I was pleased to be invited to contribute something to Trevor Day School’s 90th Anniversary magazine. This is what I wrote, with the addition of some photos from back in the day.

How the High School Began

At the opening faculty meeting in September 1990, Head of School Jack Dexter announced the theme for the academic year: Change. A year later, The Day School opened as a Pre-K–12th Grade school. Change, indeed.

In a time of declining independent school enrollment, The Day School (TDS) expanded. In 1988, two venerable schools―Walden and New Lincoln—merged, bringing together two distinct strands of progressive practice. Both had distinguished histories and both had pioneered innovative approaches to learning. In 1990, Walden-Lincoln faced an unsustainable future. It ceded its physical assets—primarily the Andrew Goodman building on West 88th Street—to TDS. In return, TDS undertook to enroll all Walden-Lincoln students, and encouraged faculty and staff to apply for positions. 

In September 1991, TDS opened with expanded numbers in all grades and sixty-five students in the high school, almost all of whom were from Walden-Lincoln. That year, no students from TDS moved up from the 8th grade. 

The new division was an extension of the TDS design for learning. The program included discretionary time, electives, a strong advisory structure, and an ethos based on trust, relationships, and mutual respect. We knocked down walls to create a Faculty Student Center as the heart of the community. We took everyone for an overnight at Deer Hill. We were, however, not bold enough to extend TDS’s no-grades assessment into the new high school. 

The faculty comprised teachers from New Lincoln (notably Irma Jarcho), Walden (among them, Cecille Little and Marty Sternstein), Walden-Lincoln (including Blanca Llaurado and Laurie Roth) and one hired from outside (Joseph Ulitto). Kate Grinnell, Sarah Pierson, and I moved up from within TDS. It was this disparate group that—conversation by conversation–-forged the systems and structures of the new division. And that meant endless meetings—seven each week—in which we hammered out the details of what was to become a unique high school and, increasingly, an attractive option among the independent school choices in NYC. In admissions, Marcia Roesch built the community family by family. 

Many moments of those early years stand out: 

• The day after the Rodney King verdict, when everything came to a standstill. Stepping off the elevator first thing that morning and finding Shelley from 8th grade, Lakeisha from 11th grade, and Cecille Little in an intergenerational moment of connection, consolation, shock, and grief. There was to be no school as usual that day.
• The afternoon that civil rights legend Bob Moses spent with students in the Center, listening to their stories of growing up and hearing gunfire at night.
• The faculty meeting where Cecille Little crossed the room to hug Irma Jarcho. (You had to know and love them both to understand the significance of that!)

“A Unique Student Body Much to be Prized” – Irma Jarcho

The student body that TDS inherited was diverse, resilient, and ebullient. They had forged close bonds in adversity and had a strong sense of identity. Their school had died, but they had survived. They looked on this alien, very white, East Side entity—this Day School—with healthy suspicion. Their trust and loyalty were to be earned, not taken for granted.

In 1993, Irma Jarcho described it best. In a note that I still have, she wrote in her distinctive looped hand: “The whole New Lincoln, Walden, Walden-Lincoln merger and its unfortunate consequences left us with a unique student body, very much to be prized. To everyone’s surprise and delight, this incredibly heterogeneous student body acts as if it were homogenized. The students get along famously; they meld into a glorious, funny, touching whole, and the combinations and permutations are well worth preserving. This is the world of the future.”

 It was, she wrote, “a successful experiment in community living and a noble enterprise.”

They were all that and more—great kids, who often drove us (I should say me), bonkers. It’s a time I will always remember with affection and pride. I am grateful to have been a part of it. 

By the end of that first year, there was much to celebrate, but so much work ahead. The strategic planning process of 1993 revealed the fault lines between the school divisions and outlined the journey TDS needed to take to become one school. The high school had to earn internal as well as external credibility. And that was the work of the next decade. 

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