CHRONICLE THE HARVARD-WESTLAKE
Los Angeles • Volume XXV • Issue VII • April 27, 2016 • hwchronicle.com
Words at Work By Kami Durairaj
Harvard-Westlake’s second annual poetry festival, “Wider than the Sky: A Young People’s Poetry Festival” welcomed keynote speaker Jacqueline Woodson, the Poetry Foundation’s 2015 Young People’s Poet Laureate, who spoke April 16 about her National Book Award winner “Brown Girl Dreaming” and her experiences with writing poetry. • See page B1
Barzdukas to depart for job in New York By ANGELA CHON
Head of Upper School Audrius Barzdukas will leave Harvard-Westlake to accept the position of Head of School at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, President Rick Commons announced in an e-mail sent to faculty, students and parents. Barzdukas has been at Harvard-Westlake for 12 years, starting as the Head of Athletics, and has served in his current position for four years. Poly Prep is a coeducational independent school with two campuses in New York. “It’s an opportunity for me to grow in different ways,” Barzdukas said. “I have the greatest job. I love HarvardWestlake students. Every day, I don’t know what 40 percent of my day is going to be, but I know it’s going to be something. Just the creativity, the vitality and the vibrancy of the students at Harvard-Westlake has felt like I’ve never gone to work.”
Barzdukas said he will empowering his colleagues to most miss the students at try new ideas and approaches,” he said. Harvard-Westlake. Director of Studies Eliza“The youthful energy, intellect and aspiration is really beth Resnick will serve as Inenergizing,” he said. “It’s really terim Head of Upper School for the 2016-17 school year while awesome. School is the best.” Maddy Harbert ’17 said the administration conducts a nationwide search to Barzdukas has been fill the position. a kind influence. Before her time “Mr. Barzdukas at Harvard-Westlake, has changed my high Resnick served as Dischool experience berector of Upper School cause he made me at Crossroads School feel as if I always had in Santa Monica and a friend on campus,” as Academic Dean at she said. “His door Sage Hill School in was always open to Newport Beach before me, and I knew he ’ that. She earned her was always in my Audrius undergraduate decorner.” Barzdukas gree in comparative Though he will government at Harmiss the students, Barzdukas said he is excited vard University, her master’s to be going to Brooklyn, in degree at Dartmouth Universipart, to see the cultural mesh ty, and an M.B.A. at UCLA Anderson School of Management. and the neighborhoods. “She has been a head of Commons said Barzdukas upper school before, so it was has made a positive impact. “He has built trust and a great opportunity for us to teamwork among the upper ask her to step in so that we school faculty and staff, while have the whole year to identify NATHANSON S
Mr. Barzdukas’s successor,” Commons said in an interview. “It’s not the job she wants long term at Harvard-Westlake, but she’s willing to do it in order to give our school the chance to find somebody great.” The administration will publish the job opening and expects to get at least 50 applications from people with experience at schools similar to Harvard-Westlake. “Harvard-Westlake is well enough known in the National Association of Independent Schools circle that it will be known to anybody who is interested in that kind of position,” Commons said. It will be an “exciting and interesting search,” he said. Commons said he will miss the “incredible job” Barzdukas has done for the school. Harbert expressed similar sentiments. “Although I’ll miss him terribly, I know that he will succeed in his new job, and those kids are so lucky to have him,” she said.
Deans consider new early admissions policy By JONATHAN SEYMOUR
The deans may institute a policy next year that would require Harvard-Westlake students to treat any Single-Choice Early Action application to Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Stanford as an Early Decision application. This would mean that the school would not support any additional applications by students accepted early to any of these four colleges and would
refuse to send the materials or transcripts necessary to complete these extra applications. “If a student is accepted early to one of these four, he or she will be expected to commit to the university without submitting any further applications,” upper school dean Adam Howard said. If students who apply early to one of these schools, collectively known as the “Big Four,” are not accepted, they will be free to apply to as many
schools as they wish during the Regular Decision period. “This is a policy in regards to early applications,” Howard said. “If the student is denied or deferred, they would certainly be encouraged to [apply] elsewhere.” If implemented, the policy will be steadfast, with minimal leniency, Howard said. “There would be financial exceptions, but it would frankly be incredibly rare, as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and
Stanford offer the best financial packages in the country,” Howard said. The deans began talking about the possible regulation after a recent trip to New York City, where they visited top prep schools, most of which already have a policy like this in place, Howard said. Some schools were in fact even stricter. The schools in New York • Continued on page A6
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BEHIND THE WHEEL: Students believe that taking the driving test at certain DMVs is easier than at others.
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