On Jan. 22, Holton-Arms announced that GDS Director of Strategic Partnerships Barbara Eghan will be joining Holton as Associate Head of School. Eghan will assume the role on July 1, 2024.
According to the email sent by Holton to all parents, Eghan served as Director of Enrollment Management and Financial Aid when she started at GDS before assuming her current role as Director of Strategic Partnerships. She is also the Founding Executive Director of the Civic Lab and has been at the school for ten years.
Holton’s Communications Director Sally Abbey told the Bit that hiring an associate head of school was a priority for Head of School Penny Evins, who assumed her position this fall. “She recognizes that she would like to have a partner in achieving her goals, so she set out to find an associate head of school to be her partner in leadership,” she added.
According to Eghan, her move was announced in an email to GDS faculty and staff shortly after Holton’s announcement. Eghan wrote, “Having worked in the area for so long, and in particular having lost many great students and families in the admissions process to Holton over the years, I entered the search process well aware of the school’s formidable reputation.”
Evins was unavailable for comment before this article’s publication.
According to Abbey, the hiring process for Associate Head of School was led by Carney Sandoe and Associates, an educational consulting firm from Boston. They specialize in faculty recruitment and leadership searches. Despite Holton being an all-girls school, the hiring process was “agnostic to gender.” The email from Holton announcing Eghan’s hiring said that the process drew over 100 candidates.
The position of associate head of school at Holton was not filled before this year. “We have not had an associate head of school in a while,” Abbey said. She could not recall exactly how long it’s been since the position was filled. She estimated that it had been about 10 years since Holton had an Associate Head of School. “There’s nobody leaving the role so that Barbara can come in,” she added.
“After the comprehensive search Barbara was the final choice, hands down,” Abbey said. “Her experience in the Civic Lab and her experience in so many parts of school leadership are some of the major reasons we are eager to have her at Holton,” she added.
In an email on Sept. 10, 2021, Eghan announced the Civic Lab to students at the GDS high school. The email said that Civic Lab would be “a dynamic space where young people—here at GDS, in our wider DC community, and even nationally—will experiment, learn, practice, and hone the skills of effective civic engagement to address any number of our democracy’s most urgent challenges.”
Junior Bryan Berman participated in the Civic Lab minimester in 2022. “It was a three-day program where we learned about the importance of democracy and had various speakers come in,” he said. Berman said that he did not stay involved in the Civic Lab after minimester.
Abbey told the Bit that Holton hopes to do programming similar to the Civic Lab with Eghan. “I would say everything is on the table right now,” she added.
“We have hit pause on program development (including the Civic Lab Fellowship) because the school is in a strategic planning year and using the opportunity to explore how best to align the core idea of the Civic Lab—which is that dialogue is the starting point for a better democracy—with the school’s future program development,” Eghan wrote in an email on Jan. 22 to the Bit.
Eghan ran the Civic Lab with Studio Arts teacher Tuan Nguyen, the program associate during the initiation of the program. “I still carry a lot of the skills that I learned with Barbara to this day,” he said. Nguyen has not been involved in the Civic Lab since 2022 and was unable to comment on its future.
According to a September 2022 email from Eghan to students, the initial plan for the Civic Lab included a speaker series and experiential learning labs. Soon after the announcement, Civic Lab hosted Nick Penniman, the CEO of Issue One, a non-profit for democracy and government ethics, and Sam Oliker-Friedland from the Institute for Responsive Government for an assembly. Eghan then announced a Civic Lab Fellowship Experience, which would culminate in a spring assembly.
In an email from Head of School Russell Shaw to community members in January 2024, he highlighted the need for civil discourse and engagement at GDS. He listed examples of civil discourse in the community; the Civic Lab was not on the list. Shaw did not respond to a request for comment.
This article was updated on Tuesday, Jan. 23, to include comments from Eghan and Nguyen.
CORRECTION (Jan. 23 at 12:50 p.m.): A previous version of this article misspelled Penny Evins’ last name.