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Oh What a Time for Foxcroft’s Retiring Head of School
Oh What a Time for Foxcroft’s Retiring Head of School
By Leonard Shapiro
When the 2025-26 academic year starts this September, Cathy McGehee, Foxcroft’s beloved and outgoing head of school, admitted recently that it will be just a little difficult for her not to be hands-on involved in the educating of young women for the first time in 40 years.
“When is the right time” to retire, she asked out loud somewhat wistfully, sitting in her office recently on the 500-acre campus. She had announced last May she’ll be leaving the prestigious girls boarding school after the current academic year. “To me, it seemed best to do it when the school is in a strong place.”
McGehee, Foxcroft’s tenth head of school, has held the job for the last 11 years, a time of both unprecedented growth and monumental challenges, most notably dealing with the recent Covid pandemic.
She pointed out that in 2023, the average tenure for an independent high school leader in America was less than seven years. She’s also leaving at a time when Foxcroft has a record endowment of about $101.3 million. The current 168 students represent a 12 percent increase over the previous year’s enrollment, just a few short of its mid-170s capacity.
Foxcroft started out far smaller when the legendary Charlotte Haxall Noland—known simply to generations of students, faculty, staff and alumni as “Miss Charlotte”—founded the school in 1914. According to its website, “her dream was to create a school that girls would want to come to and hate to leave because they loved it.
“From the beginning, Miss Charlotte’s highest aim and Foxcroft’s greatest responsibility has been to educate the whole student. Her efforts to instill high purpose, integrity, leadership, understanding, and empathy in students, along with the school’s motto — mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body) — guide Foxcroft to this day.”
And as McGehee departs, Foxcroft is most definitely in a very strong place.
How about a faculty/student ratio of 1:5 and an average class size of 12? How about enviable diversity that includes a 20 percent international student body with 26 percent U.S. students of color and 30 percent day students from around the Middleburg area?
Those 168 girls come from 22 states and the District of Columbia and 21 different countries. About 75 percent of the faculty hold advanced degrees, with a global perspective among faculty, staff and administrators that includes teaching or living in 26 countries.
On McGehee’s watch, Foxcroft has added a number of cutting edge academic programs, with a heavy emphasis on a STEAM curriculum (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) to help prepare this generation for the future techno-centric job market.
Students can pursue robotics, scientific illustration, neuroscience, and drone technology. There’s an innovation lab, a high tech space that includes 3-D printers, vinyl and laser cutters and so much more. And Foxcroft is the first girls school in Virginia to use Purdue University’s Engineering Projects in Community Service program.
The school now has 50 buildings, including several built or renovated during McGehee’s tenure. The construction of the new Mars STEAM Wing is well underway as is planning and fundraising for a future performing arts center.
McGehee’s successor, Dr. Lisa Kaenzig, was named this past November and will take over starting on July 1, 2025. McGehee and a special committee of trustees, faculty and staff will work with Kaenzig in the coming months to assure a seamless transition in leadership.
McGehee and her husband, Dr. Read McGhee III, a retired ophthalmologist, plan to return to their native Richmond once she leaves Foxcroft. That’s where they raised their two adult daughters, and where her mother still lives. Before coming to Middleburg, she had spent the previous 19 years at St. Catherine’s School in Richmond, where she served as the Director of the Upper School from 2006-14.
She’s a member of the International Coalition of Girls’ Schools Board of Trustees, is vice chair of the Virginia Association of Independent Schools Board of Directors, and serves on the VAIS Accreditation Committee. And, she said, she fully intends to “stay involved with educational causes and continue to advocate for and support girls education.”
There’s definitely some travel in her future, as well. Both she and her husband are avid hikers, and they’ve already planned a trip to Scandinavia in August at a time of year when she’s usually gearing up to start another year of teaching and guiding young women.
Clearly, she knows she’s going to miss it.
“The people you’re around are what make this work so wonderful,” she said. “And teenage girls will keep you young. My days at Foxcroft are filled with joy and laughter. And watching these young women grow in confidence and poise is the honor of a lifetime. To be part of this school’s extraordinary history has been incredibly fulfilling.”
And the same also must be said for having Cathy McGehee at Foxcroft over the last 11 years. She’ll be missed, for sure.
