Interim head of school Nat Reynolds is at home recovering from injuries sustained in a Jan. 31 car accident and has been absent since the end of first semester. His truck was hit by a car and flipped over twice before coming to a stop on his way to school that morning.

Following a two-day hospital stay, he has been at home under a doctor’s care for a little over a month. While not yet able to return to work, Mr. Reynolds said he has begun recovering.

“I don’t feel like going and running the 500 mile marathon, but I feel better,” Mr. Reynolds said in a phone interview. “I can be up and walk very clumsily, and when I walk around I only stagger a little bit.”

Earlier, he was in a lot of pain.

“For a while there it was terrible, but now it’s worn off quite a bit,” Mr. Reynolds said.

Mr. Reynolds continues to keep in contact with the administration, however, and even attended a meeting on campus in February. Judaic Studies Principal Rabbi Ari Leubitz says he has been talking regularly with Mr. Reynolds, who advises him on a day–to-day basis about personnel issues, including the budget and smaller things.

“He’s doing much better – I’ve seen him since the car accident, and we’re expecting that he’ll have a full recovery,” said Rabbi Ari Leubitz.

With Mr. Reynolds absent from campus, other administrators, including incoming head-of-school Rabbi Ari Segal, have taken more active roles in decision-making, according to officials interviewed by The Boiling Point*.

Board of Directors President Larry Gill said the school is being run by its administrative team, which has been consulting with Mr. Reynolds by phone.  The team consists of principals Rabbi Leubitz and Mr. Phu Tranchi; Chief Financial Officer Lori Fogel; Admissions Director Natalie Weiss; and Development Director Stuart Rogoff, Mr. Gill said.

Recently, the decision to bus students to Santa Barbara for the Feb. 22 boys’ basketball playoff game was made in collaboration with Mr. Tranchi, Rabbi Leubitz and the rest of the team.

Mr. Gill said that Mr. Reynolds is still a hands-on part of administrative decision-making, even without an on-campus presence.

“Mr. Reynolds is a great friend of Shalhevet School,” Mr. Gill said. “He offered his services [last spring] when we desperately needed it. He’s still the head of school, but he is doing so from his home. The team is making more decisions under the guidance of Rabbi Segal.”

Mr. Gill added that the preparations for this summer, when Rabbi Segal becomes full time head of school, have not been affected by Mr. Reynold’s absence.

“We are well on our way to transitioning the leadership to next year’s structure,” Mr. Gill said. “Students will not notice change other than Mr. Reynolds absence.”

Though he declined to give many details, Mr. Gill mentioned that an on-campus consultant, Mollie Aczel, would be coming to Shalhevet later this month.

“She is not a replacement head of school,” he said. “She’s just going to be helping out the administration for a few weeks.”

It is not known whether Mr. Reynolds will return to Shalhevet at all during his final few months as interim head-of-school. For now, he is recuperating at home, where he is reading and spending time with family. He says he misses working at Shalhevet.

“I’m in the process of reading ‘Ethical Visions of Education,’ an essay about education I find interesting,” Mr. Reynolds said. “But I always miss being around kids, being around schools. They’re a ball of life. I’m 77, very close to 78 years old now, and no matter what you want to call it, you’re old about that time.”

Although he was staying during the week in Los Angeles earlier in the school year, Mr. Reynolds actually lives in Ojai, with his wife, former Shalhevet English teacher Mrs. Laura Loebe Reynolds.

“Tell them I hope the rest of the year goes extremely well for them,” Mr. Reynolds said. “And I enjoy the thought of bantering with whatever else is going on.”