Anna Casey to bring ‘unique perspective’ as Bement’s next head of school

DEERFIELD — A familiar face will soon take the helm at The Bement School.

After four years as head of the lower school for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, Anna Casey will become the next head of school at the private boarding and day school, which she described as “a very special community,” starting July 1.

Casey will take over for Head of School Mike Schloat, who is taking a job as head of school at the Rippowam Cisqua School in Bedford, New York. Schloat was chosen to be head of school at Bement in November 2020, after serving five months in an interim role.

“A pre-kindergarten through ninth grade day school, RCS was where I began my teaching career as a fourth grade assistant teacher in 2001, and I grew up in the neighboring town of Mount Kisco,” Schloat wrote in a May 2025 announcement on the school’s website. “As much as our family has come to call Deerfield and Bement home, the call to return to such familiar ground was the driving force behind this decision.”

Before settling in at Bement, Casey’s 35 years in education started in Massachusetts and took her to independent schools across the country, from New Haven, Connecticut, to Atlanta, Georgia, and Denver, Colorado. She said the nine schools where she has worked gave her a “unique perspective” among the candidates in the Bement board of trustees’ nationwide search for a new leader.

At each stop in her career, Casey said she learned from those steering the schools.

“That’s what made me continually want to grow in the work that I do is seeing how these communities work and what makes them stand out and what leadership looks like,” Casey said. “The more places you work, the more you become fascinated.”

By observing the leaders’ approaches, she noticed how their relationships with students, teachers, parents and alumni guided their decisions and campus legacies.

‘The No. 1 thing I think about is valuing all the members of the community and making sure everybody feels like they have an opportunity to be heard and connected with,” she said of the primary lesson she has learned.

As head of the lower school, Casey meets with teachers to check in and hear their thoughts, a habit she plans to continue as head of school when difficult decisions land on her desk.

“This is their community, and so everybody feels a sense of belonging when they’re part of the conversation,” said Casey, who wants to hear from students, parents and alumni as well. “If you make hard decisions in a vacuum, people are going to feel like this isn’t their place.”

Casey said this connection can take the form of both serious discussions or catching up and laughing together. With about 230 students across the nine grades at Bement, connection is at the core of the school’s culture, Casey said. As head of the lower school, she recently watched a few fourth and fifth grade teachers chatting with first graders in the dining hall, an interaction that encapsulates a community beyond classrooms and grade levels.

“Every child is so well-known here,” she said.

She added that the “global community” at Bement also sets the school apart from other campuses in her teaching career. According to Casey, students from towns across Franklin County learn alongside students from other counties and boarding students from South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and other countries that are long plane rides away. In class, kids also celebrate holidays from cultures around the globe, including Lunar New Year, Diwali and Ramadan. Some students trick-or-treat for the first time and learn about Ramadan for the first time, Casey said.

“Even the youngest kids get a global perspective and learn what it is to be a citizen of the world,” she continued.

As students learn about other cultures, they also learn the four “core values” of Bement: compassion, integrity, resilience and respect. The abstract ideas become lessons when teachers ask kids questions like, “Are you respecting yourself when you hit yourself on the head?” or, when a student slips on the soccer field, “How can we act with compassion instead of laughing?” Casey explained.

During her first visit to Bement, Casey said she witnessed these values before even stepping into a classroom. The school’s website reads, “We hold the door for each other,” and when Casey first came to Bement, she remembered several kids doing just that.

“It’s something we truly live,” she said.

Besides the values that underly conversations in the classroom, Casey mentioned another aspect of the culture that convinced her to commit to Bement.

“Children still are kids. They work hard, and they are engaged and excited about their learning, but they also play really hard, too.”

Casey said she not only sees this play when kids swing at recess until they graduate after ninth grade; she hears it.

“Everybody will sit down and sing together. It’s so much a part of the culture that just keeps going,” Casey said.

Every Friday during morning meetings, students and teachers sing Bement’s specific birthday song to students who celebrated their birthday that week. Ninth graders sing songs in the hallway between rehearsals for their spring musical and younger students sing the same tunes after the performance.

“Childhood is protected here,” Casey said.

According to the educator, working at nine schools with their own campus cultures helped open her eyes to the building blocks of Bement’s. As head of school, she plans to balance these tenets and traditions with innovation to ensure the school evolves with each new group of students. Staying on top of current research surrounding education and listening to teachers’ thoughts will help make this progress possible, Casey said.

“When new teachers come, they bring great ideas with them, and being an independent school, we have flexibility about incorporating those ideas into our program,” Casey said. “There’s a very beautiful balance at Bement between maintaining our values and traditions and looking ahead.”