I am so proud of all the teachers who did that for hundreds of students over the past 11 years. In full disclosure, during the 2022 school year one of those students was my own daughter who thrived in the program and credits her current success to lessons she learned while a student in Evolutions. Losing this program is deeply personal to me. Thank you to Thom Henes, Craig Brown, Emily Giddings, Larry Lovett, Brian Corey, Christine Derosiers, Alice Liao, Crystal Bartels and Mindy Hoge who all taught in the program.
And yet, as we looked at the budget numbers for this year we saw we had a crisis. We simply could not ignore that the numbers had been declining. We heard from our alumni and parents this winter about the value this program adds to our school and yet when we tried to be responsive in our annual recruitment push, the student requests for this year landed at 12. Please know we wanted to run the program to keep it alive for these kids and the future. We had strong plans to do this and when we realized the team itself was not going to be able to be the same, the hill just got too high to climb. We had no choice but to make this decision right now.
Our hope is that we can rework, rebrand, and relaunch Evolutions in the years to come. We may be asking for your help to figure out how the program, which was always designed to change, should change now. This year away will hopefully give us time to figure out the right next move for the students of Wellesley High School.