief that achievement must be accompanied by unhealthy stress.
Our Commitment
We will nurture students so they understand who they are and have the skills needed to take risks, be agile, handle success and disappointment, and practice resiliency in the pursuit of their goals.
At Pingry, there is joy in the humbling work of becoming fully human. We empower our students to take bold intellectual leaps and courageous risks—and support them through their successes and disappointments. Our students should feel emboldened on their intellectual journey to turn stumbles into strides and successes into solutions. Through our people and programs, we help students develop resilience, equipping them with the skills necessary to achieve their fullest potential.
Strategic Initiatives
Redefining a culture of achievement: We will challenge the existing paradigm of achievement, assessing and modifying policies and practices to focus on processes that emphasize continuous growth, discovery, and gratitude.
• Review Pingry’s student awards, recognitions, and leadership opportunities to ensure that, in our most public moments, we are reinforcing what we value most, as rooted in our mission and Honor Code.
• Revisit our student core competencies, intentionally integrating them across the K–12 curriculum and in learning opportunities beyond the classroom.
Finding purpose and passion: We will encourage the work and play of learning outside of regularly scheduled class time.
• As part of the planned schedule review, we will focus on creating flexibility within the academic day to unlock time for students to pursue their interests and passions.
• Offer co-curricular opportunities that take place outside the academic day and encourage all faculty and students to work together across disciplines and grades to explore immersive experiences and inspire intellectual exploration (similar to MOEMS, Robotics, iRT, and Spring Intensives).
• Prioritize technology-based enrichments (e.g., robotics, computer science) in the student experience to underscore the importance of technological literacy across all academic disciplines.
• Offer spark grants for employees to collaborate across departments and divisions and pursue projects that will ignite student engagement and foster a culture of lifelong curiosity and learning.
Developing Transformative Relationships
Navigating interpersonal relationships is inherently complex, requiring profound social awareness, the willingness to listen, and the ability to bridge divides and build transformative connections. These human interactions—and the relationships we nurture—are an essential facet of learning at Pingry.
Our Commitment
We will develop in our students the social awareness and skills necessary for productive and inspired relationships.
The quality of our life is shaped by the quality of our relationships. As a high-achieving intellectual community, we perform at our best when our connections are strong. When we engage, we grow. When we converse, we deepen. When we collaborate, we improve.
Strategic Initiatives
Cultivating healthy relationships: We will create more opportunities for educators and students to build connections with each other to ensure that every student at Pingry is seen and known and feels a deep sense of belonging.
• Establish Advisory as the foundational element of the Pingry student experience to further support relationshipbuilding and meaningful connections between students as well as adults. Advisory will serve as a second classroom and a home base for students to develop voice and agency.
• Review and refine key elements that deepen connection and the student experience (e.g., Peer Leadership).
Fostering relational skills and social development: We will continue to expand the Pingry experience beyond the classroom, providing opportunities for students across grades and campuses to come together, learn from one another, and deepen community.
• Implement efforts for cross-divisional connection among students (arts, athletics, peer mentorship, clubs, and other co-curricular programs) that leverage opportunities
available at the Pottersville Campus in support of our daily work on the Short Hills and Basking Ridge Campuses.
• Expand the scope of our Community Engagement and Social Impact work to broaden opportunities for students to deepen relationships with individuals and organizations outside of Pingry.
Considering the role of technology: We will define the role that technology plays in and out of classrooms to ensure that it is supporting connection rather than preventing it.
• Review and update the technology use policy for students to promote conversation and community.
• Continue building K–12 programming and education for students, families, and educators around the appropriate and responsible use of technology in and out of the classroom.
• Utilize the AI Task Force to review crucial questions and address emerging trends and issues that affect faculty and student teaching and learning.
Cultivating an Outstanding Community of Educators
Pingry’s faculty and staff are the beating heart of our school. They inspire our students to achieve and to elevate themselves and the world we serve. Through their deep involvement inside and outside the classroom, Pingry faculty and staff earn the unwavering support of the school community. We acknowledge that the demands on educators can, at times, be overwhelming. We believe that a decision to follow one’s calling into education can and should result in a fulfilling life. We recognize the dedication of our faculty and staff, and accordingly, we are committed to making a profound investment to continuously strengthen our diverse community of world-class educators.
Our Commitment
We will attract, support, develop, and retain diverse and innovative educators who are exceptional teachers and mentors inside and outside the classroom.
Excellent educators make an excellent school. To deepen, expand, and sustain Pingry’s excellence, we must remain steadfast in our commitment to our faculty and staff. We will strengthen our investment in their growth, development, and overall well-being.
Strategic Initiatives
Growing as educators and leaders: We will be as renowned for educating and developing teachers as we are for educating students.
• Develop a cohort-based professional development institute that allows educators to engage in expansive and structured professional learning experiences.
• Evaluate and formalize partnerships with external organizations and experts that will advance and strengthen our educators’ areas of expertise.
• Institute a professional mentorship program that brings together educators in pairs or small groups to facilitate learning and building community.
• Explore flexible course loads to provide faculty an opportunity to pursue creative endeavors that advance their professional growth and create new initiatives for Pingry.
Investing in our educators: We will calibrate compensation, benefits, and opportunities to position Pingry as a national pacesetter in attracting, developing, and retaining outstanding faculty and staff.
• Affirm that educators at Pingry engage beyond the school day, investing in the student experience as coaches, chaperones, advisors, spectators, mentors, and club moderators.
• Expand employee housing on the Pottersville Campus, utilizing additional housing as an essential employee retention and recruitment tool.
• Attract and retain educators who consistently perform at the highest level by reviewing, updating, and expanding employee compensation and benefits benchmarked against peer, industry, and private sector best practices.
Creating Space for Connection
At Pingry, people have always been our most important resource—and the collaboration between and among faculty and students has a profound and lasting impact on the student experience, in and out of the classroom. In an increasingly disconnected world, these group efforts enhance transformative learning, cultivate community, improve mental health, and deepen engagement. We must preserve and enhance our ability to connect by designing spaces that make the work and play of our students and educators possible, flexible, and inviting—welcoming others to join in. Spaces that foster meaningful interactions help build a profound sense of belonging and community.
Our Commitment
We will design inspired and dynamic spaces that facilitate the delivery and implementation of curricular and co-curricular programs and schedules and promote creativity, collaboration, and belonging.
As a school and community, we are experts at connection—intentional, lasting, and inspiring commitments to each other and to ourselves. We want to create conditions for those connections to become even richer and more meaningful.
Strategic Initiatives
Enhancing our campuses: We will ensure our physical spaces and environment inspire connection and innovation, encourage students to learn and grow together, and make visible the work of our community.
• Develop, design, and update the Comprehensive Campus Plan for our three campuses and facilities.
• Align future capital projects with the priorities and initiatives identified in this strategic plan to achieve our goals, making optimal use—and adaptive reuse—of existing resources while building in a sustainable manner.
Activating Pottersville: We will use the campus to build intentional connections with oneself and one another.
• Create immersive academic experiences throughout the year for students across all three divisions that encourage innovation and belonging.
• Pursue strategic partnerships with external, missionaligned organizations—partnerships that promote meaningful connection and, in addition, may advance Pingry’s reputation and generate auxiliary revenue.
• Develop a residential community for educators, increasing the availability of long-term housing for employees and short-term housing for experts in residence, alumni, and external partners.
NEXT STEPS
Meeting the moments that define and shape us as a school and a community does not have a starting gate or a finishing line. Our work has already begun—and will continue for years to come. Together we will, in the words of Marge Piercy, “move things forward,” finding renewed energy in the continuous cycle of one remarkable school year after another, and surround ourselves with others “who do what has to be done, again and again.”
We will regularly update our community on our progress, sharing what we have learned and accomplished and continuing to communicate next steps.
The road ahead consists of many twists and turns, some known and many unknown. Navigating our rapidly changing work is the task of our school and the whole Pingry community. Rather than be daunted by these challenges, we are invigorated and energized. Together, we will meet what’s next as we always have: with excellence and honor.
A Message from Ian Shrank ’71, Chair
of the Board of Trustees
The Pingry Board of Trustees thanks you, the Pingry community, for your thoughtful and honest contributions. For months, our faculty, staff, students, parents, alumni, and friends have shared their views on what the world needs—and what priorities and initiatives should guide our actions.
We would like to offer our deep appreciation to the Strategic Planning Committee, led by our two co-chairs, Melissa Moriarty and Laura Overdeck, and our vice chair, Janice Beckmen. Their commitment and passion for this work proved time and time again to be invaluable. Together, we benefited tremendously from the generous contributions and thoughtful expertise of our 15 committee members. They met many times through evenings and over weekends to ensure that our plan meets the moments that will define Pingry now and for years to come. Our Strategic Planning Committee includes:
Melissa Moriarty ’87, P’23, ’27
Co-Chair
Laura Overdeck P’21, ’23, ’26
Co-Chair
Janice C. Beckmen P’15, ’19, ’19
Vice Chair
Aryln Davich ’99
Lincoln Germain P’26
E. Lori Halivopoulos ’78, P’23
Joshua Kalafer P’27, ’29
Allen Kim P’29
Steven M. Lipper ’79, P’09, ’12, ’14
Carolyn (Cookie) Mason P’21, ’24
Twinkle Morgan P’23, ’26, ’27
Michael Nitabach ’84
Souren Ouzounian P’23, ’27, ’27
Grace Park P’23, ’26
Prashanth Reddy P’28
Tyler Reeder P’27, ’29
Margaret Santana P’22, ’24
Anju Thomas P’19, ’22
And, of course, enormous gratitude to our Head of School, Tim Lear, and Pingry’s senior administrative team. They live the School’s mission daily and earnestly, propelling Pingry to achieve its greatest heights. Tim’s vision and leadership created a plan like no other, one that is uniquely Pingry. Key staff members Brad Fadem, Emily Cooke, and Tiffany Chan gave Tim the extraordinary support that allowed this process to be well-informed, well-organized, and profoundly inclusive.
As for me, I am deeply proud of this plan and the school Pingry has become. We live our mission and values in ways that will forever shape our students, the communities they serve, and the worlds they will change—with excellence and honor.
Short Hills Campus
Lower School (Grades K–5) 50 Country Day Drive
Short Hills, NJ 07078 (973) 379-4550
Basking Ridge Campus
Middle & Upper Schools (Grades 6–12) 131 Martinsville Road
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920 (908) 647-5555
Pottersville Campus K–12 Experiential Learning Campus
51 Pottersville Road
Pottersville, NJ 07979 (908) 647-5555
whatsnext.pingry.org
