bus05

Business Meeting, February 27, 2005

MS. BRIZENDINE: Buenas tardes, mis amigos. ¿Como están ustedes? We'll get everything started. Please come take your seats.

I'm Bodie Brizendine, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 84th annual conference of NAPSG. As you all know, we start with a business meeting, and the openings are very important, I think, for a couple of reasons. One, it allows us to look at the moment and get everything started, and secondly to say some important thank-yous.

In honor of saluting the moment, and because too many of you gave me feedback last year about reading poems, I have one. I have a few actually, but this is the first. This is a poem that salutes camaraderie and reunion. It's by a poet by the name of Linda Pastan, a contemporary American poet. I love her work. She centers her work on family and friends and all the important-things about life. This one is called, "The 25th High School Reunion."

"We come to hear the endings
Of all the stories
In our anthology
Of false starts:
How the girl who seemed
As hard as nails
Was hammered into shape;
How the athletes ran
Out of races;
How under the skin
Our skulls rise to the surface
Like rocks in the bed
Of a drying stream.

Look! We have all
Turned into
Ourselves."

Thanks. So as we begin tonight's reunion, be it one year, five, or twenty-five, I think it's appropriate to salute and thank those who have made this all possible for us to come together. At the top of the list is the Council, without whom we wouldn't be able to do any of our work. If we could ask them to stand so we can acknowledge them. Would the council members please rise? (Applause.)

The second thank-you is a huge one. It has a little story around it. We have a new saying at my house, actually a bunch of initials, and the initials are, TGFB. Anytime I get a phone call now from Bruce Galbraith, we say at our family, "Thank God for Bruce Galbraith." He's done an excellent job putting this together and I'd like him to come up to the podium now. Bruce.
MR. GALBRAITH: Thanks, Bodie, and all of you. It's a real pleasure to welcome 255 of you here for this event. I think this is one of the largest gatherings in the last five years. Napa was, of course, our benchmark. That's the largest we ever had. So obviously, you like California. You like the winery tours and the spas and all that, so welcome to some of that.

Karen, my spouse, is here. She tries to keep me balanced, and when Bodie told her about TGFB, she said, "I hope they're still referring to you with those same letters when the conference is over."

We'll see. But I am enjoying my work for you. We set an all-time record, I believe, for early arrivals. There were 130 rooms rented here last night, so the free breakfast and all that seemed to appeal and work really well.

We have a few new wrinkles in the conference. And I must tell you, being retired is very interesting. There were a great number of you who retired last year. I think we had over 20 people who became affiliate members who had been heads of school and they retired.

I now live in Florida, and we had to get a new doctor and a new dermatologist and a new cardiologist and a new every kind of "ist." I had a terrible experience getting a new dentist. I went to the dentist, and he was this old, old person. He was awful. He looked like he could hardly function anymore. And then I read his certificate on the wall and it was a name I recognized. And I said, "Where did you go to high school?"

And he named my school, and I said, "You were in my class."

And he said, "Really? What did you teach?" (Laughter.)

But speaking of wrinkles, we are doing a few things differently this year, and we do want your feedback. There's an evaluation form that will be out on Tuesday and Wednesday, and we'd like you to fill that out and tell us if you like some of the things that are a little bit different, because as you know, when you cross your hands one way and the other, it's still us, but somebody could do it a little differently. We'd love to know what you think.

One of those new wrinkles you'll love, I'm sure, and that is that on this roster today on this agenda, you will see honorary reflections. We're adding a segment of this meeting where some one of our honoraries will speak to us about what they remember about our wonderful, beloved NAPSG.

I don't think there's anybody better to begin that process than Nancy Kussrow. There's a great bond between the executive secretaries. She and Carol Lane have been incredibly helpful to me and I'm most grateful to them for all they have done.

A couple of announcements and a couple of items of business: The Council has decided to not publish the proceedings anymore. However, they are on the web page. They're a Word document, and we think it's actually more user-friendly than the book, because you can download it. So the last three years are there. Also a full membership list is there, rather than giving that to you here and expecting you to carry it home. It can be printed if you like, but it's not so much that somebody can use it for soliciting you, and they're not supposed to do that.

Secondly, we have a resolution that came out of the Council meeting this morning that refers to the Princeton Review situation. If you're not familiar with this, I'll give you a little background, because we'd like you to vote to confirm it.

The Princeton Review is producing a guidebook on select boarding schools to be published by Random House, modeled on their popular Best College Series. The book will consist of profiles that comprise the opinion of students, alumni, and parents, as well as data reported by school administrators. Once a school is selected for inclusion, they will ask the school administrators to help survey the opinions of the students, alumni, parents, current students; and it's a combination of these opinions and the data reported that would drive a profile of each school.

At the suggestion of member Burch Ford, this was brought to the attention of and discussed at length by the Council this morning. So we bring to you, as a result of that discussion, a resolution that we join with NAIS, TABS (The Association of Boarding Schools), CAIS (our sister Canadian association), and AISNE (the Association of Independent Schools in New England), in recommending that schools not cooperate in this project.

We created an NAPSG statement that uses some of the wording of the statements from the organizations mentioned to create the following. This is what we're going to ask you to support, we hope.

"NAPSG is opposed to the ranking of schools. The best school -- public, parochial, or independent -- is the one that uniquely meets the needs of each particular child. Ranking misrepresents the institution, misleads consumer-minded parents about the factors that should be considered in the complex process of choosing a school, but most importantly, can hurt children.

"Each NAPSG member school will make its own decision regarding participation and how to communicate that decision proactively to its constituents. However, we strongly encourage you not to cooperate with this or similar projects."

So I would like a motion toward that resolution if I could, please. (So moved.) Second? (Seconded.)

Is there discussion? Anybody who wants to add anything to that or comment on it? Please.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: Could you just comment on the piece about how you can actually hurt children? I'm concerned about if we choose one school and not another, that we're saying that you can actually hurt your child by selecting one member school and not another.

MR. GALBRAITH: Yes, and that's true. And I think the logic is that the listing is fallacious. And if you think you got the number 1 school for your child, it could turn out to be a bad school for your child because they're at a school that's picked with not really the kind of data that would help them.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: I think "inappropriate" rather than "hurtful" would be more appropriate.

MR. GALBRAITH: That's fine. And the ink is barely dry on this. There is a suggestion to amend the motion, to change that one word. Is there a second to that amendment to just simply change that one word? (Second.)

All right. Then we're going to vote on the amendment and the resolution. Other comments?

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: Could you speak to the possibility that Princeton Review will go around schools to find the data they need anyway, so it doesn't matter what our stand is?

MR. GALBRAITH: That's true, and we can't stop that, if that's the case. But I think we are lining up as many people as possible to say we recommend that we not do this. And certainly if someone walks into your school with that list, you say to them, "You understand that all the associations that this school belongs to have said they don't think this is a good idea?"

And perhaps they'll take the list, but at least with a grain of salt, and maybe they'll ignore it completely.

MS. RANSOME: On behalf of National Coalition of Girls Schools, we've previously adopted an anti-ranking recommendation to our members, so I'd like to add our name to the list.

MR. GALBRAITH: That's great. And it's a generic one, too, isn't it? We said that here, too. "We encourage you not to cooperate with this or similar projects." So we're doing the same thing.

MS. UNDERWOOD: We discussed this at some length at the NAIS board meeting yesterday, and you will find in this document that Bruce has read some of the language that has been carefully crafted by our attorneys at the National Association of Independent Schools. But there was a unanimous vote on the NAIS board to support this initiative, remembering that the NAIS board took the stand on this with US News & World Report many years ago. When we see what's happened at the colleges and universities that have been ranked, I'm enormously grateful to our NAPSG Council for joining NAIS and the Girls School Coalition and a number of others of us who feel quite strongly that we ought to do this with great haste.
You'll be interested to know that when we sent the letter to the Princeton Review, they wrote back a very conciliatory note asking to meet with Pat Bassett and others to see if we could get around all this, of course. I hope you know what our answer was.

MR. GALBRAITH: Thank you. We have an amendment, and if I understood your point right, the last part of the first sentence would say, "misleads consumer-minded parents about the factors that should be considered in the complex process of choosing a school, but most importantly could be inappropriate." Is that what you meant?

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: Yes.

MR. GALBRAITH: "Could be an inappropriate choice."

MS. UNDERWOOD: "Could be inappropriate."

MR. GALBRAITH: "Could be inappropriate."

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: "For children."

MR. GALBRAITH: Can we have a vote please on the amendment? I'll read it again. And I added, if you'll agree, "Could be inappropriate for children," to at least that sentence and think about what is the right word. What's the wording you want?

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: "Detrimental." Is that better?

MR. GALBRAITH: I'll read it again. "NAPSG is opposed to the ranking of schools. The best school -- public, parochial, or independent -- is the one that uniquely meets the needs of each particular child. Ranking misrepresents the institution, misleads consumer-minded parents about the factors that should be considered in the complex process of choosing a school" -- this is all NAIS wording -- "but most importantly," we are saying, "could be an inappropriate choice for their child."
Was that close?

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: I think what you want to say is, "Could lead to an inappropriate choice."

MR. GALBRAITH: All right.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: "Ranking could lead to an inappropriate choice."

MR. GALBRAITH: "Could lead to an inappropriate choice." Thanks. That's good. I've got it. We took the New England text for the last paragraph, and said -- this is still NAIS -- "Each NAPSG member school will make its own decision regarding participation and how to communicate that decision proactively to its constituents." I'll bet that came from a lawyer.

MS. UNDERWOOD: That came from a lawyer.

MR. GALBRAITH: Then I added the New England phrase that said, "However, we encourage you not to cooperate with this or similar projects."

"Could lead to an inappropriate choice" is the amendment. Can we have all in favor of the amendment please say "Aye"? Opposed? (None opposed.)

And then all in favor of the entire motion as amended, please say "Aye." Opposed? (None opposed.)

Thank you. The meeting will continue with a very few interruptions, simply moving from one person to the next, as it follows down the program.

I don't think Reveta is here. Is Reveta in the building? Reveta is upstairs waiting for Alfre Woodard. We're going to praise her a lot because she's done a great job of putting this program together. She's waiting for Alfre Woodard. At one point we had Alfre Woodard on Tuesday, and we had Sidney Poitier for tonight, but then Sidney Poitier got a call saying, "You are to be at the Oscars tonight." We think he may be getting something special. And so he reluctantly said, "I cannot come," and Alfre was willing to move from Tuesday. Can you imagine not wanting a chicken dinner with NAPSG as opposed to going to the Oscars? I just don't understand it.

Thank you. We'll move to the treasurer's report and go right on down the agenda.

MS. DAVID: I have to echo Bodie's good comments about Bruce and how organized he is. It's a pleasure to have taken over from Deborah Richman. All the good things are in order about the budget. So it's great to report that things are good on the financial front. One thing I want to point out is that we have resurrected a small finance committee to help with any major decisions on any recommendations about the budget in between Council meetings. Deborah has remained on, Clayton, Bodie. Is there somebody else? I think that's it.

I think that's going to work very well for the organization. I want to remind you also, as kind of a backdrop to the budget and understanding the numbers and the pieces that we end up talking about, that the school dues cover the operation of the organization, and that all of the events, the conferences and the workshops, really are supposed to operate on a break-even basis, and it looks like we're well on the way to doing that, especially with the wonderful membership turnout today.

We had a clear audit last year and if you look at your profit and loss statement, which is in the packet that you got, we appear to be on track to balancing the budget, as we expect. We're seven, maybe eight months into the budget year and, of course, after this conference we'll know a lot more. But there are no unforeseen expenses in our $233,000 budget.

You also have in your packet the three previous years' budgets, and I only want to point out a couple of small changes that we've made, and some things Bruce mentioned. One is that the proceedings will go on the web site, because Bruce has some particular skill with web site management. If you have been using it, you'll know that it has a nice look and a lot more useful information which we hope will be current, and that will help us.

We also made a decision to use first-class postage to send your December conference mailings. Although that's costing more, we think it's balanced out by the benefits to all of you.

Our seminars for school leaders have been fully enrolled and we're moving ahead with two in the next year.

Finally, the finance committee made a recommendation to move some certificates of deposit, to reinvest $125,000 out of the CDs into 60 percent equity and 40 percent fixed income, funds that we don't plan to use in the immediate future. We think that's a smart thing.
I don't think we have to have anything approved here. Thanks.
MR. BLANCHARD: I have a great report on new membership and membership overall. I'd first like to welcome all the new affiliate members and welcome the new second members, some from new schools, and others from long-time member schools. If this is your first NAPSG conference, we welcome you, and I think you're in for a real treat. I'd like to also echo Bruce's hard work, and Bodie's, and the whole Council, for what you're about to experience.

I'd like to review the current membership first. We have 691 total members. I think that's a record. 17 honorary members, 329 school members, 218 second members at schools, 103 affiliate members, and 24 college members. And if you would like to see the total list, it's located on our web site, NAPSG.org.

I'm going to introduce 11 new member schools to you at this time. New members, when I call your names, if you'll come forward, you'll be greeted by current Council members who will escort you at dinner. New members were accepted at last fall's Council meeting and also two were accepted this morning. If you hear your name, please come forward.

Hillbrook School, Las Gatos, California, Sarah Bayne, Head

Hilton Head Prep, Hilton Head Island, S. Carolina , Sue Groesbeck, Head

Sonoma Academy, Santa Rosa, California, Janet Durgan, Head

Windward School, White Plains, New York. Dr. James Van Amburg, Head

Episcopal High School Baton Rouge, LA, Head-elect, Kay Betts.

Spartanburg Day School, SC, Chris Dorrance, Head

St. Martin's Episcopal, Atlanta, Georgia, James Hamner, Head

St. Mark's School, Altadena, California, Doreen Oleson, Head

Archer School, Los Angeles, California, Arlene Hogan, Head

Atlanta Girls School, Atlanta, Georgia, Susan Thompson.
And last but not really a new member, but representing a new school,
Frederica Academy, Ellen Fleming, Head

A round of applause for all of our new members, please. (Applause.)

And that is my report.

MS. HABERLANDT: I apologize for the attire. It was a long flight from the East Coast, and my luggage is still on the way, we hope. Blair and I just had a nice talk about Philadelphia. It's a great place to lose your luggage.

I am here on behalf of the nominating committee, and I have two pieces of business. The first is to offer a nomination on behalf of the committee to fill the un-expired term of Rick Clarke from Redwood Day School, Vice President of Region V -- Region V is the western states and the western Provinces of Canada. Earlier this year the Executive Committee appointed Karan Merry, St. Paul's Episcopal School in Oakland, and we would now like to place her name in nomination for the full term, which will expire in 2007.

Are there any nominations from the floor? Okay. Then may I have a second for that nomination? (Second.) All in favor, would you please say "Aye"? I'm going to rule -- Bruce told me I could do this; I can't do this with the faculty. I'm just going to say it's carried.

The second piece of business is simply an announcement. We really don't have many openings for this year, but we anticipate many going forward because of retirements from Council that are coming up. So if you're interested, it's actually a very fun, worthwhile, and not terribly time-consuming activity. Thank God for Bruce, once again. So please, if you're interested, talk to me, and probably you'll be hearing from one of us, as well. Thank you.

MS. LEIPHEIMER: Having vowed never to appreciate housekeeping, Bruce has made even that enjoyable. I'm here to talk about the bylaws, and he's assuming that we have all done our homework. We all received these handouts earlier, and I will assure you that should you have had an aberration and not done that, they are simply housekeeping in the purest sense. They clarify what we've already been doing. They take, for example, a state-specific name out of them. But other than that, it is simply a clarification.

So I would like to hear a motion to congratulate Bruce yet again on great housekeeping. (Moved and seconded.) All those in favor? (None opposed.) Thank you, Bruce.

MS. KUSSROW: This is my 39th meeting of NAPSG. (Applause.) For two of those years, I was President, and for 15 years I was Executive Director. I have enjoyed all of them.

Those of us who have been around for years could tell many tales about funny things that have happened. This is our third meeting in San Diego. The first time we met here, we met at the Del Coronado. It had also been a rather rainy season, and I had a room on the top floor, as many of us did, and all along the corridor were pails catching the water from the leaks.

We had a cocktail party outdoors in a lovely patio, and all of the guests at the Del Coronado assumed it was for them. The bartenders were very happy to dole out those free drinks. We had a horrendous bar bill, but people who were not in NAPSG thought that the Del was very hospitable in doing this.

Next year we'll be meeting in Charleston. It will also be, I believe, our third meeting there. At the first meeting, one of the directors found out that the hotel was not allowed to serve liquor. Well, she thought, how impossible for a NAPSG meeting! She said that she almost had to go to the Mafia, but she had enough connections through parents of her students to get some kind of an easement, and we did indeed end up having a cocktail party.

Our speaker that year was Dr. Estelle Ramey, who taught at Georgetown, and was quite an imposing lady and a marvelous speaker. When she came out to speak, she had on a long dress and upswept hair-do, and she reminded me a little bit of Ethel Merman. The first words out of her mouth were, "What the hell are you doing to these girls?"

She had some comments about science education at our schools, and at that time, they were all girls' schools. Well, she went on to tell some stories, and one funny one was about her husband, who came in one evening and said, "Honey, I have just taken out your garbage."

She said, "What do you mean, MY garbage?" She was very much in the forefront of equality.

Well, the organization has moved on. Back in 1966, the women -- there were very few, if any men at the meetings -- still wore long dresses. In Williamsburg, we even had to go from one building to another through the snow in our long dresses, but we did it bravely.

Record keeping was done on three-by-five cards and kept in a nice little metal case. We've moved on.

I sent out the first-year bills on my portable Smith-Corona manual typewriter. Obviously, things have changed, with web sites and e-mails and Kinko's to do a lot of the hard work. It's still a great organization. I wouldn't miss it. As long as I can get here, I will. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

MR. SOUTHARD: Well, tonight I'm Tom Southard from Shady Side Academy, but from October 15th to 18th I was the representative and liaison from the NAPSG association to the Canadian Association of Independent Schools. It was just a wonderful experience. Their chosen theme for the conference was Social Justice and Responsibility, all in light of the current and future roles that their students and their schools will be assuming in society.

I was privileged to hear some absolutely wonderful speakers, such as Bill McKibbin, former staff writer of The New Yorker, now a visiting scholar at Middlebury College and author of such books as "The End of Nature" and "Enough." He spoke to our responsibilities regarding the environment.

We heard from Paula Mirk from the Institute of Global Ethics, Bernard Shapiro, Ethics Commission and past principal, from McGill University. Irshad Manji, author of "The Trouble with Islam: A Wakeup Call for Honesty and Change." And we heard from Ellen Gabriel, who's an artist and activist who uses her art to combat the stereotypes and misconceptions held by non-natives in Canada.

Our friend Pat Bassett spoke to the association about trends in independent schools that are as applicable to those in Canada as they are here in the States.

I was also fortunate to have been able to join the girls' breakfast, and benefit from the exciting dialogue about the wonderful challenges in their schools. Of course, they're very much similar to the ones that we find in our own schools.

My wife and I were taken well care of at CAIS by Paul Duckett and his wife, Diana. However, lest you think from my comments thus far that it was all work and no play, please realize we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at a CAIS seven-course dinner at the Sacred Heart School with entertainment by a fabulous swing band. And last but not least, we enjoyed a wonderful reception and closing dinner at the McGill Faculty Club.

Two things I want to note about that evening. Scores of us walked in a snakelike line from the Omni Hotel through the streets of Montreal to the McGill Faculty Club, to the sounds of an outstanding bagpiper. I can't tell you how exciting that was.

Secondly, as the NAPSG representative, I was discovered -- fortuitously, he would say &endash; by the evening dinner entertainer, who was a comedian. He discovered me in these ways: A, being from the States; B, being from the States in a Bush/Kerry election year; and C, being a man who lives in Pittsburgh representing a girls school association. I gave him so much fodder for his talk, it was quite a night. He didn't have to have much more material than that. He took it over.

It was a wonderful experience, and a most meaningful conference. I thank NAPSG and CAIS for the opportunity to convert my dollars into loonies for a tremendous experience for four days last October. And like everyone who has ever done this and stood up here and shared this with you, if you ever get the opportunity and the call, just do it. (Applause.)

MS. BENNETT: I'm Dulany Bennett from Episcopal School, and I got to be the NAPSG representative at the Girls School Association of Great Britain, which was a wonderful conference, and I'm very glad to have been able to go to it. But I have to tell you, at the beginning, about where it was. Let me assure you that what I'm about to say was shared by all the participants at the conference, and is not just my view.

This conference was held at a place called Alton Towers. They have two hotels, Alton Hall and Splash Landings. Are you beginning to get it yet? There's a big theme park there a la the 1930s. The food and the rooms would have been absolutely perfect for an eight-year-old boy. In my room there were bunk beds and the wallpaper was a little sailor boy. The food was pretty much what an eight-year-old boy would want for dinner.

I arrived bleary-eyed from an overnight flight and went into the hotel called Splash Landings, and there must have been 300 children in the lobby screaming with joy. This is the perfect children's place. The two hotels were joined by an indoor water park, so that they could have families year round and not just during the warm weather. I'm told that more families with children visit this facility than anywhere else in the UK, and that when they close the theme park around Guy Fawkes Day, there are 100,000 people there. It's just amazing.

The theory behind this hotel is to be as moderately priced as necessary so that families of all wage levels can be there. So it was really geared towards what working-class families could afford to go to.

Now, my understanding is that the Girls School Conference was held there is because this is the place where many children, most children &endash; not just the children that can afford our schools, but all children -- most want to go, most want to see, and it should be part of our experience, for the schools some of them go to, to share in this experience so that we would know more about it.

Well, practically, the first thing that the president of the association did was apologize, but very carefully, because, of course, there were people around, messing with microphones and things. It was an hour and a quarter from Manchester, and completely isolated from anything other than what went on at the hotel. For instance, there was no room service, you know, nothing you'd expect.

So that was quite an experience, and before any of you get ready to say anything, let me tell you it's in London next year, and after hearing about St. Andrew's last year, you know, I was really prepared. There you are. You're the one that misled me.
But the conference itself was absolutely fascinating. To me, the purposes are similar, as well as the format. There was a visit to the Wedgwood factory, entertainment from schools, various things like that. That was great.
Far and away, the focus of the conference was the future of girls' schools, and it's something that the British girls schools are very worried about, and they are just beginning to get hold of the problem as maybe 25 years ago, Liza, that's where our organization might have been. Right? Because they're losing applicants, they're having some decrease in the quality of applicants, they have no history whatsoever of marketing their schools, and they have, as you would imagine, a reluctance to do so. Think of our reluctance, and then add on British reserve and you'll see how far they are from it. They absolutely know that they have to do this, but they don't know how and they, of course, are trying to disassociate themselves from privilege, insofar as possible. So what do they market? It's very complex.

We can market our curriculum and the ways in which we're different, but because of A levels and O levels, they really can't. They all have to do the same curriculum, and passing those tests is the measure of how good they are academically, so they have to distinguish themselves in other ways. Unfortunately, parents are more geared to distinguish socially than we would like or certainly than they would like.
So they were quite desperate, some of them. Of course, there are old, established schools that are only a little bit worried, but there were a number of schools there, it seemed to me, whose futures were at issue.
Meg Moulton was there. She was the star of the conference, because of their perception that she had the knowledge that they needed about what to do for girls' schools. She was wonderful. She was always in the middle of a crowd. They really feel the need of help from us, no question. JoAnn Deak was there speaking as well. The research that's been done in the United States has not been done in England. And so they are really reaching out for a quick course on how to go about this. And there aren't very many good co-ed schools, but traditionally, it's been the single-sex schools that have been the strongest, and it has caught them by surprise, I think, that that's starting to change.
They're facing huge competition.

The other thing, having to do with academic life, this problem of having to teach to the tests -- when we talk about independence, in some ways they're so far removed from that that they don't think about it that way. They don't think about those national tests as something that you should try to fight against having, because they have just been there for I don't know how long. And so curriculum is fairly standard. There's a difference, of course, in how well it's taught, and in the size of the classes to whom it's taught. But other than that, it's very similar to the good grammar schools. So that creates a problem, how to distinguish ourselves in that regard, and then further how to distinguish ourselves as girls' schools.

The other thing is, because of this tie, they need to be quite involved with government, so one of the speakers was a minister in the Blair government, talking about things I didn't understand about laws and regulations and things. They were clearly trying to politic certain changes that would be to their advantage. It was interesting that having a minister of government come wasn't just something interesting to learn about government, but was really a political act of making sure that government is doing for them what they want.

Frankly, it made me so glad that I don't have to deal with that, and I was so grateful for our independence and autonomy. And of course, they don't have any of the church/state issues because they have Anglican prayers and services in all the schools, because essentially Great Britain is a theocracy of sorts. Not that there can't be a non-Anglican school, but the distinction between secular and religious is a little different than the way we would understand it, certainly.

It was great fun for me to be there, and to explain the differences, and to talk about how our schools flow directly from the mission statements, which is what they want to do, but they have these other shoals to navigate.

I would make a recommendation, however. Glad as I was to be there, and as much fun as it was to talk school to school and association to association, I think it really would be better for them if we sent the head of a girls' school, or someone who had a lot of experience with girls' schools, because they're going to be so desperate for that in the next few years. I was continually feeling bad that as a person who had only been in co-ed schools, I really wasn't able to be of as much help in the way that I would have liked to be at meals and in and around the conference. But it was a great conference. Thank you for sending me, and splish-splash. (Applause.)

MR. GALBRAITH: Cocktails will begin following this meeting, in the area right behind where we registered upstairs. Dinner is at 6:30. There are just a few reserved tables at the front for our new members and the Council member who greeted them, and our honorary members, if you please. For everyone else, sit wherever you choose this evening for dinner.

The second-to-last item is our greetings from Canada. That is not Claire Sumerlus. It's Paul Duckett. Following that, we will have our memorial resolutions, and we'd like to ask that the meeting conclude with those, and that we file out of the room in a manner appropriate to that setting, if you will, once the meeting is over.

Claire Sumerlus is the representative from the Canadian association, but she was called home very unexpectedly today because her mother is ill. And so bringing greetings from Canada is Paul Duckett. He's the head of the Country Day School in King, Ontario.

I, too, had the privilege of going to that meeting in Canada and being treated so well. Paul is a member, his school is a member of NAPSG, so he's a familiar face, I think, to most of us, but we thank you for stepping in at the last minute to bring us greetings from up north, Paul.

MR. DUCKETT: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I am speaking to you by default, and Claire sends her best wishes and apologies for not being here and doing her job.

So I am also, circuitously, from Canada, the small country to the north. Just to give you some idea of how small it is, the chair of my board is a student that I taught calculus to about 33 years ago. There don't seem to be enough people around; we keep bumping into each other over and over again. I suppose I should say that it was some kind of reasonable experience, because I still am gainfully employed at the school, so it must not have been so bad all those years ago.

I am very pleased to be here. The Canadian Association of Independent Schools is very small and very young, about 75 schools, and it's always a great pleasure for us to come south of the border and come to meetings such as NAPSG and NAIS, TAPS, ISM. We have a tremendous amount to learn, and you have many older schools and older organizations. Traditionally, I don't know why this is historically, but Americans I think are much more loyal and do a much better job of supporting their institutions, and building traditions that I think we in many ways would like to model our schools and our institutions on.

So it's a real pleasure to be here. As always, I learn a lot and I meet wonderful people, so thank you very much for your hospitality. (Applause.)

MS. STAMBAUGH: It is our tradition to remember those who have died in the year, and our responsibility to write a memorial resolution for them. There are three members who have died during the year. Duncan Alling, Archer Harman, and Joan McMenamin. I'm going to read first a resolution for Duncan Alling, which was written by his friend, Ted Lingenheld.
DUNCAN ALLING

Duncan Alling was indeed larger than life. From his tall profile to his love of bright haberdashery and large hats, he was hard to miss in a crowded room. He passed away on September 13, after a valiant and extended fight with cancer, leaving an immense void among those who knew and loved him. He is survived by Cynthia, their children Elizabeth and Greg and spouses, and four grandchildren.

Duncan graduated from Bronxville High School, where he met his wife-to-be of over 40 years. An outstanding high school and college athlete, he was the starting center on the Yale basketball team, graduating in 1960. Many of his friends have heard the story about Yale coming to Chapel Hill to play the top-ranked UNC team. The outcome of the game was lost in his descriptions of the trip and the competition. Duncan's athletic talents made him a skilled and frequent competitor in the lifelong sports of paddle tennis, tennis, and especially golf.

His career in independent education began with a teaching position at Blair Academy, where he also coached the golf team. Eventually he became director of admissions there, but his relationship with the school continued until his passing, as he helped to maintain the tradition of Blair's golf team annually exchanging playing tours with school golfers from England and Scotland.

In 1970, he co-founded Tandem School in Charlottesville, Virginia. He always had a fond remembrance for this school, now Tandem Friends School, and was excited to re-involve himself when he was asked to be an associate in conducting the search that brought Paul Perkinson to the headship in 2000.

His school-heading career spanned three outstanding schools: Miami Valley School in Ohio, Princeton Day School in New Jersey, and Rocky Mount Academy in North Carolina. He was elected or invited to membership in leading professional organizations that included the Headmasters' Association, Elementary School Headmasters' Association, Middle States Association, Country Day School Headmasters' Association, of course, The Headmistresses of the East, and the National Association of Principals of Schools for Girls.

After his retirement from full-time school headships, Duncan held interim head appointments in Egypt, Mississippi, and Virginia. His love of schools and teaching involved him as a recent recruiter for the Southern Teachers' Agency, visiting college campuses to meet and interview prospective independent school teachers. Duncan enjoyed frequent trips to New Haven for Alumni Council meetings, as he was secretary of his Yale class.

Duncan's legion of friends from his long and distinguished school leadership career, those who were part of his lifelong athletic participation, in West Chop on Martha's Vineyard, where the family gathered in August for many years, and in Charlottesville, where he and Cynthia made their home in the mid-1990s, knew and loved both Duncan Allings, the often brightly attired and always heard conference attendee, and the sensitive, caring, loyal, and true friend.

His last words to me, Ted Lingenheld, a week before his passing, captured Duncan's spirit. In a call to Cynthia to check on him, I was delighted when she handed him the phone. In a weaker-than-normal voice, his first words were, "I shot a 79 yesterday." His 17 handicap made it unlikely that Duncan could shoot 79, a very fine score, on his best day, but his disarming humor and surprising energy on the phone that day caused me to pause for just a moment to wonder how he managed to do that. Such was his love of life.

The great characters in our lives are the people we remember most vividly. By that standard, Duncan will gleam in all our memories.

And now I'd like to call on David Harman to read his father's memorial.

ARCHER HARMAN, JR.

MR. HARMAN: Thank you, Blair.

Archer Harman died very suddenly of a heart attack early in the morning of June 17, 2004, on his beloved Martha's Vineyard Island, having just disembarked from the ferry from the mainland. The night before, which we in the family now affectionately refer to as the last summer, he and my mother dined joyfully and fittingly with many past and present heads of school from the greater Boston area at the home of Bill Burke, the headmaster of St. Sebastian's School in Needham. We had celebrated my father's birthday, his 81st birthday, a few week earlier with a glorious Memorial Day weekend of tennis, sailing, biking, and a clam bake with family and close friends.

Archer Harman was born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1923. He grew up at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where his father taught. As a student at St. Paul's, he captained the varsity crew and the hockey team, which beat every Ivy League freshman team his senior year. He was awarded the top scholar-athlete prize at the school and graduated magna cum laude. He was a member of the class of '45 at Yale, where, like his father, he captained the varsity hockey team and was tapped for Skull and Bones.

My father received an accelerated degree, was married, and joined the Navy in July of 1943. As a lieutenant, he served aboard the destroyer USS Maddox in the Pacific, surviving multiple typhoons that claimed several ships, and a direct kamikaze hit into the bridge that killed the captain and several other officers. He served under Admiral Bull Halsey, whose name he gave to our bull mastiff dog many years later. Parenthetically, Admiral Halsey, the dog, proceeded to chew up three campus cats and, during our first week in Newport, the elderly lovable Labrador of the assistant head (who had applied for my father's job) at St. George's School. He was summarily given away. It was not an auspicious beginning to my father's second headship.

Archer Harman's career as teacher, coach, headmaster, director of guidance, interim headmaster, headmaster, trustee, and school volunteer encompassed ten independent schools and three public schools. After the Navy, he taught at Westminster School in Connecticut for two years, before returning to St. Paul's as a teacher in 1948, the year I was born. In 1950, he received an M.Ed. from Harvard, and in 1954 he became headmaster of the Peck School in Morristown, New Jersey. In 1961, he was named headmaster of St. George's in Newport.

After St. George's, he became director of guidance at Wellesley High School for 12 years and then enjoyed a third career as interim head respectively at MacDuffie School for two years, Sewickley Academy, Potomac School, St. George's again, and Princeton Day School, often with a year off in between many of these.

He served as a trustee at MacDuffie, St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts, Thayer Academy, ABC, and was a founding trustee of the Freedom from Chemical Dependency organization. He was a member of the Headmasters Association since 1968, and much later attended this conference when he became interim head of MacDuffie. It was a particular honor, in my first year at River School, when he was here as interim head of MacDuffie, I think being perhaps one of the few parent-child head teams in this august organization.

But it was at St. George's where my father's career was truly defined. I just want to read a paragraph from a letter that a former student wrote to my mother this summer.

"Although I am now almost 52, I can still vividly recall arriving at St. George's in September 1965 at the age of 12. I had been away at camp for two prior summers, but this arrival had more finality. I was leaving home. On what was perhaps our first night away from home, Archer held a meeting for the new boys after dinner in the assembly hall. He must have known that as evening came on, we would be lonely and at loose ends.

I can still clearly remember the direct, kind and secure manner with which he addressed us. He spoke from the heart without pretense or condescension, and he let us know we would all be okay. At that moment, I think I put my trust in him and in his school. He personified the goodness and caring with which we could have faith. That feeling about him and about the school never really left me, and helped to make my five years at St. George's the success they were."

Taking a courageous stance, first on admitting students of color and then admitting young women, my father literally put his job on the line at St. George's. On a recruiting trip to Atlanta, Georgia, to attract young black male students to St. George's in March of 1965, my parents joined the Selma-to-Montgomery, Alabama civil rights march with Coretta King. Chased by angry white men in the South, no doubt attracted by my parents' Rhode Island license plates, my father survived physical threats and, worse, later intractable trustees, many of whom resigned when the first black student entered the gates of St. George's that fall.

My father was always the consummate headmaster and complete school person. My mother, Mari, always at his side, gave him tremendous support at all of his schools, public and private. The two of them were a great team in and out of school. Legions of students and faculty members and many aspiring heads, some of whom are in this room today, respected my father as their leader and mentor and learned a great deal from him. He was compassionate, kind, caring, and when necessary, decisive. He was also a visionary, a bit too conservative for my taste on some issues, albeit not the important ones like civil rights or coeducation.

My father also had a kind of crazy and irreverent side. In Morristown, New Jersey, when he was head of Peck, my brother and I, as little boys, would vie for which one of us would have a rope tied around our waist to be sent out, chest puffed out proudly, with great trepidation to test the new ice at Silver Lake each winter. After jumping up and down and declaring the ice strong and fit, we would be pulled back to shore and rushed to put on our skates. Dad would probably be arrested for that sort of thing nowadays.

My father was a graceful and beautiful skater. I remember once he took me aside on the ice and told me that each one of us has a natural ability to turn easily and quickly in one direction, but that it's very hard to be as good, to be as fluid, going the other way. "Always practice the hard way," he said. It was great advice for skating and for so many other aspects of life as well. There was always a lesson in so much of what he did and said. Rarely preachy or didactic, his advice and homilies and assemblies in chapel always rang true. His family and his students believed and trusted him.

My father also loved to play tennis, even when the season was well over. One of our favorite Vineyard stories was when he called Walter Cronkite, who had just moved up-harbor from us late in the fall, might even have been around Thanksgiving, to be a fourth in our game.

Mrs. Cronkite answered the phone, and my father told her why he was calling. Neglecting to place her hand over the speaker, she called to her husband and said, "Walter, dear, there's some damn fool who lives a few houses away calling to ask you to play tennis in this crazy cold weather."

Well, my father could be persuasive, Walter came and played, gloves and all, even helping us sweep a few snowflakes off the court.

Let me close with where I think my father was always at his very best and his finest qualities emerged time and time again. When he was sailing, captain of his own ship, he was clearly in charge. Eminently capable, duly respectful of the vagaries of nature and the uncertain powers of the sea, teaching, always observant, competent and confident, from all his experience growing up sailing at the Vineyard and later in the Navy.

Others we know transform into Captain Blighs or worse when on their boats. Not him. He was ever gracious, accommodating, reassuring, and always teaching, just as he was at all of his schools. I don't think he was ever happier than being with my mother, often with family or their closest friends, on his boat, bourbon in hand as the sun set. Truly in his element, he was home.

At my father's memorial service at St. George's School this past September, following tradition, one of the massive stones in the chapel was unveiled, newly inscribed with my father's name and his years of service at the school. Included on the stone was the quotation the family chose from Tennyson's "Ulysses," which reads, "Come my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a better world."

As we meet here this afternoon, as heads of school, as friends and colleagues, in a brief respite from our exacting work, those words from Tennyson and my father's remarkable legacy serve to remind us powerfully of why we chose this most noble of professions.


JOAN STITT McMENAMIN

MS. STAMBAUGH: Our final resolution was written for Joan McMenamin by her great friend Mildred Berendsen, and I'm reading it.

Joan Stitt McMenamin was born on May 7, 1925, and died June 11, 2004, coincidentally Commencement Day at the Nightingale-Bamford School where she served as headmistress from 1971 to 1991.

The eldest of three children, Joan was raised in Scarsdale, New York. She attended the Master School in Dobbs Ferry, and was graduated from Smith College in 1945, where she majored in economics.

Had she been given the choice, Joan would have opted for law school to follow in her beloved father's footsteps after graduation from Smith. Instead, she accepted her father's decision that she attend Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School, where he was convinced she could develop the skills that would ensure her financial independence for the rest of her life.

Her superior secretarial skills landed her interesting jobs, the first with the Industry Division of the Marshall Plan in Paris, and the other with Paul Hoffman when he headed the Ford Foundation. Not many people know that Joan first worked at Nightingale as a secretary. In 1959 she was hired to help out in the office for a two-week period when final reports were being typed. Even in that short span of time she so impressed Catherine Woodbridge, then headmistress, that she asked Joan to return in the fall to fill a vacancy in the history department. Thus did a temporary assignment grow into a near-lifetime commitment.

Whether she was teacher of history, college advisor, assistant headmistress 1968 to 1971, or headmistress, Joan focused on the job at hand. She did everything possible to serve as effectively as possible, reading widely, listening carefully, exchanging information with colleagues, and attending professional meetings. Insatiable and indefatigable, she had a sense of urgency about her. She always seemed to know exactly what it was she was trying to accomplish, and wanted to get on with it. While her considerable energy, discipline, and determination sometimes left those around her winded or weary, her colleagues were inspired by her forceful leadership.

The clarity of her educational vision allowed her to modernize the school and navigate it successfully through the 1980s, and the superhuman demands of launching and bringing successfully to a close a major construction project in New York City. During these years Nightingale stood for academic excellence in terms of a wide range of students and the personal and classical qualities that made it unique. She also brought the school and its students and faculty into contact with a remarkable range of people, and students from St. Paul's Girls' School, London, Australia, and Japan, as part of the Study Abroad Program.

When Mrs. Woodbridge decided to retire many people urged Joan to apply for the position. John declined for all the good reasons, as she perceived it. She loved what she was doing and could not be dissuaded. However, as candidates appeared and described their vision for Nightingale-Bamford, Joan became concerned and applied for the position. (This is Millie speaking.) I recall writing to the search committee, echoing what the Nightingale-Bamford community knew: In their midst was the versatile and known educator who should be the next headmistress. The trustees needed little nudging, and happily my friend was chosen.

Enjoying one another's company and being economical, we began a prized tradition of sharing rooms at any meetings we attended. Thus we were able to have time together, difficult to arrange otherwise, given our schedules. There was always much conversation about educational concerns. But there was time for the subjects we both enjoyed, mystery book titles, politics, favorite recipes, and movies. Upon arriving at any meeting, we had to assure the arrival of the New York Times for Joan.

Joan loved to drive anywhere, and there was a memorable moment in the '70s when we had to push the car into a gas station. Notwithstanding such adventures, it was not unusual to have a car full of heads traveling with her. She always had a pad and pen to write down anything important. I often was her scribe as we flew down the highways. Last Christmas I sent her a pad with a light/pen attachment. When she called to thank me, she said it was beside her bed for that idea in the middle of the night.

It was not long into Joan's tenure at Nightingale-Bamford that she began to be tapped for leadership positions in organizations, both at the state and national levels. Her acuity of mind, her sense of humor, integrity, and the quality of her written and spoken words were harnessed to benefit other independent schools. Joan was president of NAPSG, NYSAIS, Headmistresses of the East, and the Guild of New York City schools. In the course of her career, she served on the boards of The Buckley School, The Episcopal School in New York, Lawrenceville School, and The Masters School. One school, I believe, claimed her deepest devotion. Robert College in Istanbul is a college preparatory co-ed school for Turkish students, founded by Americans and chartered in New York State. I was privileged to serve on the school's first accreditation committee and saw firsthand the indelible mark of Joan's commitment. She had led them to this demanding process, had helped them find talented educators to lead the school, and had fostered the development of a strong academic program. It is no surprise that Joan was an honorary trustee or a member of boards or organizations she has served, or that she was among the first women elected to previously all-male organizations, Headmasters Association and the Country Day School Heads.

It was also no surprise when she received the Smith College Alumnae Award for her distinguished role in so many arenas of education and in the education of young women. The honor she treasured above all was Headmistress Emerita of the Nightingale-Bamford School.

In the '80s, when Joan was diagnosed with breast cancer, the treatments exhausted her. I urged her to curtail her schedule. I was ineffectual, as was everyone else. This brave woman never missed a day of school. We all watched her fight for the realization of a dream: A new schoolhouse. She was the spirit and the presence which sustained the "Diaspora" of Nightingale-Bamford, functioning on 17 separate sites for two and a half years -- an inspiration to all of us.

Joan was always first a teacher and always made time to teach. This explains to me the special respect her faculty had for her and why she knew her girls so well. When she retired in 1991, after 20 years, she remained close to the school she knew so well and became interim head of the University School in San Francisco. Subsequently she joined Educators Collaborative, a consulting firm, and was doing the search for a headmaster at the Collegiate School in New York when she died very suddenly in her apartment in the city.

Somehow Joan made time for her beloved Edward, to whom she was married for 41 years and who died after a long illness in 1994. It was in Paris that she was interviewed by and later snared this Foreign Service officer in his late 30s. After they were married, when a friend liberated the initial interview from a file as an anniversary present, it was revealed that Ed had commented, "Seems bright. Talks too much." (Laughter.) Ed served as treasurer of Columbia University, and after retirement, as business manager of St. Bernard School.

Joan always referred to herself as Mrs. Edward B. McMenamin, because she said her husband deserved all the credit for her ability to spend all of her time working around the clock at her beloved Nightingale. Together they shared a house in Bridgehampton where Joan could garden, cook up a storm in the kitchen, entertain family and friends, and Ed could drive his red truck.

We are a privileged band of sisters and brothers who claim a connection with her. I'm sure they share my feeling that her friendship has multiplied the goodness of their life. They packed St. James' Episcopal Church for her memorial service and filled the schoolhouse she built when the school celebrated her life and meaning for them. We sang the hymns she loved and acknowledged her deep faith. She inspired Nightingale-Bamford girls and women with energy and purpose. Educator extraordinary, teacher, advisor and mentor, she led the school through unprecedented growth and to greatness.

Something said at Eleanor Roosevelt's funeral is an appropriate closing to these reflections on Joan's life and career. "Surely they are not dead who live in lives they leave behind. In those whom they have blessed, they live a life again."

And now may I invite you to stand and, as is our custom, let us observe a memorial moment, after which I will walk off the podium and I will ask that you leave the hall quietly.