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STATE OF THE SCHOOL
KIT STATE OF THE SCHOOL
On February 7 and 12, 2020 Board Chair, Ashley Lowe and Vice-Chair Clay Thomas joined me for our annual State of the School presentation. This summary presents the highlights from that talk. I encourage you to please reach out to me to discuss any element in greater detail or to seek clarification. We encouraged those in attendance to engage us in dialogue that evening, and I want to extend that same courtesy to you as you review this written summary.
I’d like to offer a special thank you to the many first-year Roeper families who joined us on the evening of the 12 th ; your energy and involvement in the many conversations that night help make us a stronger community.
During a recent Board meeting, a Trustee shared with me that one of the key tasks of a good school head was to be able to be so well informed within the field that you are always able to peek around the corner and know what is coming next. The idea is of course to be ahead of the trends, to be informed of best practices, and to anticipate the needs of the institution before those needs occur.
To some degree, the State of School presentation that I share with the community each year is my attempt to share not just our current status, but to help our community see that unknown future that George and Annemarie described in the Roeper Philosophy. Or as George reminded us: “Maybe the most important thing we have to do with our children is to make them ready to adapt themselves to change.”
Our Changing Landscape
In my talk this year, I shared five areas of approaching change that I think are worth noting as we consider the educational landscape in Michigan and the Roeper community specifically. Each element poses unique challenges to our practices, and as the trustee reminded me, we have an obligation to be aware of the shifting footing upon which we stand.
• There is a demographic shift downward in the school-aged population across the State of Michigan. Statistics for 2020 show that there are 3% fewer elementary-school-aged children in the Wayne and Oakland County region than five years earlier. The population numbers are predicted to drop 1 – 2%, or at best, remain flat over the next five years. • As in many industries today, there is a generational shift in our faculty, as many of our long-serving baby-boom-generation teachers are retiring. • There is a greater need for programs focused on the mental health and emotional wellbeing of students, particularly early adolescents and adolescents. • The cost of independent schools and private school in general continues to increase at a rate above cost of living. • There is a greater need for on-going parent education to help support the social and emotional needs of gifted children. Educators at all levels, especially at the college level, see students lacking in agency and self-advocacy skills that were more routine a decade earlier.
Each of these areas are both opportunities and risks for The Roeper School; our focused awareness and our strategic focus on each area is critical as we continue into our unknown future.
Facts about our Funding and the Budget
The Roeper School is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit with an annual budget of just over $17,000,000. Like all not-for-profits, each year, we seek a balanced budget. As an independent school, we do not accept any funding from any government source; we are funded entirely by tuition dollars and the fund-raising efforts of the good people in our Development Office.
This past year, our endowment fund eclipsed the $8,000,000 mark and is being ably managed by our Board of Trustees’ Investment Committee. It is the growth of this fund that should give each of us reason for hope. The larger the endowment grows, the less dependent we will be on tuition increases to sustain the school. The Investment Committee has created a spending policy that yields about 4% annually from the fund for inclusion into the annual budget.
The School also carries some debt, about $3,000,000 in total. The debt comes from previous capital projects like the Community Center Building and the Steward Building. The Finance Committee of the Board keeps watch on interest rates and has renegotiated the interest rate
on several occasions in the past five years to keep the cost of that debt down.
Finally, the school continues to maintain its strong commitment to need-based financial aid. Fortytwo percent of Roeper families receive need-based support from the school. This is compared to about 32% at similar independent schools. Our average award is $12,500 vs. $10,300 at similar regional independent schools. The School’s commitment to need-based financial aid reflects our commitment to socio-economic diversity and our attempt to increase accessibility to a Roeper education for gifted students who qualify for admission.
Of our annual budget, 18.7% or $3.1 million goes to fund our financial aid and scholarship fund. After faculty and staff salaries and benefits, financial aid is the largest segment of the school’s budget.
Each year the School files its 990 with the IRS in keeping with its not-for-profit status. Of particular note in that document is the investment the school makes in our program; our annual financial audit reveals that 84% of the money that comes into the school is spent directly on the program. This is a particularly noteworthy statistic as we benchmark very strongly compared with other independent schools (range 70 – 90%), and it reveals most clearly our spending priorities.
Gathering Data to Shape our Direction
During the past year, the School has engaged in a series of surveys collecting data on parent satisfaction, faculty satisfaction, and student health and well-being. Each of these surveys is part of an on-going attempt to measure and address the issues and needs within the school. In addition to the written data, the school will also be engaging in focus group conversations to supplement the data with more personal interactions. Learning from families about what attracted them to Roeper and how well we are doing in sustaining that connection is critical for our sustainability. As demographics shift in our area, and fewer schoolage children enter elementary school, retention of our current families is critical for our long-term health and well-being. It is incumbent upon us to strengthen our communication and listen more closely to the needs and concerns of our families. Ensuring that we continue to address the social and emotional needs of our gifted students is critical. Our health program must continue to evolve, our advisory, and support programs must grow as the needs of our students increase. Hand in hand with these programmatic changes is the need to work more closely with parents to help them provide guidance and direction as they raise gifted children in this changing world.
The Strategic Plan and our Progress
Back in 2018, our Board of Trustees approved our most recent Strategic Plan. The document was developed through the partnership of all constituency groups within the Roeper community, and took a little over a year to be developed and approved. The Board charged me as Head of School with the implementation of the plan. Each year I work with the Board on selecting my goals based on the various elements contained within the plan. The document is an expression of the collective priorities we as a community said were critical for the next three to five years. As we make choices on how to spend our time and our capital, these are the strategic measures we said were the priority.
Within the first section of the plan, focusing on program, we have made great strides in the construction of a school-wide Technology Plan. The plan focuses on digital citizenship, technology integration, computational thinking, equity, and continuing education. Thanks to the leadership of Middle School Director, Brian Corley, and Information Technology Manager, Brian Durst, the draft plan has been reviewed by the Board, shared at the State of the School meetings, and will be published in the coming months. This plan addresses both a strategic need, and a major recommendation made by ISACS (Independent Schools Association of the Central States) during our last accreditation.
We are pleased to welcome Marie Halpin and Micah Brown to our Learning and Counseling Team. Marie and Micah are helping to coordinate our learning support program across the divisions. Both serve in full-time roles, and work with students, parents, and teachers on helping to integrate learning plans into our students’ school experience. We are also pleased to note that the new Learning Center — Sara’s Room (in memory
of Roeper Alum Sara Porter ’95) at the Birmingham campus, has been designed and is more than half way funded. The remaining $250,000 needed to complete the project will yield a space to support 2E (twice exceptional) students, tutoring spaces, quiet study areas, and support for study skills across the Middle and Upper School. We are very excited about the opportunity to provide a space that will better meet student needs.
Our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) continues to be central to all the work we do at Roeper. This year, Director of Diversity Carolyn Lett led an initiative that created Multicultural Leadership Teams (MLT’s) on each campus. The teams are providing peer-to-peer leadership within our faculty and staff to make cultural competency a central component to all of the work we do. The Board of Trustees has followed Carolyn’s lead by completing its first SEED program and forming a DEI Committee of the Board.
Our public-private partnership — A Matter of Equity — with Detroit Public School’s Community District is successfully completing year two of our three-year project. In 2019, 28 teachers from DPSCD and Roeper participated in a week-long professional development program hosted by Wayne State University. Led by faculty from the College of William and Mary, teachers learned how to recognize gifted children, and then how to provide differentiated instruction within the classroom for these gifted children. The opportunity to work in partnership with DPSCD faculty was enriching and created connections among educators who might not ever have the chance to collaborate. Thanks to the leadership of Lori Lutz and the financial support of the E.E. Ford Foundation, we are taking the Roeper philosophy beyond the walls of our buildings while we learn from and share with new colleagues.
The second element of the Strategic Plan focuses on the health and well-being of our community. In her book, Overloaded and Underprepared, Stanford School of Education Professor Denise Pope asks us to challenge our definition of success and to look closely at the social and emotional needs of our students. Viewing each arriving freshman class at Stanford over the last decade, Dr. Pope has witnessed firsthand the changing level of readiness students possess when they arrive at college. From Dr. Pope’s perspective, students are more fragile and less independent. Her book calls on K–12 schools and parents to work in partnership on a series of skills to better prepare students for post-secondary life.
Within Dr. Pope’s work is a focus on: student schedules and use of time, project-based learning and problem-based learning within school curricula, alternative and authentic assessments by teachers, a climate of care focusing on the needs of the whole child within school communities, and education for the whole community — parents, teachers and students — in support of our children.
Based on these priorities, Dr. Pope formed an organization called Challenge Success, which sounds a great deal like the priorities that Annemarie Roeper discussed in the 1981 Philosophy when she described the work as a philosophy of life. Indeed, when we chose to take on updating our all-school schedule as part of this segment of the Strategic Plan, parents, students, and faculty articulated a list of priorities for that new schedule that are clearly in line with both Annemarie’s and Dr. Pope’s holistic view of teaching and learning.
Roeper Scheduling Priorities • Wellness, balance, time for reflection • Depth of learning • Reduce the frenetic pace — fewer transitions • Opportunities for collaborative teaching • Cross-divisional schedule alignment • Flexibility for off-campus experiential learning time • Time for professional growth and faculty collaboration • Enhance deeper relationships among students and faculty • Add to student and faculty quality of life > Minimize the busy-ness of the day > Reduce the amount of homework > Guarantee student access to extra help from teachers on a daily basis
The school has formed a committee of students, faculty and administrators to construct a new allschool schedule that uses these priorities as a filter. We know that the pace of the day, the week, the semester, and year impact the health and wellbeing of both students and teachers. Roeper is
and always has been a place that puts value on, as Dr. Pope described, a climate of care. Balancing the opportunities our gifted children have for a rich academic experience with an environment that allows them to develop agency, self-advocacy, and self-care are critical. We live in a time when anxiety, depression, and stress profoundly impact the daily lives of our students. How we pace the school day should enhance their emotional wellbeing, and cannot be a symptom that exacerbates the stress in their lives.
The third and final element of the Strategic Plan focuses on the financial sustainability of the school. This year, we completed work on the Roeper Legacy Society, a program designed to encourage and support planned gifts to the school. Community members are invited to make Roeper a part of their trusts and estate plans. This longterm giving option allows families to consider legacy gifts that can profoundly impact our future. As examples, Dennis Naas, for whom our new Commons is named, left the School a legacy gift in his trust that helped to fund the new Birmingham space. Long-time Roeper staff member, Mariann Hoag, left a legacy gift to the School that today helps us fund our need-based financial aid program. These planned gifts are powerful and impactful; I encourage you to reach out to Denita Banks-Sims, our Director of Development, to join this important group.
Our Annual Fund drive is another source of nontuition revenue. As I stated earlier, we see the cost of independent school continuing to rise, and yet, the tuition we charge does not cover the full cost of a Roeper education. To balance the budget each year, the school depends on donations to the Annual Fund to close the gap between expenses and revenue. Amounts vary based on a family’s means, but it is important to note that participation matters a great deal in this initiative. Each year Roeper makes application for a variety of corporate- and foundation-based grants. These institutions want to know the level of support that exists within a not-for-profit community from its core constituents. Parent participation in Annual Fund is a metric these institutions use to determine community commitment and investment. Our target this year is $200,000, and to exceed our 60% rate of parent participation. Our Annual Fund drive runs to the end of the school year and we encourage all families to support this critical financial investment. The School’s endowment fund has surpassed the $8,000,000 mark; this is a significant milestone for an institution that had little or no money in endowment a generation earlier. Endowment is money set aside in perpetuity. The principal is meant to grow, and yield income from sound investment that can be used to relieve the burden of various elements contained within the annual budget (e.g., financial aid, a named program, a specific position, etc.…). The larger the endowment grows, the more income it yields, and the less dependent we need to be as a school on tuition revenue.
Today, the endowment brings $327,000 into the annual budget (approximately 4% of the total of the principal — based on a five-year weighted average), or about 2% of our annual income. As we consider the strategic needs of the school, moving that 2% number closer to 10% would provide the school with far greater security and flexibility. Most importantly it would ease the burden on families who continue to see annual increases in tuition. Endowment is a source of non-tuition revenue that provides long-term security for our School. If you would like to learn more about creating a named endowment fund, or you would like to give to an already established fund, please let me know or contact Denita BanksSims, our Director of Development.
Our Board of Trustees’ Committee for Buildings and Grounds is engaged in the process of Master Campus Planning. This is a systematic study of our current campus, and determining the longterm brick and mortar needs we will have as a school. It was through this process that in the last strategic plan we focused our efforts on the Birmingham Project, and formed a partnership for our Athletic Department with Ultimate Soccer. Master Campus Planning is a long-term process that determines needs and helps to set priorities for the future. Some of the options discussed in our planning may occur during our current strategic plan, some will wait and be part of future plans and capital campaigns. The key is to be future-‚ focused, and to have vision. This, like much of the partnership between Head of School and the Board of Trustees, is to continuously peek around the corner, and to consider how best to prepare for the unknown future. F
