As of last week, advisories are now the recipients of a financial windfall. At the beginning of the year, every advisory had initially been given a budget of $50 for discretionary spending. Now, each has been provided an additional $100 using reallocated funds from the snack budget, which were left over when daily snack privileges were revoked before winter break.

Dean of Students Stacy Tepp and Upper School Principal Minnie Lee collaborated to develop the idea, which stemmed from a system in place at George School in Pennsylvania where Lee previously worked. Advisories there used the money to purchase snacks, take out, games and host end-of-year celebrations.

The new plan has been discussed at several faculty meetings, with opportunities for faculty to provide feedback, and was officially implemented last Monday.

“We feel like it’s an equity thing. If it’s on students to bring in a treat for their advisory, that’s not always equitable. That would fall to you all,” Tepp said. Another added benefit Tepp hopes to see is the avoidance of reimbursement issues.

Implementing an increased advisory budget was not what Tepp initially predicted doing. Instead, she’d been waiting for students to lead a proposal to bring back snacks. That proposal never came. “I didn’t hear anything except from I heard some students say, hey, like, we’re keeping our Commons clean. I said, that’s great, but I want you to somehow show that you can keep it clean when you have the food in it…and it’s still an issue, actually. I walked by the ninth grade commons at the end of the day yesterday– there was food all over. And we didn’t even provide it. So there’s, I hate to say, there’s still a real problem with that,” Tepp said.

Here’s how some advisories are choosing to spend their budgets: