A Message from the Head of School
Children have the opportunity to enter our doors at the age of three and to remain here for the next eleven years of their lives. A child’s experience at The Unquowa School encompasses the longest number of years during the most critical and magical portion of their development. It is our responsibility to make certain that those years are the best they can be for our children and that the institution that our founders so lovingly conceived over ninety years ago is provided with a vigorous campus and a healthy endowment that will serve children past its upcoming centennial and into its next hundred years.
One of the first things that visitors to our school often remark about is the homey feeling of our school’s campus. “I’ve driven down Stratfield Road many times and never realized that there was a school here; it looks so residential,” they say. How well that statement fits our school’s history and unwavering philosophy. Founded by parents in 1917 on its current site and committed over the past ninety-two years to working with families to help raise and educate their children, The Unquowa School recognizes the incredible responsibility that its motto, Cura Futuri Nobis, implies. The future is in our care—both that of the children we serve today and the overall well-being of this institution so that it will be here to serve future generations. To insure both, we must not only create and maintain a campus that allows us to provide the learning experience that Unquowa is known for and that 21st century education requires, but we must also establish an endowment that will provide the financial security that all healthy academic institutions require, bringing us to our centennial year in the strong position that our founders surely envisioned.
A school that is tuition-driven can certainly survive if it is cautious, but a school with a strong endowment can afford to move beyond caution and focus on best practice rather than prudent practice. It can enroll talented, curious children from all backgrounds, it can provide ample room and extraordinary facilities and, most importantly, it can attract and retain educators who can commit to working in the rewarding academic environment that the independent school world offers without sacrificing the ability to provide reasonably for their own families’ lives.
As Head of School, I meet and get to know alumni who confirm on a regular basis that it was The Unquowa School—not their high school, not their boarding school, and not their undergrad or graduate school—which made an indelible mark on their character, academic curiosity and intellectual spirit. The Campaign for Unquowa will insure our school’s ability to do just that for children into the next century of our school’s existence and beyond. That is our goal.
Sharon Lauer - Head of School