EVER STRONGER, EVER BRUNSWICK
ORIZONS AT BRUNSWICK WAS LAUNCHED IN 2014 to address the widening achievement gap among students from under-resourced families in Greenwich. To maximize chances for success, the Horizons strategy was designed with four primary components:
◾ To provide free academic enrichment for Greenwich public-school boys during the summer and weekends over a period of nine years (Kindergarten through Grade 8).
◾ To focus on improving Horizons students’ basic skills in reading, math, and swimming, which are recognized, core drivers of success in high school, college, and beyond.
◾ To offer holistic support to families of Horizons boys in order to maintain long-term enrollment, reduce attrition, and increase positive outcomes.
◾ To achieve meaningful, strong, and measurable results, both in the best interests of individual boys and to ensure the program’s sustainability. Results would be tied to scores on national public school reading and math tests, as well as to assessment of swimming progress. Our six-week summer program is supplemented by Family Education Days on six Saturdays during the school year, which include bilingual
HORIZONS AT BRUNSWICK HAS PROVEN A SUCCESSFUL public-private school partnership in closing the achievement gap for under-resourced Greenwich public-school boys. Brunswick generously makes its facilities available for a six-week summer program and six weekends during the school year. The public-school boys, in Kindergarten through Grade 8, combine focused academic instruction with summer enrichment activities and personalized tutoring when they return to classes. Academic enrichment combined with recreational activities while learning to become proficient swimmers is the hallmark to the success of this program. An educational goal throughout America is closing the earlyeducation achievement gap for under-resourced youngsters, and I am proud that Brunswick has opened its doors to these deserving neighbors. Our family donates each year to Horizons at Brunswick to ‘pay forward’ the benefits our son received in his Brunswick education.”
MARYELLEN FEELEY (P ’18)
Maryellen Feeley is former Athletic Board Chair of the Foundation Board at William and Mary. In addition, she serves on the Board of Squash Haven. She is also a former member of the Horizons National development committee. Maryellen served on the Board of Governors at the Field Club of Greenwich and has held leadership roles at Brunswick, Greenwich Academy, and Sacred Heart Greenwich. She has four grown children: a son who graduated from Brunswick in 2018 and three daughters who graduated from Greenwich Academy in 2010, 2012, and 2015.
workshops for parents. Since its founding, Horizons at Brunswick has grown from an initial class of 30 students to 130 boys in Kindergarten through Grade 8 from nine Greenwich public schools. We offer smallgroup instruction by academic specialists, often members of our faculty, in reading, mathematics, and STEAM subjects with summer recreational activities, including swimming lessons and physical exercise. Special ageappropriate classes in art, chess, foreign languages, and yoga/mindfulness are also offered.
In serving as host for the program, we make our classroom, laboratory, art studio, sports and recreational, as well as food-service and dining facilities available each summer, and Brunswick students, some 35 to 40 each year, serve as tutors and mentors, alongside Brunswick faculty members and coaches. Students from Greenwich Academy and Greenwich High School also join Brunswick students in serving as program volunteers, forging friendships that extend well beyond their shared sixweek summer experience.
In establishing Horizons at Brunswick, we sought to accomplish what few enrichment programs working with under-resourced children have been able to do — demonstrate impact and deliver highly quantifiable results.
Graduating its first class of eighth-grade boys in August 2021, Horizons has proven uniquely successful, as annual performance studies confirm, in raising standardized test scores as well as academic confidence in students entering the program who lag appreciably behind their grade-level peers
Not only do students make significant gains in academic growth, they also grow social-emotionally. Grades 4-8th students self-reported positive selfesteem by the end of summer.
■ 85% “There is a Horizons teacher who helps me feel good about myself”
■ 85% “I have a positive attitude about myself”
■ 91% “I have much to be proud of”
STAR Asse s s m en t 20 17 -2021
Assessments were not conducted in 2020 due to remote learning.
Your Donations at Work 2020-21
With a long and strong commitment to the Greenwich Community, Brunswick School generously provides use of its facilities but no direct financial support. One hundred percent of the program’s expenses are funded by donations.
in measures of educational achievement. As national studies confirm, the earlier such intervention occurs, bridging the academic performance gap for under-resourced students, significantly alters their educational trajectories. Horizons boys have risen from at-risk status into a position far more likely to guarantee future academic success. And Horizons are proud to be proficient swimmers, having acquired a health-building and life-saving athletic skill.
For more information or to donate, please go to www.horizonsatwick.org
Moreover, as our Horizons students have grown and flourished, the spirits, sensitivities, and future prospects of those volunteering to help them have risen as well. Our students working in the program report the experience has changed their lives, broadening their perspectives on how they might contribute to society as mentors in college and beyond.
In sum, Horizons at Brunswick has proven a “win/win” for everyone — for program participants, for Brunswick volunteers, and for supporters
HORIZONS
CHANGED ME AS A PERSON
and I am forever grateful. I can’t imagine my Upper School years being as enriching and meaningful in so many ways had I not been involved as a volunteer with Horizons at Brunswick. I think I honestly learned as much from that experience as the younger boys we were tutoring and working with, whether recognizing the commonalities and issues we all face or seeing the world from a perspective other than your own. I will never forget the daily expressions of appreciation from individual Horizons students I worked with. I know at some point in my life, I want to work with young children, whether as a teacher or in some other capacity.”
WILL BERKLEY ’21
Will Berkley ’21 is a Brunswick lifer, having attended Brunswick since pre-K. A lifelong Greenwich resident, he now attends Yale University. His younger brother, Andrew ’23, is also actively involved with Horizons. They both credit the Horizons Club at Brunswick with introducing them to the program. Their father, Rob ’91, currently serves as chair of the Brunswick Board of Trustees.
wishing to channel resources to basic, front-line community initiatives delivering exceptionally positive, measurable, and life-changing results.
To date, Horizons at Brunswick has relied upon annual contributions from the Greenwich and Brunswick School communities in meeting its annual operating budget, which currently stands at $500,000.
(Brunswick’s contribution of our facilities and other school resources is not a Horizons budgetary item.) Meeting that total each year through the fundraising efforts of the Horizons at Brunswick advisory board is a
continuing struggle. Accordingly, we now seek to place this extraordinarily successful program on a more advantageous and secure financial footing by endowing a Horizons at Brunswick fund to support staffing, program enhancements, outreach, and follow-up tutoring assistance for program participants. The goal is to build a $5 million endowment that would underwrite approximately one-half of the Horizons annual operating budget moving forward. With the assurance of an annual stream of revenue, Horizons at Brunswick will be better able to expand its impact in raising the academic achievement levels of students from under-resourced families in Greater Greenwich.