Dear Members of the Rivers Community,

In the spirit of gratitude that the holiday season brings, I am very proud to report that the Rivers community has raised more than $15.4 million since our kick-off of FutureMakers: The Campaign for Rivers at Gillette Stadium last October. I am truly gratified, energized, and inspired by the progress we have made together.

Thanks to the generosity of alumni, parents, and friends, we have witnessed a recent and dramatic transformation of the Rivers campus. Our signature academic facility, The Revers Center for Science and Visual Arts, will open its doors for classes on January 7 and will fundamentally transform teaching and learning on the Rivers campus.

In the past three months, we also celebrated the opening of a new outdoor athletic complex with two new multi-use turf fields and a community pavilion. In addition, we built a new picturesque boardwalk that provides a much-needed shortcut to Nonesuch Field from the center of campus and opens up a section of campus that was previously inaccessible.

These capital improvements, along with the completion of other campaign-funded priorities, such as critical infrastructure work, the construction of Nonesuch Field, and the establishment of the Center for Community and Civic Engagement, form the foundation for a new future for Rivers that is full of promise.

Great schools don’t stand still. This past year has demonstrated with unmistakable clarity that Rivers is a great school, but we can always do better. FutureMakers still has two years to go, and now that The Revers Center is completed, we are poised to move on to the next phase of campus enhancements quickly. We will also continue to grow our endowment, so we can build for the future in this less visible but equally critical way.

In addition to the planned improvements to our Black Box theater, which are already in the works, we will now take on the opportunity of enhancing the buildings in our original academic quadrangle, including our Middle School and remaining Upper School academic spaces. These reimagined spaces will be brought up to the standards of The Revers Center and fully support the needs of faculty and students in the 21st century—all while upholding Rivers’ values and honoring its legacy. To learn more about the transformation of our original academic quadrangle and our plans for a reimagined campus gateway, continue reading here.

I offer my deepest thanks to our incredibly generous community, and I look forward to continuing this important work over the next two years of FutureMakers. Together, we will ensure a bright future for our school. Most important, we will continue to prepare our students to navigate an ever-changing world and instill in them the capacity and determination to achieve great things for themselves—and to grow into agents of positive action in the service of others.

Best,

Ned Parsons

Head of School