Over the past five years, the school’s Bright Bold Next campaign has raised $91.5 million toward its $100 million goal, making it the most successful fundraising effort in the school’s history.
“It is a huge commitment to the future of our school, and I feel very good about how we’re stewarding those dollars to make transformational impact,” Head of School Jennifer Price said.
The campaign includes many initiatives, including increased financial aid, innovation grants and the addition of the Grove Street fields. The largest and most expensive initiative, however, is the Lower School (LS) renovation, which is projected to cost $44 million.
The plans for the LS renovation include doing a gut renovation of the brick building and replacing the Markham building, the Kelsey House and the Morrison House with a building that will be called New Markham. In June, Kelsey and Morrison were demolished, and the school plans to begin construction on New Markham in March. The full renovation is expected to be completed in the fall of 2029. Most disruptive construction work is planned to occur over the summer, and while some construction will go on during the school year, all students will remain on the LS campus. According to LS Director Anthony Reppucci, one of the renovation’s primary goals is to design the campus around the school’s educational philosophy.
“The building should really support collaboration, small group instruction, hands-on learning, independence, movement and different ways of teaching,” he said. “Not forcing teaching to conform to the building, but having teaching conform to the students that are in front of us.”
The renovation also aims to better unite the arts and sciences within the LS curriculum by creating shared physical spaces.
“When we look at how schools are traditionally designed, visual arts and the sciences are often separated from one another,” Mr. Reppucci said. “Having those subjects located in one building will strengthen learning and create more opportunities for integration. Rather than kids experiencing each subject as a separate part of their day, we want them to begin seeing the connections between what they’re learning and doing across disciplines.”
The renovated LS will also feature a cafeteria where lunch is cooked and served. Mr. Reppucci hopes the cafeteria will help bring the entire campus together.
“There’s a concept in the Reggio Emilia approach to education called the piazza, which is a central gathering place that helps build connection and community,” he said. “I think about our new lunchroom in a similar way. It will give us a central place where kids can come together and feel a sense of community and belonging within the LS.”
Tommy Bresler ’27, a lifer at the school, believes his siblings at the LS will benefit from eating with students outside of their own classes.
“I know during my time, it was kind of just you with your class,” he said. “This will be good for seeing people in the other class, especially in your own grade more.”
Another motivating factor for the renovation is to keep pace with other nearby independent schools that have more updated campuses.
“If you look around at the competitive landscape in terms of independent schools who have beginners to sixth grade or lower school components, BB&N is behind in terms of the facilities,” LS Campaign Committee member Steve Wise ’04 P ’36 ’38 said. “I always tell people: It’s the exact same school as when I went there, which is a good thing but also not a great thing because the buildings haven’t changed.”
Mr. Wise attributes the renovation’s fundraising success to the community coming together.
“One of the things that I just continue to be impressed about is the fact that the gifts are coming in from everywhere,” he said. “This isn’t one of these things where we’re getting two $50 million checks, or someone’s leaving $100 million to the school. It’s alums, current parents, it’s past parents. It’s current board members and past board members. So there’s a real feeling of wanting to support the school.”
Initially, Campaign Committee Co-Chair Jennifer Aronson ’92 P ’31 ’33 did not believe that the Bright Bold Next campaign’s $100 million fundraising goal was achievable.
“As an alum, and someone who’s been a parent for a while, I honestly didn’t believe that we could do it,” she said. “Until very recently, we really didn’t have a culture of philanthropy at BB&N.”
While the renovation aims to make the LS campus nicer, Ms. Aronson said that it’s about more than just that.
“It’s not about having the shiniest campus and the beautiful rendering,” she said. “It’s really about being able to deepen our commitment to education, to community, to learning, to all of our values.”
