Christine Watson will be one of two new teachers joining the Lower School faculty. She has been teaching in the La Mesa and Spring Valley school districts since 1999, following an earlier career in government service.
A graduate of the University of Washington, she also holds a Masters of Public Administration from the University of Southern California and a California teaching credential. She will be joining Parker as a teacher in the second grade, a level she taught previously at the Bancroft School.
The other new Lower School teacher will be Sara McCullough. She holds a B.A. in Human Development from Connecticut College and a Master of Education degree in Language and Literacy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has previously taught fi rst and second grades at two independent schools, the Advent School in Boston and Alexandria Country Day School in Virginia.
I am also pleased to note that we are adding a new Director of Annual Giving to our development offi ce, Abha Tirtha. (Kristina Starkey, who currently holds that position, will become our new Alumni Director in addition to keeping her role with our Grandparents Council.) Abha is currently the Assistant Director of Development at the UCSD Department of Health Sciences, where she is in charge of annual giving. She holds a B.A. in Economics and French from Albion College and a Master's in Health Administration from Loma Linda University.
Survey Results
In March we conducted our second biennial community opinion survey, focusing this time just on parents, and approximately half of our parents completed the questionnaire. We once again used a survey instrument from the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS), which was selected in 2005 because there is no comparable instrument from the NAIS or our own regional association.
By using this survey, we can compare our responses to the ISACS data representing more than 200,000 responses over a number of years, in addition to comparing our responses to those from our own 2005 survey. A tabulation of the results from this year, from two years ago, and from ISACS is included as an insert with this newsletter.
You will see that favorable ratings increased signifi cantly from the 2005 survey in several important areas. For example, satisfaction with the dress code went from 83% to 90%. Agreement with the statement that "the school has a commitment to a racially diverse enrollment" went from 68% to 78%.
Several other key markers of success had very high agreement ratings, in all cases higher than in 2005 and higher than the ISACS norms. These include positive school spirit (96.5%), equal opportunity for girls and boys (93.7%), commitment to moral values and character development (94.7%), and the presence of a caring and community environment (95.2).