Message from Matt

Dear Overlake Community, 

Today marks the final day for the class of 2019! As I watch them celebrate with each other and share in their collective excitement of what is to come next, I think about when many of them were 6thgraders at Overlake. I remember well how they watched in wonder as the seniors at that time celebrated. I imagined that many of them and their parents could not fathom what it would be like to be where they are now. And yet in seven years – here they are – older, wiser, and maybe a little more jaded than they were in sixth grade. I am sure senior parents are equally amazed and perhaps reminded about that old saying: the days are long, but the years are short.

Sending seniors off on Senior Projects marks a significant milepost in the school year. Although we have much to do between now and graduation, we have already started to plan for next year. 

As many of you have known, this summer will see significant construction on the Overlake campus. This past week the Middle and Upper Schools had a chance to celebrate with a groundbreaking ice cream social as a way to bid farewell to our current Math/Science Building before we start construction on the new Math & Sciences Center in June. 

We are incredibly excited to open the doors to these state-of-the-art facilities for the 2020-21 school year. With double the square footage for math, science, and computer science, the Math & Sciences Center will be a hallmark facility for our faculty and students to thrive. Look for more information on this project throughout the summer and in the next school year. (I will also give a thorough update at the PFSA meeting on May 15 – hope you can join us for some libations and appetizers in the Library that evening.) Certainly a very exciting time for Overlake!

As a reminder, next year we will have modular building structures on campus (i.e. portables) to house some of our math and science classes during this next year of construction, and I have every confidence that the quality of our programs will be as strong as ever. Other projects on campus are our plans to redo two of the lower fields. This is a project we have been working with the county on for over five years and believe we have navigated every request the county has made of us in regard to this work. Our intention is to convert the larger lower field to turf and the upper field to either turf or grass. This project will include creating drainage systems to deal with the extensive water run-off from the hill.

We will also be working on the road into and out of campus and will be updating a lower parking lot. These two projects are ones the county is requiring of us in order to move forward with the construction of the new Math & Sciences Center and the future Welcome & Discovery Center. 

Of course, through all of this construction school will be open and operational. Our summer program is in fact larger than it has ever been with many current students and alums working as camp counselors in the program.  

These are indeed exciting times at Overlake and although there is much campus work going on at our core, it is the work we do with students every day to help them become the young people I see outside relishing their last day at school that is the real celebration! 

Warmly, 

Matt