Celebrating Its 25th Year: The Story of the Bronxville School Foundation

It’s May, 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, raise 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 Ed 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 of Bronxville’s Blue Ribbon-designated school to a flourishing community. The Foundation continues to raise funds from those constituencies through an annual community drive to this day. The Foundation was incorporated as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization and a board and committees were established. An Alumni Committee, chaired by Linda Delaney, was formed that 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, special equipment and facilities projects and increasing the general awareness and support for the school. A process to solicit and review grant applications from teachers, administrators, parents, students and Bronxville citizens 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, field renovations and 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 Smart Music, 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 trashcans 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 newly popular Gaga Pit.

It’s February, 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 less than a quarter of a 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