Holly Fidler takes the reins at Bethany School.
When Bethany School began looking for its new head of school last summer, the search committee was seeking a candidate who was warm and empathetic, transparent in their dealings, committed to fostering a close-knit community, and enthusiastic about Bethany’s identity as the only Episcopal school in Ohio.
By spring, they had made their choice.
“Holly Fidler is this candidate,” Karen Ryan, president of the school’s board of trustees, wrote in a letter to the Bethany community announcing Fidler’s hiring. “Bethany is well-poised to accomplish great things in the years ahead under Holly’s leadership.” Fidler is an Episcopal school alumna who has previously served as head of the lower school at the Wellington School in Columbus and principal of the lower school at St. Paul Academy and Summit School in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has also taught in the public schools of both Columbus and Cleveland, where she started her career in 1999 after earning a master’s in education from the Ohio State University.
She brings a strong strategic outlook, and what Sharon Shumard, the school’s director of community engagement, called “a genuine sense of compassion” to the job.
Fidler said her coursework in educational studies at Emory University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in French, aided the realization that teaching “was always who I was.” The word “commitment” comes up frequently when she describes what drew her to Bethany, a coeducational, K-8 school with 165 students on a 23-acre campus in Glendale.
“Bethany School lives out its values and identity as an institution committed to justice and diversity,” she said. “Our physical plant’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification was a huge commitment exemplifying that the school ‘walks the walk.’ This opportunity to work in a faith-based setting that leads with its spiritual identity was exciting to me.”
In her first months in the new job, Fidler has been inviting community members, including Episcopalians in the Cincinnati area, to discover a thriving school that those who know it consider a well-kept secret.
“When I visit area high schools, I talk about what you’re going to get when you inherit a student from Bethany School: curious, kind, justice-minded, resilient, empathetic, good members of the community,” she said. “These, far beyond grades, are predictors of how a person will live and contribute to society.”
Founded 125 years ago by the sisters of the Community of the Transfiguration, the school was conceived as a countryside respite for girls living in central Cincinnati. It remained a girls’ school until 1963, and a boarding school until 1977, when it began its current incarnation. Founded during the late 19th-century backlash against the Industrial Revolution, the school provided an “open-air space” that could develop the whole child, and this emphasis on developing students’ minds, bodies and spirits is still apparent today.
Students participated recently in a Blessing of Animals for St. Francis Day with clergy from Christ Church, Glendale, and the school also creates other ways to interact with its neighbors. “The school … draws the community in, engaging through athletic competitions and events,” Fidler said. “We are a small school, but one with a big impact on our community.”
The school lives out its values not only by educating children, but by doing so in an environmentally friendly way. In constructing the two buildings in which all of its academic activities now take place, the school installed 108 geothermal wells and a new stormwater drainage system. The buildings, both completed since 2018, exceed the LEED standards established by the U.S. Green Building Council and are rated as the second most energy-efficient school buildings in the country.
LEED certification is only one step in a green school initiative. Recently, all faculty members were certified as green educators, and the insights gained in that process are “shifting the way we live in the school,” Fidler said. Several student organizations also focus on sustainability, exploring the campus for opportunities to follow better environmental practices inside the classroom and out.
While highlighting environmental concerns, the school also partners with Magnified Giving, a local non-profit for which students design projects to assist organizations in the greater Cincinnati area
About three-quarters of the school’s students are children of color, and only 10 percent are Episcopalians. The school provides them with opportunities to explore what spirituality means to them, not only through curriculum and prayer, but also in everyday experiences with their peers and community. Students attend chapel services once a week and also attend religion classes twice a week, where they learn about world religions, ethics, Bible stories, and religious traditions.
In conversations with Fidler and her staff, the phrase “come and see” echoed repeatedly. “I hope Bethany School will be a place for all, committed to helping children grow in faith, to know what it means to be part of a community and a contributor to that community, oriented toward justice and acting on their passions and compassion toward others,” Fidler said. “We have a reputation for being a great school.
Our definition of that is laid out in tenets of faithfulness, upstanding citizenry, and academic strength through the resilience and perseverance it takes to learn, grow and thrive.”
Read this story in the Winter 2022 edition of Connections Magazine.
