From Where I Stand

Sixteen years ago, I wrote my first “From Where I Stand” column. The title was a nod to my grandfather, who worked as a rabbi in Baltimore for several decades and called his synagogue newsletter column by the same name. I never asked him about the genesis of the title, but I imagine he was referencing where he physically stood—on his pulpit, delivering weekly sermons. It could also have been a reference to the unique vantage point he had as a leader, watching his community evolve from a distinct perch.

For 16 years, it has been my privilege to serve GDS from a similarly distinct perch. The world has changed meaningfully since I became a Hopper in the summer of 2010. Back then, less than a quarter of Americans owned smartphones. No one had heard of COVID or ChatGPT. And in my early years, I routinely showed up for Board committee meetings on MacArthur Boulevard (home of our former Lower/Middle School campus) only to realize I was supposed to be on Davenport Street. I have changed as well. My children, the youngest of whom wasn't old enough to start school in 2010, are now young adults. I am grayer and more wrinkled. And I've learned a thing or two—perhaps most importantly, how much there is that I still don't know, and

how much of leadership is not about solving problems but managing dilemmas.

What I do know is this: GDS lives in its stories.

Eighty years of history means a lot of stories. There's the one about Aggie O'Neil, our founding head, who arrived with Board Chair Philleo Nash to inspect the new Grasslands campus in the summer of 1946, only to find the front door locked. Philleo suggested they return with a real estate agent. Aggie said, "Give me a minute," walked around back, found a window slightly ajar, climbed through, and opened the front door from the inside. "Welcome to Georgetown Day School," she said. That story tells you something essential about the school she founded: it confidently pushes past barriers that would have stopped most people

I am grayer. I am more wrinkled. And I have a learned a thing or two...

Then there's the story I discovered in 2019, when a historian friend researching Julius Rosenberg found a 1948 Justice Department memo in Rosenberg's declassified FBI file. The memo had been written at the request of GDS parent David Bazelon, who would later become a prominent federal judge. Judge Bazelon was worried about prospective GDS parents who might be affiliated with the Communist Party and could bring discredit to the School. The official's reply: the headmaster was "very unusual, very good with children," and he "could not bring himself to believe that there was anything wrong with the school." (A few years later in 1952, Philleo, who was serving as a special assistant to President Harry S. Truman, became the first member of Truman’s staff to be publicly accused of being a Communist or Communist sympathizer by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.) GDS was apparently too idealistic or too rooted in its mission to be entirely trusted. Some things don't change.

This past year, the Benjamin Cooper Memorial Lecture featured Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson— following in the footsteps of former GDS parents Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Jackson’s 2022 confirmation hearing brought the School into the national spotlight when senators attacked her service on our Board. Once again, GDS's values attracted scrutiny from those who don't share them. Once again, the School stood firm.

The story of what we have built together during my 16 years here has key components: a financial aid budget that will exceed $10 million next year, supporting a quarter of our student body; a growing endowment that reduces our dependence on tuition; and a unified campus that has deepened our community and strengthened our identity. But the things I'm most proud of resist measurement. The most important GDS stories—when a teacher helped unlock the mysteries of Beloved for a student or a first grader found the courage to speak publicly at Author’s Brunch—are those that will never get written down and yet shape the lives of young people.

Not long ago, a senior came to my office to interview me for a class. She had been at GDS since pre-K, and I remembered her early months vividly. She was so shy that she sometimes struggled to get out of the car in the morning, and nearly inaudible when she spoke in class. The young woman who sat across from me was poised, curious, and entirely comfortable in her own skin. She wanted to talk about GDS's mission—why we chose it and how I saw it living in the School. I told her the truth: I see it living in you. In your journey from a terrified four-year-old to an 18-year-old ready to take on the world.

That is the magic of GDS—the alchemy of teachers who believe in children before children believe in themselves, of a community resilient enough to hold struggle and growth at the same time. Aggie and Philleo built this School in 1945 because they believed the world needed it. Looking at that young woman across my desk, and at everything happening in the world beyond these walls, I believe they were right. The work is evergreen. The School, its moral courage, its commitment to justice, its insistence that all children are worthy of love, matters as much now as it ever has.

What a privilege to be part of an institution that carries so many stories. And how exciting to think of all of the stories that have yet to be written and that will unfold over our beloved School’s next 80 years. To the future!