Dear Spartanburg Day School Learning Community,
I hope summer has followed through on its promise of slower days and opportunities for rest and relaxation. Here at SDS we still have a healthy hum of activity on campus with Camp Griffin charging ahead at full steam and the work of preparing for the 2026-27 school year.
There are many exciting things coming for the 2026-27 school year and I am excited to announce the launch of a new quarterly series, Learning Lived. In this new series you can expect to learn about the unique academic programming that can only be found here at SDS. Our first issue, linked below, features our two new classes in 7th and 8th grade: AI & Research in 7th grade and Debate & Public Speaking in 8th grade. These are more than just new classes — they are down payments on our mission to provide a superior education that prepares students for lives well lived. I strongly encourage you all to read this newsletter, it is just four short pages but packed with unique information on this bold new program which will prepare our students for their future.
INSERT - Click Box for Learning Lived Newsletter, Issue 1 (from Julia Snowfrock)
You can expect three more issues of Learning Lived over the course of the school year, with each issue shedding light on how learning comes to life here at Spartanburg Day School. There is more that we have worked on over the course of this summer, which will benefit the student experience, and I wanted to take a moment below to go into more detail around that work and introduce new members of our faculty who will be working to execute on our superior educational experience.
Student Information System and Database
As I mentioned in my end of year update, we have begun our transition away from FACTS/Renweb to an all-in platform managed by Blackbaud. Blackbaud is an industry leader in school databases, based in South Carolina, with robust resources that allow Spartanburg Day School to manage, analyze and protect our important data across all aspects of the student experience and the school departments.
Aligning our databases across all our departments will streamline our communication protocols, ease our information sharing internally, allow us to develop more intentional workflows between faculty, administration, and staff, allow us to know our families more completely, and enhance the end user experience significantly in terms of reducing clicks, reducing the number of outlets to find information, the timeliness of information being available and our ability to adapt to the needs of our families quickly.
You will begin to see these changes soon: families will begin interacting with our new system in November as we launch the new website and Financial Aid process. All families will begin interacting with the new system during our new re-enrollment process in February 2027. Faculty and administration will be developing the family portal starting in January 2027 with a launch date in August 2027.
As part of this transition, Susan Ott will join our team as the new Systems Analyst and Registrar. Susan is a data-driven professional with deep expertise in K-12 academic operations and student information systems. She comes to us from Ensworth School in Nashville, where she has served as the Registrar K-8 and Database Manager. In this role, she was the lead administrator for Blackbaud K-12 and played a key part in master scheduling and system integrations. She holds a certificate as a Blackbaud K-12, Raiser’s Edge, Class A Scheduler. This direct experience with this transition at an independent school will help us in anticipating the most important pieces of this work to communicate to you all well in advance.
Staffing Update
Since my end-of-year letter, we have had a few additional changes to our faculty and staff for 2026–27 that I want to share with you, along with several new colleagues we are excited to welcome to campus.
As is the natural rhythm of any school year, we also say goodbye to several valued members of our community this summer. Trey Roehl is moving on to join an outdoor-based middle school as one of their new staff members — an opportunity that is a wonderful fit for his gifts as a teacher. Sarah Terrell has made the decision to take a similar position at another school. And Talisa Kellogg will be relocating to the Atlanta area, where her husband has accepted a new position at Mercer University. We are grateful to all three for the care and energy they brought to our students, and we wish them every success in their next chapters. Finally, Donlyn Aiken, longtime upper school assistant and recently our data and systems manager, has taken on a new role at Spartanburg Methodist College. We will miss her and her willingness to lend a helping hand to all.
I also want to update you on one of the appointments I shared in the spring. Since that letter, Dr. Matt Brandstetter has made the decision to remain in Maryland and will not be joining SDS this fall. While we were sorry to see that change, it opened the door to welcome an exceptional educator to lead this important new work.
Rick Martin will join us as our teacher of 7th and 8th grade speech and debate and as the inaugural Program Head for our Speech and Debate teams. Rick comes to SDS from Riverside High School in Greer, home to one of South Carolina’s premier speech and debate programs and a genuine national competitor. Since 2013 he has been teaching Social Studies at Riverside, focusing on US History, Human Geography, and World History. He has a BA in Secondary Education from Clemson University and a Master of Educational Leadership from American College of Education in Indianapolis, IN. Rick will step directly into the new curricular work we are launching this year: dedicated classes in seventh and eighth grade focused on research, public speaking, the appropriate use of AI, and the principles of speech, communication, and debate — and, alongside those classes, our first competitive Speech and Debate teams. This program is one of the clearest expressions of our Learning Lived academic identity. It teaches students to think rigorously, to speak with clarity and confidence, and to engage ideas with others under pressure — skills that will serve them long after they leave SDS.
Michael Herring will be our new Middle School Social Studies teacher and Girls Varsity Basketball Program Head. Michael brings 35 years of experience in education, 31 of them in independent schools. He spent nearly two decades as a head varsity coach at the Noble and Greenough School outside Boston, where he built one of New England’s finest basketball programs — more than 300 career victories, an Independent School League championship, and a long list of players who went on to compete at Ivy League and NESCAC institutions. In the classroom he has taught economics and U.S. history and has served in college counseling and dean roles. Michael speaks of sport as a vehicle for character, civility, sportsmanship, and impact well beyond the walls of a school — a philosophy that fits our community beautifully. We look forward to the leadership, humor, and experience he will bring to our classrooms and courts.
Kaitlin Holman will join us as our Preschool PE teacher and Program Head for Volleyball. A Boiling Springs resident, Kaitlin currently serves as Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at D1 Training Spartanburg and previously served as Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Performance and Student-Athlete Development at Limestone University and as Interim Director of Strength and Conditioning at NCAA Division I University of Detroit Mercy. She holds a Master of Science in Strength and Conditioning from Arkansas Tech University and a Bachelor of Arts in Exercise Science and Athletic Training from Baldwin Wallace University, is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with distinction and a USA Weightlifting Level 2 coach. From a volleyball perspective, Kaitlin is a former member of the USA Under-18 National Volleyball Team, participating in the 2012 World Games in Austria. She is a three-year letter winner for Division I volleyball school, Baldwin Wallace University. She has been coaching high level club volleyball for nearly fifteen years, and the sport is her passion.
Charlotte Davis will be our new second-grade teacher — and, for many in our community, a familiar face. Charlotte previously served at SDS as our school nurse and as a substitute teacher across the lower and middle grades. She comes to the classroom by way of a distinguished career in pediatric health care, having worked as a pediatric nurse practitioner with Prisma Health and Atrium Health, as a school nurse in Spartanburg School District One, and as a nursing instructor at the Mary Black School of Nursing — always with a special emphasis on children’s mental health and whole-child care. Most recently she has taught third-grade ELA at Libertas Academy in Boiling Springs. Charlotte holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Clemson University and a Master of Science in Nursing (Magna Cum Laude) from the University of South Alabama, and she is completing a Master of Science in Curriculum and Instruction at Western Governors University. She is trained in trauma-informed practice and in COPE2Thrive, a school-based model for building children’s resilience and coping skills. Her rare blend of clinical insight and deep warmth for children makes her a natural fit for our Lower School, and we are delighted to welcome her back to SDS.
Jonathan Brooks will join us as a mathematics teacher in the Middle and Upper Schools. Jonathan brings an uncommon blend of analytical rigor and creativity to his work with students. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics and piano performance from Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina, a master's degree from Indiana University, and a Ph.D. in music theory from the University of North Texas. For more than two decades he served as a college professor of music theory — rising to the rank of full professor and taking on faculty leadership — before turning his focus to secondary mathematics, and he comes to us from teaching upper-level math at Piedmont High School near Charlotte. Jonathan has a gift for showing students how closely the logic of mathematics and the structure of music are intertwined, a perspective that fits beautifully with the connected, curious learning we prize at SDS. We look forward to the precision, warmth, and genuine love of ideas he will bring to our classrooms.
I hope that you are excited to return to campus soon, and we can’t wait to see you in a couple of weeks!
Sincerely,
Dave Skeen
Head of School
