By Lisa Smith Barr, Member, Board of Directors, The Bronxville School Foundation

Editor's note:  The Bronxville School Foundation celebrates its 25th anniversary this year with an event at the school on April 8. In honor of the occasion, board member Lisa Smith Barr has written a brief history of its founding and its accomplishments.

Feb. 24, 2016:  It's May of 1987, and stock markets are booming. Black Monday, when the Dow lost $500 billion in one day, is still five months away. Despite the seemingly strong economy, Bronxville voters defeat a school bond referendum. A new referendum is issued that foregoes $1.5 million of badly needed renovation to the auditorium and the replacement of the aging cinder running track. This bond passes, but parents of performing artists and athletes are dismayed. A committee of those parents, chaired by former Bronxville mayor Marcia Lee, raises money to make the needed auditorium renovations and school board member Alan Gray raises the funds to install a state-of-the-art track.

As the 1988-89 school year begins and ushers in what will be years of falling state aid for education, Lee remembers, "We thought to ourselves, 'Why should we start fundraising  from scratch every time one of these projects comes up for the school?' We need something more permanent." Marcia's committee, along with then-superintendent Bill Greenham and Drew Quale, a member of the board of education, worked together, and The Bronxville School Foundation was officially born in 1991 to raise funds annually for projects the district budget could not cover. 

In that first year, an anonymous $100,000 gift helped kick off a fundraising campaign led by village resident Si Ford that raised $150,000 more from school parents and community members who recognized the value to a flourishing community of the designation of the school as a Blue Ribbon School. The foundation continues to this day to raise funds from those constituencies through an annual community drive.

The foundation was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and a board and committees were established. An alumni committee, chaired by Linda Delaney, was formed, and it has grown into an important link to the school for Bronxville graduates and a source for donations. Alums support the foundation's work by buying bricks that make up the alumni walk near the flagpole at the Pondfield Road entrance.

A mission statement was drafted that still holds today, dedicating the foundation to enhancing the quality of public education in Bronxville by awarding grants for curriculum enhancements, innovative programs, faculty training, and special school facilities and equipment and for increasing the general awareness and support for the school. A process to solicit and review grant applications from teachers, administrators, parents, students, and Bronxville residents was instituted under the initiative of Marilynn Hill and Adrienne Smith. Current school superintendent David Quattrone credits the foundation's rigorous grants process with helping the "school clarify and strengthen its strategies for improvement." 

Over its 25-year history, the foundation has made almost 600 grants totaling more than $7.6 million that have touched every aspect of the school, its faculty, and its students. Technology has been an important contribution of the foundation. One of the foundation's earliest grants fully automated the library. Foundation grants have established most of the major computer labs in the school for general and special uses, such as computer science, art, music composition and recording, television production, and language learning.

The foundation most recently helped the school purchase hundreds of Chromebooks and train faculty in Google Classroom apps to help integrate technology and Internet access seamlessly into classroom lessons and provide means for students and teachers to electronically collaborate in ways never before possible. Another standout area of funding is in faculty professional development, particularly as state aid for teacher training has fallen while new curricula and pedagogical methods proliferate.

Athletics has benefited from foundation investments of more than $1 million for new specialized equipment like the school's popular climbing wall and field renovations and for the athletic training program to help athletes avoid injury and heal faster. More than $1.5 million has supported visual and performing arts at the school with auditorium renovations, programs like SmartMusic, special software for music composition, new programs like Orff music, and artist-in-residence programs that provide life-changing opportunities to students. Grants written by students have renovated the rotunda, supplied solar-powered trash cans to the grounds, replaced aging water fountains with new filtered water fountains that decrease the use of plastic bottles, and updated recess activities, including the new, popular gaga pit (gaga, which is becoming increasingly popular in schools and camps, is a game that is akin to dodgeball and is played in an octagonal pit).

It's February of 2016. New York state aid for education continues to fall. The tax cap that was imposed on municipalities and public school districts by New York State in 2012 will limit increases in the school's budget for 2016-17 to just 0.12 percent. The latest building conditions survey required of Bronxville every five years has identified $14.5 million of potential building and grounds work. Sound familiar? 

The work of the foundation is as vital now as it was in the early 1990s. "Without The Bronxville School Foundation, we wouldn't have the ability to do as much as we do," commented school board member Jeff Rohr. According to the foundation's eighteenth and current chair, Ashley Hanrahan, "In this rapidly changing, competitive, and technology-driven world, it is imperative that we have the necessary resources available in our school to maintain the excellent caliber and reputation of our school. We are grateful to the foresight of our founders that the foundation exists to provide that extraordinarily important support." For more information, visit www.bronxvilleschoolfoundation.org.

Pictured here (rotating): Projects completed with aid from the school foundation:  athletic training facility equipment, digital planetarium, and new Chromebooks and faculty training in technology.

Photos courtesy Lisa Smith Barr, Vice President, Public Relations, Board of Directors, The Bronxville School Foundation