Tim Breen, PhD., Head of Watershed School, announced that the 2025-27 school year will be his last at Watershed School. He will have served as Watershed’s Head of School for eight years. Read the announcement letter from Watershed’s Board of Trustees, followed by Tim’s letter to the community.
April 9, 2025
Dear Watershed Community,
On behalf of the Watershed Board of Trustees, I write to share that Tim Breen has announced that he will retire as Head of School at Watershed at the end of the 2025-26 school year. We are deeply grateful to Tim for his years of dedication and service to the Watershed community, and of course we fully support his decision to retire. Tim’s strong vision, deep commitment, and compassionate leadership have brought our school forward in a multitude of meaningful and lasting ways.
Tim has been a visionary leader during a critical period of our school’s history, building academic strength, supporting staff and students, and ensuring financial growth and much needed capital improvements. Over the last seven years, Tim has led the school through a recommitment to our core design principles, development and implementation of a bold and inclusive strategic vision, successful navigation of the COVID pandemic, strategic enrollment growth, the school’s largest capital campaign, the purchase and renovation of Watershed’s first buildings, and the move to our amazing new campus. Most recently, Tim has worked to position us to become an even stronger asset to the Boulder community through unification with the Friends School. Tim’s dedication to making Watershed the best it can be stems from deep care for the people at our school, belief in the power of progressive education, and confidence in people to make a positive impact – at our school, in our local community, and in our world.
The Watershed Board of Trustees is truly grateful to Tim for all he has done and for the leadership and guidance he will continue to provide during the first year of unification. We are proud of Watershed’s past and confident in the future of our combined school. As noted in the unification announcement earlier, we will be conducting a search for an interim Head of School to lead our combined school in 2026-2027 after Tim’s departure. We are thrilled to be entering this transition from a position of strength!
Sincerely,
Julie Goldstein, P’24
Chair of the Board of Trustees
Dear Watershed Community,
Earlier today, I announced at our all school community meeting that Watershed School and Friends School plan to unify and that I am retiring as Head of School at Watershed at the end of the 2025-2026 school year.
When I arrived in July of 2018 as your new Head of School, I was filled with admiration for the people, program, and mission of Watershed and with confidence that an already great school held potential to be even more. I was excited to work with our exceptional staff, board of trustees, students, parents, and alumni to build our future. We identified and deepened our program strengths, becoming locally and nationally recognized for our community-engaged, college preparatory academics; we grew our enrollment and stabilized our financial position; we wrote and began implementing an ambitious vision for the future; we undertook the school’s largest capital campaign; we bought our school’s first buildings; we moved Watershed to our new, bigger, mission-aligned campus; and we laid the groundwork for unification with Friends School which will allow our combined school to become the unparalleled preschool through high school option that our community needs. And somewhere in there, we successfully navigated the challenges of COVID. It has been exhilarating and humbling to be part of such a remarkable time in our school’s history. I am grateful to the people of Watershed. I am proud to be part of Watershed. I am excited to be with Watershed through the first year of unification.
Watershed’s mission and vision still make my heart beat a little faster. While some of the faces have changed and the program has evolved, I passionately endorse who we are and what we do. And my belief in our school’s ability to continue to strengthen and evolve into the future remains rock solid. While, after next year, I will not be leading our combined school, I will be cheering wildly from the sidelines, excited and confident about our future.
Thank you for your support, your trust, and your partnership over the years – I am honored to have been with you on this journey. I look forward to celebrating our school’s many accomplishments with you next year and, along with the staff and board of trustees, am committed to sustaining our current momentum through the upcoming transition. Please reach out if you have any questions or thoughts you’d like to share.
With deep gratitude,
Tim Breen, Ph.D.
Head of School
