MS. FORD: Good afternoon, everyone. We
welcome everyone to the 87th annual NAPSG conference. It's
wonderful to have so many of you here, and it's wonderful that
you're all in this room. When I know what's just right
outside of that glass, it's a miracle, I think, that anyone is in
this room. It's such a glorious setting, and I know it's
going to be a wonderful couple of days
I'm Burch Ford, and I have the honor of being the president of
NAPSG. I'm the head of Ms. Porter's School. I'm in my
15th year, but I'm graduating in June of 2008. That has been
another privilege, and it's particularly gratifying to be involved
with an organization that is committed, as NAPSG is, to the
education of girls and young women, and I want to read the mission
statement. I think it's something you all have heard, but I
think it's important to be reminded of it
The NAPSG mission is to further the professional growth of its
members by providing a forum in which issues pertinent to the
education of girls and young women are presented and discussed.
School heads and other representatives of member schools and
colleges meet to address issues ranging from curricular and
administrative policies to moral education and the role of women
in a complex and changing world.
And NAPSG has been at this for 87 years. So we are sharing a
wonderful legacy, and we could not be sharing better company.
In thinking again about our work and all that we do, all that
we are so lucky to do, which I think is God's work, I came across
not very long ago a passage that I love in The Once and Future
King. I don't know if you all have read that, by T. H.
White. Most people are familiar with the first book, which
is called The Sword in the Stone, and that's pretty familiar to
us. It's an absolutely wonderful book, and it's really about
moral quandaries. Merlin, who is the teacher of the young
King Arthur, called Wart, teaches him so much about life, and he
teaches him so many skills that he will need as an adult, and at
one point Wart is feeling discouraged about something, and here's
what Merlin says. He says, "The best thing for you is to
learn something, the only thing that never fails. You may
grow old and trembling in your anatomies. You may lie awake
at night listening to the disorder of your veins. You may
miss your only love. You may see the world about you
devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the
sewers of baser minds. There's only one thing for it,
then: To learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags
it. That's the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never
alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never
dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you."
And that's what we do day in and day out. We learn as leaders,
but we also teach and exemplify as best we can that learning for
our boys and girls.
This organization, NAPSG, is strong and vibrant. Our
membership is stable. You'll hear a little bit more about
that. Our finances are strong. Our finances have been
handled so beautifully and we have a reserve that is continuing to
grow. You may remember that this time last year we talked
about wanting to have reserves in place so that when the economy
goes up and down, that won't affect us, and that we would have at
least one and a half times the operating budget in reserves.
The seminar that used to be biannual that started in 1985 is
going strong. Since 2000 or 2001, it's been an annual rather
than a biannual event and over 600 women have gone through this
program since 1985. It's been tremendously successful, and
it fills a need that is really, really important. The fact
that each time it meets, it's a larger group and that it is now
annual says something about the demand. There are at least
three dozen heads of school that have come out of this program,
and it's been excellently reviewed each time that we have
it. I think it's something that you all should be proud of,
even though the group that's actually involved in this, a group of
six or seven sitting women heads who run this, it's something that
really has a huge impact on what I think we're all committed to,
which is women in leadership, and particularly in running
schools.
So I wanted to bring you up on those few things about what
NAPSG is up to. We have a few more reports, and then there
are two things for which we need to have the membership
vote. But the next item on our agenda is our treasurer's
report.