The NCGS Board recently headed to Ashley Hall School in Charleston, SC, for their June board meeting. It was precisely the right setting. The warm breezes, the Spanish moss, and the tried and true Southern hospitality created a relaxed opportunity to reflect upon where NCGS has been and where it is heading. Ashley Hall is fortunate to have a LEED certified dining hall with furnishings designed with girls in mind and a farm to table philosophy. We learned about an inspiring faculty-designed evaluation process, and we toured a historic Southern mansion that had been reimagined as a new boarding facility. Surprisingly, we learned that Ashley Hall is the only girls' school in the entire state of South Carolina. The good news? This is yet another fine example of a member school doing the sort of cutting edge work for which our schools are known. The challenge? What about the other girls in South Carolina who might benefit from learning and leading in an all-girls environment?

 

Just two days before, I traveled with Megan Murphy, Executive Director of NCGS, to New York where we engaged with the Young Women's Leadership Network to learn about the impressive growth of their affiliate public school network; met with leaders at the Girls Prep Lower East Side Elementary, the only K-8 all-girls charter school in New York City; and ended the day at Shining Hope for Communities, learning about all-girls schools built at the center of Kibera, a poverty-stricken section of Nairobi, Kenya. The good news? Each of these girls' school communities are engaged in innovative problem-solving tackling the societal infrastructures that have restricted the dreams of many girls. The challenge? What about the hundreds of other girls who would thrive in these environments if only they existed?

 

There is so much more good work to do and, happily, there are so many good people committed to doing it.

 

As I pass the leadership baton of the NCGS board to Martha Perry, Principal at St. Clement's School in Toronto, Canada, I do so with enormous pride in the work NCGS has done throughout its 25-year history. I also feel an increasing sense of urgency to support all fledgling efforts to foster "all-girls" excellence here and abroad, in the city and the country, in public and independent schools, from PK  through to college.

 

I know the work we do matters. I have seen it first-hand. I know the work we do is transformational. I have heard the voices of the girls as living proof. I know the work we do is never ending. There will always be more girls that could benefit from being immersed in the powerful energy of a school filled only with girls. And I know NCGS will be there to inspire, inform, and support our every effort to create healthy girl-only learning environments.

 

Here's to more and more good schools for girls, wherever they may be!

 

Trudy Hall

NCGS Board President

Head of Emma Willard School

 

P.S. As I personally transition from the east coast to the west coast -- from Emma Willard School to become the Interim Director by Design of the High School at Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, NCGS will absolutely remain on my Twitter feed and Google favorites list, and my go-to conference will definitely be the 2017 NCGS Conference, Education Innovation: Building Cultures of Creativity, next June in DC. I look forward to seeing you all there where we can learn and lead in the ways our girls need us to -- collaboratively, creatively, and intentionally.