Nurturing Friends Education
Purpose
The purpose of this Committee is to strengthen the Friends faith and practice of Moses Brown School. The work of this Committee shall be concerned with nurturing the spiritual base of the school, fostering strong relationships between New England Yearly Meeting and Moses Brown, and helping the school explore and deepen its Quaker values and best practices in Friends Education. The Committee will consider concrete ways that it can support and share the developments in Friends education at Moses Brown. The Committee will support the school’s work to identify children of Quaker families and encourage them to apply. The Committee will support the school’s efforts to ensure that current Moses Brown families, faculty, and staff who are drawn to the Quaker aspect of the school are given opportunities to deepen their connections to Friends faith and practice. The Committee will support the Head of School in stewarding Moses Brown’s membership renewal process for the Friends Council on Education. The committee will work with the Providence Friends Meeting Liaison and the Friends Coordinator of the Moses Brown Board to steward the process for nominating Quaker members to the Nurturing Friends Education committee, for approval by NEYM Permanent Board; and will take a lead role in creating and vetting a list of Friends for potential service on the Moses Brown Board, and presenting that pool of potential members to NEYM Permanent Board for approval. (Authority for formally appointing Friends to the Moses Brown Board rests with the Board itself.)
Procedures
- The committee will be the joint responsibility of the Moses Brown School and New England Yearly Meeting. There will be no fewer than five meetings scheduled during the year and, ideally, an additional meeting designated for the purpose of nominating Quaker members to the Nurturing Friends Education committee, and creating and vetting a list of Friends for potential service on the Moses Brown Board. Meetings of the Nurturing Friends Education committee shall normally be open meetings with the schedule approved at the beginning of each yearly cycle.
- Both the clerk of the committee and the school will provide brief written summaries of the group’s annual work. These reports will be submitted to both the Moses Brown Board and the Permanent Board of New England Yearly Meeting, to be included in advanced materials for Annual Sessions.
- The Head of School and the clerk of Nurturing Friends will share the Membership Renewal Process self-study and final report with the NEYM Permanent Board.
Committee Resources
Composition
- The committee will maintain an equal number of members appointed by New England Yearly Meeting and Moses Brown, respectively. The committee will have at least 12 regularly appointed members and 2 ex-officio members. At least six members will be appointed by NEYM, and one ex-officio position filled by either the clerk of NEYM or the clerk of Permanent Board. At least six members appointed by the Moses Brown Board will include the Head of School and the Director of Friends Education. In addition, the clerk of the Moses Brown Board will be an ex-officio member. Moses Brown members on the Nurturing Friends Education committee will be nominated by the Moses Brown nominating committee and approved by the Moses Brown Board.
- Friends on the Nurturing Friends Education committee will be nominated by the Nurturing Friends Education committee, working with the Providence Friends Meeting Liaison and the Friends Coordinator.
- The Nurturing Friends committee will also invite recommendations from other NEYM committees, including the NEYM nominating committee.
- Nominations will be made in coordination with the timeline of the Moses Brown Board nominating process and submitted to NEYM Permanent Board for approval. To facilitate effective communication and coordination, there shall be a member of the Nurturing Friends Education committee who also serves on the Moses Brown Nominating committee as a liaison between the two committees. Terms that are not designated by position will be for 3 years, with one reappointment before a committee member should step down for at least one year. These terms will rotate so there will be a “class” of appointees for each year. The clerk of the Nurturing Friends Education committee is nominated by the committee, in consultation with the liaison from Providence Friends Meeting and the Friends Coordinator, and approved by the Permanent Board.
