Included in the coverage are a timeline history of highlights and milestones, a remarkable document from the Jane Carlson Williams ’60 archives (Noe’s directly challenging speech to the faculty at the start of his fourth year), an appreciation of “Lakeside’s Head Coach” from director of athletics Chris Hartley, and Noe’s parting thoughts in his final “Head Note” column.

Transcript abridged from interviews with Head of School Bernie Noe, conducted by Carey Quan Gelernter

Lakeside School campus, Aug. and Sept. 2021

 

What’s your first recollection of hearing about Lakeside?

I remember the first moment. It was at a basketball game at Sidwell Friends School. The school had a new student who had gone to Lakeside, and whose sister had graduated from Lakeside. They’d moved to D.C. because the father had gotten a job at Brookings. At the game, I was sitting next to their mom. I knew they were from Washington state, which I knew nothing about. The mom said her daughters had gone to a school called Lakeside and that it was really strong academically, a really good school. For whatever reason, she added, “The head of school’s house is really nice.” I thought — wow, great, OK. Then a year later, a headhunter called and said Lakeside was looking for a head.

Had you ever visited Seattle?

When I came to interview here was the very first time. I’d hardly been even to the West Coast — just a couple of trips to San Francisco and Los Angeles to fundraise for Sidwell.

First impressions?

After I accepted the job, I came back in April for three days for a board retreat. I went for a run in Myrtle Edwards Park. It was barely light out, 6:30 a.m. I noticed a young woman standing on a rock, kind of out in the water. It struck me because you wouldn’t run in the park in the semi-dark in D.C. I thought, this must be a really safe city that a woman would be out there. I ran by her and then I heard an enormous splash. I thought she’d jumped in the water. I turned back and there was a gigantic whale, right off the bay. I stood on the rock with her for a few minutes. That whale came up a second time right beside me and looked right up at me — like, I could see in its mouth.

I took that as a sign: “Think big. Come here and think big.”

Did you know anyone in Seattle?

Killian had one friend, who had been her classmate at Yale Divinity School.

The move was gigantic for Killian. She’d started a mind-blowing organization in D.C., Samaritan Inns (addressing homelessness and addiction). She said, “It would be like you starting a school and it’s going really well — and then you leave.”

She came because she knew I really wanted to come. I’d had other offers. She said if it was going to be anywhere, she knew this would be the school.

So you owed her big time.

Yes. As it turns out, now she wouldn’t want to leave Seattle. And she came to that before I did. She wrote a book the first year, about working with people experiencing homelessness, “Finding Our Way Home.” It’s used by divinity schools, sociology professors. Then she decided to open Recovery Café. There are 36 cafés in the Recovery Café network now. Killian raised a bunch of money, so whenever a café opens, the café here in Seattle gives them a grant of money because it's often formerly homeless people that open them.

When the headhunter approached you, you were assistant head at Sidwell. Were you happy there?

I started at Sidwell in 1992. First two years, I thought I’d made a terrible mistake. Then I loved it. Sidwell is a unique school. Super intense. Off-the-charts intense.

More than Lakeside?

Oh yeah. The family I told you about, when I was in process for this job at Lakeside, (the mother) came to my office with her older daughter, who had graduated from Lakeside. Their younger daughter had been at Sidwell three years by then. I asked her how she would describe the difference between the schools. She said Lakeside was about 10-15 percent less intense. That turned out to be accurate.

One of my first meetings there was with Hillary Clinton, to talk through whether Chelsea was going to come there. The whole media elite sends their children to Sidwell. One of the very first people who showed up in my office at Sidwell was Bob Woodward. He said to me, "You know, Bernie, there's a lot of drinking here and I want to help you address this."

How did you first decide on becoming an educator?

Bizarrely, I’ve had a totally unplanned career.

The year before I graduated college, I got a job leading bicycle trips in the summers for high school kids and I really liked working with the kids.

My first two years after college, I took pottery, guitar lessons, read like crazy, I ran the Boston Marathon. I worked bits and pieces of jobs, in restaurants. I was living in Boston in the winter with nine other people in a communal household — it was awesome, it was the 60s, 70s. But I knew eventually I had to figure out what I was going to do. I’d done the bike trips for three summers. I thought — why don’t I try teaching? I went back to grad school, to Boston College.

I’d been a political science major at Boston University. At Boston College, I was getting a MAT — Master of Arts and Teaching, it was half history, half education classes. I’m one course short of finishing, isn’t that ridiculous?

My advisor at Boston College called me one morning and said, “The headmaster of the American school in Switzerland is here and I told him about you; why don’t you clean up and come over?” I did. He hired me.  

I taught three years in Switzerland. That was just the most awesome job. I was 25 years old. They had a fleet of vans, and with another faculty member, if you had eight kids who wanted to go, the school would pay you to travel. Every January the school moved to St. Moritz so everyone could ski. Everyone, including faculty, received three hours of ski lessons every morning. It was just wild.  

I thought, Wow, this international teaching thing is a good thing. I applied to the American School in Israel. I flew to Rome to meet the head at the airport, talked to him for 30 minutes. He said, “OK, you’re hired.” That’s the way it worked in those days. 

Why Israel?

Switzerland was so controlled, I wanted to go somewhere more free form. Actually I had first applied to Beirut, but then the civil war in Lebanon started.

By comparison, it seemed to me that the Israelis live more for today. No one does anything according to any plan. The school was 16 kilometers north of Tel Aviv. The U.S. ambassador and a lot of the ambassadors lived there. It was a fabulous life. On my second or third day there, I met Killian. I saw her running on the beach and thought, She looks American. One of the kids, the next day, said, “The woman who takes care of us during the week asked about you.” She was working with kids whose parents were doing relief work in places that didn’t have schools, so they went to my school and lived in a dorm. Their parents were doctors or in social service working with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. So I got to know Gaza pretty well.

Two years later, I decided to try for the foreign service. When we were there, Killian was close to the wife of the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Their son went to my school. So we met every luminary in Israel, we got invited to every Embassy party. That life looked really interesting to me.

That led you to Georgetown?

Yes, I was going to get a Ph.D. in international relations. Once I got there, I realized foreign service is very hierarchical, you don’t get to ambassadors’ parties right away. We had been outside of the ranks, so they didn't have to follow any kind of protocol; we were smoking cigars and having a great time. 

I got a master’s but decided not to go for the Ph.D. Then I got a letter in the mail from Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland. I had forgotten I’d registered with a teacher placement agency years before. They were looking for a history teacher.

Landon describes itself as “ranked as one of the best private schools in the D.C. area.” 

Fair enough. The mission of the school was, in effect, “All boys will play football and go to college.” I never thought I’d work in an all-boys school, not my cup of tea, but I loved it. It has issues, but all schools do. Landon was so upfront about what it was. No BS. If someone called and said, “I have a really artistic son,” they’d say, “This is not the school for you.” I was history department chair. One time a parent called a teacher and must have said, “What do you think about my son?” And the teacher said, “I don’t know how to tell you this but he’s just an asshole.” And the parent must have said, “Yeah, I know.” There were no hard feelings. It was different era, less litigious and all that. It was the ’80s. It was a rough-and-tumble boys school, but not an unkind place. The school did not tolerate being a jerk or anything like that. It was actually the last job I had where I was one of the gang. It was just fun. I loved teaching there.

Killian had gotten accepted to Yale Divinity School. We’d gotten married six weeks after coming back from Israel. We had a commuter marriage for three years. We didn’t have kids yet.

At what point did you decide to become an administrator?

I loved teaching. I’d been pretty much a department head and teacher for 13 years. I’d been at Landon seven or eight years. Around year five, I found myself thinking, “Do I want to be doing this at 65?” I was 38 at the time.  

A member of the history department walked in the office one day and said his father, who was head of Sidwell, had been looking for an upper school director. He said he’d told his father a little about me and he said if I was interested to give him a call. I didn’t call. 

What did you know about Sidwell?

It was a liberal progressive Quaker school. And they weren’t as good at sports as Landon.

And you cared about that?

I sort of cared, I guess. I don’t honestly know. I didn’t know enough about the school. A week passed. Killian said, “For heaven’s sake, at least call them.” When I finally called, they said they had closed the search but I could apply the next year. And then just before I got off phone, he went, “You know what, why don’t you come down and we’ll just meet.” We had a really good rapport. He called me that night and said, “It’s still closed, but I’d like you to meet with the search committee the next day.” Then I spent a day at Sidwell, met with the board of trustees the next day, and in four days, start to finish, they hired me.

It must have been a hell of an interview.

It was just fate, destiny, call it what you will. Quakers do nothing at that speed.

They’re very deliberate?

Yes. That was warp speed for a Quaker school.

How did you like being an administrator?

As a teacher — and I think I was a pretty good teacher — students would thank you for class; alumni would come back to see you. Then you become a principal and nobody says anything. I was also teaching ninth-grade European history and my students would be affirming. But otherwise, it was the affirmation wasteland. 

So why do it?

I realized I could have an institutional impact — just being able to shape an institution. To sort out what’s right for the kids here. I always stayed close to the kids. I did tons of stuff with them.

And, amazingly, I really loved working with their parents, too. I understood they were going to be irrational every now and then, but that’s alright, that’s the world. Good for you if you’ve got a couple of adults irrational about you. I liked it all. They made me assistant head. I liked that. I was in the job for seven years. No one had that job for more than five or so years.

Because of the pressure of the job?

So flipping much pressure.

From the parents, upper administrators?

From parents, the kids. Only now, 23 years later, is the intensity around college starting to be the same here at Lakeside as it was there. And, as much fun as it was, I was starting to do same things over and over again.

Most humans find change stressful. But you like challenge, you like change.   

I really do. There are times I wish I were more the kind of person who likes to stay in one place and do one thing. But I’m not.

Where does that come from, Bernie?

Who knows? I lived in the same town in Massachusetts for 18 years and I knew I wanted to leave that town. I grew up in a big Irish American extended family. My whole family, grandparents had lived there, they’d been there like 100 years. It’s just a restlessness I’ve always had. Anyway, I knew I eventually would leave Sidwell.

Before we go down that road, go back a bit to your upbringing. You didn’t go to college right away, you worked in factory, right?

Two days after I turned 16, I started working in a factory that made aluminum chairs.  

Did you have to work to support your family?

No one ever said that, but I knew it helped the family to have my own money. I took no spending money from them from the time I was nine years old. I had a paper route, I caddied, and then this factory job. During high school I worked 30 hours a week, except I’d go out for track in the spring. Summers I worked there full time. The people I worked with included prisoners from the Worcester House of Corrections. We unloaded trucks together, side by side; they were in their orange jumpsuits. 

Did you dad work at the same factory? What about your mom?

My dad was in a different factory — a textile mill. My mom was the baker at the high school cafeteria. I have a sister; she was a by-the-book straight-A kid. I was not that. She went to college, became a nurse in Boston.

You once mentioned that someone at the factory was a mentor to you. You took it to heart when he brought you up short.

The foreman in the part of the factory where I worked; his nickname was “Sarge,” he’d been master sergeant in the U.S. Army. They are super hard-asses. 

Was he the one who encouraged you to go to college?

That was two teachers in high school. My teacher for “Problems in Democracy” said to me, “You’re a smart person; if you would apply yourself, you could make something of yourself.” An English teacher said the same thing. Maybe 20 percent of my class went to college. I wasn’t thinking of going to college.

My dad went to eighth grade, mom to the 10th. They were so pro-education. I didn’t give a rip about doing well in school. But I did like reading philosophy and some theology. I was reading St. Augustine and Machiavelli my sophomore year. I took summer courses like philosophy at Clark University in Worcester. In high school, I was a painter, I did art. I was terrible at it, but I loved it.

You couldn’t be the weird kid that I was and end up in the same place anymore. It was a different time. By senior year, reality set in. I worked at the factory for a year after high school. Then I went to Boston University.

There is a story you told once about trying to fit in and boat shoes.

Kids at college were wearing Topsiders. I’d never seen a pair. I realized the in-crowd was wearing them. Someone explained that you wear them on your boat, and I thought, “Well, there are no boats here.”

It was a class thing, right?

A huge class thing. If you’d gone to prep school, you’d know what they were.  

At BU, I was completely out of place. A lot of the kids came from New York, a lot had traveled, spoke foreign languages. I’d done none of that. I don’t think I was on plane until I was 20. I kept a low profile. I found the other working-class kids at BU.

How did you do that?

I can do it to this day. Recently, I was on a board with four college presidents, six or eight school heads. Within a few hours I could tell who grew up as I did. By the way they carried themselves. By their attitude: You don’t expect to get any breaks. By their attitude about how the world worked.

By the time you got to Sidwell, you had been with all these upper crust people. You’d gone far beyond the confines of your early working-class world.

Oh, yes. When I lived with those nine people in the communal house, they were from very elite backgrounds — that was kind of the introduction. They’d gone to boarding schools, three had trust funds. They were Boston Brahmins. We got along great.

Then the boarding school at Switzerland, where the parents were (counts, industry moguls), glitterati, and in Israel, with the embassy people. I met these people and really enjoyed them, kind of surprisingly. I thought — these folks are just people at the end of the day.

The U.S. ambassador’s wife’s mom was Mrs. Smoot — Smoot as in, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. One time she had just met Henry Kissinger. She was a treat, 80 years old. She loved Killian. That’s how we entered the embassy circle.

For a kid from your background, that had to be glamorous.

Every day was something unique and special living there. I loved that. Then we went back to the states; I went to Georgetown and Landon; and by then I was just in this world. By that point, it was normal-ish.

So let’s bring you back to the point where you’re about to come to Lakeside. The headhunter gives you Lakeside’s opportunity statement (a brief about a school given to candidates). You’ve said that other schools’ opportunity statements just talked about their prestige, and you liked that Lakeside’s wasn’t that way.

Yes. A school in New York City had contacted me and its opportunity statement said, “This is one of America’s flagship schools.” I thought, you know what, let someone else say that about you. Don’t say that about yourself.

Too braggy?

Yes, come on, get over yourself. I didn’t want to go to that kind of place. Lakeside wasn’t and isn’t that kind of place. It’s kind of an understated place in a way. People don’t talk about how special and amazing they are. I liked that.

That sort of segues into: Even though you’d already been in these worlds you described, you knew that Seattle would be very different from D.C., that the movers and shakers in Seattle and Lakeside would include, rather than politicians, entrepreneurs and tech powerhouses. Did you worry that you wouldn’t understand them and the culture?

Not exactly. Before I left Sidwell, one board member who had lived in Seattle said, “You’ll find Seattle to be quite different from the East Coast. People in Seattle will never ask you what you did before you came to Seattle or where you went to school.” That turned out to be true.

Every city has this question. Where I grew up, it was, “Where’d you go to school?” In D.C., it was, “What do you do?” which I thought was a little more meritocratic, it wasn’t linked to family lineage. He said that in Seattle, it would be, “What did you do over the weekend? What are your hobbies?”

But you knew Lakeside had just done a big capital campaign, and you knew these people would be important, and you didn’t come from the tech world, right?

What I knew was, and I did consider this, is that even if Lakeside didn't have tremendous resources at the moment, it had the potential to have the resources that you could do really interesting things with.

Bill Gates had already given $40 million before you came. That was not a lot of money?

The endowment when I arrived, I think it was $46 million. Which is a good endowment but not an earth-shaking amount.

It wasn’t a Sidwell-level one?

Sidwell had a terrible endowment. When I left it was about $8 million. Quakers did not like to ask for money.

So you knew there was all this potential from the tech world …

I really sensed there was the potential for Lakeside to do amazing things, if we could garner everyone’s will to do it.

Will — and money?

And money; it was going to take money. I could tell from the board that they were up for it. Several board members were in their 30s when I came. On their game. Funny. I thought, “This is a good group.” It turned out to be an accurate assessment. They were very entrepreneurial. A kind of go-for-it attitude.  

The most important part was, I was amazed by the students. They asked me to speak to 150 kids at Fix; I think it was a free period and anyone could come meet the head candidate. It really struck me: All day long, kids would get up from the middle of the quad and run over to talk to me. They’d say things like, “Hey, I really hope this works out for you.” 

That wouldn’t have happened at Sidwell?

No. I loved Sidwell kids, but the East Coast is kind of in-your-face intelligence.

The kids here were absolutely comparable, at this point an even stronger group of students than most any school in the country. Lakeside is in the top 20 schools in the country, in terms of everything.

There was a kindness here. The kids would joke around with me. The kid who showed me around on my campus tour, did he talk about Lakeside? No, he talked about the party scene on weekends. I was kind of taken by that that, that he wasn’t kissing my rear, he was just being real.

They didn’t pick the “A” student to be my guide — or maybe they thought they did! But they didn’t.

One other thing. At the same time I was interviewing at Lakeside, I was offered the headship of another school, in the South. There, they said, “Killian — Mary will take you shopping while Bernie and I talk about the contract.” That infuriated Killian. At Lakeside, George Hutchinson and Jill Ruckelshaus were the two heads of the search committee, and when they offered me the job they said, “Killian and Bernie, let’s go talk about how this is going to work out.”

Killian was included.

One hundred percent. And it was clear it wasn’t something they just thought to do for show.

Going back to this entrepreneurial board: Did you voice your ideas to them?

Yes. They brought me out for a two-day retreat. They talked about where they thought the school should go and where I thought it should go. I was really, even in those days, very committed to diversity. Sidwell was very into diversity and it was a big part of my whole belief about education and that independent schools shouldn’t just be for the privileged and wealthy. They listened to all that very respectfully, and then they wrote a charge to me which included the main ideas that I wanted included. I felt great about it.

I sensed they were about innovation, diversity. They clearly wanted Lakeside to be a leading school.

What was your overall vision for the school when you came?

I just read this in a file yesterday — it was in the very first speech I gave to the Lakeside faculty. I knew global education was the future. At Sidwell, I was in charge of global education. I’d lived overseas for six years. I knew there was a whole world out there, coming on strong. And technology was going to level the playing field; the internet was just getting up and running. And I knew you couldn’t be a great school if you don’t have all kinds of kids from everywhere. I knew “global” and “diversity” mattered.

What did you see as the biggest challenges in achieving your vision?

The very first day of the academic year, I went to language department; they had just finished a two-year study that concluded they didn’t need to offer any non-Western language. Literally the first day, I told them, “You have until November: It can be Japanese or Chinese, but you’re going to do it.”

I left that room, went to the English department and said, “You need to change the  curriculum and offer literature of the world, not just British-American literature.” That was a battle because they said you can’t teach anything in translation.

Your predecessor, Terry Macaluso, described faculty resistance. To quote her, “Anything connecting to the 21st century was an invasion.” She described a “club atmosphere” and said she was not in the club. Were you in the club?

I was not in the club. The fact that I came from Sidwell kind of interested people. They knew Clinton was there, and it had a national reputation. That gave me some credibility. But it was not an easy thing.

That same day, I went to the history department and said, “You’ve got to start teaching non-Western history. Just teaching European and American history is not going to cut it.” We came to agreement — and then a month later, they said, “We met and decided we’re not going to do it.” I removed the department head and put a new person in.

This could not have been fun.

The board didn’t know how the deep the problem was. Hence, I didn’t know.

A word about Terry: Terry did yeoman’s work. There was no policy manual; she wrote one. She fixed the buildings. She put a super solid board together. She did a campaign that took a $6 million endowment to something like $46 or $48 million.

The faculty told me, “We were so worn-down fighting with Terry when you arrived, and you were fresh and we were tired.” They started to concede. In my first three years, 50 percent of the faculty left. My second year, we started a faculty evaluation system. There was a link to continued employment that had never existed before, that you could actually lose your job as a result of this. A number of people decided to get out before they were evaluated.

You told the faculty you were going from an approach based on complete individual freedom, as championed by Rousseau, to a form of representative democracy, along the lines of John Locke. There was representation — certainly in the Mission Focus work, which we’ll get to later. But Lakeside always seemed to me to be definitely “Bernie’s school.” People always said, “we’ll have to see what Bernie says.” You interview and approve every hire. There was a little bit of fear in people. Was that your intent?

It wasn’t deliberate. But when a new head shows up — and at the end of the first year, the entire administration leaves (and that needed to happen) — everybody except me … and then over a three-year period, 50 percent of the faculty leaves — I don’t care how benign you think you are, that makes people fearful. There are people who started here two years ago — they know all about that period. I didn’t tell them. That gets passed down: “Watch out.”

I don’t think I do anything to nurture that. I don’t think of myself of draconian. I just think that’s how it is with school heads. I don’t know any school where everyone feels like, “Don’t worry about the head.” 

The thing about being Bernie’s school — if you’re 20 years as a head, that starts to happen. Signing off on everyone hired depends on the size of the school. For a school this size, yes, that would be normal. Here, we have only about 20 people hired a year. So it’s not that many.

In the early days, I wanted to hire people who were globalists and committed to diversity, all-school people, good community people. When I came in, in 1999, there was zero collaboration. People never talked to their colleagues. Teachers did whatever they wanted. No one checked on you. Reining that in was painful. If I had known, I may not have taken the job. I didn’t sign up for that.

But because of that, when we did the Mission Focus in 2003, we were ready to do it. The people who stayed were down for having this place be collaborative and be global.

You were confident the Mission Focus, which called for consensus and was your idea, would go where you wanted?

No. I really didn’t try to control the outcome. We were not changing the mission of the school, but we were deciding which pieces to focus on the next five to 10 years. We needed buy-in from everyone. If it’s going to be legitimate and we’re going to do it, it has to be what everyone wants to do.

That was a big risk, wasn’t it?

This sounds terrible to say, but had it gone the way it could have gone a couple of times, I probably wouldn’t have stayed.

What were the other possibilities?

One of the big ones was that we become an environmental school. That’s a worthy cause, just not my cause. I wanted global, diversity. And the third piece, academic excellence — that went without saying. When it was all said and done, the consensus was for exactly what I wanted to work on.

This is really in contrast to when you first came and you had to clean house.

Right. From 2004 to 2016, 2017, I didn’t have to push much at all on any of that. People were just doing it.

Your style seemed different with students. You’ve always taught at least one class — your Holocaust class, which was always popular — and you had advisory groups.

I still have an advisory group. I didn’t meet with them during COVID. Instead, I met with the entire study body, and that was 700 kids over the last 18 months, in groups of 20. I taught until my 19th year. This will be the fourth year I haven’t taught.

You just ran out of time, probably?

We opened The Downtown School, there was GOA (Global Online Academy), I was on the National Association of Independent Schools board, other things.

The direct line you had to students, was that a deliberate part of your leadership style?

Absolutely. And, also, my first 10 years, I met with one student group every week for Breakfast with Bernie. We picked that up later with young alums with an annual event called Beers with Bernie. I don’t know what Kai will do with his name.

Were there some insights or things that happened because of the contact you had with your students?

It affected everything. My first year, just for example, kids would say, “Why can’t we switch into different sections? And I would ask why they wanted to. One kid told me, “One of the teachers sucks and the other is great.” Another kid taking European history said he spent the entire year studying the Greeks “because our teacher loves the Greeks.” That’s how I learned there was no consistency in departments. 

It’s almost like having, well, maybe spies is not the right word, but …

It’s on-the-ground intelligence. I’ve done it everywhere. The rule was don’t mention a specific teacher’s name or course. Middle School kids would say, ”Why do I have to take French? I want to take Spanish.” I talked to the department and they said, “We have to fill the French sections.” All the time it came down to jobs.

Kids tell you everything. They would also tell me when their parents were obnoxious. I would go back to their parents. I’d say, “The problem is you guys. You’re driving them nuts with this stuff.”

Going back to you as a change agent: You made a lot of changes in curriculum over time. Can you take us behind the scenes a bit?

The biggest one by far was the Mission Focus. It set the direction we’re still following, almost 20 years later. It’s still the right mission: To work on being successfully inclusive and diverse, to work on being global, in the best sense of the word, and academic excellence.  

A lot of the things afterward stemmed from one of those three major directional shifts. Starting the Global Service Learning (GSL) program was very much relating to being global. After that, Mission Focus Forward was another exercise. Bold and Doable was pretty significant. But the one we’re doing now, Competencies and Mindsets — that’s a fundamental shift in how things will be taught. That will be an amazing thing for the kids. The North Star is always, “What is good for these students?” It was always clear to me — if some adult wants to do something, I ask myself, “Is it good for them, or for the kids?” If it’s good for both, great, but if it’s not for the kids, I say, “No, sorry that just doesn’t make sense right now.”

One of the programs no one talks about because it didn’t work was probably the most significant learning experience for me. That was trying to launch the Peru Semester. Other semester programs were focused on learning art and literature of Europe. This was going to be service. The students were going to be doing 20 hours a week of work in the community and then go to school.

We convinced 20 independent schools to join and put up $50,000 each, we leased a campus in Peru, legally incorporated, but we couldn’t get enough kids to sign up; we’d have lost money for a while. Lakeside spent $130,000 and it failed. The board said it was the best money we had spent in a long time. The 20 schools that agreed to do it, 12-15 wrote that it was such a good experience working with you guys.

What was so good?

Just how thoughtful we were about it. The excitement.

At Lakeside the idea of service was already developed, perhaps it wasn’t true at the other partner schools?

Yes. For a lot of semester programs, part of the cachet is how will this help my child? Families are trying to figure that out. I think if we had been able to launch the Peru semester, it would have worked.

Did it lead to GOA?

It was launched almost simultaneously with Global Online Academy. That’s where we got the idea of working with other schools. GOA was launched successfully enough, and we got credibility with that.

GOA now has 6,000 students from 148 schools. It’s like a rocket ship.

That leads into talking about technology. It’s hard to believe now that there could have been so much controversy in 2001 over requiring laptops.

Before I came, in 1998, the board launched a pilot laptop program in the seventh grade. When I came, the board said let’s continue it. The faculty said it was a nightmare and didn’t want to do it. That was my second year. It was bad. The national tenure for independent school heads is three years. I told Killian, don’t unpack all the bags.

I said we’ll do it, it’s the future. But we had no money to do it, and we thought we’d have to hardwire all the buildings. Batteries were heavy then and only lasted 90 minutes. We told parents they were required to spend $2,200 on their child’s laptop. It was a full-on rebellion. The faculty, kids, and parents went off at the same time. There were three meetings at the chapel — 300 people in there, everyone yelling. There was a website (opposing it) started by “Doug” — he was a Microsoft employee — that you can still find online. People said, “You’re new, you don’t understand the spirit of the school, you’ll turn it into an Orwellian place, kids will be looking at screens all time...”

This guy worked at Microsoft? Because weren’t some people convinced it was Bill Gates that had instigated the laptops?

No, well, maybe someone said that. I had met Bill at that point but didn’t know him well.

Ironically, what they were worried about ended up happening with iPhones.

You did later worry about that and try to address that. Students came up with a “phone-free day” in 2017 and then you tried to have the technology-free lunch zones in 2018 — which didn’t work.

That was three years too late. The day Apple announced they had a smart phone, I should have thought, “Huh, where is this headed?”

You couldn’t have stopped it, could you?

I don’t think so, but I might have been able to do something.

How did the laptop controversy work itself out?

Within my first two months at Lakeside, I was fortunate enough to attend a dinner that had been set up for some of the school’s most faithful and generous alumni to meet the new head. At the end of that dinner, one of the people there, Paul Allen, said to let him know if we needed assistance, and how he could be helpful. He gave us $10 million for the lap-top program. The community was still outraged; but I thought at least we can do it now. The other thing Paul said — which was mind-blowing — was, “There’s this new thing called wireless. My company is on the forefront of it.” He sent his team to install wireless in the school. His $10 million generates $400,000 per year to spend on instruction and technology. Everything would have been different, if that hadn’t happened. Lakeside so owes him. Fortunately I was able to tell him that before he passed away. Everything would have been different if that hadn’t happened.

How did things finally calm down?

Over time, computers got lighter, we renovated Bliss in 2008 (which hadn’t had enough sockets to plug in the laptops). The faculty slowly made their peace, most got on board. It became obvious it was the future. But it was hard for four, five years.

Did people like Bill, Paul, the McCaw brothers sense you were an innovation guy and they were innovation people? What was the bond?

I think maybe a little of that. I think just our personalities worked and I was head of the school they went to and really loved. All those guys loved Lakeside.

Besides Paul Allen at that dinner, did the other tech people offer to help on some things?

Oh, yes. A lot of the tech leaders loved Lakeside and loved what we were imagining. After the Mission Focus, we added up what it was going to cost to do what we wanted to do, and it was something like $132 million. To increase the socioeconomic diversity of the school: $52 million. To keep LEEP [the Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program] fully funded and free, $5 million. The summer school needed a $5 million endowment; Global Service Learning needed $20 million. But the campaign was the whole community — there were many hundreds of others who made gifts. There were wealthy families that gave money to the school knowing it would mean it could be harder for their grandchildren to get in. It was pretty noble. I was really moved by it, actually.

That leads us to admissions. How do you balance expectations — and keep the support of alumni, trustees, donors from the traditional Seattle elite — with the desire to be more inclusive — which means inevitably less privilege to those traditionally privileged?

I would just say to people, when we’d have these discussions, “Who is Lakeside for?” I’d say it’s for all the kids in the city who are smart enough to be here and thrive. Honestly, they just understood it.

But when you came in 1999, the admissions director raised the issue of connected families voicing concerns that their children would have fewer chances of admission because of diversity efforts.

There was concern, yes. People would say — and this is terrible — but I was glad they asked, because I know others were thinking it, usually older alumni — “If you get diverse, will you be lowering the standards?“ That’s more the tack they would take. Typically, that would happen at alumni events. I haven’t had to answer that in the last five or six years. I would say, “It’s much harder to get in than it used to be; we’ve doubled the number of National Merit finalists in the last 10 years, since bringing more kids from all backgrounds.” That was all I had to say. They’d say huh, OK. That quickly went away.

There’s still an advantage to being connected (children/grandchildren of alumni, trustees, faculty/staff, or with siblings at Lakeside). That’s always kind of a trade-off with keeping alumni support, I guess?

About 16 percent get in unconnected, 40 percent connected.

We see it in colleges, too.

It’s the way it works. Until the world is different and everything’s free, I guess it’s not going to be any different.

And if we’re honest, part of the cachet of Lakeside or schools like Lakeside is proximity to families of privilege and power — which is probably more important for people who don’t have that background. Studies show attending an Ivy League school does more for the less privileged.

It’s all about the connection. You’re going to get as good an education in a lot of places but you’re not going to get the same connections.

For a period of time, there was a big debate, and we wouldn’t allow (school) parties in big houses because the thought was that it was intimidating to some folks. T.J. Vassar ’68 used to say — when he was working here (as LEEP director, then diversity director) — “When I was a student here, I loved going to those big houses; then for the rest of my life, when I was in a big house, I didn’t feel intimidated.” 

As it turns out, it was intimidating to some adults, not the kids. If you’re an adult, it’s fixed for you, you are where you are, but if you’re a kid, you’re like, “Hey, maybe in the future I’ll be in one of these houses.”

O. Casey Corr wrote in a news story in 1995, “Other Northwest schools have dedicated teachers, impressive science labs or small classes, but none has Lakeside’s enduring chemistry: a blend of social connections, big money, talent and a teaching philosophy that promotes independence over conformity, service over selfishness, leadership over flunkeyism.” I’m not entirely sure what flunkeyism means, but other than that, isn’t there truth to that?

Yeah, it’s very good; I’d agree with that.

Let’s talk more about diversity. It’s fair to say the path has not been smooth.

Less smooth than ever.

In the most recent issue of Lakeside magazine, Director of Communications Amanda Darling wrote that, “while Lakeside has made progress in making the school more inclusive and equitable, it’s stalled in some areas.” She cited faculty hiring, a significant percentage of Black students leaving before graduation, and students still reporting racial aggressions. You wrote about the initiatives, including the 2011 Diversity and Inclusion Initiative, and Our Work Together launched in 2018 and promised more, concrete changes. What might some be?

Until two months ago, if there was an opening in a department, the department hired the person. That will not happen going forward. We identified 30 teachers who will be trained in DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and asked to be on hiring committees. A DEI (staff) person will be on all the committees. If there is an opening in physics, five people on that hiring committee represent other departments and one person will be from the science department. Science will have a say, of course: they’ll say if (the candidate) knows physics. We’re doing that because we’re not hiring enough diversity quickly enough. I think it will bring about some significant change.

We developed a microaggression reporting mechanism, for adults and students. Because the way it plays out at Lakeside is someone experiences a microaggression and they don’t mention it for three years, and then you go, what are we going to do now? We’re trying to be more on that, and asking other people not to be micro-aggressive yourself, obviously, and then to notice when other people are.

There’s a whole reporting and it’s clear in the policy who you go to. All of this gets tracked, too, so you have a sense of “Where is it happening? How frequently? What is it?”

Upper and Middle school directors, me, and our head of diversity and inclusion will meet with the Black Student Union three times a year and parents of color three times a year. We heard from kids last year that the curriculum is finally diversifying. When reading about — especially African American students — they’re not just reading about stories about the subjugation of African Americans but also reading success stories. They said “enough with the enslaved people.” That’s important but let’s also talk about what’s working well with people of color so that there’s hope for the students as well.

Why, after all the other initiatives, will this be different?

I have a more optimistic view than some. We’ve gone from 24 percent students of color to 64 percent students of color. Until you get more diverse, you can’t do a lot of the other stuff. A lot of groundwork has been laid.  

We now have an African American Upper School director, African American associate director in the Middle School, African American associate director in the Upper School, a Jordanian woman as the Middle School director, an African American admissions director — a lot changes when the administration changes. They’ve experienced what the kids have experienced, so they’ve been instrumental in moving things along.

Yet the culture of the school today still does not reflect the true diversity of the student body. That’s a challenge. I don’t know if I could have met that more, or if the zeitgeist was not ready for it. I compare it to when the school went coed in 1971. Today you wouldn’t pick up in any way that this was once a boys school, it made such a successful transition. I just told this to the new faculty — you’re building your legacy now. I’m going to come back in 10 years and see that Lakeside has become a successfully inclusive school, so multicultural that it will be hard to believe it was once a homogenous culture. That’s the work ahead.

At one point, you felt that growing up working class gave you more of an understanding of racial diversity. Later you changed your thinking.

Growing up working class, I forever did not like the white privilege idea. I thought — ironically, this is the way a lot of Americans feel right now, too — no one handed me anything. But they actually did. My parents paid my tuition to college. Going to BU in 1970 was $2,800 a year, and that was with room and board.

I didn’t grow up in a connected family, or a family where people were opening doors for me, or frankly even could even show me where the doors were. So I resisted that forever. But then I realized: I went to a decent public high school; it wasn’t awesome but pretty good. My parents took care of us, paid our tuition. Then just being white, period. It’s like Steve Sundborg (recently retired president of Seattle University) says, it’s like all the games are home games and you have friendly refs. That’s an invisible advantage to a lot of white working-class kids.

I recall that you told a story, back in 2012, that it had only been the last two years that you learned to be proud of your working-class roots. What happened finally?

You get to a certain point in your life where you realize the way you grew up provided you with a lot of strengths. (Former Lakeside teacher) Jim Gaul and I talked about this, that he’d grown up the same way I did. We used to say: “Come the revolution, we can unload trucks.” A huge part of the advantage of growing up working class is that if you didn’t grow up with a lot of stuff, you don’t really miss it.

I’m happy to have some stuff, but if I don’t have it, I’m OK with that, too. It’s freeing in a way. But I didn’t recognize that for the longest time when I was just trying to figure out, “What is this role I am a part of now?”

But you still had a lot of confidence in these circles. How and why?

The confidence thing: Killian attributes it to my mother. She so believed in her kids. Honestly — in whatever period of my life, I’ve never felt I’m not worthy. If I screw up I can get down on myself, for sure. But I have a rock-solid sense, and I’ve always had it, that I’m basically OK. To be honest, it’s the reason I’ve gotten along with people from different backgrounds, because I’ve never presumed, because of your wealth or your background, or lack of wealth, that I’m better or worse than you.  

I guess that’s why those very wealthy tech people could become friends with you.

Yes, because it just was a real thing. I’ve enjoyed all different kinds of people. And honestly, if I don’t enjoy someone, I don’t care how much money they have, I’m not going to spend any time with them. Life is too short. And even all the people I’ve asked for money, and God knows I’ve asked everyone I know, I genuinely like these people. I am not just thinking, “Oh, God, I have to kiss your butt to get some money.” I’ve never done that. It’s never been my approach.

Global Service Learning, which you launched in 2004, has become a signature program of Lakeside. Looking back at its development: Any surprises or lessons learned?

The idea was always for kids to be living in a village, with a family, and do service. One thing we learned over the years is that, while students are going to do some service, because that’s important, the service isn’t the main event. (The communities) don’t need our services so much, they have plenty of labor. The kids are learning a ton just being in the village, seeing how people in different parts of the world live, becoming part of a family structure in different parts of world. It makes them very reflective about their own lives.

The kids are required to be off their devices. It’s a huge change for them. Several students said, “For the first time in my life, I’m present in the moment, not thinking of where I need to be next, or being on Instagram.” It’s been a smashing success. And that and the outdoor program, alumni say are life changing for them.

A lesson learned was that initially, we raised enough money to fully endow the program; it wasn’t going to cost the kids anything. It was free for the first couple years. But we found out people would cancel and not take it seriously. Now families put in $1800 (if you were paying for it, it would really cost something like $6500), and it’s free for any student that can’t afford it.

What do you foresee for GSL, given COVID-19?

The program is suspended for now; it’s going to be challenging. We might go to a country like Rwanda, which is very controlled. One of the things we’ll do anyway is offer some domestic programs. Because this country has become so polarized, kids from different areas don’t understand each other. And there are lots of needs in this country, too: Appalachia, Eastern Washington. We have trips ready to go, to Mississippi and New Orleans, but both those places aren’t doing well and we had to pull back.

Let’s go to the subject of athletics. There was the athletics initiative in 2014 to strengthen the athletics program, the new athletics center was built, and then we got the unpleasantness of a Seattle Times investigation on …

The Steve Ballmer thing.

Yes. As you look back, where did things go wrong?

Nothing went wrong. Honestly. Lakeside has always been reasonably good at sports, some years more than others. By 2014 we realized other schools are starting to pay their coaches so much more than we’re paying. We have to redo the system. (Then-athletic director) Abe Wehmiller went to look at Harvard-Westlake, where they had something called Program Heads (for sports). We did it as part of an athletics strategic plan. They’ve been great, and I wouldn’t say the teams have rocketed to the top of the charts or anything, but they’re good solid teams.

The basketball (story that implied Ballmer was behind bending prep sports rules to boost Lakeside) was a crock that was fabricated by the reporter, using as his source someone who is now serving time in prison.

Three Lakeside employees also were his sources.

I get that, that’s a fair point. The backstory there is they just could not stand their supervisor.

Lakeside was transparent, bringing in the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) to investigate and publishing the results. (WIAA found one violation, that the Lakeside coach in the offseason was improperly sponsoring basketball activities with Lakeside players at his nonprofit, but found no evidence a nonprofit was created to funnel students to Lakeside or that the school had relaxed academic standards to help athletes.)

That violation — that you can’t have someone who works in a summer program be your coach — still happens everywhere. That story was just ridiculous.

You’ve had a goal of providing a Lakeside-type education to more students. Summer School, Global Online Academy (GOA), an expanded Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program (LEEP), and especially The Downtown School — along with plans to expand Lakeside itself — were all, in different ways, meant to do that. How satisfied are you that they’ve met your goal?

Each program itself is doing well. Do I think Lakeside has concluded that goal? No, I don’t. We’ve made a good start. LEEP of course is free. We’re now doing it for both 6th and 8th grade students so they can be more successful in middle school or high school. We’ve completely redone the program in the last five years, it’s a good program. Still, that’s only 60 kids a year.

When we established Summer School, we raised an endowment. There were 650 kids in summer school this year and we were able to provide financial aid to 30 percent.

Global Online Academy is just unbelievable. There are 1,000 kids a year taking classes. GOA provided professional development for 40,000 educators around the country on how to teach courses online.

The Downtown School is at full enrollment.

But for all this, there is more to do. I said this to the faculty last Monday, that in my time, we’ve raised $250 million. And I’ve asked myself repeatedly, and every time I asked someone for money — and I’ve asked every single person I know for money — I’ve asked myself, “Am I just making this school for privileged kids or are we doing something beyond that?” And fortunately we’re doing something beyond that, and it’s amazing for kids here but we’re also using the resources elsewhere. I believe that a school like Lakeside has a responsibility to the city to be a good citizen. I hope we open another micro school in the South End. The board hasn’t formally approved it but we’re well into discussion. 

There’s just a lot of need educationally in Seattle and elsewhere.

A South End location was considered for the first micro-school, but the Seattle Center area was chosen instead.

Yes — we considered a lot of places, including the Eastside. But for the first one we wanted to have a central location  not associated with a particular neighborhood. That worked out well. That said, even a South End school wouldn’t be just for kids in the South End, but different parts of the city as well.

The first time you proposed expanding the number of students at Lakeside, the trustees turned it down because of the expense of a retrofit — but agreed to create The Downtown School. Was that a good tradeoff at the time?

Oh, hugely. At the time we were going to build, an architectural firm did a campus development plan. The cost to grow Lakeside by 200 was estimated at $105 million. It cost $2 million to serve 160 kids downtown. So — yeah.

We pared that (retrofit estimate) to $55 million minimally to grow this campus by 200 kids. You could still open a lot of micro-schools for that.

The theory of disruptive innovation says it’s easier to make change with new ventures than to alter existing institutions. Did you find that to be true?

One hundred percent. It’s like painting on a blank canvas, as opposed to working with all the current systems. The Downtown School starts and ends with a three-week truly interdisciplinary term. We haven’t been able to get that done here at Lakeside. Departments have their own territory and it’s hard to launch. We sent the Lakeside department heads to go down and watch the interdisciplinary courses.

The Downtown School has a distributive leadership model. Teachers have several other responsibilities in addition to teaching, like dean of students, dean of admissions. They piloted it, and we adopted a version of it at Lakeside. Here at Lakeside, we took all the things that happen in the life of a school and asked for signups. We’re only in the second year of that. It’s working pretty well.

Teachers get paid a lot more at The Downtown School, don’t they?

They did when we first started. Now they make about the same. We raised salaries at Lakeside dramatically — 25 percent. If someone has been teaching 20 years, they’re making about $106,000. We’ll ended up raising more, I think. At The Downtown School, teachers can get a $20,000 bonus. Once the bonus system goes into play at the end of year, they’ll make more.

In 2015, you told the faculty the special focus for the school year would be “being intentional in our efforts to broaden our definition of success for students.”

You said at the time: “There’s a palpable sense in America right now that this generation won’t be as successful as their parents” and many “Lakeside parents and to some extent students are terrified about that.”

Do you still think that’s true, or have the past 1 ½ years of political and COVID trauma changed that?

No, it’s truer than ever. COVID brought home more than ever there are two educational systems in America. One that has a lot of resources and operated through COVID — and one without and that didn’t. That frenzy around a closing window of opportunity for kids is stronger than ever. The demand to get into selective colleges is stronger than ever. Honestly, we have not really moved the dial on that. Despite all the rhetoric, admonitions and encouragements to think of life in broader terms. There is still a tremendous emphasis on getting into a selective college and on to a good career once you’re out of college. People are not wrong in thinking that the top 10 percent is doing a lot better than bottom 90 percent. And the top percent — if you read the book, “The Trap of Meritocracy,” which is a really good book — the author’s point is that you once had a hereditary class people were born into, now it’s a hereditary meritocratic class where very successful parents use their resources to make sure their child is getting every conceivable advantage, education and experience. That problem has been exacerbated by COVID.

So that must mean even more admissions pressure than ever on Lakeside?

Schools like Lakeside are expensive; that narrows who would apply. The Downtown School had more applications than ever before. The tuition is $18,000 at Downtown School instead of $38,000 for Lakeside. More families can afford that. A lot more. 

I went to a public school, I believe in the public schools. But they are underfunded and over-bureaucratized.

Did you ever think of working in public schools?

No. It’s just not my gift. Everyone has to do as best they perceive their gift. For someone didn’t know independent schools existed until college, they are kind of my milieu.

The speakers series is another important part of education here. They’ve sometimes caused controversy, starting with Dinesh D’Souza in 2005, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in 2015, and including General John Kelly, former chief of staff and secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, this past March.

You didn’t mention any liberal firebrands. The reason I say this is that the only people who get people furious are conservatives. If I brought Rachel Maddow — nobody bats an eyelash. But if you bring General Kelly, who turned out to be a quite reasonable guy, everyone was shocked. I worry about this, on behalf of the kids, because it’s easy to demonize people you never interacted with.

Your decision about D’Souza brought a lot of heat. There was a question of free speech versus harmful speech. (He had a new book arguing their own culture, not racism, undermines Black people, at a time the school was making a push to enroll more Black students.)

D’Souza was a train wreck. Part of the reason was, we didn’t have a speakers committee in those days. It was me making decisions from what I knew. That was dumb. I’d read an early book by him, “Illiberal Education.” It was a pretty good book. It wasn’t about race. Then he turns out to be a nut and racist and he’s gotten crazier by the years. We uninvited him. It was 100 percent the right decision. Because he wasn’t as crazy then as now, a lot of families had read and liked his earlier books. Uninviting him was really infuriating to those parents.

What goes around comes around. He was a convicted felon until Trump pardoned him. He resigned under pressure from his Christian school for reportedly being involved with a woman who was not his wife.

Jonathan Haidt, I’d bring him back. He was so important for the kids to hear from. He’s not a firebrand. He just has a different point of view.

I read that Haidt wrote something about his reception at Lakeside (he gave the school a pseudonym) and called out the students’ “unremittingly hostile” questions, accompanied by finger snapping.

He talked about what he called “Coddle U and Strengthen U.” Strengthen U’s first professor was Aristotle and believes in critical thinking. Coddle U believes in trigger warnings and inclusion. He pushed every button the kids have. The only criticism I have of him, is that he was himself a bit of snowflake, he was really put out that our kids snapped. I thought, well you put yourself out there, that’s what comes of it. I didn’t think our kids were rude. They didn’t agree with him.

This wasn’t a speaker, but also involves political expression on campus: When Donald Trump was a candidate, you told teachers they couldn’t take sides, noting some parents could be supporters. Then he started doing things that were just antithetical to Lakeside’s mission.

We had to separate out Trump and his views that were antithetical to the mission from a teacher’s right to trash Trump once he became president. I have had heated exchanges: You can’t say to your class that Trump is the devil.

Someone said that?

Basically. Lakeside is so flippin’ liberal; I had someone say, “Let’s bring Rachel Maddow as a speaker.” And I said, “Oh, sure, and maybe with Sean Hannity.” She said, “No, not Sean Hannity!” I said they’re like the extreme of the left or right. Both shade stories.

In just about every commencement speech, you’ve told seniors that those lucky enough to get a Lakeside education justify that privilege by doing good in the world. Have you seen changes, over the years, in how the seniors responded to your message?

We did a survey about 4-5 years ago, the Mission Survey, to find out if our graduates actually live the mission of the school. We asked them questions like, “Do you have diverse friends? Do you learn for the intrinsic value of learning? Are you involved in your life in anything global?” A high percentage responded and said yes. An alum said to me once, “Having gone to Lakeside is like having a third parent on your shoulder telling you to do that right thing.” I could not have heard anything that made me happier.

So that hasn’t changed or varied over the years?

When I arrived here, students were kind, respectful of each other, of their teachers; that’s been here for a long time. All we tried to do was translate what does it mean to be a good citizen to the dynamics and exigencies of the modern world. Now it’s about being a global citizen.

And what does it mean to be a good citizen when you could put the most scurrilous, nasty stuff on the web if you wanted to? For the most part, students are not doing that nasty stuff. We work hard on that.

It’s not utopia, but it’s pretty damned amazing.  You could throw your wallet on the quad and have a 95-100 percent chance of getting it back by the end of day. There’s the occasional theft but it’s rare. No graffiti. You don’t see rudeness to an adult.

Looking ahead: Onboarding is a Lakeside practice. Will you onboard the new head, Kai Bynum, and what are a couple things you might pass on that you learned the hard way or he won’t hear from anyone else?

I will certainly be available to Kai. Different heads have different views about that. My predecessor was available to me but I kind of preferred to figure out things myself. It depends on what he wants. I’ve known him for 15 years. We get along great.

I don’t think I need to tell him anything. He’s been a head, he knows the issues, and he’s from Washington; he went to the University of Washington. He understands Seattle hitting the ground running much better than I did.

Where do you see education in general going, say in the next five years? Trends?

The biggest trend will be the disaggregation of education. It’s certainly been accelerated by COVID. Students in weaker school systems will try to supplement with courses online. Not all students will be on campus every day. The academic day will absolutely be redesigned.

Will this be in public or independent schools?

I read recently that, as result of COVID-19, a number of schools around the country are doing just that — disaggregating the day, unbundling the classes, finding all kinds of new forms of assessment. So everything is shifting. We’re starting our educational focus on Competencies and Mindsets this year, and we’re completely redoing assessment. We’re trying new forms of assessment. In the real world, for example, not every test is timed. So, should we have so many timed tests, or have different devices for assessing kids?

A lot will be driven by economics. Independent schools will lead the way. They’re far more nimble. And they have the incentive for doing it. They know they’re too expensive. They know they need to be more creative.

Will this be positive, negative, or mixed?

It will be mixed. Everything is mixed. First of all, assuming you have a cohesive sense of school community — which is a big assumption — the bigger the school, the less a sense of social cohesion. If Lakeside unbundled, kids might want to take classes online and not be here first thing in the morning. There would be fewer kids on campus is my guess. I had suggested we admit 10 kids who would agree to come in hybrid mode — only come to campus every other week. They’d pay less tuition. Unfortunately, hybrid technology is still not good. No one wanted to do it. But if it worked well, you could accept 200 more students to Lakeside. No need to build a new building.

Why retire now? What led to your decision?

The plan was for me to stay one more year than I’m staying. This year and next, we were going to grow the size of the school by 220, build another academic building on the former softball field, raise $55, $60 million, and launch Lion Term (a mini semester in the middle of the year). I think the plans to expand are on hold for five years to wait and see what happens to Seattle and the world. My own personal take on it is COVID, in one form or other, is going to be here for the next three to five years. I thought — let me stay long enough to get the school through this whole thing as well as possible, launch Competencies and Mindsets, and then let the next person come in. A year ago in September, I told the board that this year will be my last.

I just turned 70. So there’s also that. How long are you going to keep going? I could have, my health is good. But there are other things I want to do. I’ll be in Seattle. I can raise money if they decide to go ahead.

It’s sometimes said that schools, or organizations in general, have the head that reflects the needs, or maybe just the zeitgeist, of their era. How do you think you reflected the needs of the era you have served in?

I think I very much reflected the needs of the era. One of my most important roles was to make note of what was happening in the world, making sure what was happening was reflected in a relevant education for the kids. That was the hope behind becoming a global school. GOA was a response to online learning. The impetus for The Downtown School was seeing that fewer families could afford Lakeside. Competencies and Mindsets re-envisioned what and how kids should master what they’ll need to thrive in the future, professionally and personally. To prepare them to live in a diverse, well, somewhat diverse, city. Seattle now has become a global city. We are now truly a school for the metropolitical area with kids from every imaginable living situation. Of the 172 kids accepted this year, their families speak 32 different languages.

When I started here, 90 percent of kids came from 15 schools. Now I think it’s 264 schools — 54 percent from public schools. That in and of itself is change. It’s really good news for the city of Seattle.

You recently became a grandfather. Do you think your two young grandkids will go to Lakeside? Do you want them to?

It really depends on how economics turn out for our kids. One there’s a possibility, one has virtually no possibility — unless they come on a full ride. One of my daughter’s a social worker at Consejo; she does therapy in Spanish for people with no health insurance. The other is in fashion with Amazon, so it’s possible for her family.

Grandpa’s not forking out?

(Smiles.) Probably not forking out.

Lighting round: Can you answer with just a phrase or one sentence each:

Over the years what’s been your:

Hardest challenge… Trying to hold school during COVID-19.

Biggest regret… Not listening as carefully as I might have.

Proudest accomplishment … How diverse the school is.

After you leave Lakeside, what else do you intend to do?

If Lakeside opens another micro-school, which I hope it will, I will raise money, help behind the scenes, if they want. I just went on the board of Rainier Scholars. I might become someone who works with school heads on how to be a successful head. I will work on strategic planning with people. And then there are days I think — I might just be reading “War and Peace.”

We’ll live in Spain part of the year. One of my daughters married a man from Spain. A year from today, we’ll leave for Spain. Walk the Camino. Probably stay in Sevilla for a few months. Try to get our Spanish down. Whatever I do, I want to be able to do it from anywhere I am in the world. So that if I do want to be in Mexico, or Spain, or Nicaragua, then I can do that.

In one sentence, how might you sum up your tenure at Lakeside?

Looking back on 23 years, it’s just been kind of joyful. I feel so unbelievably fortunate to have ended up here, a school that has been completely consonant with my personal values. I’ve been fortunate to have boards supportive of doing the right thing. And, as it turns out, that Sidwell parent was right: the head’s house is really an amazing house. And for 23 years, the school has done all the maintenance and repairs!

Without sounding too woo-woo, I honestly feel this is where I was meant to be and what I was meant to do with my life. I’m looking out right now at the kids sitting out on the quad. What else would you want to be doing with your life? It’s been kind of amazing.