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Report from the
Chair of the Board
of Trustees
 This year has been an exciting one at Putney in which we have devoted ourselves to planning for the future. Perhaps most significantly, Brian’s announcement
that he plans to step down at the end of the 2006–2007 school year after 12
years at the helm initiated a careful search process. During Brian’s tenure, Putney
has grown from about 135 students to a record 226. This growth has enabled the
school to attract, develop and retain an experienced faculty and deepen our pro
grammatic offerings, especially in the performing arts. Brian has also overseen a
significant growth in our endowment and annual funds, and the construction of a
new dorm and the Michael S. Currier Center. The search committee has the
daunting charge of finding a successor who can build on Brian’s accomplishments
and lead the school forward to a sustainable future. To date the committee has
heard from many members of the Putney community who have ideas about the future
and has crafted a position statement. It is working
with a search firm to identify and screen candidates,
and expects to begin meeting with candidates early
in the fall. You should be hearing more from the
search committee as their work progresses.
We have also been working with the many recommendations
put forward by the faculty as part of their
strategic planning efforts to choose our major initiatives for the future. This work has been linked to a
scan of the environment, which identified a number of
challenging trends. Perhaps the two most significant
of these are the rising costs of education, compared
both to family income and inflation, and declining
enrollment in boarding schools nationally. Putney’s
boarding tuition is currently at or below the median
for schools in our region. Yet, it currently equals nearly
50 percent of average U.S. family income, compared to 11 percent a generation ago, and there is no indication that inflation in our cost base
will slow down. According to the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS),
boarding school enrollment nationally has remained flat since 1992 while day school
enrollment increased 23.6 percent as more and more families choose to keep their children at home. When applicants choose not to attend Putney, more often than not they
choose to stay at home rather than enroll in another boarding school. Because Putney’s
program is so distinctive, we have been able to sustain our enrollment, and indeed the
caliber of our students is outstanding. Clearly, however, we need to take steps to make
a Putney education affordable and the institution sustainable in the future.
Out of the work done by the faculty, we have identified five areas where we face
significant strategic opportunities to become a better and more sustainable school.
We are working now to clarify those choices and assess the risks and benefits of
each. The five areas we are looking at include: programmatic excellence, environmental sustainability, diversity, global education and school size. I look forward to
updating you on our deliberations and decisions over the coming year. This kind
of prospective planning is possible for Putney because the school has achieved
a level of stability and security that is unprecedented in our recent history, thanks
to Brian’s leadership and the efforts of a diverse cadre of faculty, staff, families,
trustees and other members of the Putney community.
We are also hard at work laying the groundwork to complete Phase 3 of the
BUILDING THE FUTURE campaign and construct a Field House. This initiative has
generated debate about the optimal design of the outdoor program and the place
of that program at the school. While there are many opinions about how that
program needs to evolve, the vigor of the debate illustrates the passion and
enthusiasm that the Putney community brings to that program.
There are plenty of other day-to-day issues with which the school wrestles. Although
advances in communications technology have made great quantities of information
accessible to students and faculty on the hilltop, they pose challenges for our
community life. In the past year the school has engaged in heated debate about
the cell phone policy and appropriate use of the Internet. While these are issues
that Mrs. Hinton probably never imagined, our founding mission flourishes at
Putney. Our students are actively engaged in their own learning, as evidenced by
the liveliness of project week and the senior projects. Despite continued grumblings about the workload, students are proud of the work program and their
contributions to the sustenance of the school. The arts are alive in the everyday
life of the school, and students express themselves through multiple media. It has
been a great pleasure to be involved again with Putney over the past few years.
I am looking forward to watching and being a part of Putney’s continued evolution.
Elizabeth Eisold Blaylock ’80
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