Dear ESD Community,

It is a great time to be an Eagle! We have had an exciting year filled not only with the student triumphs and growth opportunities that every school year brings but also with the creative thinking and planning that every great school does. This edition of The Crest is filled with the news of that work that so many in our community have been engaged in. We are thrilled to be able to share it with you and even more eager to embark on the efforts that will enable us to implement all we have been planning.

During the past two years, ESD leadership, including the Governing Board and the administrative team, has engaged in a cooperative and iterative process to update the school’s strategic plan. Our thinking has been grounded in the idea that we have been entrusted with Father Swann’s vision – embodied in our Founding Tenets, mission, and Episcopal Identity – and it is our charge to imagine how we can make ESD an even fuller expression of that vision. ESD has never been stronger, and is poised to gain recognition as one of the great schools in the country. We believe our planning process gives us the map to that destination.

Great schools know who they are, have mission-driven programs, and have the people and financial resources to fulfill that mission. During our Independent Schools Association of the Southwest (ISAS) reaccreditation process, detailed by Associate Head of School Ruth Burke elsewhere in this edition, ESD was commended by ISAS as having an extremely strong sense of mission and identity, along with several other attributes. ISAS called on us to think about how we could strengthen our program to even more comprehensively fulfill our mission of igniting lives of purpose. Our work has led us to create ESDistinction, an intentional curriculum of purpose that unites our academic efforts from our early childhood program to grade 12. I invite you to read more about it in an article by Rebecca Brady, our Chief Academic Officer.

Great schools are also financially sustainable. ISAS recognized that in order for us to be the school we want to be, building our endowment has to be a priority. The National Association of Independent Schools tells us that a great school should have an endowment of approximately two and a half times its operating budget. That means ESD should have an endowment of roughly $90 million. Our current endowment is $31 million. This shortage results in a $2,000 gap per year per student that we have to spend on salaries and programs. When compared to our near competitors’ endowments, with whom we compete for the best teachers, that gap is closer to $6,000. Our planning and fundraising emphasis will be built squarely on how we address this shortfall moving forward.

Great schools are also filled with great teachers. We are fortunate to have an abundance of adults in all three divisions who make transformative impacts on young people every day. Some of them are profiled in these pages. As part of our strategic plan, we have created a program that ensures we maintain and enhance teacher quality through professional development, leadership opportunities, and increased compensation. We have determined that employee pay, in particular, is a point on which we must work hard to ensure we are competitive with the best schools in the region.

My hope is that after reading this edition of The Crest, you will be filled with joy, awe, and optimism about what ESD is and what it can be. I am proud and blessed to be part of this journey with you and cannot wait to see what the future holds for all our Eagles.

Onward and upward,

David L. Baad

The Ann and Lee Hobson Family Head of School