I would estimate that I interact with at least a quarter of the Upper School student body each day, ranging from a wave to a full conversation in class, during club meetings, or even simply by passing them in the hallway. Though that proportion is smaller when it comes to teachers, I still find myself interacting with far more faculty each day than just those who teach my classes.

However, that figure is typically zero when it comes to administrators unless I have a meeting with one. Unlike students and faculty, I do not expect to see the administration out and about in the hallways or sitting in the cafeteria.

This is a problem, particularly in a school whose mission is to be “a complete community.” The administration currently has a concerning lack of presence in Upper School day-to-day life. Contradictory to the open doors of much of the faculty, the school cannot pride itself on an administration that does not foster close student-adult relationships in its own case.

Recently, an administrator apologized to the entire freshman class because they felt that they had broken the freshmen’s trust without even knowing them. But how could trust have possibly been present in the first place if they were practically invisible to so many of the students for the entire year?

This is not to say that the trust of the students first needs to be lost in order for the administration to make itself more visible within Parker. I myself had an experience with an administrator this year where I was recounting to them the success of FWPMUN the week after it had happened. The response: “Oh, that was this past weekend? How did I miss that?”

The Code of Conduct, as we learned recently, requires many incidents to be reported directly to the administration, rather than going through a member of the faculty, however, the vast majority of students would likely pinpoint a teacher as the adult they most trust in the building. Many students do not feel comfortable approaching an administrator with the details of an incident that made them comfortable or unsafe and discussing that incident in great detail, as an investigation would require, without the explicit support of a faculty member who also knows of the incident.

Furthermore, when asked what the jobs of our administrators entail, many students say they do not know. Obviously, much of the administration’s work is confidential for a reason, but the students cannot be expected to blindly have faith in the administration without getting at least a glimpse of their day-to-day lives.

Building a community starts at the top. The administration should not be some omnipresent fixture that only becomes involved in student disciplinary matters. In order to complete the network of trust between students and adults which already extends to much of the faculty, the administration should make an effort to have an increased presence in students’ lives on a day-to-day basis.