STRATEGIC UPDATE TO THE COMMUNITY MARCH 2019
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EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION Firstly, and most importantly, our education programme - guided by our five-pronged strategic focus on making learning and the curriculum more personalised, enriched, extended, applied, and international - continues to go from strength to strength. From PK3 to Grade 12, our students are experiencing an increasingly high-quality, broad education, whether that be within the academic strand or within the other important strands of education including Athletics, the Performing and Creative Arts, Service Learning, and Outdoor Education. We continue to focus on improving all these strands of our education, ensuring that all elements of our programmes are infused with the development of the modern high-level personal skills and qualities that will be so crucial to our students’ happiness and success in the future. We believe that it is this holistic approach to education, along with our tradition of strong individual support and guidance that will allow them to reach their potential and personal best. We continue to strengthen our student support systems and have recently appointed a new learning support coordinator, a second social and emotional counsellor who has a specialty in organisational/executive functioning skills, and, in the fall, we will welcome the fourth member of our university counselling team. NEW BEGINNINGS This is a particularly joyous time of year for us as we celebrate the calendar and lunar new years and welcome the onset of spring within our culturally diverse community. I have been especially heartened by how many Mulgrave families from all cultures have joined in the various celebrations to share these special moments, and learn more about our community’s remarkable diversity, as well as all of our similarities.
One small way that we measure our success is through the acceptances that our students receive to post-secondary institutions and the feedback that our Grade 12 students are given through the process. The bulk of these acceptances come in the spring, but though we are only mid-way through the university admission season, our students have already received record numbers of ‘Early Decision’ acceptances to competitive universities in Canada, the US and the UK. We are so proud of our students’ accomplishments and happy that they will be able to continue their studies at their first choice universities.
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I am pleased to provide you with this mid-year strategic update about our school and to share a few things about the next exciting phase in Mulgrave’s development.
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DEAR MEMBERS OF THE MULGRAVE COMMUNITY,
UNIVERSITY ACCEPTANCES
Spring is also the time when we begin our preparations for the coming year. We determine recruitment strategies and set budgets. The teacher attrition situation that we have faced in the last two years, especially amongst our Junior School Associate Teachers, seems to have eased, although the fundamental Vancouver cost of living issues remain. As many of you are aware, however, we have an exceptionally large number of maternity leaves coming up, especially in the Early Years division, and we are currently recruiting talented individuals to take their places for the year that they will be away. 2019-2020 ADMISSIONS In the coming months, our Admissions team will be making offers to students for the 2019-2020 academic year. Admission applications are again at a record level and student attrition is projected to be low again, at about 6% which is our five-year average. For context, a typical attrition rate for independent schools across Canada is 10%. Families applying to intake years are taking advantage of the spaces that we have available for preschool and Kindergarten. In our non-intake years, we are, at best, only able to accept siblings and a very small number of external applicants. As always, thank you for spreading the word about your Mulgrave experiences and helping us to attract and recruit families that are interested in our holistic education and aligned with our mission to inspire excellence.
EXPANDING OUR WINGS ____________________________________________________________________________________ Our new West Wing has been an excellent addition to our facilities, and we are already seeing an impact on the quality of the educational experience for students in all areas of the school. Our teachers have been especially vocal about the additional opportunities the spaces have provided, and we look forward to sharing those stories in the months to come. The work on the renovations of the vacated classrooms are well underway and, over Spring Break, we will start relocating some classes into these areas of the school to make way for the new Junior School specialist facilities in science, design, art and languages. This work will continue until the end of the summer vacation.
THE EAST WING
FINANCING OUR FUTURE
At the end of May (subject to the final issuance of the development permit amendment by West Vancouver Council), we will start work on the East Wing project to build a new Athletics and Performing Arts facility that will provide our athletes and artists enhanced spaces designed to allow them to do their best work. With two full-size gymnasiums, a fitness studio, team rooms, and viewing atrium, we will be able to transform the scope and delivery of athletics at Mulgrave. As well, the addition of choral and dance studios to our performing arts suite will allow us to extend our arts provision. These are two strands that have waited patiently for our investment in their spaces, and we know that our East Wing will greatly benefit both our athletics and performing arts programmes, two key features of our school.
The Mulgrave Board has decided that the $18m East Wing project will be underwritten by long-term bank borrowing. The school is just about to finish paying off the bank loan for the original school building taken out in 2001; taking on a new loan for the East Wing and paying it back at the same rate as the original loan will not require any adjustment to either fees or our current operating budget. We will be most grateful to any families who are able and willing to make donations to the East Wing, but we have decided not to hold a further general capital campaign for this project following the success of Imagine Mulgrave and MPower, the two fundraising efforts that allowed us to build our Senior School and the West Wing.
During the 18-month construction period, we will need to make some small Physical and Health Education (PHE) programme adjustments, as we will lose the current Fieldhouse and Kirkwood gymnasiums. This will involve a number of off-site PHE options and the use of other facilities in the school for some classes. We do not anticipate any major effect on our co-curricular provision.
This shift will allow us to establish Mulgrave’s Annual Fund. Many successful independent and international schools use this approach to raise funds to directly support the school’s education programme along with things like teacher development and scholarship programmes to support the inclusion of students from various economic backgrounds. I am grateful to the team of parents who are currently working with us to establish Mulgrave’s annual fund, set to be launched in the fall.
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LEADING THE WAY _________________________________________________________________________ Mulgrave’s success is based on having exceptional young people, hugely supportive families, and highly talented teachers and staff. We also have many exceptional leaders at both mid- and senior-levels in the school. I am delighted with the impact that our new Deputy Head Lindsey Berns is making on the academic programme in her first few months at the school and how Martin Jones’s role as Assistant Head (Innovation and Enrichment) is supporting and empowering other school leaders to new levels of success, as well taking us forward in a number of exciting projects. Elizabeth Calderon has now taken on overall responsibility for supporting the school’s advancement (fundraising) team in addition to her current responsibilities for marketing, communications, and admissions, and she has assumed the title of Assistant Head of School (Development). The Mulgrave Board is dedicated to overseeing the strategic direction of our school, and I am so thankful for their continued commitment. In an effort to be even more inclusive of our various stakeholder groups, we are delighted to welcome Kaden Gulamani and Arden Zhang, both currently in Grade 11, as student representatives on the Board for the coming year. Stability at the Board level has been important as we have moved through the final stages of our campus plan, and I am very grateful for the extraordinary commitment of our Board members to supporting our school. I hope that this mid-year update has been useful. I will be hosting follow-up Parent Coffee Sessions where we can discuss the details of this update and any questions you may have. In the next school year, we will begin to consult all our stakeholders on the strategic direction of Mulgrave for the next five years, and I look forward to engaging you in that process. Warm regards,
Head of School For more information on our 2016-2020 strategic plan, visit: STRATEGICPLAN.MULGRAVE.COM