State-of-the-School Address 2022
Thank you for being with us this evening. It is a tremendous privilege to be on stage as the representative of so many different people’s hard work. I hope that my words tonight will do justice to the passion and stamina of our teachers, staff, and students.
In a project such as Ridgeview’s, it is natural that gratitude should be the way one begins an assessment of the state of the school. I should like to thank every parent who has written an e-mail, visited with me in the parking lot, made an appointment to meet, attended a reading group, or spoken with me by phone. In almost every instance, I have been impressed by your civility and concern for Ridgeview’s integrity. Likewise, the faculty have consistently gone above and beyond. They have exhibited the Hoplite spirit we hope to see inculcated in our children, and they have done the one thing that we cannot contract or mandate—they have cared for our students as fellow human beings. I would thank the students as well. They were the reason for my coming here many years ago, and it is for them that I have stayed. They are the lifeforce and the raison d’etre of Ridgeview. Moreover, it is staff like Mrs. Van Dusen and Mrs. Douglas, amongst many, many others, who have made our project not only better, but feasible. I would thank our board members who understand that it is too often the case that many benefit from the sacrifices of the few. Finally, my fellow administrators, who, when there is no one left to lean on, have volunteered for more and done the work all assumed would be done without seeking adulation, acknowledgement, or acclaim. They have ground it out to bring a vision to fruition and our students are infinitely better for their sleepless nights and overworked weekends.
There are six possible perspectives to take in evaluating the state of the school: financial, curricular, student success, enrollment, faculty, and mission and philosophy. From a financial perspective, Ridgeview is in good standing. Its audits are clean, its reserves are robust, donations are rising, the state looks likely to increase per pupil revenue (PPR), and we are routinely on budget. Our principal disadvantage is that the state and the district have never funded charters equitably as was proposed in Colorado’s Charter School Act of 1994. The costs associated with paying for our building cause our students to be funded at a lower rate than those in the district schools and increases our challenges with faculty retention. Some have nevertheless taken this as a challenge. Mr. Rhead and our students on the robotics team came in second this year despite facing a far better funded team. With private donations from the Johnson-Hansen Foundation and Otter Cares, Ridgeview has demonstrated with no small amount of pluck that it can compete in this David versus Goliath battle that ensues as a result of inequitable school funding.
Ridgeview continues to offer a world-class curriculum to all of its students. Our educational priorities remain unchanged. We teach students to read, write, and do math. Enthusiastic teachers like Mrs. Hitchman put in the hours to build literacy, which is the gateway to all that comes after—the history, literature, science, mathematics, and Classics. Ridgeview’s secret is less what it teachers or its peculiar pedagogical techniques. It is its people. A person might miss the greatness of Dante’s Inferno in another school, but they are unlikely to be apathetic to it while reading alongside Dr. McMahon. Students study civics, economics, moral philosophy, geography, music, and art. They study not just Latin and Greek, but modern languages, physical education, performing arts, and other electives. Nearly all of them know how to dance thanks to Mr. Halseide. Many of them have been in a play or musical thanks to Mr. Binder. We are not so antiquated that we are ignorant as to the importance of subjects like computer science, or three-dimensional design, or programming, or engineering. Our students know something of nature and survival as a result of the outdoor program thanks to Mrs. Carvalho, and that they know their grammar, formal logic, and classical rhetoric is down to the hard work of individuals such as Mrs. Halseide. That they are physically active and able to participate in a growing number of athletic endeavors is down to the hard work of people like Miss Grace and Mr. Perkins. That they can write legibly in cursive is the work of Mrs. Hornback, and that they enjoy science rather than merely memorize it is down to the work of teachers like Mr. Hayhurst and Dr. Bevill. Curriculum matters, but so too do relationships, and Ridgeview is succeeding in the cultivation of both.
We regard Ridgeview not just as an education, and certainly as much more than college prep. We regard the experience of it all, and what we hope will be a thirteen-year adventure, as integral to our regard for the whole students. As Mrs. Carvalho once put it in speaking to students around a campfire, “at Ridgeview, you are known and loved.” This is true, and we have retained a diversity of students by teaching each of them how to think rather than what to think. This has resulted in notable achievements in everything from science bowl to robotics to mock trial, music, athletics and, somewhat humorously, STEM. Humorous, because we do not consider ourselves a STEM school, but rather a classical, liberal arts school.
Still, parents want to know that their children will go on to great things, that they will have opportunities that are commensurate with the hard work they put in here. They will. They do. Most go to college (others join the military), and about half of this year’s graduating class will study computer science, chemistry, mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, biochemistry, pre-med, and micro-biology/virology. The other half plan to study in the social sciences, humanities, and animation, anthropology, psychology, English, music, and theatre. This year’s senior class has, so far, reported $2,588,532 in scholarships, and if this were evenly divided among all our graduates, there would be a little more than $100,000 for each student. They have received awards, been accepted to thirteen colleges and universities in Colorado, as well as to other universities in twenty-five different states and the District of Columbia.
Our enrollment is increasing. There is increased interest in the middle and high schools, the elementary lottery is growing, and the reasons given from prospective families include the school’s balanced response to COVID, the rigorous curriculum, the character education, the outdoor program, the absence of extremist political messaging, transparency, and our approach to cautious growth. We are not in a competition to be the biggest school. We are, however, trying to be the best school by criteria that are actually, rather than bureaucratically, meaningful.
Our teachers are incredible, and unfortunately, this year will be the last for some of them as they move out of the teaching profession. We are indebted to them for many years of exemplary service. They will be difficult to replace because there is no university or college program that is reliably producing teachers competent to work in a classical school. We must identify good people and make them an optimal fit for Ridgeview. Teaching remains a passion project, and an individual’s heart must be in it. There is little doubt that COVID has contributed to teacher burnout, and that Ridgeview is not immune from America’s phenomenon of the “great resignation”. We will have to spend more and work harder to attract new teachers. At present, we are advertising in more publications that share our values, developing our website and social media platforms, and targeting specific colleges. Our advertisements are seen by 486 schools nationally and by approximately five million people.
We have talked about how we are countercultural in the past, but as mainstream culture becomes more polarized, polemicized, and ideologically radicalized, it has brought Ridgeview into sharper contrast. Ridgeview is a place that must be experienced in order to be understood and preserving this uniqueness requires vigilance and the induction of new teachers convinced of its goodness. If I could recommend just four books that would capture our desire to slow down and think carefully about things, they would be Carl Honoré’s In Praise of Slowness, E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key, and Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. Ridgeview was not founded on these books, but in attempting to understand our curious ethos, one would benefit from reading these.
Across twenty or more years, that ethos has not changed despite administrative changes, and the more recent changes that were made to our calendar, the day schedules, the inclusion of morning tutorial, faculty advisors, afternoon chambers, carousel, the midmorning break, the longer lunches, the trimester system, the outdoor program’s expansion, a more aggressive athletics program, and more formalized testing schedules. These changes have allowed us to maintain rigor while reducing homework and to round out the experiences of our students in a myriad of meaningful ways. Some of these changes were not perfectly implemented, but they have been regularly reviewed over the past year and made more appropriate through fine tuning. That process of fitting and adjusting will continue in the months and years to come.
While these changes originally came as part of our response to COVID, it bears mentioning that we are not yet out of the woods. The intellectual, academic, physical, mental, and social deficits caused by pandemic-related restrictions are proving difficult to surmount. While we were able to achieve our mission of “remaining open to the greatest number of students for the longest period of time possible,” we are clawing our way back and there are many, many hopeful signs that we are making progress.
I would note that we are doing all of this in an environment that remains hostile to parental choice. The snarling malevolence we faced in 2007 when a state legislator announced that there was “a special place in Hell for charter school parents” may have subsided. It has, however, given way to the more prosaic, bureaucratic condescension of political elites that refuse to treat charters as they would district schools. As our commitment to citizenship as a character pillar and events such as First Responders Day hopefully evidence, there are many good people working for our governmental agencies, but each of these organizations, whether elected or appointed, has had their credibility weakened by installing hyper-partisan and hyper-ideological leadership that is not viewpoint neutral. Each has, in a multitude of instances, directly contradicted Ridgeview’s commitment to the primacy of parental prerogative, transparency, and scholarly detachment and objectivity. In the face of this, Ridgeview parents should not be obsequious or complacent. Instead, they should attend public meetings, raise their issues, demand accountability, and advocate for their child’s school if they do not wish to see Ridgeview lose its autonomy.
Our answer to these and other challenges is what it has always been. Transparency. We will share with any parent our curriculum and invite them to visit our classrooms without an appointment. There is no show. We are not keeping things from you. We want your involvement and your participation. We will be academically objective. We are not operating at the direction of a political party like so many of the aforementioned institutions. We do not motivate with fear or hate; we preach hope, compassion, and wisdom. We stand behind our character pillars and we earnestly believe that we are dedicated to truth and virtue.
We are advocates of choice, but recognize that easy choices in education have too often meant that students do not have to persevere through any particular rigor that they are not naturally talented in. Instead, they, like water, follow the path of least resistance. As a result, an education or an experience that might have been the catalyst for greater growth is too often sidestepped for something easier, though less inherently rewarding. Competition, which works to our benefit in so many other areas of life, has created something other than excellence in education.
If the Ridgeview of the future is to resemble the Ridgeview of the past, parents cannot relinquish, abandon, or abdicate their participation in their children’s education. They must take serious and cherish the opportunities to read alongside their children, to comfort them through the trials of adolescence, to be seen at their school and as a part of the community that is forming them. They must support the dress code, the disciplinary system, and volunteer where they can.
Our current board has set a high bar for this kind of unstinting support. They have shown the kind of ‘principled disinterestedness’ discussed by our country’s founders. They have a concern for the school that is separate from one informed by or principally concerned with their own children, and they have a long-term interest in the school’s future students, teachers, and administrators. We are indebted to them for their constancy and hard work.
My father, a Marine in the 1960s during the Vietnam War, used to tell me how jealously he and his fellow Marines eyed all of the Navy’s equipment. It was always newer and better, and he would conclude each of these stories by saying that the Marine Corps was like belonging to “a very poor, but very proud family.” Ridgeview is a bit this way in that it is proudly and even obstinately committed to doing a very difficult thing. It consists of a band of ultra-dedicated teachers wedded to a mission with an almost religious zeal. In this environment though, and particularly in this cultural and historical moment, it is easy to lose one’s positive morale. I have often reflected on Kipling’s 1895 poem If, a copy of which hangs in my classroom. In particular, I have returned frequently to these lines: “If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken / Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, / Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, / And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools.”
It has felt this way at times. I think it is inevitable that it should because the delay between our work and its fruition is so much longer than it is in other professions, but with each class I teach, each one I observe, each discussion I have; every time I read to elementary students in the lobby, stand around a campfire telling stories with students, or see the look of fierce determination on their faces at a game, on a mountain, or at Valborg, I am reconfirmed, and I stoop and begin again.
Thank you all for persevering alongside us in this journey and loaning us your incredible and inspiring children. We will continue to endeavor to be worthy of your trust in us.
Good night.
D. Anderson
Headmaster
