Since our May 1st update, we’ve made meaningful progress on the unification of Watershed School and Friends School. We remain committed to keeping you informed and invite your ongoing feedback through our comment form. While there will be specific requests for input from parents, students, alumni and other community members, we welcome your thoughts anytime - we don’t want to lose those great ideas!
The opportunity to build a preschool through 12th grade school in Boulder, in the hands of dedicated, talented educators, is a transformational endeavor. When we gathered as two professional communities on May 28th to build community, discover and deepen further alignment, laugh, listen, and learn from each other, it was evident to everyone that our two communities are a great match with like-minded educators dedicated to holding the student experience at the center of teaching and learning.
Listening sessions and FAQs
We wrapped up our spring online listening sessions on May 19th. Questions and ideas from those sessions have helped shape the summer work and priorities of our Joint Unification Task Force and our school staff. We’ve also updated our FAQs page to reflect thoughts and questions from the listening sessions. Many appreciated seeing and hearing from people from the respective schools. We will continue this cross-school community interaction in the coming months through casual, in person gatherings. Have ideas? Let us know.
Updates from the Joint Unification Task Force
This Joint Unification Task Force (JUTF) has been working diligently laying the groundwork for all aspects of our schools’ unification, establishing governance best practices, and working on the financial and legal aspects of the merger. They have hired experienced independent school governance consultant Megan Mann to help with this. Additionally, they have been working with each school’s business office and consultant Chris Massaro, an expert in the world of independent school mergers, to complete the financial due diligence required of our merger. On May 30th, members of JUTF, Friends School staff, and Watershed School staff met with Causeworthy to begin the brand and identity work for our unified school. More information on this to come.
Updates from Watershed and Friends staff
In addition to the May 30th brand and identity meeting, the full staff from our two schools met for an all-day retreat on May 28th. Organized by our schools’ program heads, this was the first opportunity our teachers and staff had to get together as a large group. Each school shared their unique origin stories, explored our many overlapping philosophies, and spent meaningful time building relationships to help shape our future together. It was a joy to be together as professionals dedicated to providing the best PS-12 progressive education experience possible for our community. The energy throughout the day was driven by curiosity and characterized by respect and enthusiasm for what’s ahead for us as a unified school!
Next Steps
Small groups will continue working together in July to begin discussing how to capture the best of our two schools’ exceptional programs for our unified school. Beginning in August, meetings for small groups of combined staff as well as occasional large all-staff groups will be scheduled for the remainder of the 2025-26 school year.
The moving pieces of this bold adventure are considerable. Our recent progress has reinforced an understanding of the strengths of our individual schools and our confidence that these combined strengths will, indeed, create the best PS-12 educational experience our community needs now and well into the future.
