Dear Friends,

I hope this first Tartan of the 2006-2007 school year finds you and your family basking in the warm glow of a wonderful summer experience. Given the pace of life from September to June, these precious summer months are a welcome respite for those of us fortunate enough to be able to take a little time off to recharge our batteries and to prepare for the coming year.

As you have been away from school this summer, there have been many on our faculty and staff who have remained here on campus and who deserve our deep and abiding respect and appreciation for their many efforts to ready the school for another year. In addition to summer school, summer camp, our first-ever summer of Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano, Special Camp for Special Kids, and numerous other programs, the summer has also seen the on-going challenge of simultaneously managing various construction and renovation projects. Led by the tireless and extraordinarily capable team of David Bush, Nancy Jones, Alvaro Barriga, and Lynn Ozonian, a phenomenal amount of work has been done to our physical plant in the past two months. The Pasternack Field House and the DeYoung Family Math and Science Center are nearing completion, our Upper School building has undergone a major refurbishing, the La Novia parking lot has been completely redesigned, a new space has been created for our Learning Center (the second floor of Campaigne Center), the Middle School science labs have been relocated to the second floor of the Gateway Building, classrooms have been painted, floors have been refinished, fields have been reseeded, books have been ordered, and on and on it goes. We are truly blessed to have so many dedicated and talented members of our staff who understand the need to devote endless hours during the “downtime” of the year to set the stage for the main event – the start of another school year.
And speaking of being blessed, September and the start of a new school year affords us all with the golden opportunity to begin anew, to initiate new ideas and projects, and to rethink our goals and aspirations. Recently, I was part of a conversation that explored the difference between success and significance. While this discussion might invite a lot of semantic jousting, I have always felt that schools should move in the direction of striving to make a difference in the lives of those we serve. Of course there are always the benchmarks of “success” by which schools are measured. I am frequently asked: Just exactly how do you know if you are being successful as a school? Are college acceptances, standardized test scores, games won, honors received, money raised, buildings built, etc. the measure? There is of course nothing wrong with striving to do well in everything we do, but in the end, I believe that great schools have always been more about striving for significance than for success, more for making a difference than for achieving measurable accomplishments.

The challenge of course is to define what this “significance” actually looks like. For me, it is imbedded in the hidden curriculum of schools, a curriculum that emphasizes fairness and honor, respect and integrity, and charts its way through the establishment of clear and morally sound priorities. There is so much pressure today to define success by what is quantifiable, and yet, it is my sense that when all is said and done, schools that are truly successful are those that make a genuine difference in the lives of those they serve.
As we begin this new and exciting school year, my sincere hope is that the experiences that lie ahead will be truly significant for you and your family. We will be ready to join with you in this wonderful work when the cycle begins again on September 5. See you soon.

Warm regards,
Marcus D. Hurlbut