Hello all,
We hope everyone had some time over the past weekend to rest and recuperate, knowing that tomorrow we will be able to send our kids through Croft doors to our incredible teachers and staff. A lot of information has dropped in the last few days regarding Croft Schools, and we know there are a lot of unanswered questions. We are writing to share updates on the evolution of parent engagement and organizing for the Croft-JP school as we continue to work through these challenging times and questions together.
It was exactly two weeks ago, on the heels of the Board of Managers announcement, that the Parent Advisory Council was created by parent volunteers across all grade levels, who sprung into action immediately and brought a diversity of talents and expertise to lend their support to the school. The PAC quickly coalesced around its primary short term goal: to fundraise capital from caregivers, community members, and external supporters to keep the school operating through the end of the school year. This would ensure students had a stable education for this academic year, and it would give more runway to make larger decisions about the future. We have accomplished our goal, and as of today, we have collected $1,058,827 of the $1,166,156 in pledges.
Now the question becomes: what is next? What needs to be accomplished for our school and community? And who are the right people to lead this next effort? The PAC met last night and has decided that fresh perspectives with new energy and different expertise are needed for the next phase of this work. To that end, we are working to evolve our parent efforts into several different bodies of work, and the PAC as previously structured will no longer convene. We are providing an overview of these new structures, so that community members know where to go to get involved or to ask questions.
Friends of JP Education: The Friends of JP Education (“FOJP”) non-profit will continue to steward the short term goal of the PAC. This means closing out the collection of outstanding pledges. The non-profit will also continue to fund payroll and make other vendor payments, while working with the school team to manage expenses. This group also continues to explore the question of whether parent donations can be restructured either as loans or as tax-exempt donations to better leverage parent funds. There are no guarantees and donors should continue to think of these as non-refundable, non-deductible donations as noted in the pledge form. However, FOJP is exploring these possibilities. As a reminder, you can find all key documents and membership of FOJP here.
Long Term Planning Committee: The Long Term Planning Committee (“LTP”) is the group now primarily responsible for driving the next phase of work, which is exploring what the appropriate structure or pathway our school should take in the future, and how parents can best be engaged in this exploration. This effort is being spearheaded by Will Thiel and Lindsey Musen, with several functional subcommittees. If you would like to support these efforts, you can reach out to subcommittee points of contact, listed below. They will invite you to join the Long Term Planning Committee WhatsApp group and sign up for a team.
| General Questions | Lindsey Musen |
| Community Engagement | Sarah Brady and Libbey Davis Hunt |
| Legal/Assets | Will Thiel |
| Finance | Chris Andrews |
| Acquisition Research | Kyle Raynor, Henry Spitzer |
Media and External Communications: All media and communications requests and proactive story-telling ideas should continue to be routed to our parent comms/media team, led by Becky Ullman and Nicky Bandera. If you have been contacted by the press or are interested in being part of that team, please reach out to them.
School Leadership Team: You should continue to go to Shilpa and the School Leadership Team (jp-leadership@thecroftschool.org) for all questions related to day-to-day school operations, academic programming, student experience, and teacher support. This includes anything that directly impacts your child’s classroom experience, such as curriculum, schedules, school events, and student needs. They remain fully dedicated to the needs of students and teachers and will continue to lead all in-school decision-making. They will also continue to partner closely with families and Croft’s broader leadership as we navigate this next phase together.
Board Liaisons: Erik and Merry will remain board liaisons for the Friends of JP Education non-profit, as needed. The Long Term Planning group is still determining their approach to board engagement, but once requested, Erik and Merry will build relationships between members of the Long-Term Planning Group and the Board of Managers.
Frequently Asked Questions: In order to keep information flowing to the community, we are continuing to develop and refresh Frequently Asked Questions – our original FAQ can be found here, and there is an updated version here, which will continue to be refreshed.
We are so grateful for this exceptional community, and look forward to seeing the next iteration of our efforts led by these new teams.
Erik & Merry (on behalf of the PAC)