The Steps of Caedmon Spring 2024

The Steps of Caedmon

The Magazine of The Caedmon School

A LETTER FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

Dear Caedmon Community,

Each spring, the arrival of The Steps of Caedmon allows us to celebrate this wonderful school. In this issue, we share the story of the school’s exciting new music space. We are eager to cut the ribbon and open our beautiful new music classroom, but the world of post-pandemic construction has proven to be a true test of patience—originally, the room’s opening was proposed for last September. The room is, however, almost finished! Additionally, the magazine dives into the innovative work being carried out as we pursue our new Strategic Plan, Caedmon 2027: Difference Is Excellence. This plan ensures the unique, personalized learning that Caedmon delivers to every student.

In these pages you will also have a chance to learn more about two very special people at Caedmon. The first is one of the most gracious human beings I know—Laura Capote. Laura started working at the front desk during the pandemic, so many in our community have only recently come to know her sunny, kind smile. Your children, though, know and love Ms. Capote, due in part to her greeting each child by name every morning.

The second person, Brynja Sigurdardottir, joined the Caedmon team last July. Her title is The Director of Giving and Community Engagement—in other words, the person who brings together this spectacular, warm community. As I acknowledge every day, Brynja’s superpower is her ability to unite people and to galvanize their energy to make things happen. I have a sense that we have not yet truly begun to enjoy the social excitement that she will generate here in the years to come.

Finally, it is of the utmost importance that The Steps of Caedmon offers a loud and official Thank You for the generous financial contributions from members of our community. These gifts exhibit an authentic commitment to the thriving of our school. Given our size and population, we rely immensely on our parents, teachers, grandparents, alums, and staff to give generously, and we are overwhelmed with gratitude by their generosity. The Caedmon Trustees start things in September with a 100% commitment to a donation—and we encourage the entire community to follow their lead. As you can see in the magazine, they do so every year!

As always, a huge bravo and brava goes to the many people who give so much time and energy to Caedmon. A special thank you to the CFA Co-Presidents, Sherli Furst and Brena Cascini; they have brought excitement and energy to this year’s events (and brought the Halloween Haunted House back to the schoolhouse!). The CFA Class Reps and their organizer Rob Polsky keep all of us “in the know.” As always, the editor of this magazine, Dan McNerney, does an exceptional job and creates a beautiful publication.

With gratitude and admiration, Matthew Stuart

A LETTER FROM THE BOARD PRESIDENT

My name is Michael Gramer, and on July 1, 2023, I was honored to become the President of The Caedmon School Board of Trustees.  The Board includes parents of current and former Caedmon students and non-Caedmon educational professionals.  We meet regularly in committees and as a full board to further the mission of The Caedmon School, for its current students and for future generations. I am writing not only to introduce myself, but also to discuss my relationship with our Head of School and offer a brief update of what the Board has been up to.

As the new Board President, I spent time developing a deeper relationship with Matthew Stuart, now in his 12th year as head. We both agree that the relationship between the Board President and the Head of School is pivotal in the governance and leadership of Caedmon. We focused on four key areas: (1) A Shared Mission and Trust—our relationship thrives on transparency and trust.  Having these elements, we can collaboratively build on the greatness of Caedmon and support the mission. (2) Roles and Responsibilities—well-defined roles for the Board President and the Head are crucial to success.  The Board President leads the board, coordinates its work, and collaborates with other board members according to our mandate. In contrast, as Head of School, Matthew is responsible for Caedmon’s day-to-day operations. The Board’s role is to accept, respect, and support Matthew and his decisions. (3) Strategic Alignment—we have worked closely on implementing the Strategic Plan. The Board is responsible for the school’s long-term goals and making sure that Matthew’s administrative agenda aligns with the Strategic Plan. (4) Evaluation and Support—Matthew and I constantly provide each other with feedback to make sure we are both living up to the values of Caedmon.

A few highlights of what the Board has been up to:

• Focus on Enrollment and Finances. We are rebounding from the drop in enrollment we experienced during the pandemic and are returning to pre-pandemic numbers. As a result, and with prudent oversight by the Finance Committee, the school’s finances are in excellent shape.

• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB).  In response to the work of a year-long DEIB task force, the Board is taking into account DEIB when performing its fiduciary duties. Every committee of the Board has a DEIB-focused member who is charged with ensuring that DEIB plays a part in its decision-making.

• The Annual Fund. The fund is on its way to reaching its goal, and we have achieved 100% participation this year from the current Board of Trustees and faculty.

• New Music Room. Caedmon broke ground on a massive construction project of converting the former boiler room into a state-of-the-art music room to match Caedmon’s unparalleled elementary music program. We look forward to a grand opening very soon. The school owes a ton of gratitude to Kelly Riggle (Board Member and parent) for assisting with this project.

Thank you to everyone who supports Caedmon.

Michael W. Gramer President Board of Trustees of the Caedmon School (Parent to Roman, 2029 and Rose, 2030)

A NEW ROOM FOR MUSIC

Just before the pandemic, Caedmon embarked on a highly successful campaign that raised money for an ambitious building project. Renovations were planned that would add an extra Beginners classroom to the first floor. The school would also have worked with its neighbor and landlord, St. Monica’s Church, to remodel the church basement shared between the two buildings, converting that area into a large multi-purpose room with various educational uses. Ultimately, however, and in part because of the pandemic, a less disruptive proposal was decided on, one based on the needs of St. Monica’s and new building opportunities arising from the church’s decision to replace Caedmon’s old boiler with two small natural gas boilers. Although they supply heat to the schoolhouse, these boilers are actually located in the parish center next door, opening up the possibility of repurposing the old

downstairs boiler room, located in the basement-level lunchroom, and making an educational space out of its 750 square feet.

Some changes still occurred on the first floor under this new plan. The previous goal of renovating the first floor had been motivated by the need to add more classrooms for Caedmon’s expanding Beginners program. In the end, after Caedmon decided on a more modest building project, the school’s first floor music classroom was refashioned to provide an additional Beginners classroom, the room occupied this year by Ms. Ladak and Ms. Palacios’s class. As a result, the reconstruction of the boiler room became a matter of creating a new, state-of-the art space for Caedmon’s music classes.

For a number of years now Caedmon has used the Ashtin Group, a commercial building management

The music room as it nears completion

company, to handle its day-to-day facilities oversight. Renovations also fall within Ashtin’s purview, and so Scott Samuel, Caedmon’s representative at Ashtin, has been deeply involved in the current building project. Mr. Samuel’s primary task early on was the selection of the right architect for the design of the room. Aimee Lopez, whom he ultimately chose, stood out for him because of her experience with historic buildings and her extensive work with private schools throughout New York City. Her skill at staying within budget while still delivering an excellent design—her knack for what Mr. Samuel calls “value engineering”—was also highly important. As Mr. Samuel explains, many architects overdesign things, leading to escalating costs. Ms. Lopez, while caring a great deal about aesthetics, also has a concern for functionality, which keeps her from overdesigning a structure—rooms or buildings that are excessively designed, full of ornaments and frills, create more opportunities for things to break and greater challenges for long-term maintenance. When working with educational institutions, Ms. Lopez always keeps in mind questions about how a room will be used, how it will be cleaned and maintained, and whether, given its design, it will last a long time while still retaining an attractive appearance. And in her concerns about a design’s longevity, Ms. Lopez also includes a consideration of the other uses that a room may come to have in the future.

Ms. Lopez and Mr. Samuel had conversations with Matthew Stuart about the room, bringing in a number of images as examples of how it might look. The music teachers, Jeremy Davidson and Kathleen Kilbane, were also consulted to understand their needs for the classroom, and they provided Ms. Lopez with a wishlist that touched on their space needs, their concerns about acoustics, the ways the classroom might be used, issues with storage (there are many instruments that need to be housed in a music classroom), and the matter of flexibility, which is especially important because movement is a feature of music classes and because the students in music class span the entire gamut of ages at Caedmon, from Beginners to fifth grade. An understandable concern of everyone involved in the project arose from the fact that the room being worked on had originally been the building’s boiler room—how could a windowless room in the basement become a light-filled, exciting space that children would want to be in?

Adding to the challenges, moreover, was the matter of navigating rules laid down by the New York City Department of Buildings. Caedmon’s schoolhouse, being an older building, has operated under a Letter of No Objection, which, in the words of NYC’s Department of Buildings, “confirms the legal use of a building” constructed before 1938. Such buildings do not require the much more complex approval known as a Certificate of Occupancy (CO), at least so long as no construction has occurred that would produce changes to how the building is being used. As Ms. Lopez explains, however, renovations whose extent surpasses a certain threshold trigger requirements for the entirety of a building, resulting in the need to obtain a new CO, even for buildings that have previously operated with a Letter of No Objection.

The process of working with the Department of Buildings had also changed significantly in the wake of Covid. Previously, the process was an in-person one, making it possible to send expediters to ask questions of personnel in the department and allowing architects and contractors to form working relationships with them. In recent years, however, this has given way to an entirely online system through which everything must be submitted to the department; the result is a much longer process, one that, in this case, delayed Caedmon’s renovations, pushing them back to September from the summer of 2023, which had been originally intended as their start date. As it grappled with this system, the school benefited greatly from the assistance and advice of real estate attorney Kelly Riggle, who is both a Caedmon parent and a trustee. Much of Caedmon’s success in gaining approval for the building project while maintaining its Letter of No Objection is also due to Ms. Lopez, who did research identifying pieces of the building code that enabled the Department of Buildings to view the renovation as a localized project rather than something whose scope would necessitate a Certificate of Occupancy.

The contractor for the project, Bayview, was another choice of Mr. Samuel’s. All of the contractors who put in bids for the project were responsive, he says, but Bayview, in addition to offering highly competitive pricing, had established its credentials with Caedmon, having handled a number of renovations for the school, most notably the renovation of the science lab in 2018. Bayview’s founder and president, Mike Daly, also impressed Mr. Samuel with

his awareness of the particular needs that schools have and his eagerness to accommodate them—Mr. Daly had offered, for example, to do much of the work on weekends to avoid disrupting classes during the week with construction noise. Caedmon’s maintenance staff—Melvin Morillo, Miguel Gomez, Leo del Orbe, and Ronald Perez—have been vital to the success of the project as well, making sure that the construction area is always clean and free of obstructions. And great assistance has come from former Caedmon parents Li Zeng and Ai Zhang, the owners of the Chicago-based home design company Amberleaf Home, which has a specialty in millwork—furnishings such as cabinetry and other building materials made from wood and crafted at a mill. Because of Mr. Zeng and Ms. Zhang, all of the millwork to be used both in the new Beginners classroom and in the new music room has been a donation, and Caedmon hasn’t even been charged for the costs of shipping this material.

The music room is still under construction at the time of this writing, but its unveiling is awaited with great anticipation by faculty and students. Lower Level student Catalina Carrion, noting the proximity of the new music room to the art room, says “I’m excited to see how it looks and I’m excited to do music there. We always do music and art together, and now it’s going to be easier to go from one to the other!” Ms. Kilbane remarks about the renovation: “We are so excited to move into a space specifically designed for young musicians, composers, and performers. Having bespoke acoustics, state-of-the-art technology, and space both for Orff ensembles and for dance will give Caedmon’s music students even greater freedom to create. We can’t wait to hear what comes out of our new studio!” And Mr. Davidson adds similarly that he is “excited to work in a room which I think will inspire music making. I am also thrilled by the increase in space which will provide us with the room to dance and play instruments simultaneously!”

The music room under construction around early March 2024

Snapshots of the year

BEHIND THE FRONT DESK: A CONVERSATION WITH LAURA CAPOTE

Tell us about your journey to Caedmon. They used to have a nursery at Caedmon in 2011 and they needed an Assistant Teacher. Honor Taft was the Interim Head of School at the time. She interviewed me and sent me to have a chat with Jessica Grant-Martin, who was in charge of the nursery. We hit it off and I was hired. I had the amazing opportunity of taking care of Ms. Rama’s twins, former Caedmon teacher Ms. Keels’s daughter, Ms. Woodruff’s daughter, and Ms. Taft’s son. It was a wonderful experience. The nursery did not have enough babies the following year, [however], so they didn’t need 2 teachers.

I was working part-time at John Jay College of Criminal Justice when I got a call from Saniya and Kathleen offering me [an interview for] a part-time position in the Beginners class. They interviewed me, they introduced me to Ann Simmons and Stephanie Messing, and hired me. [So] I returned in 2018, and as they say the rest is history!

So you were at John Jay in the meantime?

My friend was the Head of the Anthropology Department at that time and needed an interim administrator. I applied, was interviewed by several members of the department, and got the job. It was a challenging position for me, but I learned so much and it prepared me really well in different areas of organization, people skills, and administrative tasks. There was a time when there was a lot of turmoil in that department and I pride myself on knowing how much I worked with the Interim Head and other members to keep the Anthropology Department running smoothly then. I loved working there, but they were not able to offer me full time. I don’t regret [leaving] one bit. I really enjoy being at Caedmon—I’ve made so many friends, I’ve learned so much about education and especially little kids. Yeah, I never looked back!

And how did you get involved in teaching?

I was an English teacher as a second language (ESL), and I used to translate documentaries, and do the captions for movies for a company in Mexico. But when I moved to New York I started exploring something different, and

I realized I liked kids a lot and I didn’t know anything about them. So that’s what really opened my curiosity. So I started [studying] Early Childhood while I was working in restaurants. I wanted to learn more hands-on [too], so I started babysitting as well until I got a call from Caedmon.

Where did you study Early Childhood?

At Lehman College. I was born in Mexico City. After I graduated high school, my mom had me go away for a year. I applied through a company to be an exchange student for a whole year, and a family from Idaho chose me. Idaho was quite an experience for me, because I came from a colossal city like Mexico City into a town of 3,000 people, Payette, Idaho, which is about an hour from Boise—the capital city. It’s on the border with Oregon. It was an amazing experience for me because, first of all, the language—that’s where I really got rid of most of my accent. And I learned so much of American culture, so many idioms, expressions, and things like that. The living experience was amazing because I was a student. I lived with this lovely family and they liked to travel, so we did a little traveling around Oregon and California, Nevada, and otherwise I wouldn’t have had that experience. So it was a great year for me. I’ll always be grateful to my mom for giving me that opportunity.

And then you went back to Mexico?

I got back to Mexico City, so yeah, I worked as a translator, as an English teacher as a second language for nine years at a school for English for adults. One day I came to New York on vacation. That’s the second part of my story, because I stayed! I had never been on the east side of the country and I really, really loved it. I met my husband and made a life here.

What about your time in Beginners?

It was great, but it was a lot of learning for me because I had worked with kids, but not in a Montessori setting, so it was a lot of learning. I had a lot of support from the teachers that I worked with, Mrs. Messing and Ms. Simmons.

They were amazing mentors for me. I get very emotional because they were very patient and they taught me everything that they knew that I should know, so I’ll always be very, very grateful, and they were very encouraging and they were always praising what I did. So it was really, really nice to work with them and we were lucky enough to be together for 2 years.

How did you become Caedmon’s receptionist?

Because of the pandemic there were so many changes everywhere. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic a lot of people left the city and we didn’t have enough students for the last group, the last class [the class in which Ms. Capote was a teacher]. So what was offered to me was a part-time job which wouldn’t have all the benefits and all that. So the school had a meeting and decided that they didn’t want to let me go and they knew part time would not be enough for me. So at the time Pauline [Johnson], who had been here for 33 years, decided to retire because of the pandemic. She didn’t want to travel because she doesn’t live in the city, and the administrator at the time, Simon Prosser [Caedmon’s former CFOO], suggested that maybe I could take that job. So they asked me, and I said yes because of the experience that I had in John Jay, which was really intense and I loved it—I really love taking care of people, that’s my calling, and I said yes right away.

And again they liked me—I got many compliments for my job from the administrators and they were very happy, so I brought a lot of knowledge that I already had. It’s very difficult to be the administrator of a department in a college. Here it’s a little bit different, but many things are the same—organization skills, people skills, a little PR…I applied it here, and I guess being bilingual doesn’t hurt, and I like people! I knew I was going to miss the classroom setting, but in the end the reception was better for me. I really love coming to work every day. I am really pumped up and happy to come to work because the reception gave me the opportunity to meet every single staff, faculty, and parent, whereas in the classroom it was only the parents of my kids, my kids, and just the teachers that I worked with.

What’s a typical day like for you?

The morning is very, very busy, very hectic, because it’s dropoff. A lot of parents want to talk to the nurse, want to give messages to the teachers, so I’m there to direct them, I’m there to help them. We have a lot of visitors to the school for tours, birthday celebrations, publishing parties, and more. Then it calms down a little bit, so I can do some administrative work. It calms down around 8:50, then I lock doors, and I start doing reception work: phone calls, mail, packages. There’s so many angles to reception.

I’m also Caedmon’s registrar, so I manage academic records for all the students and have them ready for Sue Bonet since she is in charge of sending paperwork to middle schools. I think the most hectic times are dropoff and dismissal. Safety is a priority, so at those moments it’s all eyes on the kids, the doors, and the cameras. After that, around 3:40, it winds down. As in every school, there are also months that are the busiest and others that aren’t as much. [And] there are other things I take care of. I send birthday greetings to all the staff and faculty, I take care of the reception bulletin board, and I’m currently assisting Mr. Stuart with Guild matters since he’s the President of the NYC Guild of Independent Schools, etc.

What’s one challenge of the job?

To make everybody happy, because everybody needs something from the reception, sometimes at the same time, on the same day, and it’s very hard to take care of many, many different things and many different people at the same time. I’m a one-woman show! So I try to help everybody the best I can. I try to work well with everybody, and I try to do the work as fast as I can so everybody is happy and everybody has what they need.

What’s something about the job that you love?

Definitely taking care of people’s needs. Where’s this, who’s that, can you locate this person, can I have this file on this kid? And greeting all the kids as they walk into the school house. I am in a very privileged position because I see everything and I can talk to everyone, since I am the first person they see. I’m very fortunate to have made so many friends at work.

Do you have any great on the job stories?

Well, there’s so many, right? I love to see parents who studied at Caedmon and they’re applying for their children now as adults! Some of them even say hello to some of their teachers who are still working here. A more recent story: Sra. FitzGerald, Caedmon’s great Spanish teacher, brought over first/second grade students and they sang three songs for me in Spanish! I was so happy to hear them and to see how much they have learned of my beautiful and complex first language. Some of the kids were my students in Beginners, so that made it extra special!

Caedmon Gallery

The Steps of Caedmon presents this photo exhibit of art created in several media by Caedmon students throughout the 2023-24 school year. Most of the works have been made in Mr. Anderson and Ms. Almanzar’s art classes; a few items have also come from art-themed after school classes taught in the fall and winter terms.

Left: Top: Siobhan Yang (work in progress); Bottom: Alex Dele-Michael. Right: Top: Ethan Caspi-Litvak; Middle: Tina Liu; Bottom: Lecheng Shi.

Left: Top: Miles Patterson; Middle: Sophia Miller Contreras. Right: Asher Goldring. Bottom: Marie Zanger, Annabella Jimenez, Hilaire Ferdinand, Brynna Portella (work in progress).

Left: Top: Martha Nachtrieb; Middle: Julia O’Hara; Bottom: Daniel Rouillard. Right: Top: Jocelyn Lum; Middle: Sophia Liu; Bottom: Eva Maruani.

Left: Top: Gabby Miranda; Middle: Idris Aryani-Warner. Right: Leila Nashat. Bottom: Charlotte Bruker.

Caedmon’s Strategic Task Forces

Two years ago Caedmon embarked on creating a new strategic plan for the school. A strategic planning committee comprising administrators, teachers, parents on the board of trustees, and facilitator Ryan Burke, from the educational consulting firm Leadership + Design, worked on developing a vision for the school’s future. Over the course of the 2021-22 school year, the committee convened regularly, soon splitting up into four subcommittees, each charged with identifying goals for a specific facet of Caedmon that had been selected as a focus for planning as a result of previously conducted research, including interviews with members of the community. These four facets of the school were the academic program, the schoolhouse, faculty development, and Caedmon’s inclusive community. In addition to the committee, the entire parent body also had an opportunity to contribute: a Community Design Day, which took place on March 5, 2022, enabled parents to gather in the schoolhouse and respond to the committee’s ideas with their own suggestions. Working from parent feedback and their own further research, the four subcommittees subsequently presented their final proposals to one another in a June 2022 meeting. Then, in response to these presentations, a smaller steering committee— Matthew Stuart, Ryan Burke, and several trustees, including Caedmon parents Kara Zanger, Jamie Stecher, and Katie Taylor—met over the summer months and wrote the final product of this process, the strategic plan for Caedmon’s next three to five years.

Mirroring the structure of the subcommittees of the strategic planning committee, this document identified four areas of focus or initiatives for ongoing work at Caedmon: 1) Academic Program Excellence, 2) Faculty Support and Development, 3) Authentic Diversity, and 4) Maintaining the Schoolhouse. Moreover, in keeping with

“think-big” principles advocated by Leadership + Design, each of these areas of focus was given its own defining goal to stimulate ambitious proposals for how to proceed. “A unique personalized curriculum” was the goal assigned to Academic Program Excellence. Faculty Support and Development was paired with “Honoring our revered teacher-artists”, encouraging the idea of teachers as artists of their profession, while Authentic Diversity received “Redefining a global Caedmon neighborhood”, words which promulgate a vision of the school’s community which broadens it beyond the confines of the Upper East Side. Finally, the Maintaining the Schoolhouse initiative was associated with the goal-defining phrase “Bespoke schoolhouse”.

Over the summer of 2023, the administration, looking over the initiatives of the strategic plan, considered what would be needed to achieve some of their corresponding goals. Working backwards, they determined that faculty-led task forces would be an excellent means of accomplishing the goals of the plan, and after deciding that the initiative “Maintaining the Schoolhouse” would best be addressed at a later time, they created six task forces to work on goals pertaining to the first three initiatives. (The discrepancy between the number of task forces and the number of initiatives arose from the identification of multiple goals within the Academic Program Excellence and Authentic Diversity initiatives, requiring three task forces for the former and two for the latter of those areas.) The idea behind the creation of these particular task forces is to produce incremental but substantial, measurable results that move Caedmon towards a future along the lines envisioned by the strategic plan.

In the following pages, we present succinct descriptions of each task force and the work it has been doing throughout the 2023-24 academic year.

TASK FORCE 1:

The Personalized Academic Experience

The Personalized Academic Experience, one of three task forces addressing the strategic plan’s Academic Program Excellence initiative, has set itself a communication goal for the 2023-24 school year: to develop a concise graphic that clearly lays out the academic progression from grade to grade within the span of a single academic year. A major concern of the task force is to ensure that the graphic captures the way in which Caedmon’s four tenets—Community, Academic Excellence, Diversity, and Montessori—build or spiral from one grade to the next. Identifying other commonalities across the grade levels in addition to the four tenets and including them in the graphic is also a goal for this task force.

TASK FORCE 2:

Student Tracking Instruments

How Caedmon might document each student’s progress from Beginners to fifth grade is the challenge this second of the Academic Program Excellence task forces is seeking to address. For this year, the group has worked to identify a suitably individualized academic tracking system and to decide on what kinds of student data it should contain—the idea is to facilitate the ability of Caedmon teachers to check the progress of any one of their students by offering them a digital platform on which they can find student work and report cards from previous years. One of the task force’s next steps is to examine an administrative platform that CFOO Dave Carty and Assistant Head Saniya Mehdi have been considering as a replacement for Caedmon’s current record-keeping platform. This alternative administrative platform offers a student tracking system, and the task force would like to assess its suitability for the age range taught at Caedmon.

TASK FORCE 3: Teacher-artists and the Professional Teaching Environment

This task force, which addresses Faculty Support and Development, has been working on making Caedmon teachers more familiar with their colleagues’ curricula and teaching styles. Ultimately, the goal is to cultivate a school in which every teacher has a picture of the educational journey that Caedmon students advance through from Beginners up through fifth grade. In the 2023-2024 school year, this task force has established a class observation system through which every Caedmon teacher and all academic administrators will sign up to observe one specialist class and two homeroom classes, one in each of the school’s two divisions (Early Program and Elementary). After reviewing the data contained in observation forms all teachers are asked to complete during their observations, this task force will later report to the faculty and administrators about distinguishing features of the teaching and learning that take place in the school.

Elena Howell and Amy McGregor, two members of the Student Tracking Instruments Task Force

TASK FORCE 4: Assessing Caedmon’s Community

The goal of this Authentic Diversity task force is, in the words of one of its co-leaders, Bryan Storti, “to determine if we’re actually as warm and nurturing as we say we are.” At the time of this writing, the task force plans to gather data about its topic by conducting a survey in April that will be directed at everyone in the Caedmon community, including non-Caedmon parents of students in Caedmon’s Music School and Discovery Camp. Mr. Storti adds that the survey tool for community members in grades 3-5 and for adults will be one developed by YouthTruth, a non-profit company that provides schoolwide surveys for data-gathering purposes. For younger students in the Caedmon community, the task force will create a separate, developmentally appropriate survey. Mr. Storti also remarks that the task force would like to conduct the survey annually so as to identify trends in the data.

TASK FORCE 5:

Exploring a Journey Partners Program

The second of the two task forces working on the Authentic Diversity initiative of the strategic plan, this group has explored how to implement a Journey Partners program at Caedmon. Journey Partners, which was developed at St. Luke’s School and The Cathedral School, is a DEIB program in which teachers and administrators are placed in small groups whose membership is mixed with respect to gender, race, teaching level/department, and other areas of personal and professional identity. Over multiple meetings, these groups discuss how various facets of one’s identity influence professional choices and how one presents oneself within a community. Working with the Caedmon administration, the Journey Partners task force has determined that the best format for this program at Caedmon should involve four-person groups. The task force is aiming to carry out a test-run of the program, creating the groups and conducting one or two meetings by the end of the year.

TASK FORCE 6: LETRS, Orton-Gillingham, and the Teaching of Reading

Another one of the Academic Program Excellence task forces, the LETRS and Orton-Gillingham task force has been examining Lexia’s language arts program LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling). LETRS, like PAF, which is currently in use at Caedmon, is a Science of Reading-based literacy program. This task force has been charged with determining whether Caedmon should adopt LETRS and, given that the relevant training requires an extensive time commitment, how the program should be implemented if the decision is made to switch literacy programs. As task force leaders Heather Halverson and Katie Pozerski emphasize, the group is looking very carefully at LETRS lessons and assessments to reach a conclusion about how best to teach reading and writing to the student body at Caedmon.

JJ Murphy, Taylor Rosenblatt, and Katie Pozerski working in the LETRS Task Force

The Best Part of the Year!

ALEX ACHI

(Fourth Grade)

I WOULD SAY THE PRIVILEGES OF BEING IN FOURTH GRADE, LIKE HOW YOU GET TO COME TO THE TEACHER CONFERENCES, AND BECAUSE, SINCE YOU’RE OLDER, YOU GET TO HAVE BOOK BUDDIES WITH MS. MILTON’S CLASS!

JULIA IRIBARNEGARAY

(Fifth Grade)

I’M VERY EXCITED ABOUT THE CLASS TOMB! WE’RE STUDYING THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. WE’RE RESEARCHING DEITIES AND WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A CLASS TOMB ABOUT DEITIES AND THE THINGS WE’VE RESEARCHED!

OLIVIA PACE

(Early Program)

I LOVE THE BIOMES. I LOVE THE ARCTIC BIOME. I LIKE HOW WE GET TO EXPLORE WHAT THE PENGUINS COULD DO AND THE POLAR BEARS AND ALL SORTS OF STUFF LIKE IGLOOS.

ZAIN BSAT (Kindergarten)

WHEN ONE WEDNESDAY I WENT TO SWIM SCHOOL AND I WAS STAR OF THE MONTH! I GOT TO HAVE A MEDAL AND A PHOTO OF MYSELF!

XAVIER SWERDLOFF

(Third Grade)

MY FAVORITE PART OF THIS YEAR IS THE NEW FRIENDS I MADE! IT’S VERY EASY TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH THEM. IT’S NICE BECAUSE I WAS IN A DIFFERENT CLASSROOM LAST YEAR WHEN WE WERE IN LOWER LEVEL.

The Steps of Caedmon spoke with a range of students at Caedmon, asking each of them the question “What is the best part of this school year?” Here are the answers they gave!

ELLI GIANNAKOPOULOU (Second Grade)

WHEN WE STARTED MINECRAFT IN LIBRARY I WAS HAPPY BUT NERVOUS, BUT THEN CATALINA [CARRION] ASKED ME IF WE COULD DO A BUILD TOGETHER, AND ACTUALLY IT WAS PRETTY FUN!

DANIEL ROUILLARD (Second Grade)

THE ASSEMBLIES. THE HUNDREDTH DAY OF SCHOOL ASSEMBLY BECAUSE BASKETBALL IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE SPORTS. THE DRAGON [AT THE CHINESE NEW YEAR ASSEMBLY] “ATE” MY HAND AND HE SPIT OUT LETTUCE!

LAUREN LOH (First Grade)

MATH. BECAUSE I GET TO WRITE DOWN ANSWERS AND TAKE TESTS! WE’RE LEARNING HOW TO ADD THREE-DIGIT NUMBERS, AND WE’RE ALSO WORKING ON USING NUMBER STRINGS.

PETER SPEKTOR (Kindergarten)

I LOVED THE DRAGON DANCE FOR THE CHINESE ASSEMBLY. WE GOT TO PET IT. IT SCARED US. IT WAS RED!

MARIA REBOREDO (Early Program)

MY FAVORITE PART IS MOSAICS! THEY’RE LITTLE PIECES. WE GLUED THEM TO MAKE A PIECE AND WE CAN SOMETIMES FIND THEM IN SUBWAYS. MS. NUNES TAUGHT THE LESSON. WE MADE A CASTLE [OUT] OF IT. IT HAD COLOR. COLOR IS BEAUTY!

ALUMNI UPDATES

Andre Nikowitz (Class of 2014)

A student at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland, Andre is currently on track to earn his undergraduate degree in psychology this year. In addition, he is completing a number of non-degree requirements. One course he is taking in fulfillment of the latter is a class in comparative literature which examines, in Andre’s words, “political plays from a variety of theatrical traditions.” Outside of school, Andre attends events given by the university’s student-led Art Society and enjoys swimming and longdistance running. Andre sees a connection between his elementary school and his choice to pursue his college education overseas, acknowledging the role Caedmon played in helping to nurture his sense of adventure and his openness to different cultures and experiences. “Caedmon built on the cosmopolitanism I experienced as a child through my parents,” he explains. “The nature of the multicultural community that Caedmon fostered in inviting children to take their learning into their own hands is directly involved in my decision to do the same abroad.”

Carmen Berkovits (Class of 2017)

Finishing up her senior year at Beacon High School, Carmen has maintained ties with Caedmon by working Tuesday afternoons in the school’s Extended Day program. In the fall she will be attending McGill University, where she plans to study International Relations. Carmen credits a class in Constitutional Law that she took in high school this year with getting her interested in current events and the nature of government, topics she wants to keep learning about through her prospective major. Carmen is additionally interested in minoring in French—she took private lessons in the language in middle school and studied it throughout high school, when she was also in classes on French civilization and politics. Among her non-academic pursuits, dance has been important to Carmen, and she has studied ballet at the American Youth Dance Theater since she was in the fifth grade; she cites Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet as her favorite ballet. Reflecting on her Caedmon journey, Carmen says, “I made really good friends here, and I’m still friends with them and will be for a long time!”

Daniyal Khan

(Class of 2015)

Born in London, Daniyal returned to the UK in 2014 after completing his fourth grade year at Caedmon. Daniyal is currently enrolled at Durham University in England, where he is a sophomore studying both History and Classics. His courses this year have included classes on the early Roman Principate, the reception of Classical art in Renaissance Italy, and Early Modern globalization and colonialism. Daniyal is also on the rowing team of his college, and he enjoys long distance running as well, participating in the London Half Marathon last April, in which he raised a little over $3,170 for an ambulance service, the Children’s Air Ambulance. Additionally, Daniyal describes himself as “heavily involved” in Durham University’s Finance Society, its Union, and—as a Dane on one side of his family—its Nordic Society. Through his participation in the Durham University Union he has attended talks given by, among others, Jordanian ambassador Manar Dabbas, Noam Chomsky, and Canadian politician John Baird.

Maya Darst-Campell (Class of 2008)

Maya is currently working towards her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Pace University. Because of her professional interest in neuropsychological assessments, she is pursuing her clinical externship—a big part of her doctoral work— in the field of neuropsychology, which the American Psychological Association defines as “the branch of science that studies the physiological processes of the nervous system and relates them to behavior and cognition.” Maya’s externship is being carried out at Weill Cornell Hospital, and she remarks that her work there revolves around seeing pre- and post-surgical neurological patients.

Sophia Alden (Class of 2014)

After completing high school in Sweden (her father’s native country), Sophia spent a year in Mexico City pursuing Spanish language studies at UNAM. During her time in Mexico, Sophia also took voice lessons from a singing teacher and sang in the teacher’s choir. Sophia is currently back in Sweden, where she is working towards a degree in Industrial Engineering and Management at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. She says that she has

decided to specialize in Sustainable Energy Systems, and that she is excited by the courses in business and sustainability she is studying on top of the traditional math and physics classes associated with her degree. Sophia has also continued with her singing and belongs to a chamber choir that performs roughly once a month. The choir will be performing later this year at the Grieg International Choir Competition and Festival in Bergen, Norway, as well as doing Christmas concerts in Dublin in December.

Sophia Lesokhin (Class of 2018)

Sophia is now an 11th grader at the Special Music School, where she is a violin major and also takes supplementary classes in music history and music technology. Playing violin since the age of five, she chose to attend SMS because she wanted to be part of a community in which she could connect with others through music. In recent years Sophia has performed Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony with the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and played chamber music with the New York Youth Symphony.

Additional performances of hers include an appearance on WNYC Radio’s “New Sounds Live” with other SMS

representatives and a performance of a concerto last year with ISO (InterSchool Orchestras). Outside of music, Sophia is shadowing a psychologist, helping her with her work and revamping her website while learning about psychology in the process; she is also keeping up her connection with Caedmon by working in the school’s Extended Day program.

Tatiana Pavletich (Class of 2012)

Tatiana is in her first year of the Tri-Institutional Weill Cornell Medical College-Rockefeller University-Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center MD-PhD program. The program offered through this consortium enables students to obtain a joint MD and medical research-related PhD; through these two degrees program graduates are equipped to be both clinicians and researchers within the medical field. The MD is awarded by Weill Cornell Medical College, while the PhD, depending on the area of study, is given out by the Weill Cornell Graduate School, Rockefeller University, or Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School.

From left to right: Daniyal Khan, Sophia Alden, Maya Darst-Campbell, Tatiana Pavletich, Andre Nikowitz

A Conversation with Brynja Sigurdardottir

Can you describe your journey to Caedmon?

Where were you previously? What has been your experience in the development field prior to this?

I used to work in finance years ago, before I had my kids. I left that field 13 years ago, took a break to raise my family, and I spent a lot of time volunteering for my children’s schools. Then the past few years I did that sort of as a full-time job but still [on a] volunteering [basis]. I finished my term a year ago doing that and really had found my passion to work in a school environment by volunteering, so I looked into some options in the city to pursue that professionally. That brought me to Caedmon— they had an opening that I found interesting and I spoke to people in the field. Caedmon has a great reputation as a good school and a really, really excellent community, which was extremely important to me—to be in a warm and friendly community, but also in an educational environment that is child-centered. So it was really the job itself that spoke to me, and the community and the environment.

Can you tell us a little about your family?

My husband, Gudmundur, and I are both from Iceland. We moved to the US in 2004 for grad school and ended up staying. We have two boys, Jakob and Tomas, who are now in 6th and 8th grade. We love to travel, and our trips often involve skiing. When we’re home we spend a lot of time playing board and card games together. Our family is still in Iceland, so we go back once or twice a year to see them.

Tell us a little more about your volunteering experience! I started in [my children’s] preschool, ran their benefit. Then at Dalton, where my boys have been since Kindergarten, I’ve done various positions, but 2020 until 2022 I ran their Parents Association. It’s a school with roughly 1300 students, and the family association there has active 2-300 volunteers. I ran that organization, and through that role I worked really closely with the administration, including the development team, and that’s how I learned a lot about the operations of a school and how it really works.

Has your background in finance been helpful to you in this later work?

To a certain extent. The parents association [at Dalton] has their own budget, so that’s sort of where I had to use my finance [background], and I believe any math background is helpful when running an organization and working on logistics and whatnot. So maybe not directly, except with the budget, but the logical thinking and project management is big, which is my engineering background: that’s what I did in undergrad—and grad actually as well. I did financial engineering for my grad school, which brought me to the US. So to a certain extent, yes, it helps!

So what was the finance background?

I did research on securitized products, specifically asset-backed securities, so I would look at bonds that were backed by consumer loans. I did some research on consumer behavior like auto loans, student loans, credit card receivables. I would write weekly pieces on what was going on with the market and then monthly pieces that were more long-term views and educational.

Where was this?

At JP Morgan.

You’ve said that it’s important to you to work in a friendly and warm community. Why is that?

I think having taken a break from the conventional work force for a while and being lucky enough to spend time with my children and volunteer at their schools, that qualitative piece was extremely important to me, and focusing on being happy at my job was a priority. I have learned over the years that I thrive better in that kind of environment. Not to say that finance was [not] interesting and fun, but as I’ve matured and had my own family—at this point in my life it was a priority to have that warm and nurturing environment…and it has proven true: in the three or four months that I’ve been here, it’s validated how I felt.

Tell us about your background. You’re from Iceland?

I’m born and brought up in Iceland. It’s a small country right now. It has about 350-60 thousand people living there. I’m one of three siblings. I have two brothers— I’m in the middle, and we’re all close in age. I had a joyful and nice childhood close to my extended family: cousins, grandparents, so those are very fond, strong memories growing up, and I did my undergrad [degree] over there, and then it was sort of a natural thing to go abroad for a master’s degree, so that’s what brought me to the US to pursue a master’s degree in engineering.

Where did you pursue that?

At Cornell. I did financial engineering at Cornell. And my husband—my boyfriend at the time—and I, we came here together. It was a one-year master’s program, and we were definitely going to go back to Iceland. A lot of Icelandic people go abroad for higher ed, but most of them go back because it’s a tight community. So we came here, and I always say the biggest indication of our determination to go back is we did not get cell phones in the US. We did not get a car, even though a car would have been helpful at Cornell. And then halfway through, we were like, Why not see, stay and check it out? [We had] no kids at the time, nothing to tie us down anywhere. So that’s what brought me to my first job in the US, at Chase Credit Cards, in Delaware, for a year, and then I transferred to the New York office doing the research that I was telling you about.

So you were in Wilmington?

I was in Wilmington, Delaware! Yes, for a year.

And then you went to Chase in New York or JP Morgan?

JP Morgan in New York. And [I’ve] been on the Upper East [Side] since I moved here in ’06. I moved to the States in ’04, was at Cornell ’04-’05, then Delaware in ’06, and then came here. I used to have family up in Brewster, [New York], which is roughly an hour [away], so we would spend Thanksgiving there when we were at Cornell, and then we were there sometimes on weekends, and I lived there and commuted into the city my first one or two months after I transferred here.

How often do you visit Iceland?

We go back [to Iceland] at least once and often twice a year. Every summer we take the boys for a few weeks and sometimes for the holidays or spring break as well. And my parents come a few times a year. So we’re all pretty close even though we live far away.

Where in Iceland?

It’s in the Reykjavik area. Technically it’s a smaller town, but it’s also the Reykjavik metropolitan area. My in-laws are there as well, and my siblings. We can bike to my brothers’ homes from where my parents are, and we stay with my parents.

What have been your impressions of Caedmon so far?

It’s been great and I truly mean it! In meetings or at events, it feels like I’ve been here forever. I don’t feel new. The administrative team and the people I work with have been wonderful. From that perspective, it has been an easy transition, and it has felt good—[there’s been] no sort of “Huh, I didn’t expect this.” It’s been like, “OK, that makes sense, given what I’ve heard and given what I thought.”

What are some goals you have for the position?

Create a database—looking into a software which we can use for this. Bringing the community together and bringing them back to the schoolhouse. All schools, especially in New York, went through a rough time during the pandemic with not being able to invite families and parents into the school in person, so that is one of our priorities. I know Caedmon did an amazing job staying open for the students during Covid but until this fall it’s been a couple of years since the parents have really been around. That is really a priority—to continue to invite parents into school, and make sure we are in touch and

meeting up with them. That’s one of the main reasons why we were crazy enough to bring the Halloween party back into the schoolhouse! Because that is one of our main priorities, really to bring everyone back, bring them together. And that is one of the favorite parts of my job actually, to have a strong partnership with families and work closely with the CFA—all amazing volunteers. It is also important to me to share with the community the importance of giving back to Caedmon, both with donations and in terms of time and volunteering. I would say those two are my main goals for the job—continuing to bring the community together and sharing the importance of philanthropy. And on a personal level, getting to know the community and being a support and a sounding board is extremely important, because that is part of community engagement—just being there for the community.

What kind of overlap did you have with Cindy?

I started coming in in June, and the last two weeks of June I was probably here most of the time, just to learn from her, before her last day on June 30th. I found that really helpful and I enjoyed working with her. We spent those two weeks really working side by side, and she

gave me as much information as you can over that time period…and I tried to digest as much as possible, but at some point I probably hit the limit and she gave me lots more than I was able to take in. We’re still in touch— I still email her questions and she’s been generous, but I try to be respectful of her retirement!

What do you like to do in your spare time?

What are your hobbies?

Spare time I spend with my kids and my family. When you work all week, I actually don’t mind driving for an hour or two with my kids to a soccer match or a martial arts tournament—it’s not bad, and I actually try to enjoy that. My favorite, favorite thing to do is travel, especially with my family, and we love to ski—that is a big thing for us and a big part of our identity, to try to ski a few times a year, and it’s a great family hobby, we find.

Where do you go?

Anywhere there is snow! We’ve skied on the East Coast, Colorado, Utah, West Coast. Very little in Europe, so that’s kind of on our list!

Reflections on Caedmon

With their graduation just weeks away, our fifth graders were asked to reflect on their time at Caedmon, thinking about what the school has meant to them, or about an important lesson it has taught them. The following comments are a selection of the things they had to say!

I’ve been at Caedmon for a really long time, and in all this time, I’ve gained a lot of memories I will keep in the coming years. The community has been so incredibly welcoming, and I will cherish it forever.”

I have learned so much at Caedmon, but what I found the most was that you can find a family in a class.” Every moment that you could be learning something counts.”

I’ve learned that something will always come out of failure.”

Caedmon made me feel stronger with my learning and smarter, and made me cherish a lot of memories.”

I’ve learned at Caedmon that other people’s perspective is just as important as your own.”

I will always remember Caedmon because it taught me that, whether you came in 4th grade or pre-K, you will always belong.”

With Deep Gratitude

Dear Caedmon Community,

Reflecting on the past year, I am filled with gratitude for your unwavering support and generosity. Your contributions have profoundly impacted our school, helping us surpass our Annual Fund goal and raise $320,000 during the 2022-23 school year. This support ensures we can continue providing exceptional education and offer Flexible Tuition to deserving students.

The success of our Annual Fund reflects the dedication of our donors, volunteers, faculty, and staff. Together, we have created a nurturing environment where students can thrive and reach their full potential. Your generosity not only affects the present but also sets the foundation for future generations of learners.

We also value the generous gifts of time and talent from our community. This year, the Caedmon Family Association revived the Halloween Party with its famous haunted house, and we welcomed over 170 guests to the Secret Garden Gala. Thank you to all the volunteers who made these events special.

I extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to Caedmon this year. Your belief in our mission is truly inspiring. I look forward to building on this success in the coming year.

With sincere gratitude,

Brynja Sigurdardottir Director of Giving and Community Engagement

THE ANNUAL FUND 2023

1962 FOUNDERS’ CIRCLE $20,000+

Moreen McGurk and Family

Adam and Elizabeth Rosman

Mark Wallace

LEADERSHIP CLUB $10,000–$14,999

Ethan and Jenna Dabbs

Christopher and Christine Fashek

Joseph and Rebecca Hartswell

CAEDMON PARTNER $5,000–$9,999

Anonymous (1)

Ejim and Andrea Achi

Richard Froom and Kelly Riggle

Victor Gill and Amanda Lewis

Richard and Janine Hoffman

Eliot and Michelle Knudsen

Garret Leahey and Tanya Benenson

Frederic Lotti and Pamela Codo-Lotti

John Modzelewski and Jennifer Rodburg

Steven and Ashleigh Raizes

Andrew Rouillard and Celine Chan

Shubh and Ridhima Singh

David and Jody Stern

Matthew Stuart and Phillip Pena

Eric Yuen and Patty Ng

Samuel and Kara Zanger

BENEFACTORS’ CLUB $2,000–$4,999

Anonymous (1)

Takumi and Tsukasa Arakaki

Elliot and Ashley Blanchard

Freda Gimpel

David and Jill Grazioli

Steven Horwitz and Nicole Marshall

Vladimir Kokorev and Sandra Herrera

Joan Lonergan

Emmanuel and Natsuko Maruani

Dale McComb and Ashleigh Bischoff

Isao Okano and Renata Clemente

Robert Polsky and Emily Prager

J.R. and Cindy Rodriguez

Matthew Schwab and Diana Dosik

Gregory and Veronika Spektor

Sarves and Pansy Verma

Mark and Torrey Young

Michael Zuppone

SPONSORS’ CLUB $1,000–$1,999

Anonymous (1)

Gustavo Benchimol and Clara Gaspari

Crissy Cáceres

Brendan Costello and Diane Kwon

Michael and Anne D’Ausilio

Tom and Tara Ellis

Charles and Flore Fuller

David and Samantha Goldring

John Goodson and Merissa Dzau

Michael and Michelle Gramer

Peter Huefner and Samantha Viglienghi

Shawn Jang and Qiancheng Lu

Robert and Barbara Kaufman

Wayne Kawarabayashi and Moon Kim

Kristian and Heather Kristensen

Tao Ling and Pei Wang

Andrew and Barbara Loggia

Kessar and Melissa Nashat

Juliana Pereira

Anurag Poddar and Nancy Virdi

Larry Rosenberg and Jessica Bloom

Eric Rosoff and Liza Sacks

Michael and Kate Schaper

Brian and Gina Swerdloff

Douglas and Akiko Swett

Joseph and Marie Tuttle

Matthew and Allison Van Dusen

Chetan and Vaishali Vig

Christopher Wan and Hanyi Wang

Lipeng Zeng and Ai Zhang

PATRONS’ CLUB $500–$999

Anonymous (2)

Zachary Abella and Susannah-Gora Abella

Susan Austin

Maan Bsat and Faten Baassiri

David Carty

Elliot and Alexandra Charen

Erica Corbin

Robert Davis and Thelis Negron

Abiola and Adebola Dele-Michael

James and Lisa Donofrio

Myles Dorch and Alina Arias

Noam Elharar and Daniella Sade

Jonathan and Daphne Ferdinand

Jason Ford

Colvin and Nina Forde

Allison Foresi

Ronald Gee and Rose Ugarte-Gee

Mickie Hamiter and Priyanka Gill

Jack and Johannays Hartog

Hugh Hill and Julia Gorodetsky

Lai Jiang and Yi Rong

Alan and Randi Kahn

Anjali Kampschulte

Peter and Gwenn Kapner

Christopher and Katisha Liu

Brian and Laura Markovich

Carl-Alain and Farida Memnon

Ergys and Nertila Myselimi

Robert Nachtrieb and Alessia Falsarone

Meghan O’Donnell

Richard and Rebecca Parry

Claudine Portella

Humberto and Anne Reboredo

Nicholas and Kim Romano

Jeremy and Cristina Rosenberg

Dmitri Shuster and Ellen Opman

Brett and Randi Singer

David Toberisky and Martha Hanson

Wei Wang and Lulu Lin

Jelle and Katherine Westra

Byron and Erica Whitmore

Di Wu and Yunqing Lin

Andrew and Ann Yeung

FRIEND UP TO $499

Anonymous (6)

Kwame Ampofo and Julia Boahene

Jenni Arcieri

Ivica Arsov and Dragana Nesic

Henry Besanceney and Rosanna Ragone

Susan Bonet

Anthony and Aishlinn Bottini

Laura Capote

Suzanne Charity

Mohit Chawla and Eileen Rizada

Inten Chen and Leslie Bernstein

Irving Cuevas and Irma Ramos-Cuevas

Scott DeNegre and Rebecca Reeb

Thomas Denzler

Robert Diehl and Maren Handorf

Patrick and Susan Fennessey

Elaine Fitzgerald

Paula Flatow

Gerald Flattmann

Rosemary Frisaro-Kessler

Robert and Sherli Furst

Keith and Brena Gooberman

Heather Halverson-Vasquez

Joseph Sellitto and Jeanine Hightower-Sellitto

Kenneth Hightower and Casey Grillo

Marleine Hofman

Michael and Dana Hubbe

Marlon Jimenez and Johanna Burgos

Emerson John and Kiesha Boykins-John

Carol Jordan-Dorch

Andrew Kagan

Morgan and Sorayah Kaschak

Chloe Kawarabayashi

Irene Kawarabayashi

Mia Kawarabayashi

Peter and Diana Keenan

Rose Kory

James and Beatrice Lattimore

Cheng Lee and Angelika Kogler-Lee

Aleksandr Litvak and Inbal Caspi

Christopher and Katisha Liu

Shixin Liu and Qiulei Hu

Suzanne Lynch

Bettadapura Manjunath

Gregory Maskel and Gabriela Pereira

Sincere McMillan

Dan McNerney

Ali and Saniya Mehdi

Bernd and Stephanie Messing

William Miller and Maria Contreras

L.J. Mitchell

John Oakes and Carin Kuoni

Ruben Pena and Cynthia Lopez

Vasilis Psoras

Majlinda Rama

Manuel Pedro Ramos and Dhwani Ramos

Marilou Reventar

Robert Ritchie and Amy Chow

Leonid Rosin

Ritendra and Rima Roy

Robert and Dee Dee Scarborough

Adam Schlessinger

Manuel Schmidt and Christiane Fashek Schmidt

Mark Schuman and Julie Williams

Arnab and Swati Sen

Martin Sherlock and Christine Spinelli

William Silverman and Leslie Patterson

Bryan Storti

Ivonne Storti

Jennifer Tarpley

Samantha Tarpley

Vonetta Trotter

Mary Beth Vrazel

Tim Wang and Elaine Lin

Elizabeth Ward

Tracy White

Meredith Woodruff

Charles Yang and Sandra Smith

Mi Zhou

Hannah Zuckerberg

Michael Zuppone, Jr.

BY CONSTITUENCY

Trustees

Susan Austin

Crissy Cáceres

Erica Corbin

Jenna Dabbs

Adebola Dele-Michael

Jason Ford

Freda Gimpel

Michael Gramer

Joey Hartswell

Garret Leahey

Farida Lecoin

Miguel Marshall

Dale McComb

L.J. Mitchell

Rebecca Parry

Emily Prager

Kelly Riggle

Manuel Schmidt

Jamie Stecher

Katie Taylor

Kiery Tuttle

Chetan Vig

Charles Yang

Torrey Young

Eric Yuen

Kara Zanger

Alums

Chloe Kawarabayashi

Irene Kawarabayashi

Mia Kawarabayashi

Juliana Pereira

Hannah Zuckerberg

Michael Zuppone

Alum Parents

Elliot and Ashley Blanchard

Kwame Ampofo and Julia Boahene

Ivica Arsov and Dragana Nesic

Henry Besanceney and Rosanna Ragone

Elliot and Alexandra Charen

Ethan and Jenna Dabbs

Thomas Denzler

James and Lisa Donofrio

Patrick and Susan Fennessey

Gerald Flattmann

Charles and Flore Fuller

Michael and Sheri Halsband

Neil and Hillary Hohmann

Michael and Dana Hubbe

Alan and Randi Kahn

Peter and Gwenn Kapner

Wayne Kawarabayashi and Moon Kim

Peter and Diana Keenan

Joseph Kramar and Jaymie Sullivan

Moreen McGurk and Family

John Oakes and Carin Kuoni

J.R. and Cindy Rodriguez

Nicholas and Kim Romano

Jeremy and Cristina Rosenberg

Ritendra and Rima Roy

Robert and Dee Dee Scarborough

Michael and Kate Schaper

Joseph Sellitto and Jeanine Hightower-Sellitto

Arnab and Swati Sen

Martin Sherlock and Christine Spinelli

Mark Schuman and Julie Williams

Dmitri Shuster and Ellen Opman

Brett and Randi Singer

David Toberisky and Martha Hanson

Matthew and Allison Van Dusen

Jelle and Katherine Westra

Andrew and Ann Yeung

Michael Zuppone

Grandparents

Christopher and Christine Fashek

Robert and Barbara Kaufman

Carol Jordan-Dorch

Bettadapura Manjunath

Friend

Suzanne Charity

Brendan Costello and Diane Kwon

Joan Lonergan

Jack and Johannays Hartog

James and Beatrice Lattimore

Marilou Reventar

Ivonne Storti

Organizations

Assured Guaranty

Bank of America

Barclays Capital

Benevity Community Impact Fund

Goldman Sachs

Google

JP Morgan Chase Bank

Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Neuberger Berman Group LLC

New York Life

S & P

W.P. Carrey Foundation

CAEDMON DIAMOND JUBILEE BENEFIT

(Includes Underwriting and Live, Silent, and Reverse Auction)

HEADS’ CIRCLE $15,000–$19,999

Jamie Stecher and Becky Diamond

LEADERSHIP CLUB $10,000–$14,999

Joseph and Rebecca Hartswell

CAEDMON PARTNER $5,000–$9,999

Anonymous (1)

Victor Gill and Amanda Lewis

Richard and Janine Hoffman

Jonathan Perle and Jill Gluskin

Michael Zuppone

BENEFACTORS’ CLUB $2,000–$4,999

Ejim and Andrea Achi

Nathan and Colleen Bruker

Mohit Chawla and Eileen Rizada

Michael and Anne D’Ausilio

Richard Froom and Kelly Riggle

David and Jill Grazioli

Vladimir Kokorev and Sandra Herrera

Dale McComb and Ashleigh Bischoff

Robert Polsky and Emily Prager

Simon Prosser

Humberto and Anne Reboredo

Gregory and Veronika Spektor

Douglas and Akiko Swett

Mark and Torrey Young

Joseph and Marie Tuttle

Eric Yuen and Patty Ng

SPONSORS’ CLUB $1,000–$1,999

Susan Bonet

Abiola and Adebola Dele-Michael

Ronald Gee and Rose Ugarte-Gee

David and Samantha Goldring

Mickie Hamiter and Priyanka Gill

Brian and Laura Markovich

Emmanuel and Natsuko Maruani

Ergys and Nertila Myselimi

Steven and Ashleigh Raizes

Isao Okano and Renata Clemente

Anurag Poddar and Nancy Virdi

J.R. and Cindy Rodriguez

David and Jody Stern

Nicolle Wallace

Byron and Erica Whitmore

Samuel and Kara Zanger

PATRONS’ CLUB $500–$999

Anonymous (1)

Zachary Abella and Susannah-Gora Abella

Colvin and Nina Forde

Keith and Brena Gooberman

John Goodson and Merissa Dzau

Michael and Michelle Gramer

Peter Huefner and Samantha Viglienghi

Shawn Jang and Qiancheng Lu

Andrew Kagan

Jason Liang and Helena Wang

Christopher and Katisha Liu

Brian Loh and Dhivya Rajandran

Arjun Masurkar and Reeha Sinha

Robert Nachtrieb and Alessia Falsarone

Sean and Lucia Perkins

Nicholas and Kim Romano

Larry Rosenberg and Jessica Bloom

Adam and Elizabeth Rosman

Eric Rosoff and Liza Sacks

Matthew Stuart and Phillip Pena

Christopher Wan and Hanyi Wang

Tim Wang and Elaine Lin

Lipeng Zeng and Ai Zhang

FRIEND UP TO $499

Anonymous (3)

Takumi and Tsukasa Arakaki

Slawomir and Beata Balon

Maan Bsat and Faten Baassiri

Gustavo Benchimol and Clara Gaspari

Carmelo Carrion and Juzenia Tirado-Carrion

Erica Corbin

Robert Davis and Thelis Negron

Noam Elharar and Daniella Sade

Tom and Tara Ellis

Allison Foresi

Rosemary Frisaro-Kessler

Rashadi Gordon

Lai Jiang and Yi Rong

Susan Kelly

Nick Kessler

Robert and Jessalyn Keywork

Tao Ling and Pei Wang

Aleksandr Litvak and Inbal Caspi

Shixin Liu and Qiulei Hu

Andrew and Barbara Loggia

Suzanne Lynch

Sincere McMillan

Ali and Saniya Mehdi

Kessar and Melissa Nashat

Richard and Rebecca Parry

Ruben Pena and Cynthia Lopez

Robert Ritchie and Amy Chow

Ritendra and Rima Roy

Andrew and Alyson Sedia

Martin Sherlock and Christine Spinelli

Shubh and Ridhima Singh

Jennifer Tarpley

Vikram and Stephanie Venkatraman

Chetan and Vaishali Vig

Richard Vollkommer and Emily Chapin

Jelle and Katherine Westra

Charles Yang and Sandra Smith

NOTE: In compiling our list of donors, every effort is made to be accurate. If your name has been omitted or listed incorrectly, please let the development office know and accept our sincere apologies.

Head of School

Matthew Stuart

Assistant Head of School/ Director of Early Childhood

Saniya Mehdi

Director of Elementary

Jelecia McGregor

Elementary Student Learning and Support

Heather Halverson

Giving and Community Engagement

Brynja Sigurdardottir

Finance

Dave Carty

Communications

Ali Foresi

Admissions

Jennifer Tarpley-Kreismer

After School and Alumni Development

Andrew Kagan

Board of Trustees

Ejim Achi

Susan Austin

Crissy Cáceres

Jenna Dabbs

Adebola Dele-Michael

Jason Ford

Freda Gimpel

Michael Gramer

Joseph Hartswell

Farida Lecoin

Dale McComb

L.J. Mitchell

Ergys Myselimi

Rebecca Parry

Emily Prager

Kelly Riggle

Ridhima Singh

Katie Taylor

Chetan Vig

Byron C. Whitmore, II

Charles Yang

Torrey Young

Eric Yuen

Kara Zanger

Caedmon Family Association Co-Presidents

Brena Cascini

Sherli Furst