Headmaster's Blog

Nobel Laureate and Founder of the Gbowee Peace Foundation , Leymah Gbowee, gave Monday morning Chapel for our seventh and eighth graders. Both classes of boys had participated when in Grade Six in the GPF's Backpack Initiative, which provides backpacks and supplies to high achieving Liberian students in need. Last year , the boys organized, managed, and ran a bake sale that raised more than $1,200, enabling them to purchase 48 backpacks. In religion class they wrote letters to the children who were to receive them.  Ms. Gbowee thanked the boys for their efforts in support of GPF.  She showed where in Liberia the boys' backpacks and letters were distributed, and the network of young volunteers involved in the process. She also asked for our boys' prayers ahead of her address to the UN General Assembly about sustainability goals, raising peace builders, ending extreme poverty, and providing increased opportunities for girls. Ms. Gbowee expressed her hope that so...

Our beautiful new Upper School Library! The new Library Suite, which includes a commons area between the Lower and Upper School Libraries, affirms Saint David's commitment to the classical tradition. Here our boys can read quietly, collaborate on projects, conduct research, and learn to utilize the tools of technology in support of their scholarship. Research has indicated better comprehension and engagement when reading printed texts. Our belief in the power of books and the written word remains steadfast! It will serve our boys well.

With their secondary schools closed in observance of Yom Kippur on Wednesday, several young alumni took the opportunity to visit Saint David's. They made the rounds of our newly expanded school and met up with their Saint David's teachers, expressing awe about the new spaces and excitement about all that is happening at their elementary school. We loved seeing Alex H '17, John S '17, Paul L '18, Will M '17, Donovan S '15, Ryan E '15, Edoardo C '15, Charlie C '18, Jack C '18, Richard P '18, Caspar S '17, Billy G '17, Brody P '17, Lucas R '17, Nicholas v P '17. Our door is always open to them and to all our Saint David's alumni!  

The following excerpts are from my Opening Letter to the Saint David's Community: It’s been a dream for 45 years and an active goal for 12, and here we are—a newly reimagined, redesigned, and expanded campus on 89th Street.  A cast of thousands got us here.  It was an awe-inspiring collection of remarkable talent and unbridled commitment that enabled the school to complete this major construction project on budget, and to open on time.  Our new spaces will allow the program, its teachers, and our boys to fulfill their endless potential... ...Despite all this newness, we will never lose sight of what truly defines Saint David’s: our mission.  In keeping with our Classical tradition, Saint David’s will continue to balance the education of our boys across her four pillars: the academic, athletic, artistic, and spiritual.  Our academic, athletic, and artistic programs are strong.  Of this there is no doubt.  Our boys successfully matriculat...

Yesterday was the first day in a school that, after two-and-a-half years of tight-belt compression, stretched into beautifully expanded space. Exhale. We were ready. So were the boys! Often wide-eyed, they oohed and aahed, and then got to business greeting their classmates and teachers, who helped them navigate their way to their classrooms; some familiar, others brand new. Teaching and learning began. Each morning, I will continue to greet our boys at the same townhouse door, the black door of Building 16, as has been custom for decades. Saint David's is the same school at its core, with the same values and mission that have guided us for nearly 70 years, now housed in a beautiful new program-driven facility that will enable our community to be all that we can be. This year's school-wide theme is simple--boys. They are who we teach, what we do. And boyhood is what we treasure. Welcome to Year 68.