The Bronxville Promise

FALL 2023 UPDATE

At the Sept. 6 meeting of the Board of Education, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Rachel Kelly, reviewed new and refined language that has been incorporated into the Bronxville Promise following a summer review by the leadership team, faculty, staff and the BOE. The updated Promise incorporates additional language around diversity, inclusion, belonging, technological advances and civil discourse.

JUNE 2023 UPDATE

Board of Education Statement (read at June 2023 board meeting):

At The Bronxville School, we strive for academic excellence in everything we do. To that end, we work to create an environment that supports the growth and learning of all students and where all students feel that they belong. We believe that by respecting diverse ideas, opinions, ideologies and backgrounds, we create an environment where all students can live up to The Bronxville Promise.

• Review of Bronxville Promise language by faculty and leadership team underway and expected to conclude over the summer
• Additional input from students and the community will be solicited in September
• Board will consider whether to codify the Promise as policy in “Philosophy” section
• Efforts toward improving visibility will continue:
• BOE meeting “Promise In Action” moments showing demonstration of outcomes
• Website update will feature Promise and outcomes more prominently
• Feedback on bullying experiences (heard by BOE at workshops) has resulted in:
• Followup on specific incidents
• Revision to student exit form
• Review of anti-bullying curriculum (which included most recently - anti-bullying PSAs developed by 4th graders and proposed MS program “Start with Hello”)

Timeline

Since the Spring of 2022, the Board of Education has held ongoing discussions and community listening sessions on how best to bring greater visibility and action to the important values of diversity and inclusion in Bronxville. There has been recognition that some relevant language already exists in the Bronxville Promise, the district’s mission statement, which was originally developed in 2014. In 2019, the faculty enhanced the Promise by defining desired student outcomes for each element of the Promise; these outcomes would be used to guide curriculum design. 

December 15, 2022
Presentation by former Superintendent Dr. Roy Montesano on the results of the Advisory Committee meetings held during Spring and Fall of 2022.

Bronxville Union Free School District
Strategic Implementation Plan 

The Strategic Implementation Plan is developed with the input of Curriculum Leaders, which represent every grade level and discipline across the district, as well as input from the Leadership Team.  The plan outlines a focused set of multi-year actionable goals to provide stakeholders of the organization a point of entry to move closer towards the vision of the Bronxville Promise for all students and articulates a strategy towards meeting those goals.   The plan can and should be flexible to adhere to the needs of teachers and students. However, the clarity provided by the planning process is meant to reaffirm the organization’s commitment to established goals.  The plan also serves as documentation of important work that has happened across the district in recent years. Naturally, next steps often build on the work that was started and often include strategic partnerships to assist us in achieving our goals.  Next steps can also serve as the basis of work that will be done as part of school, department, and/or grade level groupings. The evaluation of the plan includes the reflections of both insiders and outsiders, as well as qualitative and quantitative measures and helps us to determine if goals have been met and, therefore, should be retired or expanded.

June 2019

In the summer of 2014, the Bronxville School District began with a question, “What makes a Bronxville Education distinctive?” Initially, the conversation was meant to define “success” for ourselves, in an era when success is often defined externally through standardized tests, college admissions, or the “perfect transcript”. This exercise, which began as a brand and later became the Bronxville Promise, was a collaborative effort to (re)define our priorities in preparing students for an ever-changing global world and renew our commitment to Bronxville’s long history of progressive education as A Lighthouse School.