Letter from David Pepper and Christian Sullivan

Dear Bullis Families,

We hope the last two weeks brought whatever you hoped for–peace, rejuvenation, excitement, adventure; we sometimes need different things! As Christian mentioned in his December letter to the community, we are writing at the beginning of the new year with a brief state of the school, some musings on the future, and news of tuition for 2026-2027.

While Christian lives thousands of miles from his parents and sister, this was a family vacation for him. He was able to be with his American family throughout the holidays, and with the advent of WhatsApp, etc., can now speak or FaceTime with his British family multiple times a week. When Lisa and Christian lived in Kenya for years in the 90s, they would speak to their families perhaps once a month. No one had cell phones, and the cost of international calls was prohibitive.

We start this letter with this brief reflection because, as we start 2026 and a new strategic planning process for Bullis, we are struck by the importance that both technology (AI in particular) and human connection will have as we move forward. Our Strategic Planning Conference will take place on January 10 - many thanks to those of you who have registered. The goal is to gain further feedback from constituents about what Bullis should consider as we chart the path forward. The core strategic topics of academic life, critical thinking, arts, athletics, technology, financial sustainability, and the campus will be key in this process. However, these topics must fit into a much broader, fundamental framework:

• What world are we preparing our young people for?
• What skills, talents, and characteristics will they need?
• What will their employment opportunities look like?

At the risk of sounding dinosaur-esq, Christian reports that his teaching life has encompassed the advent of computers in classrooms, email, the internet explosion, smartphones, social media, and, most recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI). At no point during his career, up until now, has there been much uncertainty about what the world, in general, will look like in the short to medium term. Sure, events and governmental change would happen, new careers would materialize, and there might even be international outsourcing of well-paying jobs, but there was a sense that the general state of employment would remain stable, and the mass disappearance of career sectors was far-fetched. Suddenly, with the advent of AI, this is in the realm of the possible.

On Friday, the New York Times published this article. We are struck (as are others mentioned in the article) by the significant steps and initiatives being taken with respect to AI without full knowledge of the possible outcomes. As indicated in Christian’s letter of November 24, 2025, Bullis is taking what we believe are appropriately cautious and investigative steps with AI, but we are acutely aware that it took years for empirical data to show deleterious outcomes of social media and smartphones for young people. We know little about how AI will develop and, in particular, what the impact will be on teaching, learning, and students. That’s not to say that we ignore what is going on with AI; to the contrary, we must stay abreast of everything and take judicious steps that we are sure will cause no harm. Fortunately, Bullis can be flexible and nimble. Being totally independent, we are not subject to anyone’s mandates and have the ability to act when we need to. This independence, flexibility, and ability to be nimble were perhaps most clearly illustrated in our approach to the pandemic. We eschewed conventional wisdom and did what we believed was the right thing for the community by opening school in September 2020. We were proven correct. As we move forward, we will continue with this mindset–our priority is the best interests of our students. It will be incumbent upon the Board and Christian to execute our new strategic plan, knowing that it is not a monolith but rather a direction forward that will be adjusted iteratively as necessary.

The State of the School:

Since it is tricky to respond to this prompt in a qualitative, subjective manner that is not replete with hyperbole, it is best to turn to our performance against the current strategic plan and some statistics/data. With such a complex school with a large age range of students, this can be difficult, but this approach is the most illustrative.

Rather than gather dust, the 2021-2026 Strategic Plan has been our literal to-do list on a daily basis. Some accomplishments from the plan include:

• Academic life was prioritized. We completed a K-12 curricular review, streamlined redundancies, and introduced a new daily rotating schedule.
• To attract the best teachers, faculty salaries were increased to the 75th percentile for area schools, and a new evaluation process was implemented.
• We have maintained tuition increases within a 2-5% range and grew our total endowment/quasi-endowment to over $35 million.
• We reached our "right size" of approximately 1,090 students (up from 800) while maintaining small class sizes.
• New visual branding was created to modernize the identity while staying rooted in Bullis history.
• We developed and adopted a Portrait of a Graduate, a framework that informs how teachers shape students to ensure they are prepared for the future.
• We built a new Lower School specifically designed to optimize learning and growth for our youngest students, renovated South Hall to create a hub for Middle School students, and, in doing so, created additional spaces for Upper School students.
• We appointed Directors for both Athletics and Arts to create long-term visions for these programs.
• We appointed a Director of Wellness to implement a K-12 wellness policy.
• After an independent audit, we transitioned from a single director to a Community Culture Committee to better serve the school's needs through empathy, respect, and acts of service.
• We are strengthening ties with graduates through a four-year alumni strategic plan involving mentoring and capstone projects.
• An area of growth: We are still working to ensure gender equity in athletics and enhance junior varsity and recreational athletic programs.

Admissions Data:

Our admissions data suggests that prospective families are more interested in Bullis than ever before. Each of the last four years has seen record-breaking applications and yield on offers. We presumed that this year, the rate of application increase would flatten, but as of January 5, we have 11% more applications than this date last year. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. Due to the lack of available spaces, we have discouraged 11th and 12th grade applications, so applications to these grades have plummeted. If these grades are removed from the statistics, we have 15% more applications today (K-Grade 10) than we did on this day last year, and these applications are in the grades where we expand. Since our yield on offers has risen by nearly 10% in recent years, and our retention rate of current students is above 96% (NAIS average is approximately 90%), the consequence is that the admissions team has a much greater ability than ever to build our classes intentionally.

College Data:

College lists at any school are a result of a variety of factors–the profile of accepted students, the added value that a school provides to its students, the quality of college counseling, individual student “hooks,” and, perhaps sadly, increasingly, the amount of financial aid required. We are proud that Bullis continues to have a student body that is socio-economically, religiously, ethnically, racially, and neurologically diverse; and we are proud, too, of the colleges to which our students are matriculating. Our students have choices, and though college decisions sometimes seem arbitrary, in general, we believe our students are receiving offers from appropriately targeted colleges. Here is the list of our college matriculations. Please note that we list the matriculations by year for the last three years–conflating multiple years can sometimes give a skewed impression. And we note with an asterisk students who will play D1 or D2 athletics. We do this for two reasons. First, counter-intuitively, it is to highlight where the non-athletes are matriculating. Second, it demonstrates very clearly that it is not just athletes who are gaining admission to highly selective colleges. And this is not to condescend to our many student athletes; they are highly focused students who often excel in multiple areas of school life.

Tuition For the 2026-2027 School Year:

The Board of Trustees votes annually on tuition rates for the following year. Last year, in deciding tuition, the Board embarked on a long-term plan to eventually organize tuition rates into essentially three bands–the Lower, Middle, and Upper School would each have its own tuition rate. While this approach still means that there is a jump in tuition between divisions, random increases by grade are avoided, and jumps in tuition between grades are lessened.

This year, the overall tuition increase is 2.66%. However, in order to move towards our long-term goal, some grades will experience a higher rate, but most will experience close to 2.66% or below. Tuition rates for next year can be found here.

As mentioned, Bullis has reached its strategic goal of 1090 students. (The county-imposed cap on our enrollment is 1096). We are pleased to have achieved this goal years before it was envisaged. However, a reality of that success is that going forward, additional financial resources are only accrued through philanthropy or tuition increases; we can no longer build revenue through admitting additional students. Obviously, this means that in the future, faculty increases are directly associated with tuition increases. It is the reality of successful independent schools.

This year, the school will be able to increase average faculty salaries more than the average tuition rate of 2.66%. In order to meet the needs of our students, we need the best teachers. We must be competitive with compensation and other benefits in order to attract and retain high-quality teachers, especially in this expensive area of the country. This must remain a priority in the coming years.

Reenrollment Contracts:

We will send reenrollment contracts to eligible students on Friday, January 9, 2026. The hard deadline for their return is 11:59 pm on Monday, February 2, 2026. Unless Christian approves a rare extension of this deadline, parents who have not fully executed the reenrollment contract by this date should understand that their child’s place at Bullis next year will be offered to an incoming student. This policy is fair to both current and prospective students. We want to build the best classes possible. In the first instance, that means retaining our current Bulldogs, and in the second, offering places to those students whom we most want to enroll. In order to do so, we need to know how many places we have.

A change in the date when enrollment contracts are binding:

We also want you to be aware of an important date in the admissions calendar. The Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington (AISGW) has recommended to schools in the association that the binding date for enrollment contracts going forward should be May 1. Previously, it was June 1. Bullis will be following this recommendation. This means that if you have executed a school enrollment contract, you can withdraw from it before May 1 and only lose the non-refundable deposit. After May 1, the contract becomes fully enforceable, and the entire tuition for the following year is payable.

This change has been made to avoid the time crunch at the end of May when school is extremely busy and the school year is ending. It is a less-than-ideal time for both schools and waitlisted students to make decisions about the following year. The May 1 deadline gives families plenty of time to reconsider their enrollment decision, if necessary, and waitlisted students time to consider late offers.

The Board of Trustees is proud of our accomplishments over the period of this last strategic plan and is beyond excited for the future of Bullis. We are passionate about this school and community, and hope you are too. Very best wishes to all our Bulldog families for 2026.

Warmly,

David Pepper, Chair of the Board of Trustees
Christian Sullivan, Head of School