This weekend we will hold our second annual fundraiser: Night @ Mardi Gras. I cordially invite you to join us for what will again be a wonderful night of food, music, dancing, and fun, all for a great cause.
The purpose of this event, and those forthcoming, is to raise funds for the development of an Innovation Center and all new campus libraries. The Innovation Center will include a sciences complex--the functionality of college-grade chemistry, biology, and engineering laboratories with an R&D edge. An abundance of interior glass, solar tubes, and automated LEDs will ensure a bright, modern feel in a LEED-certified building. Additionally, there will be a large display area for completed projects, including the IB personal project requirement, an automated, climate-controlled greenhouse, a fully stocked fabrication workshop, and a project yard with a 500-gallon research tank. The second floor will provide a very large Middle and Upper School library following the design cues of modern college reading rooms, and a number of specialized classrooms for multimedia/computer science, mathematics, and language acquisition. This library will also offer individual and small group study carrels. Finally, this building will feature a new nurses station and additional bathrooms.
The completion of the Innovation Center will allow for a full redesign of our current library. All existing library space will be remodeled, and re-tasked exclusively for OECC and Elementary students. You can expect an innovative design concept that will integrate traditional library features with creative new approaches. The new library will inspire the imagination of our children and support literacy across multiple languages.
Similarly, we want to inspire our budding scientists, computer scientists, and engineers to follow their creative instincts. The Innovation Center will ensure our students the space, tools, and resources to design, build, and test original prototypes in software and engineering. The engineering lab and fabrication workshop will remain open to our students after normal school hours, just as our athletic and arts spaces are currently.
Upon completion of this capital campaign, in conjunction with the implementation of IB, we will truly be a world-class institution without peer in the Caribbean. To make this happen for our children, we need to raise a considerable amount of money. To date, we have raised a little more than $500,000, or 7% of the anticipated cost of our project. We will need a whole lot more to make this vision a reality.
My wife and I have pledged a significant gift to the school for this project. Our logic was simple. Under current tax code, we could make a fully deductible gift to Baldwin School that lowers our overall taxable income, while supporting something we really care about. Either way we were going to spend the money--we just decided to make sure our money went to education, and to the community we have grown to love. If every current family committed to a fully deductible gift of $10,000 over three years, a little more than $3000 per year, or $278 per month, we could begin building in a year or so. It's food for thought.
Join us Saturday. You can get your tickets in any of the divisional offices. Let's make this happen!
See you around campus.