FALL 2023 1
The Wingèd Ox
& ANNUAL
REPORT
2022-2023
Tales from St. Luke’s School • Fall 2023
Contents
3
HEAD OF SCHOOL WELCOME
4
CELEBRATING BART BALDWIN
6
NEW YEAR, NEW FACES
8
RETIREMENTS
9
PA ENRICHMENT GRANTS
13
SUMMER PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
15
LOWER SCHOOL CRONICAS
16
UPPER SCHOOL LIBELLUS
18
CELEBRATING THE CLASS OF 2023
21
YOUNG ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
22
THEN AND NOW: AN INTERVIEW WITH
SLS ALUMNI TURNED SLS TEACHERS
24
CALLING ALL ALUMNI!
Annual Report 2022-2023
26
FROM THE CHAIR
27
VOLUNTEER SPOTLIGHT
30
GIFTS OF TIME & TALENT
The Wingèd Ox
FALL 2023 3
Head of School Welcome
Dear St. Luke’s Community,
The start of a new school year is a time of great
anticipation, a moment when we embark on new
beginnings while also cherishing the timeless
traditions that have shaped our school's identity.
In my first year as Head of School, I realize we are
writing a new chapter for our school while also
building on the narrative history that makes this
school community so special.
As we settle into the routines of the school year,
and I have the opportunity to meet with so many of
you—formally or informally—and learn about your
St. Luke’s story, I am enthralled by the individual
journeys that brought our community together
and am amazed that within those unique stories
there are themes that consistently emerge. Literally
and figuratively, our space welcomes, nurtures
connection, and fosters belonging. When one walks
through the gates of St. Luke’s School, the bustle of
the city fades and is replaced by the joyful laughter
of children and the enthusiastic pleasantries of
adults greeting each other in the open spaces of our
stunning campus.
The joy of belonging to St. Luke’s School is vividly
present within the building, as well. Recently
I watched as students counted the seconds to
8:00 a.m. so that they could head upstairs to their
classrooms and get ready for their full days. During a
recent Fall deluge, JK students created mud art and
observed worms as they migrated to drier land. As I
work with our Grade 8 students on mock high school
interviews, I am in awe of their articulate retellings
of their care for others, accomplishments, service,
and leadership. The privilege of guiding students on
their educational journey is a responsibility I do not
take lightly and their joy and enthusiasm at school is
the highlight of my days.
The subsequent pages of this Wingèd Ox Magazine
and Annual Report capture so many cherished
moments unique to St. Luke’s: faculty pursuing
lifelong learning and bringing their discoveries back
to their classrooms, new staff bringing new energy
and perspectives, alumni who go out into the world
to lead with heart and make us proud, and so many
volunteers and donors who share their time, talent,
and treasure in support of this magical community.
If we have not yet met, I hope that we will soon.
As we author this new chapter together, please
know that my door is always open. I encourage
you to reach out, share your thoughts, dreams,
and concerns, and be an active participant in the
St. Luke’s family. Together, we will make this a
remarkable volume in the St. Luke’s story.
With joy,
Tracy Fedonchik
Head of School
Top: Ms. Fedonchik greets students on the first day of
school along with her dog Pip’n. Bottom: Exploring the
sand table with JK.
4 THE WINGÈD OX
Celebrating Bart Baldwin
Head of School, 2007 – 2023
After 16 years as Head of School,
Bart Baldwin retired at the end of
the 2022 – 2023 school year.
In his tenure, he oversaw our growth
from a parish school of fewer than
200 students to an independent
Episcopal school of more than 340
students, and physical expansion that
added two stories to our building and
enhanced our outdoor play areas.
Under Bart’s leadership, the school
increased staffing; expanded arts,
sciences, and learning resources;
and institutionalized and
deepened our commitment to
diversity, equity, and justice.
All of these are incredible achievements, but what
we will most cherish and remember about Bart
was the way he made us feel. He made each of us
feel seen – parents, students, teachers, and staff.
In this vibrant, busy, and often overwhelming city,
Bart cherished our community as a sanctuary on
Hudson Street. He fostered an environment where
we all had opportunities to engage deeply and he
encouraged us to enter through the gates with
vulnerability and compassion so that every member
of our school could be fully themselves.
Board Chair Holly Fogle wrote of Bart’s leadership
at St. Luke’s, “What you are leaving here is a true
legacy. A beautiful school with a strong partnership
with the Church. An amazing team of educators and
administrators. And a group of children that feel
deeply cared for because they have always been our
North Star.”
Bart wrote to the St. Luke’s community last year,
“Partnering with and serving St. Luke’s School has
been one of the great joys and privileges of my life,
and I am so much the better for it. St. Luke’s School
will easily and smoothly transcend a change in Head
of School because the heart of the school beats
within each of you.” We are deeply grateful to Bart
for his 16 years of heartfelt service to St. Luke’s
and we wish him all the best in his retirement. If
you’d like to be in touch with Bart to send him your
well wishes or to share a memory, please contact
development@stlukeschool.org.
FALL 2023 5
BY THE NUMBERS
We know that numbers cannot capture the
magic and warmth of Bart, but they can tell
a story. Below are some key facts and figures
relating to Bart’s time with us at St. Luke’s.
` 16 YEARS of serving as St. Luke’s
School Head of School
` 28 YEARS as a head of school
` 40 YEARS in education
` 200 STUDENTS ENROLLED in Bart’s
first year which grew to 340 STUDENTS
ENROLLED by the 2022 – 2023 school year
` 2 STORIES and 20,000 SQUARE FEET
of added learning space plus a beautiful
outdoor and rooftop renovation
` 3 DOGS who accompanied Bart and
brightened our days – Roxy, Luke, and Coeli
` 1 GLOBAL PANDEMIC navigated
` 16 GRADUATED CLASSES
` 553 NEWSLETTERS sent to the
SLS community
Counterclockwise from top left: Bart greeting and addressing students on
the first day of school, September 2022; Bart teaching, September 2022;
State of the School address, January 2019; scenes from Bart’s retirement
party on June 2, 2023 (Coeli hugging Bart; dedicating The Bart Baldwin
Buddy Bench from the Board of Trustees—the Buddy Bench is where
someone can go sit when they need a friend or someone to play with on the
playground; addressing the crowd; Bart with Coeli)
6 THE WINGÈD OX
New Year, New Faces
DANNY ABRAMS joins as an After
School Program staff member and
substitute teacher. He has a degree in
Psychology and a minor in education
from UMass Amherst. In his spare time, he is a
musician: he plays guitar, drums and piano.
EVELYN BELIVEAU joins St. Luke's
School as an After School Program staff
member. She will conduct Homework
Help on Mondays and Thursdays. She
has worked in New York City as a tutor specializing
in reading and grammar and as a teaching artist for
nearly four years. She attended Bowdoin College.
CHEVONE D. CAMERON joins
St. Luke's School as Human Resources
and Administration Associate. Prior to
joining St. Luke’s, Chevone worked at
Motivate LLC (CitiBike) as their HR Generalist/
Associate. She attended Medgar Evers College.
JESSIE CORDRAY joins us as an
athletics coach and substitute. He has
an M.A. from the University of San
Francisco and holds a USSF C license.
He is also a certified youth Futsal instructor and a
staff coach at DUSC. He spent the last six years
teaching in NYC charter schools.
We eagerly welcomed these talented and enthusiastic new members of our community, and we look forward
to seeing the new energy and ideas that they bring to our school and their classrooms and departments.
OLIVIA DULANY joins as the 2R
Associate Teacher. A graduate of
Williams College and a candidate for a
master’s from Chaminade University in
Hawaii, most recently Olivia has been a Teach for
America Corps member and focused on students
with learning differences.
TRACY FEDONCHIK joins as St. Luke’s
sixth Head of School. Tracy spent 21
years at The Dalton School where she
worked first as an associate teacher in
Grade 3, then as lead Grade 3 teacher, before moving
to the Middle School where she taught Grade 5
language arts, social studies, and mathematics. In 2014,
Tracy was named Assistant Middle School Director and
later Middle School Director. Tracy graduated from
Fairfield University with a BA in English Literature and
Creative Writing. After an early start in the business
world, she decided to change careers and earned an
MS in Teaching Literacy and Childhood General
Education from Bank Street College of Education.
THE REV. ISABEL ROBERTS GELLER,
known as Mo-G (for Mother Geller) is
the St. Luke's School Chaplain. Along
with her mentor, Fr. Andrew Ancona,
she will create the Chapel programming and
Eucharist services. Mo-G will also help to teach the
Religious Education and Justice classes in the Upper
School. Before heeding the call to ordained ministry,
she was the stage door manager with Dance Prism,
a semi-professional ballet company in Concord, MA,
and the senior warden at St. Andrew's Episcopal
Church in Ayer, MA.
TYRIEK GOOD joins as a PE Associate
Teacher, allowing us to better support
and expand that program. Tyriek has
vast coaching experience including
coaching at The Dalton School, Hunter College,
and the Agnes Irwin School in Pennsylvania.
A graduate of City College in New York, he has
particular experience in intercollegiate sports
which will support our intra- and inter-mural
programs immensely.
FALL 2023 7
CLAUDIA SOL HINOJOSA joins as
Interim Spanish Teacher for Grades 5
– 8. A native of Mexico, Señora Sol joins
us after years of experience teaching
Spanish and working as a Spanish Curriculum
Developer at schools in New York City, Wisconsin,
and Oregon. Claudia also has worked as a
professional salsa dancer and has taught salsa dance
and Zumba classes throughout her career. She
received a bachelor's in Psychology from
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Mexico.
AYESHA LONG joins as Chief DEI
Officer and will work alongside every
constituency group to oversee
St. Luke’s DEIJB policies and practices,
partner with educators and student services,
educate families on DEIJB principles, and support
students in their learning of these concepts. Ayesha
worked previously at City and Country as the Middle
School Director and the Director of Community Life,
Equity, and Inclusion. She has also worked at The
Dalton School, Empower Charter School, and New
York City Department of Education. Ayesha received
her undergraduate degree from Hunter College and
a graduate degree from Brooklyn College.
ELIZA MACY joins St. Luke’s as an After
School Program staff member. Eliza
comes from the Brooklyn Botanical
Garden where she taught gardening to
elementary school students. Because of this, she has
brought horticulture education activities to ASP.
Eliza attended Macalester College.
LUKE MUSCAT joins as co-lead Junior
Kindergarten teacher. A dancer and
educator, Luke is a candidate for his
doctorate in education, having earned
his master’s at Bank Street College. He worked
previously as head toddler teacher at Barrow Street
Nursery School and has also been a first grade
teacher at Hewitt and a long-time dance educator.
ALEX OWEN joins as the Grade 7 and 8
Music Teacher. Alex has taught music to
a variety of ages, and most recently
taught elementary music at Quad Prep.
In addition to teaching at St. Luke's, Alex is a busy
jazz trumpeter and vocalist and will be incorporating
his experience as a working musician into all of his
classes. Alex is a graduate of Connecticut College
and holds a Master's degree in Music Education
from Teachers College, Columbia University.
ANGEL PEÑA joins the Grade 4 team.
She worked previously as a Grade 5 and
6 teacher at Achievement First
Brownsville Middle School, a charter
school in Brooklyn. Prior to that, she taught
Grade 3 and 4 in Arizona, where she earned her
undergraduate and master’s degrees from Arizona
State University.
MAGGIE PERAULT joins the Grade 4
team but is already known to the St.
Luke’s School community, having served
as the family leave replacement for
Grade 3 last year. She has also been a Grade 2 and 4
lead teacher at Lycée Français, and prior to that, a
Grade 3 and 5 lead teacher in public school. She
holds an undergraduate degree from the College of
William & Mary and a master's degree from
Teachers College, Columbia University.
ERICA PETTIS joins St. Luke’s as the
Director of Development. In her role
she will focus on leading our Annual
Fund and Spring Benefit fundraising
efforts. She will also work to grow our alumni and
alumni parent engagement and programming. Prior
to joining St. Luke’s, Erica worked at Graham-Pelton
consulting as their Independent School Practice
Group Leader, the Allen-Stevenson School, and the
Pingry School. She's a graduate of Hamilton College.
KAELANI PRYCE joins St. Luke's as a
Human Resources and Administration
Associate. Prior to working at St. Luke’s,
Kaelani worked in the HR field at a
nursing home. She has also served as an education
paraprofessional with the NYC Department of
Education. She is a graduate of CUNY Lehman College.
DEION A. SAINVIL joins as an interim
Grade 5 and 6 History Teacher and
Grade 5 Advisor. Most recently, Deion
interned at Bloomsbury Children’s
Books and taught at Coral Springs Charter School in
Coral Springs, Florida. He holds a Bachelor’s of
Science in Social Science Education from Florida
State University and a MFA in Writing for Film and
Television from Emerson College.
SHEILA SHELDON joins as Chief
Financial & Operating Officer. In her
role, she will provide strategic
leadership, analysis, management and
oversight of all finance and operations while leading
high functioning teams in the Business Office,
Facilities, and IT Departments. Sheila worked
previously as the Director of Finance at the
Archdiocese of New York, and prior to that was a
Controller at St. John's University. She holds a degree
in accounting and finance from New York University.
8 THE WINGÈD OX
ALLISON SNYDER joins as the 3W Associate
Teacher. Most recently, she was a Grade 1 and
3 associate teacher at Ethical Culture
Fieldston School. She sees teaching as a
service and has taught writing to incarcerated women,
advocated for students with learning differences, and run
classes in executive functioning. She is a graduate of Sarah
Lawrence College.
JINLI SPENCER is an alum of St. Luke’s School
and is thrilled to return as the Grade 3P
Associate Teacher. A graduate of Wellesley
College with a master’s expected from the
University of Pennsylvania, Jinli is passionate about gender
equity in education. As part of their master’s program, they
taught third graders at a public charter school. In addition,
they have been an editorial assistant at a publishing house
specializing in children’s literature.
ZOE TEZAK joins Rebecca Swanberg in the
Communications Office as our
Communications Manager. She was previously
the middle school office manager at The
Dalton School and prior to that received her Bachelor’s of
Science in Media Studies and Communications from NYU.
ZAHARA WIGNOT joins St. Luke’s School as
the Executive Assistant to Head of School,
Tracy Fedonchik. Zahara has held similar
positions at Harlem Day Charter School,
Avenues The World School, and McKinsey & Company.
She holds a B.A. from the University of Washington.
New Year, New Faces (Cont.)
Retirements
Scenes from a special chapel service
celebrating Ms. Bramble on May 24, 2023.
We are so grateful to all our professional staff, and particularly
appreciative of the gifts of those who are moving on to new
adventures. We wish everyone well and are so grateful for their
time and impact at St. Luke’s School! Here we want to celebrate
the two incredible staff members who retired at the end of the
2022 – 2023 school year.
BART BALDWIN (Head of School) retired after 16 years as Head of School. (See page 4-5 for a
longer tribute to Bart’s years of service to St. Luke’s.)
BRENDA BRAMBLE (Registrar) retired after 34 years providing service and inspiration to the
families of St. Luke’s School. She was the first person many students, teachers, and families saw
when they entered the school each day and she masterfully juggled bus duty, phone calls, late
arrivals, and early dismissals with a smile each day. We will miss Mrs. Bramble and wish her a very
happy retirement!
FALL 2023 9
PA Enrichment Grants
the 16th century, Emperor Rudolph II,
whose base was in Prague, established
an alchemical library and invited many
famous alchemists to work there
under his patronage. Despite his
support, alchemists faced persecution
from some Christian groups who
believed their work was about magic spells and
the occult. I was very curious to visit this museum
because alchemy is an ancient philosophical and
proto-scientific tradition that historically existed
in India, China, the Muslim world, and Europe.
Alchemists believed that all matter consisted of the
same five elements (earth, air, fire, water, and ether)
in different arrangements and proportions. Alchemy
consisted of altering the proportions of these
elements to make desired substances. According to
this idea of matter, every chemical reaction was a
transmutation. Transmutation is a change in which
one type of matter becomes another. For instance,
alchemists believed that lead's transmutation would
lead to the formation of gold.
After Prague, I visited the German Monk Gregor
Mendel's Monastery in Brno, Czechia. He is one of
my favorite scientists. After completing his daily
duties in the monastery, he conducted the famous
pea experiments that kick-started modern genetics
study. This monastery is still functioning, and the
original papers of his treatise still exist for all to read.
No science trip would be complete without a
stop at the Max Planck Society in Berlin which
was established in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm
Society for the Advancement of Science. Here, new
sciences were developed, such as biochemistry,
physical chemistry, genetics, microbiology,
non-Mendelian genetics, nuclear physics (first
successful fission experiment), inorganic chemistry,
biophysics, and more.
However, there is a dark side to the history of the
Max Planck Institute: scientists participated in
the crimes of the Third Reich by justifying them
scientifically. This resulted in the deaths of millions
of Jewish and Roma people. Currently, the research
institute is bringing their horrific immoral history
to light so this does not happen again.
I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the PA
Grant Committee for granting me this opportunity.
It was truly awe-inspiring to tread the same paths
and explore the laboratories once frequented by
brilliant minds.
Each summer, the Parents
Association sponsors grants intended
to help professional staff engage in
studies or travel that enriches their
curriculum. The PA Enrichment Grant
Committee was pleased to select
seven recipients to receive grants for
travel during the summer of 2023.
DANIEL DEEPAK, Grade 6-8 Science & Coding Teacher
Visiting the laboratories in Prague, Brno, and the
Dahlem district brought back memories of my
grandfather's chemistry lab. My grandfather, Hari
Krishna Srinivas, ran a chemistry lab in Rangoon
(now Yangon) in Burma (now Myanmar) where
he used Ayurveda, Indian medicinal system, and
modern pharmacological practices to produce
medication for both cure and prevention. When I got
to the Museum of Alchemy in Prague, I could feel the
excitement of the early alchemists who were trying
to find ways to heal broken hearts and prolong
people’s lives.
The Museum of Alchemy in Prague is in the old
Jewish quarter of Prague. Built in 300 AD, it has
a secret door in a bookcase leading to the labs of
the alchemists and an underground passageway
to King Rudolph’s castle. In their labs, they made
elixirs for eternal youth, love, and memory; the old
Jewish quarter was a haven for them to practice. In
10 THE WINGÈD OX
CAMELLIA HARTMAN,
ASP Music Teacher & Substitute Teacher
This past August, I traveled to Emerald Isle in search
of the “Irish Session,” a cultural phenomena so
commonplace in Irish culture that citizens laughed
when I shared this as the subject of my intellectual/
spiritual pursuit. Irish sessions are informal,
sometimes impromptu, gatherings of musicians and
nonmusicians alike, with the shared goal of finding
“the Craic” (exuberant, life-giving spiritedness)
over a soundtrack of traditional and familiar tunes.
What these sessions illuminated for me was not just
a delectable dose of lively jigs, reels, waltzes, and
hornpipes, but also a profound connective thread
woven through differing regions, histories, and
ideologies.
My main goal was to observe the ways that Irish
culture and life supports this kind of unmediated,
creative mode of expression: a session can exist in
a restaurant, bar, or music hall, but it can also be a
spontaneous gathering of friends around a kitchen
table or in a backyard. There is no hierarchy of the
session; all are welcome, and all play an equally
important role – whether that be as a musician,
a listener, a clapper, hollerer, guest vocalist, or
requester of songs – in finding “the Craic.”
In my two weeks of travel, which spanned a
U-shaped driving tour of the island (Dublin
→ Kilkenny → Cork → Dingle → Doolin →
Ballyvaughan), I heard and watched hundreds of
songs performed, some of which were explained to
me for their historical significance, some of which
were so old and entrenched in the cultural memory
that they didn’t even have names. Each session
had a different instrumental configuration, some
with singers, some without; people of all ages were
present, from tiny babies and toddlers running
around to weathered, knowing faces singing
ancient songs.
I could share so much more about this special trip,
but for now, jumping back into this school year, I
am so excited to bring some of these songs back to
my music students, to encourage them to learn by
ear and find the joy, “the Craic,” in sharing music in
community. I will encourage my students to keep
journals of their thoughts and feelings and think of
how these personal stories can turn into creative
expression, inspired by the long musical history that
lives so vividly in everyday Irish life. I look forward
to finding more ways to activate the broader St.
Luke’s community in acts of music-making and
appreciation, building confidence and excitement
around performance and art!
ELON ROSENBERG, Grade 4 Teacher
This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to
visit South Africa with the support of a Parent
Association grant. I especially wanted to visit this
country since combining a study of Africa with
our Geography unit a couple of years ago. While
reading Nelson Mandela’s powerful autobiography
Long Walk to Freedom, I was able to visit many sights
connected to his life and South Africa’s inspirational
struggle to end apartheid. I was able to go on a tour
led by a former political prisoner of Robben Island
off the coast of Cape Town, where Mandela spent
the majority of the 27 years of his incarceration.
Later in my trip, I visited the empowering Apartheid
Museum in Johannesburg and the township of
Soweto where Nelson and Winnie Mandela lived
and where the Soweto Uprising took place in 1976.
One of the most amazing moments was meeting and
listening to stories from Antoinette Sithole, who was
one of the students who marched on this day and
is known for being in a photograph that shook the
world, in which she was pictured next to her dying
brother. When speaking to people about apartheid,
despite the sadness of the subject, there is pride for
what they were able to overcome.
PA Enrichment
Grants (Cont.)