Endowment and Campus Enhancement

Endowment - $1,500,000

A healthy endowment serves not only as a safety net for a school, should unforeseen financial hardship occur, but it also provides an alternative revenue stream under normal circumstances that relieve an institution of singular dependence on tuition. While our ultimate endowment goal is certainly greater than we feel this first campaign can accomplish, we are committed to raising one dollar of endowment for every dollar we raise for campus enhancements. The income from this endowment fund would begin to help us address the following:

Faculty Salary and Benefits

Our financial commitment to teachers as individuals must match the intellectual and social commitment we expect them to make to our children if we are to attract and keep talented educators. No one enters teaching to become rich, but everyone who becomes a teacher should be able to attain the modest goals of owning a home, raising children and affording health care. Consider these statistics.

• Our mean faculty salary falls in the bottom quartile of Fairchester Independent Schools
• Most of our administrative salaries fall below the fiftieth percentile of other schools under two hundred and below the bottom quartile of schools above two hundred
• While our health benefit covers 64% of its cost for our single employees, it covers only 30% for couples and, worse yet, only 22% for employees with a family. That means that it’s conceivable for an employee to pay as much as a third of his or her take-home pay to health insurance
• The 3% contribution we donate each month to employees’ Tiaa-CREF annuity accounts falls short of the percentage offered by other independent schools in the area.

Financial Aid

Visitors to our school often remark about the intangible quality that the socio-economic diversity of our community brings to the daily life of our children, one that belies the general make-up of Fairfield County. It is an important thread in the fabric of our community – one that serves as a ballast in the rarified atmosphere of this county and, more importantly, one that offers talented, unique children an opportunity they would otherwise miss.

Campus Improvements - $1,500,000

As we approach our centennial year, our Board of Governors is committed to maintaining the small student body that is the hallmark of our family-like community on its original site in Stratfield Village. While doing so, our goal is to maintain, renovate and enhance our campus to better meet the programmatic needs of our children. These include the following needs:

Playing Field Irrigation and Renovation

As a school with a growing athletic program and daily gym for all students, our one existing playing field must be top of the line. Restoration would include re-pitching and sodding our field with natural athletic turf, irrigation for proper maintenance and the installation of an electronic scoreboard and parking guard rails.

Permanent Performing Arts Space

Creation of a permanent performance space with adequate lighting, sound and storage will jettison our existing performing arts program as well as support the growth of an articulated drama program for students in every grade. This performance space will be created without impacting the integrity of our athletics space.

New Performing Arts Classroom

Creation of a second performing arts classroom will provide students and teachers with an additional music and drama classroom that can also serve as an after school yoga space. It will also free up the current lower school music room for much needed early childhood space.

Music Room Renovation

With access to the new stage that will allow it to serve as a green room during productions renovations to the renovation of our existing music room will include a small practice stage for chorus and drama as well better storage for instrumental music.

Upper School Science Lab Renovation

This renovation will integrate technology with the hands on aspects of scientific inquiry and blur the line between ‘real’ and ‘digital’ experience for our fifth through eighth grade students. With a botany/greenhouse area and improved and expanded lab space our upper school science facility will properly support our existing upper program.

Dining Room Renovation

This new design will provide less congested dining space for our students and faculty and much needed improved acoustics for lunch and meetings. In addition, by replacing the existing dining entrance with glass and replacing the windows that overlook the brook, this renovation will create a beautiful naturally lit atmosphere for a space that is used by our community from morning ’til night.

General Infrastructure Improvements

Installation of sprinklers in the older section of our school and the routine replacement of flat roofs are vital projects that our operating budget simply cannot support.