To build a high school
Greenwich Country Day merger saves Stanwich, costing teachers most
GREENWICH — The visionaries of The Stanwich School always wanted it to be a K-12 institution, but over the last 10 years, the school lost the money and students it needed to support that vision.
But when the school this fall is folded into Greenwich Country Day School, and most of its 208 students swell the GCDS population to 1,180 kids, the vision for Stanwich, full classes and first-rate facilities, will be realized — but without the Stanwich name. “What you see going up right now is basically what Stanwich has always wanted and felt it needed in order to take the next leap forward demonstrating its educational strength to
INSIDE: Former GHS headmaster creates a new Upper School for Greenwich Country Day. A4
Greenwich,” Head of School Charlie Sachs said. “Although we didn’t realize we’d have to join together with GCDS to achieve those ends, we are achieving them and the students will be able to take advantage of new facilities.”
A section of the new school will memorialize the uniforms, the students, the winning teams, their trophies and national championships, Sachs said.
The Stanwich School was founded in 1998 by Pat Young, a former faculty member and lower school head at Greenwich Academy, because she thought a different kind of co-ed institution was needed in the area. The school initially served kindergarten through fourth grade, growing with each year.
Young had always wanted Stanwich to have an upper school, and the expansions to include grades 9-12 began in the early 2010s. But results were modest at best. Stanwich graduated four students from Grade 12 in 2016, 13 students in 2017.
In 2012, it acquired extra acreage from the Greenwich Reform Synagogue and launched a $100 million plan to renovate its 25-acre campus on Stanwich Road, including the addition of an artificial turf field.
But these expansions occurred while the economy was still fighting back from the Great Recession. According to tax documents, Stanwich School has lost $4,272,445 in revenue from fiscal year 2010-11 to 2015-16.
At the same time, enrollment eventually dipped below 300 — to 96 prekindergarten through fifthgraders and 112 sixth-graders to 12th-graders — for the entire school, this year.
“We would have been able to continue operating, but we reached our peak enrollment, 480, just before the economic downturn,” Sachs said. “I think folks kept thinking the enrollment would follow as economy improved. The reality was, in the last four years, the demographics of Connecticut changed, our schools have become so expensive, and it had really undermined our ability as an independent school community in Greenwich to maintain all these schools.”
The school would have had to downsize faculty to keep going, having already “trimmed around the edges” over the last four years to balance the budget and maintain a strong program.
“We were at a point where we were going to have to make tough decisions,” he said. “This consolidation precluded that necessity.”
Former business office employee Ellen Flink remembers Stanwich as a great place to work with good people. She said she heard calls to save money, but nothing that conveyed the urgency of the situation. Continued operation might have been unsustainable, she said.
“I think Stanwich wouldn’t have survived on its own if GCDS didn’t come to pick up the pieces,” she said.
Tuition rates went up 3 percent to 5 percent a year for the last six or seven years to meet the rising costs of independent education, he said, but it wasn’t enough to get Stanwich to where it wanted to be.
“It’s tough to create a high school without money and facilities,” retired teacher Merilyn Stephens said.
The Stanwich facility will be for high school students only come the fall, with renovations to come that include a new arts quad, more classrooms, a kitchen and a performing arts center. School officials have agreed with the town to cap enrollment there at 550. Country Day Head of School Adam Rohdie has said the ideal size will be about 450 students.
Greenwich Country Day School has a longer, more famous history. Founded in 1926, the independent, co-educational school, which once counted future President George H.W. Bush among its students, now enrolls about 900 from nursery to the 9th grade level. In November 2017, Greenwich Country Day acquired Stanwich and became the only independent nursery through 12th grade co-educational private school in Greenwich.
“As you look at the high school landscape across America, there are more articles being written about reimaging high school,” Rohdie said. “We know more about the brain in the last 10 years than we’ve learned in the last 100. This is a great opportunity to reimagine high school.”
Filling out the ranks
Not everyone will get to take part in the opportunity, however. Twothirds of Stanwich’s current teachers will not be joining the faculty ranks of the new, expanded school. And many are not happy about it.
“Quality teachers are being let go,” Stephens said. “They just really care for kids. They’re team players. We’ve lost good leaders and great teachers.”
Sachs, while not involved in the hiring, said GCDS has expanded its faculty significantly, interviewing many candidates from across the country.
GCDS had few high school teachers, so it assimilated Stanwich teachers who instructed at the middle- and high-school levels. But hiring on lower school teachers from Stanwich in many cases would have been redundant, Sachs said.
Rohdie said the school has hired between 12 and 15 teachers to handle the influx of about 100 Stanwich lower- and middle-school students.
Some Stanwich teachers feel they were treated unfairly. Multiple teachers and staff said senior Stanwich officials had told them during the 2017-18 school year that if the school employed them in 2018-19, they would have jobs in 2019-20. What kind of employment was not guaranteed, however.
Over time, however, these teachers reported that the tone of meetings changed, and they began to realize that many teachers would not move over in the merger. Flink recalled that her fellow employees felt communication was poor and information vague.
Rohdie denied this, saying Stanwich teachers were given the first opportunity to apply for jobs at Greenwich Country Day. He said the messaging has been “100 percent clear.”
“When we acquired Stanwich, we said very clearly, our goal would be to give the teachers first at-bat,” Rohdie said. “They would have the first opportunity to interview.”
Further, every teacher has a one-year contract, he said.
“One-year contracts allow the school to make hiring decisions that best suit the needs of the kids,” Rohdie said. “It’s a cleaner approach.”
He and others in the hiring process spent time evaluating teaching and making decisions about who would continue, he said.
Sachs said no one knew exactly what the process would look like.
Greenwich Country Day “continues to be surprised by the enrollments for the upper school, so I can’t really speak to what people expected,” Sachs said.
A year ago, Rohdie said he lost sleep wondering whether the high school could attract 75 ninth-graders. But 145 ninth-graders applied and 115 were accepted. The 10thgrade class has 45 students, the 11th-grade class 15 and 12th-grade class has 13, he said.
These older grades are the rising juniors and seniors of Stanwich.
“I think we all hoped that those people who wanted to go on to GCDS would have that opportunity to work at a similar level,” Sachs said. “I think GCDS has done everything to make that possible, but the reality is, I don’t think in any reasonable way, we could’ve lived up to their hopes.”
“I think every Stanwich teacher wanted to be part of the new school, but for some, that won’t be possible,” he said.