Our Head of School Transition

+ May 22nd, 2024: A Update from Jane Moulding, Chair of the Board of Trustees

Dear Meridian Community:

As the big news about Josh’s stepping down as Head of School sinks in, I know that questions about next steps are, quite naturally, emerging. And while I do not yet have full exact details, I promised you would hear from the trustees again with an update.

We are a relatively new board, and we have been taking the time needed to form a coherent leadership group with Josh’s help and the guidance of long-term trustee and former board chair, Beth Eliot Schultz. Hiring, supporting, and evaluating the work of the Head of School is a board’s primary responsibility, along with fiduciary oversight. We are all deeply respectful of Meridian’s mission and values and the collaborative and thoughtful way decisions are made. We also see Meridian as a place where both finding your voice and developing leaders are honored.

In our board discussions, among other things, we have been educating ourselves about leadership succession, especially after a beloved founder steps down. In addition, we have sought advice both from other schools which have experienced similar situations, and also from head search consultants. We are guided in all aspects of this work by our deep appreciation for what Meridian stands for, its rich past and present, and what the future holds.

The board continues to meet and work together to consider options for next steps, and we will be communicating to you again during the late summer about where things stand. Meridian is a close and engaged community and we plan to respect the constituency groups that ought to be part of finalizing the appointment of a new head. Stay tuned for further communications. If you have any specific questions at this time, feel free to address them directly to me at jmoulding@smarterwisdom.com.

May and early June are always times tinged with excitement and sadness in schools–beginnings and endings mixed together. I wish you all a wonderful end-of-year, with time for the goodbyes, accolades, celebrations, smiles, and tears. Several trustees are planning to attend some of these end-of-year events; they will be wearing name tags indicating that they are members of the Board. I hope we get to say hello to some of you, while our eyes, ears, and hearts stay focused on the accomplishments and process of Meridian students.

Best Wishes,

Jane Moulding
On behalf of the Board of Trustees

+ May 11th, 2024: A Letter from Joshua Abrams

Dear Friends,

Meridian Academy began our work in 2003, and every day since has been filled with problem-posing, discovery, collaboration, and joyful learning. Being a part of Meridian’s creation and development has been beyond rewarding, and it is with a sense of profound gratitude that I am sharing my plans to end my tenure as head of school in June 2025.

I have been honored these past 19 years to work with Meridian’s delightful, original, and authentic students, teachers, staff, and families and Meridian’s many supporters in Boston and beyond. When Meridianites and our guests walk into our building, the welcome, the engagement, the eagerness to share enthusiasms, and our community values are all palpable.

Our students have inspiring teachers, courses focused on important questions and powerful connections, the time to explore and experiment, and constant practice expressing themselves through writing, speaking, and varied artistic modes. These distinctive features of Meridian enable students to produce work of depth and purpose. Each of our 56 Exhibition Evenings have featured our students’ extraordinary long-term investigations in the Humanities, Arts, World Languages, Mathematics, and Science. They have highlighted our students’ capacity for conveying their learning articulately and enthusiastically. I am always moved by the incredibly positive energy that begins as students change into their exhibition attire and continues throughout the night of shared learning.

Whatever is going on in the wider world, I know that each day I show up for work I will find opportunities for challenge, invention, and humor – in addition to Meridian’s ambitious academic efforts, we are also a spirited group that takes our silliness very seriously. Many of my favorite memories have been moments of infectious goofiness, such as everyone, students and teachers alike, dressing up in homemade costumes for Halloween (you can see me dressed up here as the personification of a snow day), a Community Group finding a common interest in making a chain mail vest for a teddy bear, Student Handbook skits demonstrating what not to do, and much more.

Meridian was designed with many intertwined values and goals including a commitment to economic equity; to student interests and ideas; to complexity, nuance, uncertainty, and humility; to learning from failures and successes; to reading, writing, and creative expression across the curriculum; and to celebrating personal and academic growth. The features that helped us realize these objectives include an intentionally small and nurturing community, nimble scheduling and use of the broader world as our campus, interdisciplinary classes, long-term projects and investigations, and a focus on people over things. I am gratified at how well these mutually interdependent aspects of our design have worked together to help us achieve our mission.

A lot of the work that makes a school possible goes on behind the scenes. Meridian has had wonderful trustees guiding our board and work since 2001 (we spent two years planning and launching the school). I let the board know of my plans to step down last spring and they have been invaluable assessing Meridian in the current moment and striving to make our future efforts meeting our mission ever more effective and relevant to their time. Meridian is ready and well-positioned to continue its journey with new leadership, and I am eager to see and cheer on its further progress.

I plan to continue working as an educator after I step down at the end of the 2024-25 school year. I want to spend more time, among other things, teaching students and teachers and working on curriculum development, honing some of the excellent work we have crafted at Meridian and considering how best to share it far and wide.

Through next year, my attention is fully on Meridian and I am looking forward to welcoming everyone here during our 20th anniversary.

Best,

+ May 11th, 2024: A Letter from Jane Moulding, Chair of the Board of Trustees

Dear Meridian Community:

Almost 20 years ago, Joshua Abrams founded an intentionally small school in Boston. A school you know well. Meridian Academy is built with the foundation of Josh’s central ideas and beliefs about education and teaching: placing students first and recruiting talented teachers and staff who love young people. In June 2025, after we mark the 20th anniversary of the founding of this amazing place, Josh has decided to end his tenure as Head of School and begin the exciting process of (in Josh’s words) rewiring.

Josh’s dedication, depth of thought and can-do attitude drove the creation of this special community in Jamaica Plain. He brought, to every aspect of his work, his intellect, verbal prowess, love of watching students grow and prosper, and his devotion to ensuring that as many families as possible have access to Meridian. Meridian’s mission is strong and of our time. As founding head, teacher, mentor, and Josh-of-all-trades, he has built and nurtured a team of adults and a community of students that realize Meridian’s mission to “…pose and investigate original questions, work collaboratively, and communicate clearly and creatively.”

Meridian not only serves its students and families, it is also an exemplar for teachers and school leaders from around the country and the world. Annually, we open our doors to around 100 educators from as near as the Harvard Graduate School of Education and as far as San Diego, Iceland, Denmark, and India. Some schools have longer term relationships with us, including a number of charter schools in our region who are working overtime to supplement traditional curricula with project-based learning for their students. Staying open to the world of education, both near and far, is a hallmark of Meridian that both nurtures and stretches its mission.

The Board of Trustees has known of Josh’s decision for a while now, and we have slowly and deliberately begun the work to create and implement a process for the appointment of our next head of school. We will be in touch in the coming weeks with more specific information about the search.

I know I speak for all trustees, current and past, when I say how grateful we are for Josh’s leadership as head of school and member of the board. As a relatively new board member, I have enjoyed working with my trustee colleagues and learning more about the school. Linking back to the experience of others is always a vital part of ensuring success for the future; and we, of course, are so fortunate to have our founding head as part of that process. We know there will be an array of ways that will bring Josh to our campus in the months and years to come after he steps down as head in June of 2025.

In addition, there will be opportunities to celebrate and honor Josh’s legacy in the months to come. The warmth and reach of his positive impact will stay with us for many years. We are all indebted to Josh’s efforts on the part of our students and families. We wish Josh, along with his family, all success in his rewirement, both personally and professionally.

With deep appreciation,

Jane Moulding
On behalf of the Board of Trustees

Seth A. Abramowitz, Secretary
Stephanie Kinkel
Jane Moulding, Chair
Lisa J. Poller
Beth Eliot Schultz
Sidra D. Smith
Velina Batchvarov
Venice Touze, Treasurer

+ May 9th, 2024: A Letter from Joshua Abrams

Dear Extended Meridian Family,

It is with great appreciation and anticipation that I write to share some of Meridian’s journey with you and news about the years ahead. Meridian’s timeline has many starting points, but the first focused efforts to create a new school began in the winter of the 2002-2003 school year. For two-and-a-half years, a committee of like-minded teachers and parents worked together, and we kicked off our school on September 8th, 2005 with the 1st Annual Bagel Breakfast Beginning. Next year, I am looking forward to our community celebrating our 20th anniversary together.

At the end of the 2024-2025 school year, and after twenty years of having the privilege of leading Meridian, I will be ending my tenure as Head of School. As the school has grown from 10 students to 90, so, too, have my different responsibilities and the scale of each one of them. During my first two decades as a teacher, I never had administrative ambitions. I did have educational ambitions and wanted to be able to serve students and teach in ways that other schools would not support, which is why Meridian came into being. I have taught as much as possible every year of our history and am ready to return to a greater focus on students, curriculum development, and teacher training so that other schools can do more of what Meridian students and faculty get to enjoy doing every day here.

I am most definitely not interested in retiring. I am rewiring and refocusing and excited to do fewer tasks in greater depth. I do not yet know what shape those efforts will take or where they will be – there is time in the coming year for that to be figured out – but I know that all that I have learned in the past two decades will be invaluable in my continued work as an educator.

When I was young, I would not describe myself as someone for whom gratitude was a primary or strong emotion. But in my family life and life as a teacher, gratitude has become a persistent and steady state for me. Being a part of our wonderful community has been indescribably gratifying, so, in the remainder of this letter, I want to share with you the people who have made Meridian possible and a bit of our history along the way.

Although I was raised in a rebellious time and place (New York City in the 60s and 70s), it turns out that I was not terribly rebellious myself. I am so grateful for my mother who took me to her kindergarten classes and talked about her teaching and my father the accountant who taught me to love math, and for them taking our family to political protests in Washington DC. It was a pretty straight path to my ending up as a mathematics teacher who did Model UN on the side.

Thoughts about what became Meridian first percolated between me and my dear friend, Humanities teacher, and founding Meridian trustee Kathy Ennis. As Kathy and I commuted together to Wista (well, Worcester, but our students insisted on this spelling and pronunciation) to teach at and help develop the Massachusetts Academy of Mathematics and Science, we would discuss how that school’s model could be adapted to a broader academic program. Many aspects of MAMAS informed Meridian’s design, but it was primarily just a junior year experience. Kathy and I pondered all of the opportunities that a multi-year school could realize, if it had similar academic ambitions for the kind of questions that students could pose and investigations that they could carry out.

That plans for Meridian took root is due to Tricia Morrow, who next year is wrapping up her 39 years as co-founder and leader of Neighborhood School. Tricia galvanized members of the NS community to organize and help launch Meridian and all have remained great partners throughout the years. I hope, at least in spirit, that we help justify the final ‘s’ in Neighborhood Schools, Inc.

Joining Kathy and Tricia as a noteworthy creator of Meridian is our founding Humanities teacher, Betsy Grant. I have unending gratitude for Betsy, her development of many of our courses, and her creativity initiating many of our traditions. I can’t imagine Meridian getting through our first years, including starting with ten 6th and 7th graders in a mildewy church basement, without her. Betsy took a big leap of faith and cut in pay to move from California to JP and embraced and expanded the vision for what Meridian could be in countless ways.

Meridian is sounder in body and heart thanks to Lenny Brown, who joined at the start of Meridian’s second year and has been our longest serving teacher. Lenny has inspired generations of students to play sports with intensity, joy, and sportspersonship. Lenny coaches Meridianites to push beyond what they think is possible becoming brawny while laughing more than seems reasonable for students doing 50 burpees, 50 squat thrusts, 50 pushups, etc.

Meridian has been blessed with amazing teachers and staff. They are the heart and brains of our work. I will resist listing everyone, but give a special shout out to, and echo everyone’s appreciation for, those who have served at Meridian 5 years or more (current staff in bold):

Abby Carle - Spanish
Alex Trunnell - MST
Betsy Goldman - Theater, JRPS
Catherine Epstein - Humanities
Ed Kleiman - Bookkeeper
Emily Farbman - Art
Emily Naito - Head of the Middle School, MST
Hilary Law - School Secretary
Judy Boykin-McCarthy - School Counselor
Laura Jaye - Music
Laura Somia - French, Spanish
Leisa Quiñones-Oramas - Spanish
Mary Ellen Ehrenreich - Art
Megara Bell, Sukriti Dubral, and Nia Torres - Health
Nathan Sokol-Margolis - Head of the Middle School, Humanities
Sara McDonald - Spanish
Sarah Parker - Assistant Head of School, Humanities
Socrates “Moreno” Guzman - Facilities
Sonja Vitow - Spanish, French
Stephanie Kinkel - Dean of Faculty, MST, Trustee

I have been so fortunate to lead and learn with Sarah, Emily, and Nathan as we have developed Meridian’s administrative practices over the years. Everyone should be so lucky to have colleagues who care deeply about the mission, work tirelessly, initiate change creatively, and have a great sense of humor. There have been innumerable moments of delight and challenges faced with all of my colleagues that I cherish.

Another group that helped Meridian come to life, and has sustained us ever since, is our donors. I am particularly grateful to our supporters near and far, with a special thanks to those who did not have children attend Meridian yet saw in us the possibility to change lives and become a model of how to honor students’ ideas and creativity.

Meridian’s design has always involved taking advantage of the incredible campus that Boston and beyond provide for us, but a school still needs a homebase and I am grateful to our three landlords: Covenant Congregational Church in Forest Hills (2005-7), Temple Ohabei Shalom in Brookline (2007-2014), and Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Jamaica Plain (2014-today). We have been so lucky to land homes that supported Meridian’s different stages of growth.

My gratitude to Meridian’s students cannot be measured (not even with a good ranking function). You give me purpose. You have made me laugh, learn, ponder, improve, and create on a daily basis. I love each of you and love coming to school to spend time with all of you. Meridian’s intentional smallness has meant we have all gotten to celebrate learning and life together. I send special hugs out to our wonderful alumni who have been pioneers in building our community and pioneers beyond our walls applying what they learned and developed here. I want to highlight the students and parents who came in our earliest years with none of the surety that we would last or be able to get our students into college or know what we were doing. Our world is filled with people who try to be risk averse and end up missing out on so much. You are not those folks.

Lastly, Meridian only exists because of the love, support, and forbearance of my amazing wife, Emily, who runs nonprofits herself and has been a constant source of wise counsel, and my fabulous sons, Matthew and Isaac, who chose to attend Meridian making it possible for me to both dive deeply into my work and be a present parent. Getting to be their teacher was a highlight of my life.

Meridian is small so that we can adapt and serve nimbly. This transition to our second Head of School is an occasion for new leadership with new insights into how to achieve our mission. I am excited to see how Meridian moves into its future and where it takes the opportunities to evolve next. The board of trustees has known about my plans since last June and has been working energetically to consider what a Meridian-appropriate transition should look like. You will be hearing soon from our board chair, Jane Moulding, about the trustees’ efforts and next steps.

Many adventures still lay ahead. Next year, we will have a party in May to mark twenty years of curiosity, creativity, and community. I am excited to celebrate with all of you and encourage you to join in on the plans.

With enormous gratitude and fondness,

Meridian’s Founding Students and Faculty on Our First Fall Trip to Hale in 2005