We hope that you and your children enjoyed the trips this August and that the first week of classes has passed propitiously. We would like to suggest to our community five things that can be done to make the most of the year ahead.

In less than a week we will begin a new academic year. While it is no easy thing to bid farewell to summer, here there is an aspect of beginning again that has a freshness and an optimism about it. It is neither Panglossian nor Pollyannaish to believe that the year to come can be whatever we would like for it to be.

The journey from Mrs. Bennett’s classroom to this stage is not one that can be easily summarized.

I think that it is important that each of us is not merely at Ridgeview, or attending Ridgeview, or passing through Ridgeview, but with Ridgeview. It suggests solidarity, not principally with a structure situated at the corner of Stuart and Lemay, but with an idea. It is the state of that idea as much as it is the state of the school that we should be concerned with this evening because the two are inseparably linked.

In order that we might continue modeling the kind of reading that is leisure rather than work, the parent reading group will continue meeting over the summer break. If we are very fortunate, and even a little bit persuasive, we will add to our numbers those who have not yet had the good fortune of passing a few hours in the company of interested and interesting people.

What was once the sanctum of a church is now Ridgeview’s performing arts complex – referred to by its familiars as the PAC.

Before leaving the lobby, the plaques recognizing our student’s academic achievement and character are noteworthy for two reasons.

As we proceed towards the PAC, one will notice to the right of the doors a large plaque with a lengthy quotation in Greek from Plato’s Republic.

The lightboxes in the wall opposite this stone tablet change periodically, but each picture serves to represent the community Ridgeview students have forged not out of the happenstance of districting, but through shared endeavors. Such

In this series of Principal’s Perspectives to be published over the coming months, a complete tour will be provided of Ridgeview’s facilities. It is hoped that in so doing, students, parents, faculty, and staff will gain a better understanding of the various ways in which the building reflects the aims and ambitions of a classical, liberal arts education and endeavors to be the type of place in which we become the type of people who gladly and cheerfully pursue such noble aims.

Over the past three weeks it has once again become clear how Ridgeview is different and what it is that makes it special. While children throughout America will spend a minimum of fifty percent of their waking hours between the ages of five and eighteen in a school, Ridgeview’s students and families unarguably get more for their investment.

As our days shorten to scarcely a blink, few of us are likely enjoying anything resembling a repose as we make our lists and gather our gifts for the impending holiday. As we rush to and fro harried and wearied by the obligations of the season, we are wont to neglect the spirit we are desperate to imbue it with. Nevertheless, the idealized version of the season beckons and we should be quick to indulge it.