Dear CA Community

The 2019-2020 school year has been the most unusual and most challenging of my more than 20-year career as an educator. We recently finished the school’s first-ever Spring trimester of 100% remote learning. We also ended the year celebrating our Class of 2020 with the school’s first-ever virtual graduation and diploma car parade. No one could have anticipated the changes brought upon us by COVID-19 and the rapidity with which conditions continue to evolve. With the pandemic, and with an enormous groundswell of support for greater racial equity and justice in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, this is a time for us and for our children like no other. In so many ways, we have been catapulted in new directions. I can’t tell you how impressed and proud I am of our community’s response in the wake of both of these major forces of our time. Our faculty have responded in untold ways to new teaching challenges; our students and alumni are asking great questions about how we all deepen our commitment to building a diverse and inclusive environment.

We’re shifting from the immediate issues of these crises, and we are now looking ahead. We’re planning for the reopening of Colorado Academy in the Fall with contingency plans and hybrid learning models; we are planning for virtual events as well as in-person teaching; and with great enthusiasm, we hope to harness the energy in our community for deeper learning and discussions about how we can be a model of excellence around inclusion, equity, and justice.

If we are witnesses to nothing else in our time, it is the power of a single individual to build the world up or to tear it down. Our goal is to remember that “the power of one, if fearless and focused, is formidable, but the power of many working together is better.” (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo)

Sincerely,

Mike Davis, PhD Head of School