By Dr. Martin Kilbridge
This past Sunday we celebrated Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles who had anxiously gathered in a house in Jerusalem, unsure of what their future held with Jesus’ departure. The Holy Spirit transformed them, infusing them with hope and the courage to proclaim the gospel message. The Holy Spirit continues to animate the Church and it animates us, the Academy of the Holy Names community, in our mission to educate young women of competence, confidence, and compassion to build a better world.
It is with that spirit we undertook last year to develop a multi-year strategic plan. The result was a comprehensive plan for a promising future based on input from all our constituencies. We announced AHN 2030 this past fall with the tagline: Our School. Our Spirit. Our Future. The plan has been central to the work of the Board of Trustees and the school’s Leadership Team, composed of Margaret Taranto, Steve Graubart, Kristin Vivian, David Perritano, and Kendra Astemborski.
I take this opportunity to provide you with an update on our progress and lay out our goals for 2025-2026.
An important dimension of our Strategic Plan is to continue to increase enrollment. We had a second year of growth this year and anticipate another year of growth based on this admissions cycle. In fact, we now have waiting lists at two grade levels. A Holy Names education is an investment in the future of young women. We are honored to be stewards of that investment and thank the families that entrust us with fostering their child’s development.
We also seek to enhance our sense of belonging, satisfaction, enthusiasm, and support among our student body. To that end, we held a series of focus group meetings for students, parents, and teachers and issued multiple surveys. The results pointed to areas for improvement in terms of discipline and community-building. We are developing programs and revising policies to strengthen these areas and will share these plans with our school community in the coming days and weeks.
Recognizing the important role arts education has played since the founding of the Sisters of the Holy Names, we have established a dance program and created a beautiful dance studio in the Arts Center. Led by the fantastic Claire Jacob-Zysman, the program is flourishing.
Our gifted faculty received special attention in the Strategic Plan. We have created a plan and formula to boost teacher salaries over time. We have also developed a tool to ensure their duties are equitably distributed and stipends, including those for coaches, are increased in conjunction with teacher salary increases.
Outreach to our proud and loyal alumnae has intensified this year with the addition of Katie Ann McDermott ’98 to our outstanding Institutional Advancement team.
Lastly, we wanted to ensure a sustainable Partners in Education program to support students whose families would otherwise not be able to consider a Holy Names education. We not only recrafted the program to ensure long-term sustainability, but raised more than $130,000 at the Spring Gala Paddle Raise to buttress it. We thank our generous donors who help us nurture the promise inherent in each young woman we admit.
Next year’s Strategic Plan tasks include enhancing the student experience, launching a three-year curriculum review (including special attention to our role as a sponsored ministry of Holy Names Educational Ministries), and developing a marketing plan to engage more families.
For more than 140 years Holy Names has been an exemplar of a quality girls’ education. The vision and spirit that led to its founding is alive and well as we chart our future.