Thank you to all of the students, parents, alumni, staff, and trustees who are already working together to make the Watershed and Friends journey a success! While we’re clearly still in the early stages of this multi-phase process, we’ve successfully crossed the starting line together since the April 9 announcement to unify was made.
Joint Unification Task Force
The task force, comprised of trustees from both Watershed and Friends boards, has been formed and is working hard to structure the work needed when two organizations become one: tasks, timelines, and working groups. The task force is composed of our board chairs, our heads of school, and three more members of each of our school’s Board of Trustees.
Listening sessions and feedback forms
Many of you have sent in your thoughts, concerns, and celebrations via the feedback form on the TogetherinBoulder website, and the listening sessions held for students, parents, and staff so far have been well-attended. We’re grateful for the authentic and engaged way our communities are showing up! Your input has been and will continue to be critical to this process. Thank you and stay-tuned for further input opportunities in addition to these upcoming listening sessions:
When possible, we use questions that have emerged from community input to add to our FAQ page. Please check in periodically to see what new questions have been asked and answered!
Teacher and staff meetings
Administrators at our two schools have been collaborating in the areas they oversee - discussing needs, priorities, and timelines. Much of this kind of work happens behind the scenes at schools anyway, but we’ll update you as progress unfolds.
More at the forefront, of course, is the vital work our teachers do! Teachers from our two schools will come together for a shared planning day during our Professional Learning / Professional Development time at the end of May. Middle school teachers will be planning additional collaboration time over the summer. Our schools will also schedule collaboration time for our teachers during August Professional Learning / Professional Development days and we’re beginning to discuss a regular cadence of collaboration time for teachers during the upcoming school year.
Informal parent gathering planned
Our two schools’ parent associations are looking at dates to plan an informal gathering for families to meet each other casually. More information coming soon.
