It’s time for the annual Lamplighter Young Alumni Car Wash 2012: Presented by Classic BMW! The car wash will be happening from noon to 3 p.m. at Lamplighter. The wash is free, but they will accept donations to the school. Go support Lamplighter, and get some FREE Pinkberry, cool shirts, and JD’s cookies!

Head of school Joan Hill and students assembled hygiene kits last week for Community Partners of Dallas.

Lamplighter students helped provide comfort to abused and neglected children by assembling hygiene kits and donating them to Community Partners of Dallas.

“It’s fun helping other people,” said Azal, a first-grader at Lamplighter.

Azal captured the feeling of students who donated, assembled, and delivered hygiene kits for children that are removed from their homes. The kits included shampoo, soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste.

Joan Hill, Lamplighter’s head of school, explained why the school is interested in being so involved in the community.

“Through our efforts with Community Partners, we are hoping to ease a difficult situation for a young child,” she said. “Lamplighter is committed to working to improve the lives of children in small ways each day.” Read More…

Frank Wilczek speaking with fourth-graders about his love of science.

If you ask your 10-year-old what she did in school, and she says “chat with a Nobel Laureate,” you might want to put a check on her imagination. Unless of course, she goes to Lamplighter, where that statement is totally legit.

Frank Wilczek, the Herman Feshbach professor of physics at MIT was in Dallas to present at the Lightner-Sams Lecture at SMU in late April and made a pit stop at Lamplighter to answer student’s questions, chat about the universe, and admire the school’s “formidable” roosters. For the press release on the momentous occasion, go to the jump. Read More…

Lamplighter School is hosting a private screening of “Race to Nowhere: The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture” tomorrow at 7 p.m. at Studio Movie Grill. After the documentary, local film critic Gary Cogil will facilitate a discussion with the filmmaker, Vicki Abeles. There are 19 seats remaining. Click here to reserve yours.

If you can’t make it tomorrow, there will be a public screening of the film on Wednesday, same time, same place. Following the show, three child psychologists will hold a Q&A.

Although Halloween festivities had died down by Monday, Day of the Dead activities were just getting started. Lamplighter celebrated the Mexican holiday on Nov. 1 and 2 by making a special altar of remembrance with photos and memorabilia from loved ones who have passed away. The holiday is quite a joyous occasion, despite a seemingly morbid theme. From the looks of it, Lamplighter students were in the right spirits.

As of yesterday, Lamplighter is no longer a Hockaday tenant. The outlandish $1-per-year lease that ran through 2027 was cut short when the school decided to purchase the land out-right.

Communications director Melisa Dorrill said acquiring the land from Hockaday has been a 10-year process, with the main negotiations occurring during the past year. The details have been kept hush-hush by both parties as per terms of the agreement.

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, Lamplighter celebrated with a dirt cupcake party for all of the school’s pre-kindergarten through fourth grade classes. Trustee David Miller was on hand for the festivities and expressed his support.

“Now we’ll have this land forever,” Miller said.

With nearly 40 years of experience in independent schools, Judy Gass will begin her role as Interim Head of Lamplighter School today. Gass is no stranger to Dallas private schools as she has previously worked at The Episcopal School of Dallas, Hockaday School, and St. John’s Episcopal School, where she also served as interim head. Gass has been involved with the Jubilee Center, David’s Place, ArtReach, and The Dallas Children’s Theater. Additionally, she has served as a trustee for Educational First Steps and The Lamplighter School.

In what I think will be generally be considered a positive move (unless your name rhymes with Farnold Fohen), erstwhile Lamplighter teacher Sheila McCartor, whose much-discussed dismissal prompted the split between Headmaster Arnold Cohen and the board of trustees, was named executive director of alumni relations earlier this week. The woman has taught every fourth grader who has walked through the doors of Lamplighter for the past 43 years and, which means she knows personally the vast majority of graduates of the 58-year-old institution. Seems like a fit. I would say ‘They all lived happily ever after,’ but, well, at this point, that seems a bit premature.

From left: Simon Dalley (ILCAC  treasurer); Usha Kulshreshtha (2010 Awardee); Tobia Frederico (ILCAC Secretary); Cedric Lorce (2010 Awardee); James Vary (ILCAC board member); Asmita Mukherjee (2009 awardee); Ben Bakker (former chair); Chueng Ji (ILCAC Chair); Wayne Polyzou (ILCAC vice-chair).

Unless you were a fourth grader at Lamplighter in the past 43 years, you probably know Sheila McCartor best as the eye about which the Lamplighter storm is turning. As scores of commenters on the Facebook page dedicated to her reinstatement can attest, she is much more. (I should say that it has been a relative pleasure to have my requests for comment rejected by Ms. McCartor. Each time, she has been unfailingly gracious and polite.)

She’s still keeping mum on McCartorgate 2010, but she did send along an announcement along two days ago announcing the most recent recipients of the Gary McCartor Award. Gary, Sheila’s late husband, was a professor of theoretical physics at SMU. In 2008, two years after his death, Sheila established the annual award, which covers travel expenses for two young scientists to attend the annual meeting of the International Light-Cone Advisory Committee, an organization dedicated to advancing research in quantum field theory of which Gary was a founding member.

At a banquet on June 16 at this year’s conference in Valencia, Spain, 2010 award winners Cedric Lorce and Usha Kulshreshtha and 2009 winner Asmita Mukherjee accepted the $2,000 grants.  Sheila was unable to attend this year’s conference because of the Lamplighter mess, but she sent along a press release from the 2008 event.

“To conclude, Mrs. McCartor presented Hannafious and Honkanen with the simple gift of pencils, ‘In my
observations, it seems that a very good theoretician needs to have a very good pencil,’ said McCartor.
Providing extra erasers, she added, ‘This is not to suggest that you will ever make mistakes in your
calculations, but should you, a fresh eraser always makes it easy to begin anew.’”

The Lamplighter saga continues. The school, along with trustees Karen Pollock and J. David Miller, last week filed a counter-claim (which can be found here) against now former headmaster Arnold Cohen. The basic outline of the story is no surprise, as Cohen’s suit and subsequent announcements by Cohen and Lamplighter trustees have painted a picture, however hazy, of how the formerly amicable relationship came to legal blows, but the response, at times almost novelesque, gives a very detailed,  point-by-point recap (from the perspective of the school and trustees, of course) of how things have gone down.

The response portrays Cohen’s behavior in the weeks following his decision to dismiss longtime teacher Sheila McCartor as volatile and erratic, claiming that he “engaged in conduct that might varyingly be described as reckless, inconsistent, insubordinate, malicious and even outright dishonest” including “several obscenity-laden rants.” Furthermore, the original lawsuit is fabrication; Cohen “concocted a story where day is night and black is white.” The response detailed the response by Cohen during a one-on-one meeting with Miller when the trustee proposed keeping McCartor with the school in a non-teaching capacity:

“Dr. Cohen erupted. ‘You know, I am done, I don’t need this job.’ He then began yelling. ‘You can raise the f***ing money yourself, f*** you.’ Mr. Miller sat silently as Dr. Cohen got out of his chair, placed all of his weight behind it and then slammed it into the desk. Dr. Cohen leaned over the desk as if looking for something to throw, and then walked to his office door. He then told his long-time friend, ‘And as long as I am the head of this school, this is my office. Get the f*** out of here.’”

The school denies Cohen’s charges of interference with personnel decisions, breach of contract, and defamation and makes a few charges of it’s own: That Cohen abrogated his contractual obligations; that, by releasing the name of Pollock’s daughter in regards to test performance, he breached his fiduciary duty to the school; and that he damaged the school’s reputation with the suit and his subsequent behavior. The school is seeking unspecified damages for all three. It also claims that, because Cohen violated his employment contract, he was fired with just cause and, thus, is not entitled to his two years remaining salary ($222,268 in 2008, according to filings with the IRS) or to his deferred compensation ($33,405 in 2008).