On February 13th, the Bedford Central School District community showed up in force, giving their support to our 2020 Strong Hearts, Strong Minds fundraiser. Over 300 parents, neighbors, administrators and teachers, bid on amazing auction items donated by local businesses and generous community members, sipped on cosmopolitans while dancing along with featured band Ask Your Mom and supported the Foundation’s initiative to bring RULER, as well as other academic initiatives to our seven schools.

It was a truly amazing evening of the community coming together for a common goal - to give our children the tools that will help them cope with social and emotional experiences. Thank you to our fantastic host committee, to our major sponsors, to all who donated auction items, to all who attended, to all who showed their support and generosity in the silent auction and to everyone that continues to understand the importance of what we are doing in the district. We can’t wait for the next one!

“I don’t remember a time, at least in recent years, when it felt like the whole community came together for the common good, to enjoy an evening together, and to celebrate our district. I am so excited that it was a financial success, but even more importantly, that we are truly in partnership, BCSD leadership and the Foundation, in moving the district forward and doing the critical work of supporting our students and preparing them to receive the world class education they deserve”.

-Dr. Adelberg, Acting Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, Bedford Central School District

The Foundation for Bedford Central Schools hosted its first book club meeting on January 28th, focusing on the book "Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive”. Approximately 30 Bedford area residents, met at the Bedford Post Inn, to enjoy wine and snacks, while discussing Marc Brackett’s research on social emotional learning and what that means. Participants were asked, “how are you doing?” and challenged to really answer that question and to further answer it from the perspective of a child (possibly their own child) who might be struggling to identify and label their own feelings.

Led by social emotional learning expert Katherine Long, this was a great kickoff to the District’s plan to roll out Marc Brackett’s gold standard program of social emotional learning called RULER. Stay tuned for future book club meetings hosted by the Foundation.

Screenagers Next Chapter

OCTOBER 13TH - Buy your tickets!

Record Review

WOW WHAT A YEAR!
Through the support of the Bedford Central community, the Foundation provided programming in classroom curricular enhancement, equipment and supplies, program and experiences tied to curriculum objectives and professional development in all seven of the District’s schools.

Read our end-of-year recap in the Record Review.

Our Second Community Book Drive

Some happy Fox Lane personnel checking out all the books we collected and sorted for the new elementary curriculum during the 2018/2019 school year. This year’s book drive correlated with the District’s partnership with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project which provides professional development to the District’s K-5 teachers around best teaching practices for young readers and writers.

“Not only did [the Foundation] and our families far surpass our expectation in the sheer volume of books collected, but the amount or organization that the Foundation did to prepare the collection is unbelievable. You left us with cartons of books by author, reading level and by topic. We’ve shared this information with grade level teaching teams to get these books into our classroom libraries for our students to enjoy as soon as possible”.

-Dr. Adelberg, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, Bedford Central School District

Thank you for your generosity! We are doing great things because of you!

Screenagers

The Foundation was pleased to present this timely documentary to the Bedford School District community on April 20th 2017. The screening was followed by a discussion with members of the BCSD Technology Department. As Screenagers is about the impact of the digital age on children and how to help them minimize harmful effects and find balance, participants in the community discussion- parents, students and administrators- shared they felt both more confident and better equipped to establish balance around screen time. We look forward to continuing this tradition of bringing important issues to our school community in the form of documentaries, discussions, lectures and informative community events as well as partnering with other community organizations to facilitate constructive dialogue and community participation across the District’s vital constituencies.

Sold Out Cocktails & Comedy Night Friend & Fundraiser!

The Foundation’s 2017 Spring Fundraiser was sold out thanks to overwhelming support from our community and Foundation friends! On Thursday, March 30th,  guests were treated to scrumptious dinner bites prepared by DinnerThyme Events and wine and beer donated to support the event by Captain Lawrence and Leonard Park Wines. Award-winning comedian, Christine O’Leary and her apprentices, kept us laughing and inspired to hold high paddles to support FBCS projects. 

We raised enough money to commence funding the elementary enrichment program for all K-5 students across the district for the 2017-18 school year with a focus on environmental issues, pay to send a FLHS teacher to AP certification training for a new course to be offered fall 2017 at the High School entitled Computer Science Principles and,  raised partial financial support, for the new 7th grade Capstone project at FLMS.

First Annual Book Drive

The Foundation's first annual book drive was a resounding success!  Nearly ten thousand books were donated to enhance classroom libraries in all schools.  Many of the books were in pristine condition, with a variety of donations enticing to even our most discerning young readers.  After four weeks of lugging hundreds of boxes of books and piling them high in an empty classroom at BVES, the book drive committee went through each and every book, sorting them by grade.  Many brought back childhood memories or were favorites that we had read to our own children and were thrilled to see again.  Having teachers come and select bags and bags of books to replace the "decrepit" ones in their classroom libraries reminded us why this project was so important. Hundreds of remaining books were delivered to MKES, where students were sent home with armloads of books for their home libraries.

"After the Bedford Foundation books arrived at Mount Kisco Elementary (probably close to 5000 books), teachers had a week to go through and pull books for their classroom libraries… We then made the books available to students to take home for their home libraries. I wanted you to see the pictures of the students shopping. They were so excited and many who would have had no books this summer, left the building with armloads… Please pass our thanks along to the Bedford Foundation. The Mount Kisco community is deeply appreciative."

—Bill Hunter, Elementary Consulting Teacher, MKES