Much of the work of any Head of School is completed behind closed doors, often alone, working on policy development, responding to directives from the Board, preparing reports, conducting reviews, writing options papers, and so on.  It is important work (so I am told), and because I mention it so infrequently in my blogs, I would not want you to think I neglect it.  Similarly, I would not want to over-emphasize this less interesting side of my job because I would hate it if you drew the erroneous conclusion that I am a boring person who does boring things :-)

My view is that these administrative tasks are the things I do between the times when I do my real work, which is working with people.  That is why I have a open door policy that allows this work to be interrupted whenever someone comes to my door – people are my real work and my number one priority!  I know other Heads have different views, but I believe the really important work for a Head of School is talking with parents, working with students and listening to faculty.  Everything else remains important, but it is secondary to this over-riding priority.

This past week has been one of those times when the balance was not quite in the proportions I would normally choose.  There was so much of the ‘other’ work pressing on my time that I had a choice – either I needed to neglect some of  my ‘real’ work (i.e. working with students, faculty and parents) or I had to sacrifice some ‘down time’ and sleep.   I chose the latter, which I hope was the right choice.  When you are a Head of School, there are some weeks that are, quite simply, like that.

Early Thursday evening was a very happy exception to this pattern, however (and fortunately not the only one!).  I was delighted to help host an informal function for parents to talk about our exciting plans for the development of our campus in the next few

years.  There were three of these events scheduled for this past week by the Advancement Department.  I was unable to attend the first one on Monday due to an important meeting with some board members, the event on Tuesday was cancelled because of the heavy rain, and so it was a joy to help welcome about 30 parents to Thursday’s event under clear blues and golden sunshine.

The pace of our building works at the moment is nothing short of breathtaking.  The new classroom block and administrative facility near the front gate is still ahead of schedule.  We expect the building to be completed in May and to be fully functional by the opening of the new school year in August.

Three weeks ago, as everyone who uses our main driveway knows only too well, we started work on a second major building project, the new 440-space parking garage.  Although construction of the parking garage will cause some disruptions to carpool and parking arrangements until the end of this academic year at the end of May, the reward should be that the new facility will be fully operational from the start of the new school year in mid-August.   I have never known a place where so many people get excited about the improvements that a new parking garage will bring – and for good reasons given our shortage of parking spots and carpool congestion at the moment.

At Thursday evening’s meeting, we shared our plans for the next facet of campus development, which is a major extension to the Lower School and construction of an all-new, purpose-built pre-school facility.  We are working hard to gather the necessary funds to enable construction of the Lower School extension to commence in summer 2012, if possible, as this time frame would minimize the disruption to our students caused by construction work (such as noise and loss of playground space) during term time.

We certainly have some exciting times ahead of us.  It should not be too long (I hope) before we have an unrecognizably state-of-the-art campus to serve our students’ needs through several decades into the future.

I expect that the momentum to plan Awty’s future will take yet another leap forward this Tuesday evening when I will be holding the first meeting of the Strategic Planning Advisory Task Force.  At this meeting, I will be outlining the next stages of the consultative process and the plan of action to complete the Strategic Plan.  I will also be presenting a summary of the results of the recent Awty-wide strategic plan questionnaire.

I would love to share more about the strategic planning process with you now, as I am feeling quite excited by it (sad as it may be, strategic plans do typically excite Heads of Schools!).  However, I really should share this information with the Strategic Planning Advisory Task Force first, so I will restrain myself and write more about this next week.

Please watch this space!

The first group of bonus photos this week shows the progress made to date on our new classroom and administration block.

This second group of bonus photos shows the progress made to date on our new parking garage.