Several weeks after President Obama delivered his State of the Union address to Congress and the nation, Dr. Douglas North, the newly appointed head of school, gave his ‘State of the School’ address to a gathering of parents, faculty, and trustees.

Before introducing Dr. North, Bert Trombly, the President of the Board of Trustees, took a moment to speak about the financial status of the school. He noted that The Academies will be “in the black” within a few years (Dr. North later corrected Trombly, saying that the school will be out of the red this year), and that the budget has successfully been balanced. After citing Dr. North’s long list of credentials, including that he graduated from the Albany Academy in 1958, earned degrees from Yale University, Syracuse University, and the University of Virginia, and has ties to several colleges in Alaska, Trombly called North “the right guy at the right time”.

The President of the Parent’s Association, Debra Nelson, also touched briefly on the role of the parents at the Academies, praising their continued support and participation in the community.

Dr. North’s speech was short (shorter, at least, than Obama’s), and focused mainly on the future of the school, demonstrating how technology will be integrated into the curriculum and used as a means of more effective communication and marketing. In talking about the unified, yet still separate and individual, identity of the schools, Dr. North presented a new logo for The Academies. The slightly revised design adds the AA and AAG crests to the far left and far right, respectively, of the red and blue banner that appears on a variety of school publications. While Dr. North did not mention when this new logo would be implemented, he did note that a new website will debut next fall, which will offer better communication, marketing, and advertising tools. One of the features of the new site is a “My-Academy” page where parents can customize their own site with events and information that they are most interested in.

Now that the school’s finances and identity have been resolved and are in order, Dr. North said, it is finally time to focus on more important and exciting things, such as the future of the school. Using his laptop, Dr. North demonstrated several ways in which technology will be used to enhance learning. One such computer program, Google SketchUp — often used by architects to design intricate and complicated buildings — will be utilized by kindergarteners to ‘draw’ basic shapes such as circles and rectangles. After doing a quick demo onscreen, Dr. North said that this free software will be introduced in the classroom via Smart Boards, and then, with the help of their parents, students will complete homework assignments using the program. Dr. North also showed an animated video from Harvard University of a cellular mechanism, and said that such media will soon be available to students. In a third example, Dr. North brought up a website that featured an online, interactive, electron microscope which students can use to investigate specimens on a microscopic level.

Speaking without notes, Dr. North was eloquent and articulate. Dr. North also mentioned that he and his wife, who will be joining him in Albany in early May, will be living permanently in the Leonard house, allowing them to run the school as “a mom and pop institution”.

Trombly concluded the presentation by adding that, out of all the private schools in the area, The Academies is the only one whose enrollment has increased for the past three years.

Several years after the merger of AA and AAG, it seems as though the school is finally moving towards the future, which, as Dr. North affirmed, is full of possibilities.