Kingsley Montessori School recently welcomed both a new director of elementary and a new director of early childhood, ushering in a new era for the 71-year-old Back Bay institution.
Bonnie McKeever was hired as director of elementary and Becky Drake Hedin was hired to serve as director of early childhood.
The director of elementary and director of early childhood roles were created to support the head of school after the Exeter Street campus opened in 2006. Prior to that, the Fairfield Street campus was home to the entire student body of 130 children between the ages of 3 and 12.
“The quality of what parents, teachers and children now receive with three education leaders is a better product,” Head of School Renee DuChainey-Farkes said. “We’ve taken another huge step forward with the introduction of Bonnie and Becky because they come to us with administrative excellence, academic excellence and a vast knowledge of childhood curriculum.”
DuChainey-Farkes added that the decision to hire McKeever and Hedin was part of a strategic planning initiative that Kingsley undertook last school year that led to the increased enrollment and other new offerings at the school.
“The addition of these two new directors shows our continued commitment to strengthening our leadership and providing the best possible education,” DuChainey-Farkes said.
Director of Elementary Bonnie McKeever, has worked as a teacher and administrator in independent schools since 1981. McKeever comes to Kingsley from the Meadowbrook School of Meadowbrook, Pa., where she had worked since 2001 and served as its assistant head of school for the last three years. At Meadowbrook, her responsibilities included managing and overseeing the preschool through sixth-grade educational curriculum, as well as supervising all faculty and teaching assistants and class scheduling.
For McKeever, Kingsley provides a particularly exciting opportunity as the school has expanded its enrollment from 199 to 229 this year to meet an increasing demand, as well as adding toddler, preschool and kindergarten-only classes.
“This forward movement supports our core ideals of learning, excellence, connections and empowerment and strengthens our place as a premiere educational institution in the Back Bay area,” McKeever said.
Director of Early Childhood Becky Drake Hedin has worked as a teacher and administrator in both public and independent schools since 1976. Hedin comes from The Clapp Elementary School of Woburn, where she served as principal since 2006. Her other experience includes working as the director of The Enrichment Center for Children of Sudbury, where she oversaw a private early childhood center that served 100 families of infants through preschoolers. Hedin also was the cofounder and curriculum coordinator of The Learning Experience, a Framingham-based private school for kindergarten through second grade that uses Montessori materials in its teaching.
With her experience working with both preschoolers and elementary school children, Hedin looks forward to helping merge Kingsley’s early childhood program, based at 30 Fairfield St., with its elementary school at 26 Exeter St.
“One of the goals at Kingsley is to bridge both programs,” Hedin said. “Having had experience working in early childhood development and elementary schools, both in and out of the classroom, helps me make that link.”
For more information about the Kingsley Montessori School, visit www.kingsley.org or call 617-226-4900.

Back Bay resident helps honor city’s anniversary

By Sun staff

As vice president of The Partnership of the Historic Bostons, Back Bay resident Larry Phillips looks forward to commemorating the 379th anniversary of the city this week.
“I am very enthusiastic about this unique opportunity to tell the story of the settlers who came to the new World as English and adapted their heritage to establish local governance in these earliest Massachusetts towns,” Phillips said. “The history of this important era will be told in a way that has not been done before.”
The Partnership, based at 65 Marlborough St., is coordinating the Ninth Annual Boston Charter Day activities in celebration of the founding of Boston, which, along with Dorchester and Watertown, was named in 1630 by the Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Activities run from Sept. 10 through 13 and will focus on this year’s theme, “Breaking Away: Evolution of Governance in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.” All lectures, tours, and other events are being presented by The Partnership in cooperation with The Dorchester Historical Society and The Historical Society of Watertown.
The opening program will be “British Roots of Governance” in the Rabb Lecture Hall of the Copley Branch of the Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston St., on Thursday, Sept. 10, at 7 p.m., following a one-hour informal reception.
All events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.bostoncharterday.org.

Labor Day 2009

Labor Day has come and gone, finishing off the half-summer during this, the fall of our discontent.
The government estimates that 14 million Americans are out of work. The unemployment rate is 9.7 percent and rising, although the numbers of those losing jobs is declining.
We all know that the world economy was turned upside down last December and January, when the underpinnings of the American banking system appeared to collapse.
In fact, all of us have been affected by this recession, more so than any other before it.
So Labor Day 2009 is a bust.
There isn’t much to celebrate except that the economy didn’t entirely disappear, taking everything we own with it down the proverbial drain.
The nation is politically divided, although the Democrats have greater numbers than the Republicans.
But the Republicans are noisy in their anger.
The president’s honeymoon is over.
This is like saying that the hope for change has been replaced by the natural pessimism that comes with Americans tending to vote with their stomachs – and their fallen retirement accounts and home values erased belie empty stomachs.
But at least it appears that the ugliest, hardest to manage manifestations of the recession may be easing up.
The end isn’t here.
In fact, it is a new beginning, this Labor Day 2009.
Now we peer into the next four months leading to the new year.
Business all around will be better than it was this time last year, proving the ages-old adage that when you’ve gone as low as you can go, the only way is up.
Last year at this time we were sinking but didn’t know it. Our assets were evaporating but we couldn’t control the building downward spiral. AIG, Lehman Brothers, the automobile industry, Bernie Madoff, etc., were breathing their last collective breaths.
As we move away from Labor Day, the health reform issue will take center stage.
Without health reform, the nation will come close to bankrupting itself – and yet – those who need health reform the most seem to be shouting it down the loudest.
What might have been presented simply as Social Security was in the late 1930s is a 1,000 page manifesto of confusion and complexity that even the president cannot claim to fully understand.
All idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity. There are no eternal facts as there are no absolute truths.
But we know this – Labor Day has come and gone. With its passing, many dark days are behind us.
The New England fall beckons.

During a community meeting at the Boston Public Library last week, the city unveiled a proposal to build bike lanes on both sides of Commonwealth Avenue.
“Our highest priority is to create a network of bike paths,” said Nicole Freedman of Boston Bikes, a program that Mayor Thomas M. Menino launched two years ago to make the city more bicycle-friendly. “We’re working on five to 10 miles of bike lane this year, and we look at Commonwealth Avenue as a critical component of our bike network.”
The Commonwealth Avenue modifications would be achieved by narrowing the travel-lane widths of the two-lane roadway to create bike lanes between Kenmore Square and Arlington Street. As part of the mayor’s plan, the new lanes would link the Charles River Esplanade network to new bike lanes on Columbus Avenue in the South End.
One aspect of the project still under consideration is whether the new bike lanes would run on the left-hand side of the street adjacent to the Commonwealth Avenue Mall or on the right-hand side, leaving bicyclists to navigate around double-parked cars. Depending on which configuration is ultimately selected, an existing traffic lane running between Kenmore Street and Charlesgate West or another from the Massachusetts Avenue underpass will need to be eliminated.
Nick Jackson, a project consultant and senior planner for the Toole Design Group of Hyattsville, Md., said the Commonwealth Avenue modifications might also include “bike boxes,” experimental devices that pull the stop-bar back to make room for bikes in front of vehicles at stop lights. The devices are currently in use in Cambridge and are the subject of a comprehensive study in Portland, Ore.
Jackson added that the project would include the minimal amount of new signage required by national regulations.
Also, Jackson assured the crowd of bicyclists and residents that the city would remain invested in the project after its implantation.
“The installation of the bike lanes is not the end of the story,” Jackson said. “[They] will continue to be monitored over time…so that modifications can be made.”
Meanwhile, Freedman told the Sun, “The city is reviewing comments from the public meeting and updating the design accordingly.”