May 1 General Meeting Minutes

9 parents in attendance

Mr Havlik: May 11th will be a very special gala as the school celebrates its 10th anniversary. I hope to see many parents at the party. It’s a great way to mark the end of a successful year and look forward to the next. By the way, this year, I’m not wearing platform shoes!

Upcoming Events:

Open Houses for K-3 families

State Math test May 1-2

6th and 7th Grade Spring Dance May 9th

BSI Debate Tournament: May 10th

Pi5NY: May 11th

BSI Gala: May 11th

Family Fun Night: May 15th, 4:30-7:30

2nd Annual Talent Show: May 17th

Friends and Family Day: May 31st

PTO Funded Enrichment Update:

BCM Band: June 5

Together in Dance: June 12th

Child’s Play NY--Shakespeare social emotional program, starts next Monday for 4th grade

Bio Bus, K-2 Science enrichment

Consortium for Research and Robotics, 7th grade

This year, the school received a grant and was able to apply $9600 of DOE funds, which will save the PTO money (the program costs about $16k total)

Enrichments for Next Year: Thinking Ahead

Music: 3rd (extend BCM or invite another organization in?)

Debate: Would like to bring debate into the school day

BEAM and Center for Architecture: How can we make BEAM and Ctr for Architecture more robust?

Chess: Talking to Olga and Vlad about how chess went this year; Olga traveled to some tournaments this year for the first time. How can we improve experience next year?

Cooper Union 6th and 7th: new partnership for us. Would like to expand to 6th.

Overnight Field Trip Scholarships: $2,000 was budgeted this year and we used all of the funds and more. Need to expand so all students can attend our overnight trips.

Science supplies: will ask for more PTO-funded science supplies

I really appreciate that the PTO helps provide these great programs.

BSI Babies! Ms Teresa Tito and Valerie Durandisse had their babies. Everyone is healthy.

Slideshow of photos: 

Consortium for Research and Robotics-- 7th graders have been studying linear equations. Now moving into working with curved lines. Will use industrial robots to execute the drawing. Very excited to see the process. Photos of bridge-building in 2nd grade; planned community model share in K; Coding Space programming; FaceLab round 2 in 4th grade. Mr O’Hickey is the leader this time. FaceLab we can do next year without PTO funds because the kits have been purchased and the teachers are trained.

Photo of STEMLab progress on roof: meeting tomorrow with the contractors. Will see progress with when the components are moved in with warmer weather.

Photo of buddies: 4th and 8th grade together

Street art in Colombia. “Always Play” message was inspiring.

Ben Gonchar ‘19, student council president: Presented about the school talent show on Friday, May 17, 6pm, Curated and run by BSI’s Student Government; $5 per person at the door (no family deal, sorry). There will be surprise teacher acts!

People are still talking about last year’s talent show. Auditions involved 110 students; Because timing is tight, only 30 acts were chosen. We hope those who didn’t get in this year will apply next year. It was very hard to narrow the field down. All the acts were really great.

PTO representatives:

Gala: This is a big year with the 10th anniversary celebration. We expect a big turnout. New this year: Popular Park Slope eatery Yamato Sushi is providing some of the food. There will be birthday cake, too!

We need people to help edit the database of auction items, we need a lot of day-of volunteers, a clean-up crew. Parents make this event so successful every year. Ple

Fun Run: May 11, nycruns.com, select BSI as your school.

Direct Appeal: So far have raised $235,659 in direct funds.

We want to get more outside funds for the STEMLab and other projects. 40% of families have given to the Direct Appeal

Annual audit--we are a few years behind on audits. We are going to get started on the audit for this year. Will present to membership a plan to audit the past two years. Although the PTO doesn’t typically raise enough money to require annual audits, we are planning to do them so that the school and PTO will qualify for future grants, especially for the new BSI StemLab. The PTO is seeking folks who have experience in grant-writing to help build this new phase of fundraising for the school. Email: execbd@bsipto.org

SLT:

Some topics recently discussed at the SLT: Science fair was too short, parents have  complained. Special Education committee; School working on a directory for who to contact when parents have questions or concerns.