The Board of Directors of the Brookline Education Foundation presents this report of the Foundation’s activities for our fiscal year that began on July 1, 2007 and will end on June 30, 2008

• Programs
• Fundraising

Through its programs, the Foundation strives to enrich the professional lives of educators by recognizing and supporting them as they identify and pursue opportunities that will have the greatest impact on their practice, the lives of their students, and on their school communities.

The Foundation has committed more than $285,000 in funding for our grants and program-related activities for the 2008-09 school year. These funds support activities at each of Brookline’s nine schools, ranging from individual teachers embarking on activities designed to renew them as professionals to whole school activities resulting in a new way of thinking about education.

We have approved $32,000 in funding for support of 13 grants for the 2008–09 school year, directly benefiting 22 teachers and specialists. A complete list of these Teacher Grants is attached to this report.

The Collaborative Grants Program continues to thrive, both in the amount of funding awarded and in the scope of the projects undertaken. Funding totaling $102,500 has been awarded for the 2008–09 school year to support 10 grants that directly involve more than 150 educators and hundreds of students systemwide. A detailed description of the Collaborative Grants is attached to this report.

The Brookline Education Foundation sponsors several awards and endowed programs that honor individuals and enhance educational experiences for teachers and students.

• The Ernest R. Caverly Award is given annually to one elementary and one high school teacher in recognition of professional excellence and contributions to the Brookline Public Schools. The 2008 recipients are Alicia Hsu, a third grade teacher from Lawrence School, and Ellen Lewis, an English teacher at Brookline High School.

• The Robert I. Sperber Award was presented to Dr. Robert Weintraub, Headmaster at Brookline High School, at a celebratory event on Sunday, May 4. Dr. Weintraub joins William Grady, retired Director of the Opportunity for Change Program, and Barbara Shea, retired Principal of Lincoln School, as recipients of this prestigious award.

• The Adam Russell Gelfand Fellows Program annually recognizes an outstanding recipient of a Brookline Education Foundation Teacher Grant. This year’s Fellowship is awarded to Sharon Kiernan, a Lawrence School teacher, who will travel to Spain to research and document varied styles of architecture in order to enhance the third grade structures unit.

• The Charlie Baker Legacy Award was created last year to provide funding for a grant for continuing education, travel, program development, or other similar pursuits in the area of US History and/or World Geography. The first recipients of this award are Jen Doubilet, Amy Neale, Marcy Prager, and Jennifer Thompson from Driscoll School. Their grant will take them to Oraibi, a Hopi village in Arizona, where they will study the relationship between Hopi culture and the changing environment.

In addition to providing support for this annual award, a one-time gift will be given to the district to purchase a collection of new history videos that will serve all schools equally. This gift is given by the Bakers specifically to honor retired Runkle Social Studies teacher Jerry Kelly, whose map project was inspirational to their son.

• In the spring, the Todd Saker Fund helped support a visit to each of the elementary schools by Mitali Perkins, a prolific author of fiction that focuses on the lives of young people born or raised in a culture other than that of their parents. The Foundation is grateful to Pat McEachen for her assistance in arranging these visits.

• The Jack and Jordan Trust Litchman Fund again supported ocean and tidepool studies with a visit by the New England Aquarium’s Tidepool exhibit to each third-grade classroom in Brookline.

• The BEEP Fund supported visits to Brookline preschool classrooms by musician Philip Alexander and by the New Philharmonia Orchestra’s traveling instrument “Petting Zoo.”

• The Andrea Cilley Environmental Education Fund was established by friends and family members to honor the memory of Andrea Cilley, a Runkle School parent and community activist, who died suddenly last year. Proceeds from the fund will be used to support the Collaborative Grant Earth Science by Design.

• The Robert Weintraub Fund was established this year to support grants to Brookline High School teachers through the Foundation’s Teacher and Collaborative Grant programs.

• The Foundation, through its Anniversary Fund, is presenting a gift of $25,000 in microscopes and related material to each second-grade classroom and a ground water simulator to Brookline High School.

Thanks to the generosity of our many supporters, we are closing in on our goal of $440,000 for this year.

As of May 19, we have collected $347,047 from the following sources:      

*This amount includes donations given to the Foundation to support the Andrea Cilley Fund, the BEEP Fund, the Charlie Baker Legacy Award, the Adam Russell Gelfand Fellowship, the Jack and Jordan Trust Litchman Fund, the Todd Saker Fund, and the Robert Weintraub Fund.

In addition to our fall campaign and spring “apple for the teacher” appeal, our Green Apple Society, comprised of donors who annually give $1,000 or more, continues to grow. This year, Green Apple Society members were invited to attend a reading by author Sophie Freud, who read from her book Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family.

The Adult Spelling Bee, which will add more than $27,000 to our coffers when outstanding pledges are paid, was very successful, with sixty-four teams participating, celebrity word pronouncers, and coverage on local access television. Breakfast at Ten, a team comprised of Selina Chow, Leah Greenwald, and Marie Hoguet, correctly spelled the word “psilocybin,” a hallucinogenic obtained from fungi, to win.

Thirty-four 5th-grade students participated in the Spelling Bee. The winner was Juliana Kaplan, from Pierce School, who correctly spelled the word “conqueror” to win. Second place went to Juliana’s good friend, Korey Caron, also a Pierce School student.

The Foundation conducted its fifth raffle this winter selling all 600 tickets. Theta Biomedical Consulting and Development, a local business, won the raffle on a ticket purchased by resident Haris Theoharides. The raffle netted more than $44,000 for the Foundation’s programs. 

The Foundation is extremely grateful for the continued support of local businesses. In particular, the following businesses consistently make an extraordinary effort to give back to the community:   

• Brookline Bank
• Brookline Booksmith
• The Children’s Book Shop
• Chobee Hoy Associates Real Estate
• Clear Flour Bakery
• Connelly Hardware
• Cypress Automart, Inc.
• The Fireplace Restaurant
• Fast Frame
• Hammond/GMAC Real Estate
• Karp, Liberman & Kern Sotheby’s International Realty
• KooKoo Cafe
• Party Favors
• Pathways Realty
• The UPS Store in Brookline Village

These local businesses understand that it makes good business sense to support the public schools through the Brookline Education Foundation. Please show your appreciation by supporting them.

Fundraising success enables the Foundation to communicate with the community in a variety of ways. Our newsletter, published three times each year, is distributed to all families and educators in the Brookline Public School system as well as loyal supporters and friends of the Foundation. Throughout the year, The Brookline TAB has published articles and press releases about our activities.

This year, the Foundation hosted breakfasts for families of students in grades PreK-3 featuring Mary Matthews, ELA Curriculum Coordinator, and the Literacy Specialists and Librarians at each of the participating schools. The topic of Ms. Matthews talk was “Learning to Read and Write...How and When Does This Happen in the Brookline Public Schools?” These breakfasts provided an excellent opportunity to introduce both Ms. Matthews and the educators supporting literacy skills development and the work of the Foundation to parents of younger students.

2008 has been a great year for the Brookline Education Foundation and, as a result, for excellence and innovation in teaching in the Brookline Public Schools. We are proud of the work that we do to support teachers, administrators, and students in Brookline and look forward to continuing to expand the reach and the impact of our activities in the years ahead.