Letter from Matt- June

matt horvat

Dear Overlake Community,

During this time in a school year it is hard not to find yourself thinking back to the start of school. That first day of school and driving up the winding road with our seniors waving their hand-made signs. Each one of those signs thoughtfully crafted with an individualized message as unique as our students.

I’ve had the fortune of attending Overlake’s tradition of a senior sign-making party on Sunday night. I’ve watched as our seniors carefully think about what message they want to convey to our community and what their sign says about them, their values and beliefs. Many of them are funny and self-deprecating while also being touching and reflective. 

And now, flash forward 10 months later, and these same students are now thinking carefully about what message they want to convey to another, larger community- the world outside of Overlake. They are not alone in their work.

On May 11 for our professional development day, our faculty and staff began the hard work of identifying shared values at Overlake. With the help with of a facilitator we used the day to dive into what are the values that bind us altogether. We did this by asking questions, listening to one another, and being open to various insights. This work is timely, doing it on the heels of celebrating our first 50 years. The goal for this work is to coalesce around a shared set of values leading us into our next 50 years. We started the initial work and will continue with this work in August. We will also seek input from our students on what values are important to them. Doing this work is important as we continue to work on and refine the program at Overlake, having a shared set of values will help as we use it as a lens to guide our decisions.

Other less lofty work ahead of us will be visible beginning later this summer. Starting in mid- July and lasting approximately one month, we will be working on the main roadway into campus, as required by King County in order for us to do any future construction projects. As seen on this map, we will be repaving the road, widening it in places, replacing the speed bumps with speed humps, and adding a knee-high retaining wall along a portion of the eastern section. To do this work, we’ll unfortunately have to remove some trees. We will be working with arborists to plant new trees and will also look at ways to reuse the fallen timber elsewhere on our campus. During portions of this roadwork traffic at times will be limited to one lane.

Additional construction work will be occurring this summer. In August, work begins to convert our lower fields into turf fields. This work when completed will support all our field sports. As seen on this map crews will be turfing over the two grass fields and using a cork infill. The new layout will include covered stands and a baseball practice area, that will reduce the number of off-campus trips for practices and games. We anticipate work on the fields to be completed by November. The two lower parking lots will also be repaved during this construction.

This work has been in the planning stages for several years and with the completion of the Conditional Use Permit (CUP) process with the King County we are now able to move from planning to doing!

There’s lots to look forward to, and yet it’s important to stay in the moment with our seniors and their families. It’s time to celebrate with them. For schools, graduation is the final victory lap of the year. All of our collective hard work, focus and care is expressed in each of our graduates-who they are and who they have become while at Overlake.

We wish them every happiness in the future and look forward to ushering them to their next adventure. We hope you’ll join us Sunday, June 10th in the Gym for commencement

Warmly,

Matt