Upheaval at Holton

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I see as troublesome is class size...up to 20 kids per classroom and 1 teacher.

They have a hard cap on the number of students, based on their occupancy permit. Or are you referring to possible future expansion?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I see as troublesome is class size...up to 20 kids per classroom and 1 teacher.

They have a hard cap on the number of students, based on their occupancy permit. Or are you referring to possible future expansion?

Yes. Parents have been called for a meeting tomorrow that many in this chain have speculated is about raising the cap by 100.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As the parent of a girl at a nearby private school, I hope Holton remains a strong school. She’s in lower ES and we aren’t looking to switch schools, but we’re hoping it could be a good option for 9th.

This area doesn’t necessarily have a huge number of strong, secular HS options. If you’re ok with a Catholic school, there’s a ton. Less so if you’re not. Holton declining in quality would be a big loss.

COMPLETELY agree! There are really very few secular HS options in this area, which is very surprising to me!

[Anonymous]

Hope Holton remains a strong school. It has a special niche as a secular single sex school with outstanding sports, arts and academics.

[Anonymous]

Did any current parent go to the coffee and willing to share what's up?

[Anonymous]

Academically, the school discarded the year-long western civ history course and many of the honors senior electives do not teach much at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did any current parent go to the coffee and willing to share what's up?

Yes. They want their occupancy permit expanded to allow up to 200 more students, however there are no plans to change the student-teacher ratio, nor the enrollment levels at upper school. Instead, they may expand lower school. My read of it is they may start offering education before 3rd grade, since a lot of peer schools do that also. With the new learning commons, they have more rooms available for teaching on campus so there is sufficient physical space.

The other change requested to their permit would be to allow more community use of the school, which can bring in more revenue and also improve the school's profile in the community. The current permit doesn't allow this.

They will not be adding another entrance.

It seems like these are long-term plans. Just getting any changes to the permit will take a lot of time (a traffic study is underway), so I think it's just to allow expansion later if they want to do it. The permit was last updated 20 years ago.

On a side note, they also mentioned yield (% who accepted the offer to attend) was the highest ever in this latest round.

As a parent, I'd say overall I'm not concerned, since it seems like class sizes (student-teacher ratio) will not change. They were adamant about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Academically, the school discarded the year-long western civ history course and many of the honors senior electives do not teach much at all.

Had a senior graduate in 2024—that old school class was discarded several years ago so it’s not indicative of any recent substantial shift in rigor. It wasn’t popular so they got rid of it and offer classes more students want to take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Academically, the school discarded the year-long western civ history course and many of the honors senior electives do not teach much at all.

Ha. I took Western Civ at Holton - in 1970-something! Hail to Mrs. Terry!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bigger news is the plan to expand the school by about 100 kids to shore up new funds. Fundraising has been lackluster, and so much was spent on new library, athletic facilities, etc.

Can you say more about the planned expansion. We’re applying this year for DD, and this is the first I’ve heard of an expansion.

You want to reach out to the board members.

Transparency is key.

[Anonymous]

Are people still clueless as to why Holton is tanking?

The new HoS is a puppet hard-right conservative who's friends with
Brett Kavanaugh and Glenn Youngkin.

Last year, she made many cultural changes and got into a big fight with the Black affinity group. She walked away from the forum crying, and one of her assistants wrote in an email that the Black families needed to pay for how they treated her. The same assistant accidentally sent the email to a bunch of Black parents.

Most of the White parents seem okay with it, but a lot of the Black parents are trying to leave. We pulled our application after everything came out.

It was a pretty big deal last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bigger news is the plan to expand the school by about 100 kids to shore up new funds. Fundraising has been lackluster, and so much was spent on new library, athletic facilities, etc.

Can you say more about the planned expansion. We’re applying this year for DD, and this is the first I’ve heard of an expansion.

You want to reach out to the board members.

Transparency is key.

The Black affinity group did that last year, and the HoS assistants threatened them. Not worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are people still clueless as to why Holton is tanking?

The new HoS is a puppet hard-right conservative who's friends with
Brett Kavanaugh and Glenn Youngkin.

Last year, she made many cultural changes and got into a big fight with the Black affinity group. She walked away from the forum crying, and one of her assistants wrote in an email that the Black families needed to pay for how they treated her. The same assistant accidentally sent the email to a bunch of Black parents.

Most of the White parents seem okay with it, but a lot of the Black parents are trying to leave. We pulled our application after everything came out.

It was a pretty big deal last year.

wtf

Why are they expanding. That is absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are people still clueless as to why Holton is tanking?

The new HoS is a puppet hard-right conservative who's friends with
Brett Kavanaugh and Glenn Youngkin.

Last year, she made many cultural changes and got into a big fight with the Black affinity group. She walked away from the forum crying, and one of her assistants wrote in an email that the Black families needed to pay for how they treated her. The same assistant accidentally sent the email to a bunch of Black parents.

Most of the White parents seem okay with it, but a lot of the Black parents are trying to leave. We pulled our application after everything came out.

It was a pretty big deal last year.

All breathlessly reported on this forum at the time!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are people still clueless as to why Holton is tanking?

The new HoS is a puppet hard-right conservative who's friends with
Brett Kavanaugh and Glenn Youngkin.

Last year, she made many cultural changes and got into a big fight with the Black affinity group. She walked away from the forum crying, and one of her assistants wrote in an email that the Black families needed to pay for how they treated her. The same assistant accidentally sent the email to a bunch of Black parents.

Most of the White parents seem okay with it, but a lot of the Black parents are trying to leave. We pulled our application after everything came out.

It was a pretty big deal last year.

wtf

Why are they expanding. That is absurd.

One of the reasons why the HoS was brought in was because she was sold as a good fundraiser. The Marriott family pulled its funding because of the school's DEI stance. So, folks on the board thought that DEI would cause more donors to leave, so they brought Penny in to help regain right-wing donations. She hasn't been able to, so they will need more students now.