Career day was a huge success – the school recruited incredible panelists, including David Harbour, an actor from Stranger Things, and CEOs of major corporations and nonprofits to speak to our students about their professional journeys. Victor and Josue, board trustees, participated in the event. 

We recently also celebrated our graduation – had two well-known keynote speakers (one motivational speaker and one fashion designer) and Kevin, our trustee, did a great job delivering his speech. We also honored a parent in the award ceremony. 

In addition, BSNBCS gave out ~4k masks to our community during the Canadian Wildifre incidents, where the air quality index was poor for NYC. 
 

We have a candidate who is deeply interested in joining our board - he will be joining us for our July or August meeting or for summer school. 

We have come to the end of terms for several members and need to vote them in for new 3-year terms.

Nick filled in for Lisa Renee and provided the financial update - the school continues to be in good shape and there are no major expenses incurred. Separate from current financials, we have been applying for a number of grants for school expansion for the high school expansion – we found out today that we were awarded a grant for $749k. 

We are working on grant compliance as we’re nearing the end of the reporting period for many of the government funding opportunities we leveraged for our school (CSSA, ARP, ESSER and more). We’re documenting the expenses and the programmatic impact (health, education outcomes, etc) of those expenses to show the impact of the funding. 

One of our graduates who graduated two years ago was recently impacted by gun violence in our community – the school held a vigil and a march with local activists and students. We had resources available for students including licensed social workers and counselors, as well as talking to violence interrupters and other community groups. The staff was also given access to telehealth resources to help them deal with the news.