Gallery • 7 Photos

Diane Huang

Head of School Bryn Roberts sits in his office. “What’s very different from today was that it was one size fits all,” he said about his high school experience.

In an email this afternoon, the SPA Board of Trustees announced that Head of School Bryn Roberts will be retiring at the end of the 2021-2022 school year. Roberts has been serving as the Head of School since 2006. In his fifteen years of service, Roberts has helped transform the St. Paul Academy and Summit School community. Living up to the school’s mission statement, “shaping the minds and the hearts of the people who will change the world,” Roberts has provided the school with fundraising, expanding SPA’s Upper School with the construction of Huss Center, Schilling Center for Math and Science, the renovation of Old Main, along with expanding and diversifying both the student and faculty bodies.

In the email, President Board of Trustees Tim Welsh wrote, “Under Bryn’s leadership, nearly every aspect of SPA has evolved to meet the rapidly increasing expectations of a school in the 21st century. Through innovative strategic planning, genuine care and support for his team, and an unrelenting commitment to the school’s mission, Bryn has positioned SPA and its students to make the world a bit better for all of us. Bryn’s most important legacy is that thousands of students who have come through the doors of SPA since 2006 will shape the world in countless ways. Our community and indeed our world are, and will continue to be, much better off because of Bryn’s leadership at SPA.”

Within the email, a letter from Roberts to the community was also included. Roberts said, “It has been a privilege and great fun for me as an educator to lead a caring community that prizes the unabashed pursuit of excellence…Few educators and school leaders have enjoyed the opportunities and support that I have received throughout my tenure as the Head of School at SPA, for which I am deeply grateful. I look forward to next year. I hope that we will be beyond the worst of the pandemic and thus able to focus on renewing the expansive bonds of our community and envisioning the next stage of this remarkable school’s evolution. I am excited about SPA’s future, not just through June 2022, but in the decades ahead.”

Junior Kat Braggs has known Roberts since she was 8 years old. She said, “I always admired the work Bryn Roberts did for the SPA community. He brought together not just the administrative aspect of our school, but the inclusive character and community feel that makes SPA unique.”

Senior Ivan Starchook said, “Mr. Roberts has been the head of school since I started at SPA in first grade. While I’ve grown up at the school, I’ve been able to see SPA grow and change too, and Mr. Roberts’s work to bring us together as a community will always be remembered.”