Under the mentorship of life-changing coaches, develop resilient student-athletes who embody compassion, integrity, and ethical leadership while embracing challenges as opportunities for growth.

• Envision and implement a comprehensive student-athlete character development program
• Inspire student-athlete leaders as role models and mentors who champion school values and culture
• Empower coaches as character builders through professional development and training: What does it mean to be a coach who truly changes lives?

Ensure Menlo’s varsity teams are consistently competing at their highest possible levels by attracting and retaining high achieving student-athletes, hiring and retaining elite coaches, and upgrading facilities to underscore the excellence of our program.

ATTRACT STUDENT-ATHLETES TO MENLO

• Expand the pipeline of prospective 6th and 9th grade student-athletes and enhance Menlo’s appeal to top talent
• Develop Middle School athletes and maximize retention and engagement in the transition to Upper School
• Strengthen teamwork between coaching staff and Admissions
• Raise the profile of Menlo Athletics across the broader community
• Harness compelling storytelling to convey the impact of Menlo Athletics, reinforce its brand, and inspire future student-athletes

HIRE AND RETAIN ELITE COACHES

• Continue advancing compensation efforts and identify ways to ensure coaches feel valued and supported
• Professionalize the work experience for coaches
• Develop strategies to tackle housing challenges

ENSURE FACILITIES MEET NEEDS

• Develop Cartan Field
• Explore Pool Facilities Options

Empower every student-athlete to be their best self—in their sports and classes—by providing progressive skill development and cutting-edge resources that help them excel athletically, while equipping them with the tools, support, and mindset to thrive in Menlo’s strong academic environment and beyond.

• Increase integration between Athletics and Academic departments
• Provide exceptional support in sports performance, sports medicine, and wellness
• Deliver comprehensive college recruiting support, equipping athletes with the necessary resources to navigate the process

Elevate community engagement with Menlo Athletics— bringing together students, coaches, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, and neighbors—to foster a positive, inclusive, joyful school culture.

• Enhance the game-day experience with engaging fan activities, promotions, and incentives
• Strengthen Sea of Gold to boost spirit and engagement
• Leverage Athletics to generate hype and spirit for the Menlo community and brand
• Build alumni connections through Athletics

Help students build the knowledge, tools, and mindset to make healthy choices and set boundaries around their relationship with technology, their time and commitments—academic, athletic, artistic, and extracurricular—as well as their need for sleep, nutrition, and strong social and familial relationships.

• Develop and roll out an age-appropriate curriculum that inspires students to engage with technology and social media in more intentional and responsible ways.
• Bolster initiatives to equip students with core academic habits and time management skills, with a primary focus on grades six through nine.
• Identify and implement opportunities to more fully embed wellness into the life of the School
• Empower parents and caregivers to help students make informed, healthy choices for a balanced life by purposefully curating and delivering resources and guidance

Evolve Student Life programming to instill a school-wide culture that embodies Menlo’s values of kindness, respect, empathy, and civility; prioritizes belonging and authentic connections between students and peers, teachers, coaches, and advocates; and cultivates the positive, trusting relationships essential to student well-being and at the heart of who we are as a school.

• Evaluate and enhance the 6-12 Advocacy program to offer a more meaningful and measured experience.
• Design intentional school-wide programming to strengthen inter-grade connections, expand peer mentorship, promote leadership and student voice, and foster a culture of courage, kindness, and belonging.

Cultivate a mindful, intentional, and authentic understanding of mental health at Menlo by integrating programming to normalize emotional experiences and destigmatize supports; equipping students with healthy coping skills and emotion regulation strategies to navigate the spectrum of life’s challenges, from mistakes and hurt feelings to loss and trauma; and developing responsive, collaborative, evidence-based suicide prevention support systems.

• Enhance mental health support and accessibility by expanding counseling resources and opportunities.
• Deliver professional development training for advocates, teachers, and coaches around centering and integrating well-being practices and SEL strategies into the curriculum and daily routines.

• Partner with local organizations to provide consistent, responsive, evidence-based mental health and suicide prevention training for all parents, faculty, coaches, and staff.

(Planning in process, Fall 2025)

Belonging is essential to learning and growth, and it lies at the heart of how Menlo educates and cares for its community. This plan will outline strategies to foster kindness, allyship, and shared accountability; enhance responsive and inclusive teaching; and strengthen more equitable family partnerships. By weaving together daily practices, professional learning, and community life—and through collaborative efforts with Wellness and Athletics—it aims to broaden and intentionally shape student programming, strengthen incident reporting, expand faculty training, and support parent onboarding.

(Planning in process, 2025-2026)

The arts have long been a core component of a Menlo education, nurturing creativity, novel thinking, empathy, and the ability to listen and collaborate. Today, when technology can do so much, and what is uniquely human will set us apart, arts education is now indispensable—cultivating capacities technology can never replace.

In charting a plan for the future of the arts at Menlo, we want to ensure that every student has a transformative arts experience at every stage of their journey and bolster participation across our programs. By focusing on process over product and experiential learning that cultivates depth, flow, and individual voice, we hope to encourage students to shape their own creative paths and grow in unexpected ways as thinkers, makers, and learners. Ultimately, our vision is for all of our students to understand why the arts matter—because they awaken a deeper sense of humanity, inviting exploration of the unseen, an embrace of complexity, and connection with themselves and others. The most powerful discoveries, after all, rarely follow a straight line; they emerge through curiosity, commitment, and openness to possibility.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the world faster than anyone can predict, and it will affect our students’ lives in profound ways. To help Menlo navigate these uncharted waters, we’ve formed a board-level AI committee that includes experts, alumni, and parents, to help define clear north stars and key assumptions to guide our decisions and provide strategic advice for the Senior Administrative team. Together, we’re committed to keeping a Menlo education relevant, values-aligned, student-centered, and forward-looking as tools and technologies continue to evolve.

We know our children will have opportunities to bring ideas to life in ways we can’t yet imagine by harnessing these emerging technologies. Our goal as an educational institution is not only to empower them to use these tools in novel and discerning ways, but also to cultivate the human qualities smart machines cannot replicate—empathy, creativity, ethical reasoning, joy, and the ability to connect deeply with others and the world. Students who pair these skills with technical acumen will be best prepared for the future, which is why—guided by our values—we are encouraging experimentation, critical reflection of how and what they are producing, and intentional integration of these technologies across our curriculum.

As we continue advancing these efforts, we must support and empower our faculty, staff, and administrators as they thoughtfully weave AI into teaching with a focus on relevance and student growth. This means fostering a culture of continuous learning and collaboration while adapting programs, practices, and operations to harness the benefits of AI without compromising our mission and values. To guide our community in this rapidly evolving landscape, we are also working to strengthen our change management, encouraging early adoption and on-campus pilots aligned with our vision, creating a modest endowment, and dedicating staff time to thoughtful planning and innovation.

(in process)

Catalyst, Menlo’s Applied Leadership Semester, launched this fall after years of planning. This transformative, semester-long course invites motivated juniors to grow as leaders, tackle complex global challenges, and cultivate a lasting sense of agency and optimism. Through an interconnected set of classes and immersive experiences spanning Menlo’s campus and the greater Bay Area, students are investigating interconnected issues of a changing climate from multiple perspectives, designing and evaluating emerging solutions, and learning directly from innovators, engineers, and policy makers. Along the way, they are challenged to be reflective and responsive, ambitious and adventurous, process-oriented and solutions-driven. By the end of the term, our Catalyst students will be adept in systems thinking, grounded in their own capacity to lead and solve problems, and connected to a community of mentors and peers who will inspire and support them long after their time at Menlo.

(in process)

Menlo’s summer engineering program in Whitaker Lab, which just completed its fourth year, provides motivated low-income students from beyond Menlo with a high-quality, hands-on introduction to STEM in our innovative maker space. Through partnerships with Peninsula Bridge and the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula, the program expanded its reach to 85 students annually, offering age-appropriate engineering challenges that ranged from soldering circuits and building electric cars with middle schoolers to designing and constructing original skateboards with high schoolers. The projects not only developed technical skills but also sparked creativity, strengthened confidence, and deepened students’ excitement for design thinking and engineering.