Community Meeting Recap: December 9, 2024

Thank you to everyone who came to our Community Meeting this week. We plan to have another Community Meeting in the spring, and in the meantime we can share more about this meeting with those of you who couldn’t make it. We understand childcare is a major barrier to attending school events like this, and it is our top priority to find a solution for this. 

Community Survey & Annual Report 

After a lovely eurythmy opening led by Carrie Mass, we had the chance to get to introduce ourselves to the group, and then Board Member Wendy Sue Horn led us through the preliminary findings of our Community Survey and solicited more feedback from the group. We will share more in depth takeaways from this survey soon. 

Kyle Miller, Board Treasurer, reviewed the financials from the 23-24 Annual Report, celebrating the fact that 75% of our expenses go towards compensation for the wonderful staff and faculty here at PWS, and noting that $307K of the money we made through donations and fundraising was due to a one-time payment from the ERC program, a government payroll tax refund for employee retention during the pandemic. 

CARE Vision 

School Director Chiaki Uchiyama and Director of Administration Crystal Lawrence led a discussion of our CARE Vision. Our school has a long history of being cared for by the hands and hearts of individuals who came together to make a home for PWS, and to ultimately buy and renovate our current property., Our main building, which was built in 1936, will always need updating, just like any home does. 

In addition to our desires for very practical campus enhancements like a new high school roof and updated, energy efficient HVAC system, we also have visions and goals to expand our campus and our ability to bring Waldorf education to an even larger community. Any major campus addition would require a major amount of money, so we are seeking funding opportunities where we can. 

Watch our CARE Campaign video from last year’s Auction!

This summer, we had the opportunity to apply for a statewide grant called the Childcare Infrastructure Fund, focused on expanding child care centers in Oregon. This led us to revive a vision school leaders created in 2010 to build a separate early childhood center on the south side of the field, near the Monroe parking lot. This would not only expand our EC spaces, but also free up space in the main building for our other grades. Although we were not awarded the grant in the first round, we will have two more chances to apply in 2025. 

Our Care Vision is very much a vision that is alive and morphing, not a plan set in stone. The vision will evolve as different funding opportunities arise and based on the desires and needs of our community. We want your input! Please take a moment to fill out our quick survey on the CARE Vision here. 

Wrap Up

We finished the night with small group discussions and singing led by Chiaki Uchiyama. Thank you again to everyone who joined, and to all of you for being a part of our PWS community! 

A few final resources you may want to reference are our Five Year Strategic Plan and our most up to date tuition FAQs.