Superintendent talks progress on New Trier’s yearly goals, including belonging, opportunity and wellness

As part of New Trier High School’s strategic plan, the superintendent creates an annual plan with a list of goals they would like to see accomplished over the course of the next year.

First-year Superintendent Dr. Peter Tragos shared on Monday a mid-year progress update on his five goals, which the School Board approved last July, and what the rest of the 2025-’26 school year may look like.

Tragos said on Feb. 23 that this year his goals were to build on the past six years of accomplishments following the retirement of Superintendent Dr. Paul Sally in 2025.

“To build on that six years of progress in the plan is to also focus on the vision of New Trier 2030 (the strategic plan), which is to develop in every graduate the skills and dispositions to lead meaningful, compassionate and impactful lives, and doing this through the focus on these five particular areas for our annual goals,” Tragos said.

The focuses of this year’s goals are:
• Future programming and career-connected learning,
• Characteristics of a New Trier graduate,
• Culture of belonging,
• Culture of wellness, and
• Access and opportunity to rich and rigorous coursework for all students

Tragos said the first half of the year was focused mostly on development of the goals, including fine-tuning language within the goals and launching pilot programs.

“While most of that work remains in development and early implementation phases, the progress indicates we’re moving in the right direction as we start to increase alignment and see some momentum,” he said.

For future programming, Tragos said internal committees have been working together to increase communication among themselves, which has allowed them to “engage with each other in a more effective way.”

The district has also launched a Design Your New Trier Experience pilot program with freshmen. This is part of an initiative that aims to enable students to discover their interests and shape their experience around them.

“The idea is they can design something unique for their own interests and talents and find all of the available opportunities at New Trier to match up with that,” Tragos said.

For the second goal, Tragos said the district recently launched a webpage dedicated to the characteristics of a New Trier graduate. He added that staff are working on aligning the adviser system to the characteristics.

Regarding the culture of belonging, he said staff and student belonging councils have formed and host regular meetings. The staff development council reportedly initiated a student-led art installation for senior adviser groups, while junior and senior students have hosted anti-bias seminars for freshmen and sophomores.

In terms of school’s culture of wellness, Tragos said the district is developing a consistent definition of “wellness” and created a subcommittee to coordinate initiatives in the areas of physical, mental, emotional and social wellness.

And for the fifth goal of giving access to rich and rigorous coursework, Tragos said staff are reviewing AP course prerequisites and designing one-semester course elective options.

In the second half of the year, Tragos said the goal is to continue to maintain the momentum, build coherence, look at the impact of the changes and provide “thoughtful, phased implementation.”

Board member Joo Serk Lee asked Tragos if he could explain restorative practices, which is a goal within the culture of belonging.

Tragos said restorative practices are a way of dealing with conflicts involving students.

“In most cases, a restorative practice is about repairing the harm that’s done,” Tragos said. “A student has violated some norms; they’ve hurt another peer or an adult with their words or with their actions, and this is a way of bringing repair to that relationship, to restore that environment to what it was.”

Board President Jean Hahn asked how the Design Your New Trier Experience will work for students after their freshman year.

He said the program is meant to be exclusively for freshmen. From there, students will use what they learned to help shape the rest of their New Trier experience. This could culminate in an internship or a capstone course.

“It’s the planning or design, and then the experience is available in Grades 10, 11 and 12.”

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