1 June  2020

Dear  Families, Faculty, and Friends,

Our campus is currently in bloom, full of bees and color. In the afternoons, the chickens make the rounds of the flower beds and scratch in the dirt for bugs. It is peaceful and beautiful. I only wish our students could be sitting on the grass enjoying the sun and one another. Our campus is not meant to be this quiet. Even Sparkles, our itinerant cat, finds it too quiet and jumps up on the picnic tables to greet the few visitors who come by. Soon, this campus will fill once again with voices and bodies and music and art and labs and equations and poetry and dialogue. I will appreciate that moment and savor it with a new and profound sense of how special a gift it is. None of us will ever take for granted the beauty of a face-to-face conversation. And it is with your support that we make this happen.

• Tuition covers 90% of our total expenses with the balance coming from the generosity and support of families, friends, and granting organizations
• 50% of our local students receive financial assistance, for a total of $350,000 annually
• Our tuition is a fraction of comparable schools in Seattle (40% less on average)
• 80% of our budget goes to faculty salaries and benefits 
• Our faculty remain our most valuable asset - and as such, we have continued to pay their salaries and benefits these past months in spite of reduced revenue and increased technology costs
• 20% of our budget goes to mortgages, rent, utilities, technology, experiential education gear, landscaping, maintenance and lots of copy paper  
• Currently, costs have risen while revenue has decreased due to the pandemic

Without your support, Spring Street School can neither sustain the programs nor the relationships that are at the core of who we are. As you scroll through the auction items, please know that every dollar you pledge helps make the Spring Street dream possible. Your pledges help support school programs such as art, theatre, and experiential education, as well as tuition assistance to local families in need. Your pledges make this all possible. 

This is Spring Street’s 25th year. We have grown from 2 buildings to 7. We have 18 teachers, over half with advanced degrees and with an average of  15-years of teaching experience. Most importantly, each year, we continue to further develop and refine a program that puts academics, relationships, community, and experiential education at the center of each student’s experience. This year’s class is off to colleges as near as Washington and as far away as New York, Vermont, Wisconsin, California, Florida, Massachusetts, and Oregon. I am immensely proud of their incredible efforts and accomplishments. They are ready to follow their individual paths and change the world. The future has always been unpredictable and we pride ourselves on preparing students for the unexpected by teaching them to be resilient, to ask questions, and to think for themselves. That future has never been more unpredictable than it is now, and the need for critical thinkers and doers has never been greater. We may only graduate 20 students each year, but I know their impact on our future makes them giants.

All of us - students, parents, faculty, friends, alumni, supporters - are here for individual reasons, but there is one that binds us together. We believe that how we prepare the next generation matters. We believe that challenging students in the classrooms of Spring Street, the mountains of Nepal, and the remote villages of Guatemala prepare them to both be ready for an unknown future and make that future better for their presence. So, thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you for helping make our dream possible.  

Louis Prussack

Head of School