RE LOG Spring '25

SPRING 2025 Ransom Everglades LOG 13 By Amy Shipley The 2002 GMC Envoy driven by Ransom Everglades science teacher Emily Grace sputtered to a halt near her home in Hollywood, the engine dying at nearly 220,000 miles. She and her husband, a K-8 art teacher in North Miami, pushed the SUV down the block to their driveway. The couple was despondent. Their other car, a 2006 Honda Civic, had a broken A/C system and front windows that didn’t roll down. The parents of two children ages 4 and 9, Emily Grace and Piper Williams needed reliable transportation. Yet with mortgage payments and other expenses, replacing the car, Williams said, “didn’t seem possible or realistic at all.” That changed a couple of days later. That week, Head of School Rachel Rodriguez summoned upper school teachers into the Posner Lecture Hall to share a surprise announcement. (She separately shared the news with middle school faculty.) She let them know that the RE Board of Trustees approved $10,000 stipends for RE’s full-time teachers, approximately the amount expected annually from a newly created cost-of-living endowment once it is fully funded. Patrick and Kristen McMahon, RE parents, provided the seed funding in January 2024 for the endowment to address a growing challenge in South Florida for teachers: the rising cost of housing and other expenses. The best part, Rodriguez told teachers, was that payments on the stipends would kick in immediately, appearing in their upcoming paychecks. Grace burst into tears at the announcement. “I was stunned,” she said. “I am so incredibly grateful and touched by the endowment gift. This is life-changing for me and my family.” That weekend, she and her husband purchased a used Jeep – a 2016 Wrangler – with, she noted, functioning air conditioning and a warranty. Gratitude has abounded as teachers have learned more about the endowment – officially the Patrick and Kristen McMahon Faculty Endowment Fund and informally the COLA or cost-of-living-allowance endowment. The stipends were a central focus of a November story in Bloomberg News , which reported on the difficulty of luring and retaining teachers in Miami amid skyrocketing costs for housing and insurance The ‘cost-of-living- allowanceendowment’ RE faculty member Emily Grace with husband, Piper Williams, and children, Esther (9) and Argyle (4). Portraits by Suzanne Kores