I recently had a chance meeting with the current BCE president, Jen Faber, and after a pleasant conversation she agreed to do more of an in-depth "interview" for the Voice. Afterall, why let "Mark at the Mic" Lucchesi have all the fun profiling people in town? We talked for about an hour about her background (molecular biology and history), why she passed up a chance at med school, and worked in a medical lab and for J&J. But BCE was the topic du jour and you can find more details here.
Once your kids are out of BIS and especially after they are out of BHS, you tend to lose touch with the organization. I have. I still believe it is a critical contributor not just to the school system, but to the overall quality of life and our shared investment in B'game.
As the mother of three boys, Jen started as a BCE donor, then volunteer and eventually became a board member. She was a site director at Hoover which is often a jumping off point to further BCE involvement. As Covid hit and some people moved out of B'game, BCE experienced some turnover which may have contributed to Jen taking on the presidency after only four years in town. See what can happen when you raise your hand?
The main function of BCE-- raising money and granting it back to the schools--is pretty stable. With a fiscal year starting July 1, the funds granted have been between $2.6M and $2.7M for the last three years --the Covid years. There are expenses and the endowment needs to be maintained in case there are more economic disruptions. The grants have funded 19 additional teachers which is why multi-year stability (or better yet growth) is important. The additional staff are teaching music (7), PE (5), language (2) and five other assignments.
Jen revealed that she has a "challenger" mentality--probably why we got along right off. She sees the BCE board and presidency as a political position in the sense that one needs to know how to influence other bodies like the District, the Trustees and the City while understanding where to pick one's fights. We didn't get into that too much, but if and when one arises, I will know who to ask about it. Here's our selfie taken during the interview in case you want to say hi when you see her around town.
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