Current parents Adeola Lawal and Jacqui Jett serve as ambassadors at a Admissions event.

We’re still elbow-deep in the number-crunching and report-drafting that comes at this point in the Admissions Cycle! We are certainly celebrating another unprecedented season, with a 6% increase in our total applications – 359 for the 19-20 school year and counting.

And what is the key to the continued growth in interest in CA? Quite simply, our reputation and the word-of-mouth recommendations that parents offer within their various communities are invaluable (the “wonder buses” help, too).

The CA Admissions Team of four would be swamped without the incredible support from parent volunteers whose outreach and hospitality efforts are unparalleled. In fact, since this time last year, Cary Academy parents have

• conducted 100 campus tours;
• helped facilitate 6 Tour and Information Sessions that welcomed over 400 visitors to our campus;
• packaged 500 give-away bags; and
• conducted countless ambassador phone calls (and/or coached their Charger through their own ambassador call).

We offer our sincerest thanks to all of our parent volunteers, especially the New Parent Committee of the PTAA and their leaders for 2018-19: Suzanne Bright, Jacqui Jett, and Melissa Matton.

In my blog post this past September, I offered that “the admissions office is coordinating our outreach efforts to cultivate more touch-points with African-American and Latino families, from visiting more local elementary and middle schools to partnering with educational foundations who specifically support underrepresented populations.”

While the admissions team achieved all the goals noted above, the most powerful partnership grew from within our own community.

Cary Academy’s Parents of African-American Students (PAAS) affinity group offered their partnership and support with phenomenal outcomes—from increasing the presence of families of color at admissions events, to hosting a recruitment event off-campus at the home of Peter and Annette Greene, to serving as outreach ambassadors for families within the admissions process.

The PAAS efforts to support admissions were invaluable and speak tremendously to the power of modeling the mission of Cary Academy to our students—we strive collaboratively together toward excellence. Our sincerest thanks go out as well to Annette Greene, president of PAAS, and all of the PAAS parents who joined in this impactful work.

Of course, the admissions cycle for the 2020-21 school year is right around the corner, and we look forward to continued partnership in the years ahead, both with these current groups as well as with other constituencies on campus.