BKCM COVID-19 Updates

•••••

11.17.20 4:51 PM

Dear BKCM CMS & Suzuki Families,

We wanted to update you on BKCM’s hybrid learning program, and provide you with some guidance as we prepare for our next block of hybrid learning to begin after the New Year.

*** Please note that the information in this letter is specific to the Suzuki and Community Music School programs. Music Therapy will continue remotely until further notice. ***

BKCM Will Remain Open Until Further Notice

First, as you are aware this afternoon the city announced that NYC public schools would close effective tomorrow. We wanted to let you know that BKCM is not impacted by this mandate, and will be staying open until further notice.

Rising Cases and Potential Closures

Like all of you, we are closely monitoring Covid prevalence throughout the city, as well as in neighborhoods more proximate to BKCM, where the majority of our in person students draw from. Decisions on a potential building closure will factor in mandates / guidance from the city, as well as an ongoing evaluation of local conditions and BKCM-specific considerations. Since BKCM is primarily teaching one on one and small group lessons, we have more flexibility than a traditional school classroom. Our decisions around closure will not necessarily follow the NYC DOE. The welfare and safety of our community is our first priority and we are prepared to close should conditions warrant.

Hybrid Learning – How’s it Going?

After taking the summer to develop and invest in new safety measures and protocols, cleaning procedures, and all the attendant equipment and supplies BKCM reopened for reduced capacity, in person hybrid learning on October 19th. We’ve been excited to welcome our students and faculty back into the building for private lessons. Thus far, it’s going great. 130 students have participated in this first block of hybrid in-person learning. We had planned up to 35% our regular building capacity, but with the number of students and teachers who ultimately opted to stay remote, we are operating at closer to 20% capacity.

For those who have continued remote learning over the last few weeks, thank you for staying with us. Your commitment to your music practice is a testament to the work that we love to do at BKCM no matter the circumstances, reinforcing our mission and belief that music is essential. Our teachers and program directors have been holding bi-monthly professional development trainings to share their remote learning experiences and best practices to provide the same quality music education that BKCM is committed to providing during more ordinary times.

Opting into Hybrid In Person Learning for Block III – January 4 – March 27th,

If you are interested in opting into hybrid learning for the next lesson block (January 4 – March 27th), please be on the lookout for communication from your Program Directors. They will be reaching out with opt in forms for in person hybrid learning over the next several days. As of now, Suzuki and Community Music School are the only departments with in person hybrid learning options. Music Therapy will continue remotely until further notice.

Please be reminded that BKCM is not mandating that teachers return for in person learning. We understand that individual risk factors surrounding Covid impact everyone differently, and are honoring any teacher’s need to continue to teach remotely at this time. As a result, not all students will be able to opt in to hybrid learning. Woodwinds, brass, and voice instruments will continue to learn remotely, as it is still unsafe for aerosol instruments to be learning in person indoors. We appreciate our community’s flexibility and understanding of individual faculty member’s needs to stay home and our safety policies in regard to aerosol based instruments.

COVID Testing Policy

We currently require that students and any parents who are regularly in the building present a negative Covid PCR test prior to the start of each Block (not each time in the building).

For families that are already taking in person hybrid lessons, and families that are considering starting in Block III, please be aware that we are assessing our current testing protocols with our Program Directors and administrative team to determine whether the existing requirements need adjustment. We currently require that students and any parents who are regularly in the building present a negative Covid PCR test prior to the start of each Block.

We appreciate everyone’s patience and adherence to our testing requirements. We understand that it is challenging to factor testing into everyone’s busy schedules, and particularly challenging to get little ones used to regular testing. Ultimately, the safety of our entire community of faculty, staff, and families is our priority and we appreciate our community’s understanding and care.

We will communicate to you any changes in the Covid testing policy by December 10th. We would expect families who are traveling over the holidays to return, and then wait 4-5 days before getting tested. This may necessitate students not being able to join in person until the second in person rotation during Block III.

New Garden Space!

We’re excited to let you all know that our new garden space in the lot adjacent to our existing garden is open! This project has been in the works for several years but was dramatically accelerated with the onset of Covid. Seeing the previously unused, overgrown site transform has been incredibly rewarding for our team and our community. Families waiting for students are welcome to hang out and wait in our beautiful new garden space. The space will be heated and lit during the winter and have two 200 sq ft tents. If you haven’t seen it yet, come by and check it out. We are all so happy with how it’s turned out, and are excited by its possibilities and for our community to enjoy a new neighborhood garden space.

Upcoming Holiday Closures:

A reminder that BKCM will be completely closed on:

November 24 – 29: Thanksgiving Break

December 22 – January 3: Winter Recess

We hope you’re all taking care of yourselves and your loved ones. Have a wonderful and safe holiday, and we look forward to hopefully seeing more of you in person over the next few months.

Best,

Michaela Mechlovitz

Director of Administration

•••••

10.7.20 9:00 PM

Dear BKCM Students & Families,

I am writing as a follow up to my note dated October 3rd.  As promised, please find attached a copy of the BKCM Reopening Plan 2020-21 10.8.2020. The handbook contains our most up to date building operating policies and health and safety protocols. This will be a useful reference for our upcoming Town Halls and further communications from your respective Program Directors.

Reminders, clarifications and updates:

1. Most of our Community Music School (CMS) and Suzuki students, beginning on October 19th, will have the opportunity to resume in person lessonson a rolling two weeks in person, two weeks remote, basis.

2. Please note that Suzuki will start on Oct 19th as well (not Oct 26th as previously indicated) to begin concurrently with CMS.

3. If you opt in to hybrid lessons, you will get further communication from your Program Director regarding your specific in person start date.

4. The hybrid in person / remote lesson program applies to the Suzuki program, and CMS private lessons. CMS group lessons will generally continue remotely.

5. Please note that Music Therapy will continue remotely, at least through year end.

6. To reiterate from my last email, just as students may continue their lessons remotely, we are not requiring our faculty to return for in person teaching. We know and expect many exceptions and unique circumstances, all of which will be handled with the utmost consideration.

7. Last, as noted in the handbook, all students, faculty, staff and family members will be required to present a negative PCR Covid-19 test in order to start in person lessons. The test must be taken within two weeks of the in person start date.

Reopening details will be discussed in a series of town halls. Please join if you can.

• Oct 8 – Suzuki Families Reopening Town Hall @ 8:30 pm
• Oct 13 – CMS Families Reopening Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 14 – Open / All Families Town Hall @ 7:00 pm

Complete this Hybrid Opt-In Form & Survey By Oct 9th (Specific to CMS & Suzuki)

To help us better understand your specific plans, we ask you to complete this form by October 9th for every member of your household who is enrolled (or plans to enroll!). The survey asks you to choose one of three options:

• Begin hybrid / in person lessons starting with the October 19 – December 21 block
• Begin hybrid / in person lessons in a later block (one starting in January, and one in April)
• Stay remote the entire year

The options to begin hybrid lessons at a later date (Jan or April) or stay remote all year are not binding. In other words, you may elect now to start at a later date and ultimately decide to stay remote all year, or vice versa. However, if you wish to start in person during the first phase, you must make that election now and join at the appointed start date. You will not be able to join a reopening phase in progress.

There is so much more to share about our reopening. Please join us for a town hall, stay tuned for more communications from your program directors, read our forthcoming reopening handbook, and complete the opt-in form / survey as soon as possible!

The staff and faculty truly look forward to seeing you (masks and all!) in the next few weeks, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to open our front doors again.

See you soon,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

10.3.20 3:19 PM

Dear BKCM Students & Families,

Happy October. I am excited to share news of the Conservatory’s reopening plans. If you’ve been holding off on registering, I encourage you to read on — we have much good news to share.
 

In-person lessons will resume on October 19th on a hybrid, low density basis, phased in by program. Most of our Community Music School and Suzuki students, beginning later in October, will have the opportunity to resume in person lessons on a rolling two weeks in person, two weeks remote, basis. This approach allows us to operate the building at a very low density, while accommodating the majority of our on-site private lesson and Suzuki students. For a high level summary of reopening our plans, please read through this presentation.

As we note in the presentation, decisions about resuming on site lessons vary from program to program, by class format, and even by instrument. The nature of what we do at BKCM, and the physical attributes and limitations of our building, requires a very granular level of decision making. Program Directors will be communicating more specific information and guidance to their students and families in the coming days.

Just as students may continue their lessons remotely, we are not requiring our faculty to return for in person teaching. We know and expect many exceptions and unique circumstances, all of which will be handled with the utmost consideration. Ultimately, our goal is to safely welcome back as many of our students and faculty as possible.

You can still register for the 2020 – 2021 school year! While many of our Community Music School groups and ensembles are meeting remotely, we still have private lesson availability for both in person and remote instruction. For information on enrollment and to sign up for a trial lesson, please call our registers (718 622 3300).

Complete reopening details will be shared and discussed in a series of town halls. Also, keep an eye out for our comprehensive reopening handbook. Here are a few key dates for reference (Zoom links hyperlinked):

• Sep 28 – Soft reopening begins for faculty and staff
• Oct 7 – BKCM distributes reopening handbook
• Oct 8 – Suzuki Families Reopening Town Hall @ 8:30 pm
• Oct 13 – CMS Families Reopening Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 14 – Open / All Families Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 19 – In person Community Music School private lessons resume
• Oct 26 – In person Suzuki lessons resume

Please complete this survey! To help us better understand your specific plans, we ask you to complete this survey by October 9th for every member of your household who is enrolled (or plans to enroll!). The survey asks you to choose one of three options:

• Begin hybrid / in person lessons in October
• Begin hybrid / in person lessons at a later date (two other windows to begin hybrid / in person lessons are planned – one in Jan and one in April)
• Stay remote the entire year

The options to begin in person at a later date (Jan or April) or stay remote all year are not binding. In other words, you may elect now to start at a later date and ultimately decide to stay remote all year, or vice versa. However, if you wish to start in person during the first phase, you must make that election now and join at the appointed start date. You will not be able to join a reopening phase in progress.

We bought the vacant parcel of land adjoining our garden! One especially exciting development that will greatly assist with our reopening: we acquired the vacant parcel of land that adjoins our garden. Our immediate goal is to activate the site and use it as waiting area and gathering / circulation space. We want our students, families, caretakers and other members of the BKCM community to be able to attend classes and events as safely as possible – so every extra square foot of space gives us more operational flexibility. There are a range of things we can do with the site over time to make it more attractive and more public depending on the needs and wishes of BKCM and our neighbors. The intent is certainly for the space to function much like our existing garden—to be open to the public for block-wide events and broader community use.

I know you will have many questions… and there is so much more to share about our reopening. Please join us for a town hall, stay tuned for more communications from your program directors, read our forthcoming reopening handbook, and complete the survey as soon as possible!

I truly look forward to seeing you (masks and all!) this fall, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to open our front doors again. Most of all, I’m thrilled that students and teachers will have opportunities to connect in person again! Until then, I leave you with this pic of one of our (15!) newly crafted portable plexiglass partitions.

See you soon,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

7.27.20 3:12 PM

Dear BKCM Students & Families,

I hope this email finds you well and managing through the extraordinary challenges of the times. From before COVID to better days ahead, I hope BKCM and music are something of an anchor — a source of continuity and connectedness, happiness and calm.

I wanted to update you on our latest plans for the upcoming school year. BKCM staff and faculty have been working diligently throughout the summer to develop building reopening plans and protocols. At the same time, we have been preparing for the eventuality of either in person or remote teaching.

*** After much internal discussion, and with the direct feedback of nearly 300 households and 90 staff and faculty from our reopening survey, we have made the decision that BKCM will open on a fully remote basis for the month of September. ***

To be clear, private lessons and group classes will begin, as scheduled, in September on a remote basis. If you are unsure about the status of your lesson or class, feel free to reach out to our registration desk, or your respective program director. Our administrative staff and program directors will be communicating regularly over the coming weeks as we gear up for the start of the year.

At every decision point, the health and safety of our large and diverse community of students, families, staff and faculty is the paramount consideration. We will be continually assessing the environment and consulting the relevant authorities, and plan to make a decision in mid-September concerning reopening plans for October. In person, remote, or both, as the case will undoubtedly be this year, BKCM remains committed to ensuring the excellence and continuity of music education and music therapy.

We are hosting a series of town halls, starting this Thursday, to give you more insight on how we envision resuming in person classes once that determination has been made, and the analysis and thinking that led to this decision. We will record the town halls and circulate the links if you are unable to attend. We will also be circulating the presentation materials to help everyone understand the unique challenges and virtues related to reopening our building (e.g. our studios are small…but they have functional windows! 😉)

Thank you for your commitment to music, your patience and your flexibility.

Best,

Chad Cooper

Executive Director

•••••

3.31.20 2:21 PM

Dear Friends,

I hope that you and your loved ones are well during this tremendously difficult time.

I’m writing with an update on the state of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, as we begin the second week of our reinvention as a virtual music community. I am deeply encouraged by what I am seeing across all of the Conservatory’s programs. Still, there is much to do in the coming weeks as we endeavor to relaunch our programs at our 70+ community-based organization and public school partner sites—many of which are under tremendous pressure.

Our onsite programs have made terrific progress in transitioning to remote learning. Across our Suzuki, Community Music School and Music Therapy divisions, we are now providing remote private music lessons and music therapy sessions to 740 students and clients. When you add our group music classes and ensembles, we are reaching 950 out of 1,000 students, or 95% of our pre-pandemic onsite student/client population.

When it comes to our offsite Music Partners and Music Therapy schools and community organization partners, there are many unknowns. These partners—including the New York City public school system, City and State agencies, social service agencies and many other smaller community organizations—are under-resourced and facing enormous pressure to reinvent themselves. We are doing everything we can to coordinate with our partners and create options for engaging the students and clients we serve. We will continue to keep you posted as these plans develop.

Onsite and offsite, we are developing, adapting and refining our online learning curricula in real time to make our programs as robust, interactive and engaging as possible. We are also adapting and refining our understanding of what it means to be a community. For BKCM, the concept of community has always been intertwined with our physical home in Park Slope. Today our community comes together virtually, from the homes of students, staff, faculty and music therapists across Brooklyn and beyond. Our building remains an integral part of the Conservatory’s identity; now, though, it is our strengths as an organization—our passion for our mission, our extraordinary people, our entrepreneurial spirit and our deep expertise in music education and music therapy—that are sustaining and even growing our BKCM community.

Thanks to your generosity, the financial health of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music improved significantly in the years prior to this crisis. This made a crucial difference in how we have been able to respond. As the crisis has mounted, you have been unfailingly encouraging, gracious and supportive with your offers of help, expertise and financial support. We will take you up! As we adapt to our new reality, I look forward to being in touch with ways to engage with you to help BKCM navigate through this enormously challenging time.

Some additional details about our programs and progress:

Onsite Music Therapy. In our first week of virtual learning, we conducted remote Music Therapy sessions for almost all of our 110 on-site MT clients (excluding our dayhab groups). While remote therapy may not ultimately work for everyone, we have been encouraged by the interest from our clients, and the thoughtful and creative approaches our therapists are taking to this format.

Community Music School. Of our 389 private lesson students in the Community Music School, all but ten are moving forward with online lessons. Group classes are a heavier lift. Each is unique, and we are experimenting with different formats and platforms to create the best learning experience. As we begin our second week of remote learning, I am happy to share that 36 of 40 of our group classes and ensembles are convening in some capacity.

Suzuki. Suzuki had a solid opening week. Virtually all of our 240 Suzuki students have transitioned to online. Group classes are the next wave; they are being rolled out by instrument group. Our Suzuki Early Childhood program, SECE, also kicked off this past weekend.

Music Partners. NYC public schools reopened via remote learning a week ago. Several of our Music Partners schools will resume their music programming with BKCM this week. Most are still in a holding pattern. For now, our teachers are experimenting with different approaches and working with our school partners to be ready with a plan and curriculum that we can plug into whatever platform our schools elect to use. We want to make it easy and additive for our partners to bring our programming back into the fold for our 4,500 Music Partners students.

Offsite Music Therapy. Similar to Music Partners, our offsite Music Therapy partners vary widely in their resources and their ability to retool themselves for remote learning. Our largest offsite program, the Manhattan Childrens Center, has already resumed. The Jackson Developmental Center (Queens) has cancelled. Of our eight CAMBA-funded programs, the four that rely on the City’s Department of Youth & Community Development (DYCD) are in the process of restarting. We hope the other four will resume in the coming weeks as well.

Developing Our Tech Prowess. In two short weeks we have made substantial progress on the tech front. Most private lessons are taking place on Google Hangouts Meet. Group classes are taking place on Zoom. Music Partners is looking into platforms such as FlipGrid, Acapella, ClassDojo and BandLab, among others. We are investing in software subscriptions (such as Zoom licenses) and hardware (including Chromebooks and web cameras) to ensure that every faculty member has a high-quality device to provide lessons. We have set up a two-tiered tech support team, with our registrars acting as the frontline. The most complicated requests are transferred to our two IT specialists.

Looking After the Welfare of Our Staff & Faculty. We are greatly concerned about the well-being of our staff and faculty. They are the lifeblood of BKCM, the number one reason our families come to the Conservatory. For many of them, we are their livelihood. The inequities in COVID-19’s affect on differently resourced communities reverberate through our faculty. Our on-site faculty have largely resumed their prior teaching schedules, while our offsite teaching artists and music therapists are in limbo, as the fate of their programs rests largely with our partners and will take weeks to resolve. This is not to say they are idle; on the contrary, these faculty members are working diligently to develop new skills and pedagogy to engage students and clients remotely. My view is that we are one institution, not four P&Ls, and that we should look after as many of our people for as long as possible without putting the organization at financial risk.

Funding Needs. As of now, we don’t know what the shortfall in our revenues will be relative to our 2020 fiscal year budget. We are analyzing multiple financial scenarios. Historically, the three biggest drivers of spring revenue are our spring fundraiser, our revenues from offsite spring programming and our registration revenues for the following school year. The duration and intensity of the economic fallout from COVID-19 will have varying effects on these three streams. At the same time, we are making necessary but unbudgeted investments in hardware, software, professional development and training—all of which are critical to our new remote learning plan.

Funding Sources
We are looking at five sources to help plug the shortfall to the greatest extent possible:

– Emergency funding sources created specifically for COVID-19 response including the CARES Act

– Charitable donations from our Board, Advisory Council, families and friends

– A retooled Spring fundraising campaign

– New revenue opportunities, such as expanded private and group lesson enrollment; and

– Short-term borrowing.

Even in this enormously difficult time, I believe there is an opportunity to offset some of our lost revenue with new enrollment. I am keen to open enrollment wherever possible, as soon as possible.

Music has the power to change lives and build community. This is true now, more than ever. For many of our students and clients, music education will be a source of inspiration, expression, joy and stability during this time. With your continued partnership, we will do everything in our power to make this possible.

With gratitude,

Chad Cooper

Executive Director

•••••

3.17.20 4:30 PM

Dear BKCM Community,

I wanted to give you the latest update on what’s happening at the Conservatory. At the time of this writing, we are in the midst of a rapid transformation—a full paradigm shift from in-person to distance learning. For an organization that values in-person interaction, community and making music together, this is a major shift, but one that is absolutely necessary.

If our staff and faculty went above and beyond in the best of times, their commitment, thoughtfulness and creativity are all the more remarkable now. The current predicament has unleashed a wave of innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and awe-inspiring dedication, as our faculty help us reconfigure our entire operation to meet students’ and clients’ needs in this new reality. We are so fortunate to have such extraordinary faculty and program leadership!

Program Updates
Our onsite music education programs, the Community Music School and Suzuki Program, are implementing a remote learning model beginning with lessons scheduled for this Friday (3/20). We will move quickly to launch online group classes, and wherever possible, ensembles as well.

For our onsite Music Therapy clients, music therapy will be offered remotely where it is logistically feasible and clinically appropriate. We are working with each family individually to address the unique needs of each client, striving to maintain continuity of care in any way possible.

Like the Conservatory, many of our offsite Music Partners and Music Therapy schools and community partners are also undergoing enormous changes. We will work alongside them, creatively and diligently, to develop options for continuing engagement for as many of our 6,500 community outreach students and clients as we can.

What Happens Next
You will hear more in the coming days from your Program Directors and Faculty members with the specific next steps for your lessons. In the meantime, a few summary points:

1. CMS & Suzuki – Private Lessons: Resume via videoconference this Friday (3/20)
Beginning this Friday, all CMS and Suzuki private lessons will resume via videoconference at their regularly scheduled times, unless you have specifically heard otherwise from your program director or faculty member.

2. CMS & Suzuki – Group Lessons & Ensembles: Will resume very soon
We will be resuming group lessons CMS and Suzuki group lessons as quickly as we can. This will happen on a staggered basis. Your program directors and faculty will be in touch with next steps.

3. Onsite Music Therapy
The Music Therapy team is reaching out to each family individually to discuss the possibilities for continuing music therapy remotely.

4. Video Conference Platforms
Our default video conference platform for private lessons is Hangouts Meet by Google. Group classes will be using Zoom.

5. Make-ups / Withdrawals / Refunds / Credits
We ask for everyone’s patience concerning make-ups, withdrawals, refunds, etc. We are using the full bandwidth of the organization at the moment to operationalize our program for as many of our students as possible. We will update you on make-ups, withdrawals, and other related enrollment and policy matters within two weeks.

Thank you again for your patience, your flexibility, and your commitment to continuing your or your child’s musical journey.

Best,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

3.13.20 5:28 PM

Dear Friend,

As a supporter of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (BKCM), I wanted to reach out to you directly to let you know how the Conservatory is responding to COVID-19.

As you well know, the situation is changing rapidly — a decision made 4 pm one day feels outdated by 9 am the next morning. If anything, this drives home the importance of being nimble, adaptable, and as communicative as we can with all of our stakeholders.

Our four programs—Suzuki, Community Music School, Music Partners and Music Therapy—are all operational at the moment, but this will undoubtedly look different in the coming days.

Our onsite music education programs, Suzuki and the Community Music School, are preparing to implement a remote learning model. This will initially be rolled out for private lessons. As the private lesson program finds its footing, we will explore ways to offer more online programming with groups classes as our next priority. For our onsite Music Therapy clients, music therapy will be offered remotely where it is logistically feasible and clinically appropriate. For many of our onsite clients this will not be an option.

Our community outreach programs, Music Partners and Music Therapy, are subject to far different dynamics. Decisions with respect to the ongoing operation of these programs lie largely with our partner organizations, and in the case of Music Partners, almost entirely with the Department of Education.

Given all of this, at the highest level, our goals right now are:

• To make the right decisions in consideration of community health and safety.
• To ensure the ongoing viability and health of the Conservatory.
• To ensure the continuity of music education and music therapy for as many of our students and clients as possible.
• To be communicative, transparent, consistent and fair.

Operational decisions will be made in consultation with the Board, our program leadership, and partners, using the best information and the resources we have at our disposal.

Like many of our peer organizations, we are choosing to postpone our Spring Benefit, currently scheduled for May 18^th.  It is still very much our intention to deliver the one-of-a-kind event experience that you expect from the Conservatory. We will announce a future date as soon as we can.  Until then, two things we know for sure:

• The event, in whatever form it takes, will surprise, delight and inspire (read: it’s going to rock); and
• Our fundraising needs will be as vital than ever, as the Conservatory absorbs significant, new financial strains.

With all the unknowns right now, one thing I can say with certainty is that for many of our students and families the continuity of their music education will be one of the bright lights during an otherwise difficult time. It’s not so far-fetched to think that many of the people we touch through their music education and music therapy in the coming days and weeks will reflect back on this later in their lives and think of their music education as a source of inspiration and stability.

Thank you for your continued support in this time of uncertainty. We are so grateful to count you among our supporters.

Please reach out at any time with questions or suggestions.

Sincerely,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

3.12.20 1:00 PM

Dear BKCM Community,

BKCM continues to closely monitor the COVID-19 outbreak. We are receiving daily informational updates from local (Dept of Health & Mental Hygiene, Dept of Education, Dept of Cultural Affairs), state (NY State), and national organizations (CDC). We are also actively receiving information from the many schools and cultural institutions with whom our students, staff and faculty affiliate.*** For the time being, BKCM will continue to operate under normal business hours.  Please note: We will be closing BKCM for three days next week —Tuesday March 17th through Thursday, March 19 — to plan, train staff and faculty, and take other necessary steps to prepare for a potential transition to online learning. We intend to resume lessons on Friday 20th as scheduled. Any changes in our plans will be communicated to the community by 5 pm on March 19th. ***

Anyone whose lessons are impacted by next week’s three day closure, should plan to make up their lesson during the make up week (June 23rd – 25th). If that is not possible, we will work with you on an individual basis to reschedule your lesson.

We have prepared a detailed FAQ with critical information (updated at 1PM 3.12.20) on BKCM’s recommendations and plans related to COVID-19. Please take a few minutes to read the document. Any updates will be hosted on this page, and update notifications will be sent via email to everyone in our community.We will continue to send out frequent updates as the situation continues to evolve. We appreciate your patience and your flexibility as we prepare for potential disruption to lessons and classes. These are certainly extraordinary times, but we believe in the power of music, particularly during adverse times, to bring us joy and to bring us together (virtually, if need be!).

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Best,

Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

11.17.20 4:51 PM

Dear BKCM CMS & Suzuki Families,

We wanted to update you on BKCM’s hybrid learning program, and provide you with some guidance as we prepare for our next block of hybrid learning to begin after the New Year.

*** Please note that the information in this letter is specific to the Suzuki and Community Music School programs. Music Therapy will continue remotely until further notice. ***

BKCM Will Remain Open Until Further Notice

First, as you are aware this afternoon the city announced that NYC public schools would close effective tomorrow. We wanted to let you know that BKCM is not impacted by this mandate, and will be staying open until further notice.

Rising Cases and Potential Closures

Like all of you, we are closely monitoring Covid prevalence throughout the city, as well as in neighborhoods more proximate to BKCM, where the majority of our in person students draw from. Decisions on a potential building closure will factor in mandates / guidance from the city, as well as an ongoing evaluation of local conditions and BKCM-specific considerations. Since BKCM is primarily teaching one on one and small group lessons, we have more flexibility than a traditional school classroom. Our decisions around closure will not necessarily follow the NYC DOE. The welfare and safety of our community is our first priority and we are prepared to close should conditions warrant.

Hybrid Learning – How’s it Going?

After taking the summer to develop and invest in new safety measures and protocols, cleaning procedures, and all the attendant equipment and supplies BKCM reopened for reduced capacity, in person hybrid learning on October 19th. We’ve been excited to welcome our students and faculty back into the building for private lessons. Thus far, it’s going great. 130 students have participated in this first block of hybrid in-person learning. We had planned up to 35% our regular building capacity, but with the number of students and teachers who ultimately opted to stay remote, we are operating at closer to 20% capacity.

For those who have continued remote learning over the last few weeks, thank you for staying with us. Your commitment to your music practice is a testament to the work that we love to do at BKCM no matter the circumstances, reinforcing our mission and belief that music is essential. Our teachers and program directors have been holding bi-monthly professional development trainings to share their remote learning experiences and best practices to provide the same quality music education that BKCM is committed to providing during more ordinary times.

Opting into Hybrid In Person Learning for Block III – January 4 – March 27th,

If you are interested in opting into hybrid learning for the next lesson block (January 4 – March 27th), please be on the lookout for communication from your Program Directors. They will be reaching out with opt in forms for in person hybrid learning over the next several days. As of now, Suzuki and Community Music School are the only departments with in person hybrid learning options. Music Therapy will continue remotely until further notice.

Please be reminded that BKCM is not mandating that teachers return for in person learning. We understand that individual risk factors surrounding Covid impact everyone differently, and are honoring any teacher’s need to continue to teach remotely at this time. As a result, not all students will be able to opt in to hybrid learning. Woodwinds, brass, and voice instruments will continue to learn remotely, as it is still unsafe for aerosol instruments to be learning in person indoors. We appreciate our community’s flexibility and understanding of individual faculty member’s needs to stay home and our safety policies in regard to aerosol based instruments.

COVID Testing Policy

We currently require that students and any parents who are regularly in the building present a negative Covid PCR test prior to the start of each Block (not each time in the building).

For families that are already taking in person hybrid lessons, and families that are considering starting in Block III, please be aware that we are assessing our current testing protocols with our Program Directors and administrative team to determine whether the existing requirements need adjustment. We currently require that students and any parents who are regularly in the building present a negative Covid PCR test prior to the start of each Block.

We appreciate everyone’s patience and adherence to our testing requirements. We understand that it is challenging to factor testing into everyone’s busy schedules, and particularly challenging to get little ones used to regular testing. Ultimately, the safety of our entire community of faculty, staff, and families is our priority and we appreciate our community’s understanding and care.

We will communicate to you any changes in the Covid testing policy by December 10th. We would expect families who are traveling over the holidays to return, and then wait 4-5 days before getting tested. This may necessitate students not being able to join in person until the second in person rotation during Block III.

New Garden Space!

We’re excited to let you all know that our new garden space in the lot adjacent to our existing garden is open! This project has been in the works for several years but was dramatically accelerated with the onset of Covid. Seeing the previously unused, overgrown site transform has been incredibly rewarding for our team and our community. Families waiting for students are welcome to hang out and wait in our beautiful new garden space. The space will be heated and lit during the winter and have two 200 sq ft tents. If you haven’t seen it yet, come by and check it out. We are all so happy with how it’s turned out, and are excited by its possibilities and for our community to enjoy a new neighborhood garden space.

Upcoming Holiday Closures:

A reminder that BKCM will be completely closed on:

November 24 – 29: Thanksgiving Break

December 22 – January 3: Winter Recess

We hope you’re all taking care of yourselves and your loved ones. Have a wonderful and safe holiday, and we look forward to hopefully seeing more of you in person over the next few months.

Best,

Michaela Mechlovitz

Director of Administration

•••••

10.7.20 9:00 PM

Dear BKCM Students & Families,

I am writing as a follow up to my note dated October 3rd.  As promised, please find attached a copy of the BKCM Reopening Plan 2020-21 10.8.2020. The handbook contains our most up to date building operating policies and health and safety protocols. This will be a useful reference for our upcoming Town Halls and further communications from your respective Program Directors.

Reminders, clarifications and updates:

1. Most of our Community Music School (CMS) and Suzuki students, beginning on October 19th, will have the opportunity to resume in person lessonson a rolling two weeks in person, two weeks remote, basis.

2. Please note that Suzuki will start on Oct 19th as well (not Oct 26th as previously indicated) to begin concurrently with CMS.

3. If you opt in to hybrid lessons, you will get further communication from your Program Director regarding your specific in person start date.

4. The hybrid in person / remote lesson program applies to the Suzuki program, and CMS private lessons. CMS group lessons will generally continue remotely.

5. Please note that Music Therapy will continue remotely, at least through year end.

6. To reiterate from my last email, just as students may continue their lessons remotely, we are not requiring our faculty to return for in person teaching. We know and expect many exceptions and unique circumstances, all of which will be handled with the utmost consideration.

7. Last, as noted in the handbook, all students, faculty, staff and family members will be required to present a negative PCR Covid-19 test in order to start in person lessons. The test must be taken within two weeks of the in person start date.

Reopening details will be discussed in a series of town halls. Please join if you can.

• Oct 8 – Suzuki Families Reopening Town Hall @ 8:30 pm
• Oct 13 – CMS Families Reopening Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 14 – Open / All Families Town Hall @ 7:00 pm

Complete this Hybrid Opt-In Form & Survey By Oct 9th (Specific to CMS & Suzuki)

To help us better understand your specific plans, we ask you to complete this form by October 9th for every member of your household who is enrolled (or plans to enroll!). The survey asks you to choose one of three options:

• Begin hybrid / in person lessons starting with the October 19 – December 21 block
• Begin hybrid / in person lessons in a later block (one starting in January, and one in April)
• Stay remote the entire year

The options to begin hybrid lessons at a later date (Jan or April) or stay remote all year are not binding. In other words, you may elect now to start at a later date and ultimately decide to stay remote all year, or vice versa. However, if you wish to start in person during the first phase, you must make that election now and join at the appointed start date. You will not be able to join a reopening phase in progress.

There is so much more to share about our reopening. Please join us for a town hall, stay tuned for more communications from your program directors, read our forthcoming reopening handbook, and complete the opt-in form / survey as soon as possible!

The staff and faculty truly look forward to seeing you (masks and all!) in the next few weeks, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to open our front doors again.

See you soon,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

10.3.20 3:19 PM

Dear BKCM Students & Families,

Happy October. I am excited to share news of the Conservatory’s reopening plans. If you’ve been holding off on registering, I encourage you to read on — we have much good news to share.
 

In-person lessons will resume on October 19th on a hybrid, low density basis, phased in by program. Most of our Community Music School and Suzuki students, beginning later in October, will have the opportunity to resume in person lessons on a rolling two weeks in person, two weeks remote, basis. This approach allows us to operate the building at a very low density, while accommodating the majority of our on-site private lesson and Suzuki students. For a high level summary of reopening our plans, please read through this presentation.

As we note in the presentation, decisions about resuming on site lessons vary from program to program, by class format, and even by instrument. The nature of what we do at BKCM, and the physical attributes and limitations of our building, requires a very granular level of decision making. Program Directors will be communicating more specific information and guidance to their students and families in the coming days.

Just as students may continue their lessons remotely, we are not requiring our faculty to return for in person teaching. We know and expect many exceptions and unique circumstances, all of which will be handled with the utmost consideration. Ultimately, our goal is to safely welcome back as many of our students and faculty as possible.

You can still register for the 2020 – 2021 school year! While many of our Community Music School groups and ensembles are meeting remotely, we still have private lesson availability for both in person and remote instruction. For information on enrollment and to sign up for a trial lesson, please call our registers (718 622 3300).

Complete reopening details will be shared and discussed in a series of town halls. Also, keep an eye out for our comprehensive reopening handbook. Here are a few key dates for reference (Zoom links hyperlinked):

• Sep 28 – Soft reopening begins for faculty and staff
• Oct 7 – BKCM distributes reopening handbook
• Oct 8 – Suzuki Families Reopening Town Hall @ 8:30 pm
• Oct 13 – CMS Families Reopening Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 14 – Open / All Families Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 19 – In person Community Music School private lessons resume
• Oct 26 – In person Suzuki lessons resume

Please complete this survey! To help us better understand your specific plans, we ask you to complete this survey by October 9th for every member of your household who is enrolled (or plans to enroll!). The survey asks you to choose one of three options:

• Begin hybrid / in person lessons in October
• Begin hybrid / in person lessons at a later date (two other windows to begin hybrid / in person lessons are planned – one in Jan and one in April)
• Stay remote the entire year

The options to begin in person at a later date (Jan or April) or stay remote all year are not binding. In other words, you may elect now to start at a later date and ultimately decide to stay remote all year, or vice versa. However, if you wish to start in person during the first phase, you must make that election now and join at the appointed start date. You will not be able to join a reopening phase in progress.

We bought the vacant parcel of land adjoining our garden! One especially exciting development that will greatly assist with our reopening: we acquired the vacant parcel of land that adjoins our garden. Our immediate goal is to activate the site and use it as waiting area and gathering / circulation space. We want our students, families, caretakers and other members of the BKCM community to be able to attend classes and events as safely as possible – so every extra square foot of space gives us more operational flexibility. There are a range of things we can do with the site over time to make it more attractive and more public depending on the needs and wishes of BKCM and our neighbors. The intent is certainly for the space to function much like our existing garden—to be open to the public for block-wide events and broader community use.

I know you will have many questions… and there is so much more to share about our reopening. Please join us for a town hall, stay tuned for more communications from your program directors, read our forthcoming reopening handbook, and complete the survey as soon as possible!

I truly look forward to seeing you (masks and all!) this fall, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to open our front doors again. Most of all, I’m thrilled that students and teachers will have opportunities to connect in person again! Until then, I leave you with this pic of one of our (15!) newly crafted portable plexiglass partitions.

See you soon,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••
3.31.20 2:21 PM

Dear Friends,

I hope that you and your loved ones are well during this tremendously difficult time.

I’m writing with an update on the state of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, as we begin the second week of our reinvention as a virtual music community. I am deeply encouraged by what I am seeing across all of the Conservatory’s programs. Still, there is much to do in the coming weeks as we endeavor to relaunch our programs at our 70+ community-based organization and public school partner sites—many of which are under tremendous pressure.

Our onsite programs have made terrific progress in transitioning to remote learning. Across our Suzuki, Community Music School and Music Therapy divisions, we are now providing remote private music lessons and music therapy sessions to 740 students and clients. When you add our group music classes and ensembles, we are reaching 950 out of 1,000 students, or 95% of our pre-pandemic onsite student/client population.

When it comes to our offsite Music Partners and Music Therapy schools and community organization partners, there are many unknowns. These partners—including the New York City public school system, City and State agencies, social service agencies and many other smaller community organizations—are under-resourced and facing enormous pressure to reinvent themselves. We are doing everything we can to coordinate with our partners and create options for engaging the students and clients we serve. We will continue to keep you posted as these plans develop.

Onsite and offsite, we are developing, adapting and refining our online learning curricula in real time to make our programs as robust, interactive and engaging as possible. We are also adapting and refining our understanding of what it means to be a community. For BKCM, the concept of community has always been intertwined with our physical home in Park Slope. Today our community comes together virtually, from the homes of students, staff, faculty and music therapists across Brooklyn and beyond. Our building remains an integral part of the Conservatory’s identity; now, though, it is our strengths as an organization—our passion for our mission, our extraordinary people, our entrepreneurial spirit and our deep expertise in music education and music therapy—that are sustaining and even growing our BKCM community.

Thanks to your generosity, the financial health of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music improved significantly in the years prior to this crisis. This made a crucial difference in how we have been able to respond. As the crisis has mounted, you have been unfailingly encouraging, gracious and supportive with your offers of help, expertise and financial support. We will take you up! As we adapt to our new reality, I look forward to being in touch with ways to engage with you to help BKCM navigate through this enormously challenging time.

Some additional details about our programs and progress:

Onsite Music Therapy. In our first week of virtual learning, we conducted remote Music Therapy sessions for almost all of our 110 on-site MT clients (excluding our dayhab groups). While remote therapy may not ultimately work for everyone, we have been encouraged by the interest from our clients, and the thoughtful and creative approaches our therapists are taking to this format.

Community Music School. Of our 389 private lesson students in the Community Music School, all but ten are moving forward with online lessons. Group classes are a heavier lift. Each is unique, and we are experimenting with different formats and platforms to create the best learning experience. As we begin our second week of remote learning, I am happy to share that 36 of 40 of our group classes and ensembles are convening in some capacity.

Suzuki. Suzuki had a solid opening week. Virtually all of our 240 Suzuki students have transitioned to online. Group classes are the next wave; they are being rolled out by instrument group. Our Suzuki Early Childhood program, SECE, also kicked off this past weekend.

Music Partners. NYC public schools reopened via remote learning a week ago. Several of our Music Partners schools will resume their music programming with BKCM this week. Most are still in a holding pattern. For now, our teachers are experimenting with different approaches and working with our school partners to be ready with a plan and curriculum that we can plug into whatever platform our schools elect to use. We want to make it easy and additive for our partners to bring our programming back into the fold for our 4,500 Music Partners students.

Offsite Music Therapy. Similar to Music Partners, our offsite Music Therapy partners vary widely in their resources and their ability to retool themselves for remote learning. Our largest offsite program, the Manhattan Childrens Center, has already resumed. The Jackson Developmental Center (Queens) has cancelled. Of our eight CAMBA-funded programs, the four that rely on the City’s Department of Youth & Community Development (DYCD) are in the process of restarting. We hope the other four will resume in the coming weeks as well.

Developing Our Tech Prowess. In two short weeks we have made substantial progress on the tech front. Most private lessons are taking place on Google Hangouts Meet. Group classes are taking place on Zoom. Music Partners is looking into platforms such as FlipGrid, Acapella, ClassDojo and BandLab, among others. We are investing in software subscriptions (such as Zoom licenses) and hardware (including Chromebooks and web cameras) to ensure that every faculty member has a high-quality device to provide lessons. We have set up a two-tiered tech support team, with our registrars acting as the frontline. The most complicated requests are transferred to our two IT specialists.

Looking After the Welfare of Our Staff & Faculty. We are greatly concerned about the well-being of our staff and faculty. They are the lifeblood of BKCM, the number one reason our families come to the Conservatory. For many of them, we are their livelihood. The inequities in COVID-19’s affect on differently resourced communities reverberate through our faculty. Our on-site faculty have largely resumed their prior teaching schedules, while our offsite teaching artists and music therapists are in limbo, as the fate of their programs rests largely with our partners and will take weeks to resolve. This is not to say they are idle; on the contrary, these faculty members are working diligently to develop new skills and pedagogy to engage students and clients remotely. My view is that we are one institution, not four P&Ls, and that we should look after as many of our people for as long as possible without putting the organization at financial risk.

Funding Needs. As of now, we don’t know what the shortfall in our revenues will be relative to our 2020 fiscal year budget. We are analyzing multiple financial scenarios. Historically, the three biggest drivers of spring revenue are our spring fundraiser, our revenues from offsite spring programming and our registration revenues for the following school year. The duration and intensity of the economic fallout from COVID-19 will have varying effects on these three streams. At the same time, we are making necessary but unbudgeted investments in hardware, software, professional development and training—all of which are critical to our new remote learning plan.

Funding Sources
We are looking at five sources to help plug the shortfall to the greatest extent possible:

– Emergency funding sources created specifically for COVID-19 response including the CARES Act

– Charitable donations from our Board, Advisory Council, families and friends

– A retooled Spring fundraising campaign

– New revenue opportunities, such as expanded private and group lesson enrollment; and

– Short-term borrowing.

Even in this enormously difficult time, I believe there is an opportunity to offset some of our lost revenue with new enrollment. I am keen to open enrollment wherever possible, as soon as possible.

Music has the power to change lives and build community. This is true now, more than ever. For many of our students and clients, music education will be a source of inspiration, expression, joy and stability during this time. With your continued partnership, we will do everything in our power to make this possible.

With gratitude,

Chad Cooper

Executive Director

•••••

3.16.20 3:27 PM

Dear Community Music School Students

We are planning to begin teaching all private lessons and group classes online beginning this Friday, March 20th. We are taking this week to train our teachers on the technology and develop best practices for continuing the learning online.

We are planning to continue with the current schedule with your current teacher and class. I will be sending individual updates to each private lesson student and group class. Please be on the lookout for an email from us in the coming days with instructions on how to login to your lesson or class.

In the meantime, if you would kindly fill out this quick remote learning assessment. We are curious to know what your online capabilities are at home so we can best assess how to deliver our curriculum in the best way possible.

Thank you again and I wish you and your family safety and health during this time.

Brian Drye
Director of Community Music School

•••••

3.13.20 5:28 PM

Dear Friend,

As a supporter of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (BKCM), I wanted to reach out to you directly to let you know how the Conservatory is responding to COVID-19.

As you well know, the situation is changing rapidly — a decision made 4 pm one day feels outdated by 9 am the next morning. If anything, this drives home the importance of being nimble, adaptable, and as communicative as we can with all of our stakeholders.

Our four programs—Suzuki, Community Music School, Music Partners and Music Therapy—are all operational at the moment, but this will undoubtedly look different in the coming days.

Our onsite music education programs, Suzuki and the Community Music School, are preparing to implement a remote learning model. This will initially be rolled out for private lessons. As the private lesson program finds its footing, we will explore ways to offer more online programming with groups classes as our next priority. For our onsite Music Therapy clients, music therapy will be offered remotely where it is logistically feasible and clinically appropriate. For many of our onsite clients this will not be an option.

Our community outreach programs, Music Partners and Music Therapy, are subject to far different dynamics. Decisions with respect to the ongoing operation of these programs lie largely with our partner organizations, and in the case of Music Partners, almost entirely with the Department of Education.

Given all of this, at the highest level, our goals right now are:

• To make the right decisions in consideration of community health and safety.
• To ensure the ongoing viability and health of the Conservatory.
• To ensure the continuity of music education and music therapy for as many of our students and clients as possible.
• To be communicative, transparent, consistent and fair.

Operational decisions will be made in consultation with the Board, our program leadership, and partners, using the best information and the resources we have at our disposal.

Like many of our peer organizations, we are choosing to postpone our Spring Benefit, currently scheduled for May 18^th.  It is still very much our intention to deliver the one-of-a-kind event experience that you expect from the Conservatory. We will announce a future date as soon as we can.  Until then, two things we know for sure:

• The event, in whatever form it takes, will surprise, delight and inspire (read: it’s going to rock); and
• Our fundraising needs will be as vital than ever, as the Conservatory absorbs significant, new financial strains.

With all the unknowns right now, one thing I can say with certainty is that for many of our students and families the continuity of their music education will be one of the bright lights during an otherwise difficult time. It’s not so far-fetched to think that many of the people we touch through their music education and music therapy in the coming days and weeks will reflect back on this later in their lives and think of their music education as a source of inspiration and stability.

Thank you for your continued support in this time of uncertainty. We are so grateful to count you among our supporters.

Please reach out at any time with questions or suggestions.

Sincerely,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

3.13.20 4:39 PM

CMS Private Lesson, Group Class, SECE and Early Childhood Students,

We are suspending classes and lessons beginning Saturday March 14 to Monday March 16th, in addition to remaining closed from March 17th to March 19th.

We will be using this time to work with our faculty and staff to gear up for the transition to remote learning. Please stay tuned for updates from our staff and teachers here at the conservatory. Please be on the lookout for more information in the coming days. We are committed to putting whatever resources we can to support the continuity of your classes and lessons in an online learning environment.

If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Brian Drye
CMS Program Director

•••••

3.12.20 1:00 PM

Dear BKCM Community,

BKCM continues to closely monitor the COVID-19 outbreak. We are receiving daily informational updates from local (Dept of Health & Mental Hygiene, Dept of Education, Dept of Cultural Affairs), state (NY State), and national organizations (CDC). We are also actively receiving information from the many schools and cultural institutions with whom our students, staff and faculty affiliate.*** For the time being, BKCM will continue to operate under normal business hours.  Please note: We will be closing BKCM for three days next week —Tuesday March 17th through Thursday, March 19 — to plan, train staff and faculty, and take other necessary steps to prepare for a potential transition to online learning. We intend to resume lessons on Friday 20th as scheduled. Any changes in our plans will be communicated to the community by 5 pm on March 19th. ***

Anyone whose lessons are impacted by next week’s three day closure, should plan to make up their lesson during the make up week (June 23rd – 25th). If that is not possible, we will work with you on an individual basis to reschedule your lesson.

We have prepared a detailed FAQ with critical information (updated at 1PM 3.12.20) on BKCM’s recommendations and plans related to COVID-19. Please take a few minutes to read the document. Any updates will be hosted on this page, and update notifications will be sent via email to everyone in our community.We will continue to send out frequent updates as the situation continues to evolve. We appreciate your patience and your flexibility as we prepare for potential disruption to lessons and classes. These are certainly extraordinary times, but we believe in the power of music, particularly during adverse times, to bring us joy and to bring us together (virtually, if need be!).

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Best,

Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

11.17.20 4:51 PM

Dear BKCM CMS & Suzuki Families,

We wanted to update you on BKCM’s hybrid learning program, and provide you with some guidance as we prepare for our next block of hybrid learning to begin after the New Year.

*** Please note that the information in this letter is specific to the Suzuki and Community Music School programs. Music Therapy will continue remotely until further notice. ***

BKCM Will Remain Open Until Further Notice

First, as you are aware this afternoon the city announced that NYC public schools would close effective tomorrow. We wanted to let you know that BKCM is not impacted by this mandate, and will be staying open until further notice.

Rising Cases and Potential Closures

Like all of you, we are closely monitoring Covid prevalence throughout the city, as well as in neighborhoods more proximate to BKCM, where the majority of our in person students draw from. Decisions on a potential building closure will factor in mandates / guidance from the city, as well as an ongoing evaluation of local conditions and BKCM-specific considerations. Since BKCM is primarily teaching one on one and small group lessons, we have more flexibility than a traditional school classroom. Our decisions around closure will not necessarily follow the NYC DOE. The welfare and safety of our community is our first priority and we are prepared to close should conditions warrant.

Hybrid Learning – How’s it Going?

After taking the summer to develop and invest in new safety measures and protocols, cleaning procedures, and all the attendant equipment and supplies BKCM reopened for reduced capacity, in person hybrid learning on October 19th. We’ve been excited to welcome our students and faculty back into the building for private lessons. Thus far, it’s going great. 130 students have participated in this first block of hybrid in-person learning. We had planned up to 35% our regular building capacity, but with the number of students and teachers who ultimately opted to stay remote, we are operating at closer to 20% capacity.

For those who have continued remote learning over the last few weeks, thank you for staying with us. Your commitment to your music practice is a testament to the work that we love to do at BKCM no matter the circumstances, reinforcing our mission and belief that music is essential. Our teachers and program directors have been holding bi-monthly professional development trainings to share their remote learning experiences and best practices to provide the same quality music education that BKCM is committed to providing during more ordinary times.

Opting into Hybrid In Person Learning for Block III – January 4 – March 27th,

If you are interested in opting into hybrid learning for the next lesson block (January 4 – March 27th), please be on the lookout for communication from your Program Directors. They will be reaching out with opt in forms for in person hybrid learning over the next several days. As of now, Suzuki and Community Music School are the only departments with in person hybrid learning options. Music Therapy will continue remotely until further notice.

Please be reminded that BKCM is not mandating that teachers return for in person learning. We understand that individual risk factors surrounding Covid impact everyone differently, and are honoring any teacher’s need to continue to teach remotely at this time. As a result, not all students will be able to opt in to hybrid learning. Woodwinds, brass, and voice instruments will continue to learn remotely, as it is still unsafe for aerosol instruments to be learning in person indoors. We appreciate our community’s flexibility and understanding of individual faculty member’s needs to stay home and our safety policies in regard to aerosol based instruments.

COVID Testing Policy

We currently require that students and any parents who are regularly in the building present a negative Covid PCR test prior to the start of each Block (not each time in the building).

For families that are already taking in person hybrid lessons, and families that are considering starting in Block III, please be aware that we are assessing our current testing protocols with our Program Directors and administrative team to determine whether the existing requirements need adjustment. We currently require that students and any parents who are regularly in the building present a negative Covid PCR test prior to the start of each Block.

We appreciate everyone’s patience and adherence to our testing requirements. We understand that it is challenging to factor testing into everyone’s busy schedules, and particularly challenging to get little ones used to regular testing. Ultimately, the safety of our entire community of faculty, staff, and families is our priority and we appreciate our community’s understanding and care.

We will communicate to you any changes in the Covid testing policy by December 10th. We would expect families who are traveling over the holidays to return, and then wait 4-5 days before getting tested. This may necessitate students not being able to join in person until the second in person rotation during Block III.

New Garden Space!

We’re excited to let you all know that our new garden space in the lot adjacent to our existing garden is open! This project has been in the works for several years but was dramatically accelerated with the onset of Covid. Seeing the previously unused, overgrown site transform has been incredibly rewarding for our team and our community. Families waiting for students are welcome to hang out and wait in our beautiful new garden space. The space will be heated and lit during the winter and have two 200 sq ft tents. If you haven’t seen it yet, come by and check it out. We are all so happy with how it’s turned out, and are excited by its possibilities and for our community to enjoy a new neighborhood garden space.

Upcoming Holiday Closures:

A reminder that BKCM will be completely closed on:

November 24 – 29: Thanksgiving Break

December 22 – January 3: Winter Recess

We hope you’re all taking care of yourselves and your loved ones. Have a wonderful and safe holiday, and we look forward to hopefully seeing more of you in person over the next few months.

Best,

Michaela Mechlovitz

Director of Administration

•••••

10.30.20 12:37PM

Dear Suzuki Families,

Happy Halloween and Día de Muertos!

A few reminders:

1) ANYONE ENTERING THE BUILDING (including parents) must have submitted a negative COVID-19 PCR (not rapid) test to Alex.Selawsky@bkcm.org. We have to turn away anyone without a test. (You can present a test result in person, but we prefer that they are sent ahead of time.) Find child-friendly recommended testing sites HERE. I took my 3 year old on Monday, and we were able to have a successful test.

2) THIS SUNDAY: sign up for an IN PERSON performance class hosted by Emile Blondel at 5:30 PM in the Concert Hall! There are 7 spots remaining. Find sign up link below for this and other upcoming performance classes.

3) Upcoming performing dates are listed at the end of this email, including the wonderful Piano Halloween Festival on Saturday at 11 AM! I highly recommend this very fun event featuring costumes and unique spooky repertoire. Zoom link below, but for audience members, we prefer that you view via the livestream on Facebook if possible; instructions may be found here.

4) I highly recommend this interview with three-time Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn. Hilary Hahn first started learning violin through the Suzuki Method when she was 3 years old, and now she has returned to Suzuki to record violin for books 1-3. She offers her insights into the Suzuki approach and her new recordings. It’s an enjoyable read for most anyone interested in music.

Performance Class Sign Ups:

Sunday, November 1st 5:15 PM – Emile Blondel – IN PERSON

Sunday, November 8th 4:30 PM – Emile Blondel – IN PERSON

Sunday, November 8th 5:15 PM – Emile Blondel – IN PERSON

Friday, November 13th 5:30 PM – Ruth Klukoff – VIRTUAL

Sunday, November 22nd 5:30 PM – Ruth Klukoff – VIRTUAL

Suzuki Event Dates (ALL VIRTUAL) 

• Piano Halloween Festival, Saturday, October 31, 11 AM
• Sunday, December 13 – Cello/Bass & Violin Solo Recitals – throughout the day; times TBD
• Thursday, January 14 – Guitar/Flute Solo Recitals – 5 PM & 6:30 PM 
• Sunday, January 31 – Piano Solo Recitals – times TBD
• Sunday, January 24 (&/or Jan 31) – PENDING Virtual Suzuki Celebration & Benefit / String Festival
• Suzuki Honors Recitals: (students nominated by faculty at their solo recitals) 
  • February 6, 2021, Teen Recital….4 PM (dress rehearsal February 5 at 7 PM) 
  • March 13, 2021, Junior Recital….3 PM (dress rehearsal March 12 at 5:30 PM)

Thank you everyone for reading!

Very best,

Julianne Carney-Chung

Suzuki Program Director

•••••

10.7.20 9:00 PM

Dear BKCM Students & Families,

I am writing as a follow up to my note dated October 3rd.  As promised, please find attached a copy of the BKCM Reopening Plan 2020-21 10.8.2020. The handbook contains our most up to date building operating policies and health and safety protocols. This will be a useful reference for our upcoming Town Halls and further communications from your respective Program Directors.

Reminders, clarifications and updates:

1. Most of our Community Music School (CMS) and Suzuki students, beginning on October 19th, will have the opportunity to resume in person lessonson a rolling two weeks in person, two weeks remote, basis.

2. Please note that Suzuki will start on Oct 19th as well (not Oct 26th as previously indicated) to begin concurrently with CMS.

3. If you opt in to hybrid lessons, you will get further communication from your Program Director regarding your specific in person start date.

4. The hybrid in person / remote lesson program applies to the Suzuki program, and CMS private lessons. CMS group lessons will generally continue remotely.

5. Please note that Music Therapy will continue remotely, at least through year end.

6. To reiterate from my last email, just as students may continue their lessons remotely, we are not requiring our faculty to return for in person teaching. We know and expect many exceptions and unique circumstances, all of which will be handled with the utmost consideration.

7. Last, as noted in the handbook, all students, faculty, staff and family members will be required to present a negative PCR Covid-19 test in order to start in person lessons. The test must be taken within two weeks of the in person start date.

Reopening details will be discussed in a series of town halls. Please join if you can.

• Oct 8 – Suzuki Families Reopening Town Hall @ 8:30 pm
• Oct 13 – CMS Families Reopening Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 14 – Open / All Families Town Hall @ 7:00 pm

Complete this Hybrid Opt-In Form & Survey By Oct 9th (Specific to CMS & Suzuki)

To help us better understand your specific plans, we ask you to complete this form by October 9th for every member of your household who is enrolled (or plans to enroll!). The survey asks you to choose one of three options:

• Begin hybrid / in person lessons starting with the October 19 – December 21 block
• Begin hybrid / in person lessons in a later block (one starting in January, and one in April)
• Stay remote the entire year

The options to begin hybrid lessons at a later date (Jan or April) or stay remote all year are not binding. In other words, you may elect now to start at a later date and ultimately decide to stay remote all year, or vice versa. However, if you wish to start in person during the first phase, you must make that election now and join at the appointed start date. You will not be able to join a reopening phase in progress.

There is so much more to share about our reopening. Please join us for a town hall, stay tuned for more communications from your program directors, read our forthcoming reopening handbook, and complete the opt-in form / survey as soon as possible!

The staff and faculty truly look forward to seeing you (masks and all!) in the next few weeks, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to open our front doors again.

See you soon,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

10.3.20 3:19 PM

Dear BKCM Students & Families,

Happy October. I am excited to share news of the Conservatory’s reopening plans. If you’ve been holding off on registering, I encourage you to read on — we have much good news to share.
 

In-person lessons will resume on October 19th on a hybrid, low density basis, phased in by program. Most of our Community Music School and Suzuki students, beginning later in October, will have the opportunity to resume in person lessons on a rolling two weeks in person, two weeks remote, basis. This approach allows us to operate the building at a very low density, while accommodating the majority of our on-site private lesson and Suzuki students. For a high level summary of reopening our plans, please read through this presentation.

As we note in the presentation, decisions about resuming on site lessons vary from program to program, by class format, and even by instrument. The nature of what we do at BKCM, and the physical attributes and limitations of our building, requires a very granular level of decision making. Program Directors will be communicating more specific information and guidance to their students and families in the coming days.

Just as students may continue their lessons remotely, we are not requiring our faculty to return for in person teaching. We know and expect many exceptions and unique circumstances, all of which will be handled with the utmost consideration. Ultimately, our goal is to safely welcome back as many of our students and faculty as possible.

You can still register for the 2020 – 2021 school year! While many of our Community Music School groups and ensembles are meeting remotely, we still have private lesson availability for both in person and remote instruction. For information on enrollment and to sign up for a trial lesson, please call our registers (718 622 3300).

Complete reopening details will be shared and discussed in a series of town halls. Also, keep an eye out for our comprehensive reopening handbook. Here are a few key dates for reference (Zoom links hyperlinked):

• Sep 28 – Soft reopening begins for faculty and staff
• Oct 7 – BKCM distributes reopening handbook
• Oct 8 – Suzuki Families Reopening Town Hall @ 8:30 pm
• Oct 13 – CMS Families Reopening Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 14 – Open / All Families Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 19 – In person Community Music School private lessons resume
• Oct 26 – In person Suzuki lessons resume

Please complete this survey! To help us better understand your specific plans, we ask you to complete this survey by October 9th for every member of your household who is enrolled (or plans to enroll!). The survey asks you to choose one of three options:

• Begin hybrid / in person lessons in October
• Begin hybrid / in person lessons at a later date (two other windows to begin hybrid / in person lessons are planned – one in Jan and one in April)
• Stay remote the entire year

The options to begin in person at a later date (Jan or April) or stay remote all year are not binding. In other words, you may elect now to start at a later date and ultimately decide to stay remote all year, or vice versa. However, if you wish to start in person during the first phase, you must make that election now and join at the appointed start date. You will not be able to join a reopening phase in progress.

We bought the vacant parcel of land adjoining our garden! One especially exciting development that will greatly assist with our reopening: we acquired the vacant parcel of land that adjoins our garden. Our immediate goal is to activate the site and use it as waiting area and gathering / circulation space. We want our students, families, caretakers and other members of the BKCM community to be able to attend classes and events as safely as possible – so every extra square foot of space gives us more operational flexibility. There are a range of things we can do with the site over time to make it more attractive and more public depending on the needs and wishes of BKCM and our neighbors. The intent is certainly for the space to function much like our existing garden—to be open to the public for block-wide events and broader community use.

I know you will have many questions… and there is so much more to share about our reopening. Please join us for a town hall, stay tuned for more communications from your program directors, read our forthcoming reopening handbook, and complete the survey as soon as possible!

I truly look forward to seeing you (masks and all!) this fall, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to open our front doors again. Most of all, I’m thrilled that students and teachers will have opportunities to connect in person again! Until then, I leave you with this pic of one of our (15!) newly crafted portable plexiglass partitions.

See you soon,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••
4.30.20 3:46 PM

Dear Suzuki Families and Faculty,

This Sunday, May 3, four performing events featuring Cello, Bass, Flute and Piano students will take place via Webinar! May 14 & May 17 events will feature Guitar, Violin & Viola.

BKCM is offering a very exciting roster of summer programs that are fun, creative, offer a big break from the usual, and there’s something for everyone. This will be in addition to our online summer private lessons. The summer session will run July 1 – August 31. Watch your BKCM emails in the next two weeks for more details.

REMINDER: BKCM will be proceeding with enrollment starting June 15 for the 2020-2021 Suzuki program. If you haven’t already, please complete the scheduling survey for each of your children AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! Deadline is TONIGHT. If you aren’t able to fill it out by then, your department head will reach out to you directly, but please save them that effort if at all possible.

Find separate scheduling surveys for each instrument group here:
http://suzuki.bkcm.org/2020-21-scheduling-surveys/

Please fill out this exit survey if you are not planning to return.

Scholarships/Payment Plans:
BKCM remains committed to distributing the $15,ooo for Suzuki scholarships that we raised in January. If you are interested in applying for a scholarship, email me and I will send the application form when it is ready. Additionally, we will expand our payment plan options to include a lower initial payment and several additional payments. More details will be available soon.

PERFORMING EVENTS THIS SUNDAY:
For those who are not participating (extended family, grandparents, and 1st & 2nd year piano students not playing in the festival) we STRONGLY recommend watching on Facebook. Use this link: https://bkcm.org/facebook-live-instructions/

Email me ASAP if you would like to discuss privacy for your child’s performance.

Sunday, May 3
10 AM Cello/Flute Solo Recital
10:45 AM Cello Solo Recital
11:30 AM Cello/Bass Solo Recital

Sunday, May 3
2:45 PM Piano Festival Concert

May 14 & May 17
Guitar & Violin/Viola Solo Recitals

I am looking forward to sharing these wonderful performances with our big community!

Sincerely,

Julianne Carney-Chung
Suzuki Program Director

•••••

4.23.2020 10:19 PM

•••••

4.12.20 9:27 AM

Dear Suzuki Families,

I trust and hope that you all are finding new ways to celebrate the holidays this week in new ways. Chag Pesach Sameach and Happy Easter.

We’ve been connecting online with extended family, and held an Easter egg hunt in our living room this morning. Mark is delivering an iPad to his father today, who is 98 and in good health, but whom we haven’t seen in over a month.

A reminder that there are no regularly scheduled group/theory classes or private lessons today through next Friday, due to the originally scheduled spring break.

Teachers may have scheduled make up private lessons on these days. Private teachers will have confirmed with you about this directly.

BKCM will be offering make up private lessons to those missed due to COVID-19 closures, either in the upcoming days, or in June, per individual teachers’ schedules. Group/theory classes missed during the COVID-19 transition week will not be made up.

The department heads and teachers are working hard together to put together an online performing event experience. Please watch your email for more updates on that.

When we are able to be in the same place again, I know we will cherish the privilege deeply.

Please continue to send your updates! I would love to hear how/whether your relationship with music has shifted during this experience. For me, the joy of playing, listening and sharing has been renewed.

Dorothy Savitch, our Music Partners director, shared this recent photo:

Thank you for reading, and stay well!

My very best,
Julianne Carney-Chung
Suzuki Program Director

3.31.20 2:21 PM

Dear Friends,

I hope that you and your loved ones are well during this tremendously difficult time.

I’m writing with an update on the state of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, as we begin the second week of our reinvention as a virtual music community. I am deeply encouraged by what I am seeing across all of the Conservatory’s programs. Still, there is much to do in the coming weeks as we endeavor to relaunch our programs at our 70+ community-based organization and public school partner sites—many of which are under tremendous pressure.

Our onsite programs have made terrific progress in transitioning to remote learning. Across our Suzuki, Community Music School and Music Therapy divisions, we are now providing remote private music lessons and music therapy sessions to 740 students and clients. When you add our group music classes and ensembles, we are reaching 950 out of 1,000 students, or 95% of our pre-pandemic onsite student/client population.

When it comes to our offsite Music Partners and Music Therapy schools and community organization partners, there are many unknowns. These partners—including the New York City public school system, City and State agencies, social service agencies and many other smaller community organizations—are under-resourced and facing enormous pressure to reinvent themselves. We are doing everything we can to coordinate with our partners and create options for engaging the students and clients we serve. We will continue to keep you posted as these plans develop.

Onsite and offsite, we are developing, adapting and refining our online learning curricula in real time to make our programs as robust, interactive and engaging as possible. We are also adapting and refining our understanding of what it means to be a community. For BKCM, the concept of community has always been intertwined with our physical home in Park Slope. Today our community comes together virtually, from the homes of students, staff, faculty and music therapists across Brooklyn and beyond. Our building remains an integral part of the Conservatory’s identity; now, though, it is our strengths as an organization—our passion for our mission, our extraordinary people, our entrepreneurial spirit and our deep expertise in music education and music therapy—that are sustaining and even growing our BKCM community.

Thanks to your generosity, the financial health of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music improved significantly in the years prior to this crisis. This made a crucial difference in how we have been able to respond. As the crisis has mounted, you have been unfailingly encouraging, gracious and supportive with your offers of help, expertise and financial support. We will take you up! As we adapt to our new reality, I look forward to being in touch with ways to engage with you to help BKCM navigate through this enormously challenging time.

Some additional details about our programs and progress:

Onsite Music Therapy. In our first week of virtual learning, we conducted remote Music Therapy sessions for almost all of our 110 on-site MT clients (excluding our dayhab groups). While remote therapy may not ultimately work for everyone, we have been encouraged by the interest from our clients, and the thoughtful and creative approaches our therapists are taking to this format.

Community Music School. Of our 389 private lesson students in the Community Music School, all but ten are moving forward with online lessons. Group classes are a heavier lift. Each is unique, and we are experimenting with different formats and platforms to create the best learning experience. As we begin our second week of remote learning, I am happy to share that 36 of 40 of our group classes and ensembles are convening in some capacity.

Suzuki. Suzuki had a solid opening week. Virtually all of our 240 Suzuki students have transitioned to online. Group classes are the next wave; they are being rolled out by instrument group. Our Suzuki Early Childhood program, SECE, also kicked off this past weekend.

Music Partners. NYC public schools reopened via remote learning a week ago. Several of our Music Partners schools will resume their music programming with BKCM this week. Most are still in a holding pattern. For now, our teachers are experimenting with different approaches and working with our school partners to be ready with a plan and curriculum that we can plug into whatever platform our schools elect to use. We want to make it easy and additive for our partners to bring our programming back into the fold for our 4,500 Music Partners students.

Offsite Music Therapy. Similar to Music Partners, our offsite Music Therapy partners vary widely in their resources and their ability to retool themselves for remote learning. Our largest offsite program, the Manhattan Childrens Center, has already resumed. The Jackson Developmental Center (Queens) has cancelled. Of our eight CAMBA-funded programs, the four that rely on the City’s Department of Youth & Community Development (DYCD) are in the process of restarting. We hope the other four will resume in the coming weeks as well.

Developing Our Tech Prowess. In two short weeks we have made substantial progress on the tech front. Most private lessons are taking place on Google Hangouts Meet. Group classes are taking place on Zoom. Music Partners is looking into platforms such as FlipGrid, Acapella, ClassDojo and BandLab, among others. We are investing in software subscriptions (such as Zoom licenses) and hardware (including Chromebooks and web cameras) to ensure that every faculty member has a high-quality device to provide lessons. We have set up a two-tiered tech support team, with our registrars acting as the frontline. The most complicated requests are transferred to our two IT specialists.

Looking After the Welfare of Our Staff & Faculty. We are greatly concerned about the well-being of our staff and faculty. They are the lifeblood of BKCM, the number one reason our families come to the Conservatory. For many of them, we are their livelihood. The inequities in COVID-19’s affect on differently resourced communities reverberate through our faculty. Our on-site faculty have largely resumed their prior teaching schedules, while our offsite teaching artists and music therapists are in limbo, as the fate of their programs rests largely with our partners and will take weeks to resolve. This is not to say they are idle; on the contrary, these faculty members are working diligently to develop new skills and pedagogy to engage students and clients remotely. My view is that we are one institution, not four P&Ls, and that we should look after as many of our people for as long as possible without putting the organization at financial risk.

Funding Needs. As of now, we don’t know what the shortfall in our revenues will be relative to our 2020 fiscal year budget. We are analyzing multiple financial scenarios. Historically, the three biggest drivers of spring revenue are our spring fundraiser, our revenues from offsite spring programming and our registration revenues for the following school year. The duration and intensity of the economic fallout from COVID-19 will have varying effects on these three streams. At the same time, we are making necessary but unbudgeted investments in hardware, software, professional development and training—all of which are critical to our new remote learning plan.

Funding Sources
We are looking at five sources to help plug the shortfall to the greatest extent possible:

– Emergency funding sources created specifically for COVID-19 response including the CARES Act

– Charitable donations from our Board, Advisory Council, families and friends

– A retooled Spring fundraising campaign

– New revenue opportunities, such as expanded private and group lesson enrollment; and

– Short-term borrowing.

Even in this enormously difficult time, I believe there is an opportunity to offset some of our lost revenue with new enrollment. I am keen to open enrollment wherever possible, as soon as possible.

Music has the power to change lives and build community. This is true now, more than ever. For many of our students and clients, music education will be a source of inspiration, expression, joy and stability during this time. With your continued partnership, we will do everything in our power to make this possible.

With gratitude,

Chad Cooper

Executive Director

•••••

3.27.20 2:11 PM

•••••

3.26.20 5:26 PM

Dear SECE families,

I hope this email finds you and all of your loved ones healthy and managing the current situation as well as possible. Thank you so much for your patience while the Suzuki program has been transitioning to online learning.

We will resume SECE classes ONLINE starting Saturday, Monday, and Thursday at your regular class times!

Classes will be held via ZOOM. Here is a tutorial how to get set up. Please use a laptop if at all possible, or tablet. Zoom works best through an app that you can download.

You will receive an email from your SECE teachers a day or two before your class. In that email, you will find a list of materials to prepare your home classroom, and the Zoom meeting invitation.

The children will gain even more if you continue singing the SECE songs along with your recordings every day with them.

We hope the online class gives your family a little of the structure and activity that we are all craving right now.

My very best,

Julianne Carney-Chung
Suzuki Program Director

•••••

3.19.20 11:28 PM

Dear Suzuki Families,

We are just about ready to start online private lessons! Please read these tips and protocols at least several hours before your first online lesson to give you time to prepare. This will help make your experience smoother.

Your teacher will send to you a google calendar invitation via email; within that invitation will be a link to your Google Meet. Please note that Google Meet is not compatible with Safari (Chrome and other browsers works well.) If there are issues using that platform, parent and teacher may turn to alternate platforms if mutually possible. By choosing one platform, we are able to provide some tech support to faculty and parents.

BKCM is also exploring Zoom for group classes. More information about that will become available in the next week.

There is a lot to learn for everyone, so we will all work together in this new platform. Let’s use patience and humor with each other while working diligently to keep our young musicians deeply engaged in their music.

A couple reminders:
1) If you have internet connection issues, please reach out to me. Please do not ask your teacher to go to your home for lessons. At this time, everyone must practice social distancing.

2) Online lessons are not yet standard for BKCM. Institution wide online learning is an accommodation for unusual and unprecedented circumstances, and are not yet regular practice for BKCM.

3) Please keep your regularly scheduled lesson time if at all possible. Knowing that everyone is juggling childcare and often two parents working from home in small NYC apartments, there may need to be flexibility, with the assumption that lesson times will revert to the current schedule when things resume in person. Please keep your teacher and I updated on your situation, and we will work together to resolve conflicts. Additionally, faculty will be ending lessons a few minutes early in order to send any wrap up details, and to take a short break; for those who are not accustomed to working online for many hours at a time, eyes and voices will need periodic brief rest.

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Julianne Carney-Chung
Suzuki Program Director

•••••

3.16.20 4:25 PM

Dear Suzuki Families,

As a reminder, there are no classes today through Thursday this week.

I will be reaching out again later this week with more details about resuming private lessons online on FRIDAY. After we are underway with private lessons, we will begin to offer group/theory class possibilities. We will also be putting together a plan for our many upcoming performing events.

I am sure you are all taking deep breaths today while adjusting to this very new reality. I am optimistic about the possibilities – many facets of Suzuki programming can take place online. There are many great ideas and new opportunities, and faculty will be spending the next two days putting our ideas into an inspiring next phase of our program. As parents, more screentime was probably not one of our goals, but we will press forward.

The musical world is pulling together in incredible, generous ways. The Suzuki community across the country is banding together to share ideas. And, the great performing institutions have opened up their electronic vaults. Check out these resources:

Vienna State Opera- new opera posted every night
Description
Live Streaming Site

Berlin Philharmonic- free streaming for 30 days
Free 30 Day Pass
https://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/en/titelgeschichten/20192020/digital-concert-hall/

Metropolitan Opera- free operas posted every weeknight
Video about Streaming Service
https://www.playbill.com/article/metropolitan-opera-after-shutting-its-doors-will-offer-free-streams-from-live-in-hd-catalog

Accessibility has been an important topic in conversations this year in staff/board Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work. With the expansion into online resources, there is a chance to offer resources to people who cannot come to BKCM for services – not just through the Suzuki program, but also through our Music Therapy, CMS and Music Partners programs. There are also challenges to those who have varying access to technology in their homes.

Thank you for your patience while we dive deeply into technology that is new to many of us. We’re all in this together!

Very best,

Julianne Carney-Chung
Suzuki Program Director

•••••

3.13.20 5:28 PM

Dear Friend,

As a supporter of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (BKCM), I wanted to reach out to you directly to let you know how the Conservatory is responding to COVID-19.

As you well know, the situation is changing rapidly — a decision made 4 pm one day feels outdated by 9 am the next morning. If anything, this drives home the importance of being nimble, adaptable, and as communicative as we can with all of our stakeholders.

Our four programs—Suzuki, Community Music School, Music Partners and Music Therapy—are all operational at the moment, but this will undoubtedly look different in the coming days.

Our onsite music education programs, Suzuki and the Community Music School, are preparing to implement a remote learning model. This will initially be rolled out for private lessons. As the private lesson program finds its footing, we will explore ways to offer more online programming with groups classes as our next priority. For our onsite Music Therapy clients, music therapy will be offered remotely where it is logistically feasible and clinically appropriate. For many of our onsite clients this will not be an option.

Our community outreach programs, Music Partners and Music Therapy, are subject to far different dynamics. Decisions with respect to the ongoing operation of these programs lie largely with our partner organizations, and in the case of Music Partners, almost entirely with the Department of Education.

Given all of this, at the highest level, our goals right now are:

• To make the right decisions in consideration of community health and safety.
• To ensure the ongoing viability and health of the Conservatory.
• To ensure the continuity of music education and music therapy for as many of our students and clients as possible.
• To be communicative, transparent, consistent and fair.

Operational decisions will be made in consultation with the Board, our program leadership, and partners, using the best information and the resources we have at our disposal.

Like many of our peer organizations, we are choosing to postpone our Spring Benefit, currently scheduled for May 18^th.  It is still very much our intention to deliver the one-of-a-kind event experience that you expect from the Conservatory. We will announce a future date as soon as we can.  Until then, two things we know for sure:

• The event, in whatever form it takes, will surprise, delight and inspire (read: it’s going to rock); and
• Our fundraising needs will be as vital than ever, as the Conservatory absorbs significant, new financial strains.

With all the unknowns right now, one thing I can say with certainty is that for many of our students and families the continuity of their music education will be one of the bright lights during an otherwise difficult time. It’s not so far-fetched to think that many of the people we touch through their music education and music therapy in the coming days and weeks will reflect back on this later in their lives and think of their music education as a source of inspiration and stability.

Thank you for your continued support in this time of uncertainty. We are so grateful to count you among our supporters.

Please reach out at any time with questions or suggestions.

Sincerely,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

3.13.20 4:17 PM

Dear Suzuki Community,

All onsite classes will be suspended beginning Saturday, March 14.

Faculty will be participating in training sessions Tuesday – Thursday next week, and we will begin to offer online private lessons on Friday, March 20.

BKCM will be providing tech support to families who need it. To help us with this, all families, please fill out this survey.

Please watch your email for additional support materials over the next week.

Once private lessons are underway we will also explore creative ways to provide online programming in place of our group classes and upcoming scheduled student performing events.

We hope to be a light in this difficult time, and I look forward to being in close virtual contact with all of you.

Our Suzuki community is a precious treasure. I look forward to continuing to nurture the potential of our young musicians in this new way while safeguarding the health of our families and faculty.

Be well everyone,

Julianne Carney-Chung
Suzuki Program Director

•••••

3.12.20 1:00PM

Dear BKCM Community,

BKCM continues to closely monitor the COVID-19 outbreak. We are receiving daily informational updates from local (Dept of Health & Mental Hygiene, Dept of Education, Dept of Cultural Affairs), state (NY State), and national organizations (CDC). We are also actively receiving information from the many schools and cultural institutions with whom our students, staff and faculty affiliate.*** For the time being, BKCM will continue to operate under normal business hours.  Please note: We will be closing BKCM for three days next week —Tuesday March 17th through Thursday, March 19 — to plan, train staff and faculty, and take other necessary steps to prepare for a potential transition to online learning. We intend to resume lessons on Friday 20th as scheduled. Any changes in our plans will be communicated to the community by 5 pm on March 19th. ***

Anyone whose lessons are impacted by next week’s three day closure, should plan to make up their lesson during the make up week (June 23rd – 25th). If that is not possible, we will work with you on an individual basis to reschedule your lesson.

We have prepared a detailed FAQ with critical information (updated at 1PM 3.12.20) on BKCM’s recommendations and plans related to COVID-19. Please take a few minutes to read the document. Any updates will be hosted on this page, and update notifications will be sent via email to everyone in our community.We will continue to send out frequent updates as the situation continues to evolve. We appreciate your patience and your flexibility as we prepare for potential disruption to lessons and classes. These are certainly extraordinary times, but we believe in the power of music, particularly during adverse times, to bring us joy and to bring us together (virtually, if need be!).

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Best,

Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

10.3.20 3:19 PM

Dear BKCM Students & Families,

Happy October. I am excited to share news of the Conservatory’s reopening plans. If you’ve been holding off on registering, I encourage you to read on — we have much good news to share.
 

In-person lessons will resume on October 19th on a hybrid, low density basis, phased in by program. Most of our Community Music School and Suzuki students, beginning later in October, will have the opportunity to resume in person lessons on a rolling two weeks in person, two weeks remote, basis. This approach allows us to operate the building at a very low density, while accommodating the majority of our on-site private lesson and Suzuki students. For a high level summary of reopening our plans, please read through this presentation.

As we note in the presentation, decisions about resuming on site lessons vary from program to program, by class format, and even by instrument. The nature of what we do at BKCM, and the physical attributes and limitations of our building, requires a very granular level of decision making. Program Directors will be communicating more specific information and guidance to their students and families in the coming days.

Just as students may continue their lessons remotely, we are not requiring our faculty to return for in person teaching. We know and expect many exceptions and unique circumstances, all of which will be handled with the utmost consideration. Ultimately, our goal is to safely welcome back as many of our students and faculty as possible.

You can still register for the 2020 – 2021 school year! While many of our Community Music School groups and ensembles are meeting remotely, we still have private lesson availability for both in person and remote instruction. For information on enrollment and to sign up for a trial lesson, please call our registers (718 622 3300).

Complete reopening details will be shared and discussed in a series of town halls. Also, keep an eye out for our comprehensive reopening handbook. Here are a few key dates for reference (Zoom links hyperlinked):

• Sep 28 – Soft reopening begins for faculty and staff
• Oct 7 – BKCM distributes reopening handbook
• Oct 8 – Suzuki Families Reopening Town Hall @ 8:30 pm
• Oct 13 – CMS Families Reopening Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 14 – Open / All Families Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 19 – In person Community Music School private lessons resume
• Oct 26 – In person Suzuki lessons resume

Please complete this survey! To help us better understand your specific plans, we ask you to complete this survey by October 9th for every member of your household who is enrolled (or plans to enroll!). The survey asks you to choose one of three options:

• Begin hybrid / in person lessons in October
• Begin hybrid / in person lessons at a later date (two other windows to begin hybrid / in person lessons are planned – one in Jan and one in April)
• Stay remote the entire year

The options to begin in person at a later date (Jan or April) or stay remote all year are not binding. In other words, you may elect now to start at a later date and ultimately decide to stay remote all year, or vice versa. However, if you wish to start in person during the first phase, you must make that election now and join at the appointed start date. You will not be able to join a reopening phase in progress.

We bought the vacant parcel of land adjoining our garden! One especially exciting development that will greatly assist with our reopening: we acquired the vacant parcel of land that adjoins our garden. Our immediate goal is to activate the site and use it as waiting area and gathering / circulation space. We want our students, families, caretakers and other members of the BKCM community to be able to attend classes and events as safely as possible – so every extra square foot of space gives us more operational flexibility. There are a range of things we can do with the site over time to make it more attractive and more public depending on the needs and wishes of BKCM and our neighbors. The intent is certainly for the space to function much like our existing garden—to be open to the public for block-wide events and broader community use.

I know you will have many questions… and there is so much more to share about our reopening. Please join us for a town hall, stay tuned for more communications from your program directors, read our forthcoming reopening handbook, and complete the survey as soon as possible!

I truly look forward to seeing you (masks and all!) this fall, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to open our front doors again. Most of all, I’m thrilled that students and teachers will have opportunities to connect in person again! Until then, I leave you with this pic of one of our (15!) newly crafted portable plexiglass partitions.

See you soon,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••
3.31.20 2:21 PM

Dear Friends,

I hope that you and your loved ones are well during this tremendously difficult time.

I’m writing with an update on the state of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, as we begin the second week of our reinvention as a virtual music community. I am deeply encouraged by what I am seeing across all of the Conservatory’s programs. Still, there is much to do in the coming weeks as we endeavor to relaunch our programs at our 70+ community-based organization and public school partner sites—many of which are under tremendous pressure.

Our onsite programs have made terrific progress in transitioning to remote learning. Across our Suzuki, Community Music School and Music Therapy divisions, we are now providing remote private music lessons and music therapy sessions to 740 students and clients. When you add our group music classes and ensembles, we are reaching 950 out of 1,000 students, or 95% of our pre-pandemic onsite student/client population.

When it comes to our offsite Music Partners and Music Therapy schools and community organization partners, there are many unknowns. These partners—including the New York City public school system, City and State agencies, social service agencies and many other smaller community organizations—are under-resourced and facing enormous pressure to reinvent themselves. We are doing everything we can to coordinate with our partners and create options for engaging the students and clients we serve. We will continue to keep you posted as these plans develop.

Onsite and offsite, we are developing, adapting and refining our online learning curricula in real time to make our programs as robust, interactive and engaging as possible. We are also adapting and refining our understanding of what it means to be a community. For BKCM, the concept of community has always been intertwined with our physical home in Park Slope. Today our community comes together virtually, from the homes of students, staff, faculty and music therapists across Brooklyn and beyond. Our building remains an integral part of the Conservatory’s identity; now, though, it is our strengths as an organization—our passion for our mission, our extraordinary people, our entrepreneurial spirit and our deep expertise in music education and music therapy—that are sustaining and even growing our BKCM community.

Thanks to your generosity, the financial health of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music improved significantly in the years prior to this crisis. This made a crucial difference in how we have been able to respond. As the crisis has mounted, you have been unfailingly encouraging, gracious and supportive with your offers of help, expertise and financial support. We will take you up! As we adapt to our new reality, I look forward to being in touch with ways to engage with you to help BKCM navigate through this enormously challenging time.

Some additional details about our programs and progress:

Onsite Music Therapy. In our first week of virtual learning, we conducted remote Music Therapy sessions for almost all of our 110 on-site MT clients (excluding our dayhab groups). While remote therapy may not ultimately work for everyone, we have been encouraged by the interest from our clients, and the thoughtful and creative approaches our therapists are taking to this format.

Community Music School. Of our 389 private lesson students in the Community Music School, all but ten are moving forward with online lessons. Group classes are a heavier lift. Each is unique, and we are experimenting with different formats and platforms to create the best learning experience. As we begin our second week of remote learning, I am happy to share that 36 of 40 of our group classes and ensembles are convening in some capacity.

Suzuki. Suzuki had a solid opening week. Virtually all of our 240 Suzuki students have transitioned to online. Group classes are the next wave; they are being rolled out by instrument group. Our Suzuki Early Childhood program, SECE, also kicked off this past weekend.

Music Partners. NYC public schools reopened via remote learning a week ago. Several of our Music Partners schools will resume their music programming with BKCM this week. Most are still in a holding pattern. For now, our teachers are experimenting with different approaches and working with our school partners to be ready with a plan and curriculum that we can plug into whatever platform our schools elect to use. We want to make it easy and additive for our partners to bring our programming back into the fold for our 4,500 Music Partners students.

Offsite Music Therapy. Similar to Music Partners, our offsite Music Therapy partners vary widely in their resources and their ability to retool themselves for remote learning. Our largest offsite program, the Manhattan Childrens Center, has already resumed. The Jackson Developmental Center (Queens) has cancelled. Of our eight CAMBA-funded programs, the four that rely on the City’s Department of Youth & Community Development (DYCD) are in the process of restarting. We hope the other four will resume in the coming weeks as well.

Developing Our Tech Prowess. In two short weeks we have made substantial progress on the tech front. Most private lessons are taking place on Google Hangouts Meet. Group classes are taking place on Zoom. Music Partners is looking into platforms such as FlipGrid, Acapella, ClassDojo and BandLab, among others. We are investing in software subscriptions (such as Zoom licenses) and hardware (including Chromebooks and web cameras) to ensure that every faculty member has a high-quality device to provide lessons. We have set up a two-tiered tech support team, with our registrars acting as the frontline. The most complicated requests are transferred to our two IT specialists.

Looking After the Welfare of Our Staff & Faculty. We are greatly concerned about the well-being of our staff and faculty. They are the lifeblood of BKCM, the number one reason our families come to the Conservatory. For many of them, we are their livelihood. The inequities in COVID-19’s affect on differently resourced communities reverberate through our faculty. Our on-site faculty have largely resumed their prior teaching schedules, while our offsite teaching artists and music therapists are in limbo, as the fate of their programs rests largely with our partners and will take weeks to resolve. This is not to say they are idle; on the contrary, these faculty members are working diligently to develop new skills and pedagogy to engage students and clients remotely. My view is that we are one institution, not four P&Ls, and that we should look after as many of our people for as long as possible without putting the organization at financial risk.

Funding Needs. As of now, we don’t know what the shortfall in our revenues will be relative to our 2020 fiscal year budget. We are analyzing multiple financial scenarios. Historically, the three biggest drivers of spring revenue are our spring fundraiser, our revenues from offsite spring programming and our registration revenues for the following school year. The duration and intensity of the economic fallout from COVID-19 will have varying effects on these three streams. At the same time, we are making necessary but unbudgeted investments in hardware, software, professional development and training—all of which are critical to our new remote learning plan.

Funding Sources
We are looking at five sources to help plug the shortfall to the greatest extent possible:

– Emergency funding sources created specifically for COVID-19 response including the CARES Act

– Charitable donations from our Board, Advisory Council, families and friends

– A retooled Spring fundraising campaign

– New revenue opportunities, such as expanded private and group lesson enrollment; and

– Short-term borrowing.

Even in this enormously difficult time, I believe there is an opportunity to offset some of our lost revenue with new enrollment. I am keen to open enrollment wherever possible, as soon as possible.

Music has the power to change lives and build community. This is true now, more than ever. For many of our students and clients, music education will be a source of inspiration, expression, joy and stability during this time. With your continued partnership, we will do everything in our power to make this possible.

With gratitude,

Chad Cooper

Executive Director

•••••

3.16.20 3:27 PM

Dear Families,

I hope this email finds you well. As you may know, the Conservatory generally follows all protocols established by the DOE. Because the DOE has closed schools until at least 4/20, BKCM is following suit and transitioning all lessons and music therapy sessions to online learning effective Friday, March 20th.

We remain committed to serving you and your families and are striving to maintain continuity of care in whatever way possible. Online sessions may range from your child continuing adaptive lesson instruction; to participating in familiar songs and conversing with their music therapist; to caregiver supported check-ins to provide familiar repertoire for your child; to facilitation of support for you to musically engage with your child at home.

In keeping with our music therapy philosophy, our approach during this time will continue to be informed by the unique needs of your child, so we will be in touch with each of you over the coming days to inform you of our recommendation of which format(s) of online experience we think will provide the best support and continuity for your child.

In order to make the best recommendation, it is imperative that we receive some information from you about access to technology and instruments in your home. We would ask that you kindly submit your responses to this survey by Wednesday, March 18th: https://forms.gle/PcHmi8kCD5EgDRkLA The sooner we receive your response, the sooner we can move forward with a recommendation of services.

As always, thank you so much for your continued support, patience, and dedication to our program.

Very best,
Christina Sterrett Caliz MA, MT-BC, LCAT
Music Therapy Onsite Coordinator

•••••

3.13.20 5:28 PM

Dear Friend,

As a supporter of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (BKCM), I wanted to reach out to you directly to let you know how the Conservatory is responding to COVID-19.

As you well know, the situation is changing rapidly — a decision made 4 pm one day feels outdated by 9 am the next morning. If anything, this drives home the importance of being nimble, adaptable, and as communicative as we can with all of our stakeholders.

Our four programs—Suzuki, Community Music School, Music Partners and Music Therapy—are all operational at the moment, but this will undoubtedly look different in the coming days.

Our onsite music education programs, Suzuki and the Community Music School, are preparing to implement a remote learning model. This will initially be rolled out for private lessons. As the private lesson program finds its footing, we will explore ways to offer more online programming with groups classes as our next priority. For our onsite Music Therapy clients, music therapy will be offered remotely where it is logistically feasible and clinically appropriate. For many of our onsite clients this will not be an option.

Our community outreach programs, Music Partners and Music Therapy, are subject to far different dynamics. Decisions with respect to the ongoing operation of these programs lie largely with our partner organizations, and in the case of Music Partners, almost entirely with the Department of Education.

Given all of this, at the highest level, our goals right now are:

• To make the right decisions in consideration of community health and safety.
• To ensure the ongoing viability and health of the Conservatory.
• To ensure the continuity of music education and music therapy for as many of our students and clients as possible.
• To be communicative, transparent, consistent and fair.

Operational decisions will be made in consultation with the Board, our program leadership, and partners, using the best information and the resources we have at our disposal.

Like many of our peer organizations, we are choosing to postpone our Spring Benefit, currently scheduled for May 18^th.  It is still very much our intention to deliver the one-of-a-kind event experience that you expect from the Conservatory. We will announce a future date as soon as we can.  Until then, two things we know for sure:

• The event, in whatever form it takes, will surprise, delight and inspire (read: it’s going to rock); and
• Our fundraising needs will be as vital than ever, as the Conservatory absorbs significant, new financial strains.

With all the unknowns right now, one thing I can say with certainty is that for many of our students and families the continuity of their music education will be one of the bright lights during an otherwise difficult time. It’s not so far-fetched to think that many of the people we touch through their music education and music therapy in the coming days and weeks will reflect back on this later in their lives and think of their music education as a source of inspiration and stability.

Thank you for your continued support in this time of uncertainty. We are so grateful to count you among our supporters.

Please reach out at any time with questions or suggestions.

Sincerely,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

3.13.20 12:55 PM

Dear Music Therapy Parents,

I hope that this email finds you well in this stressful time.  By now you will have received an update (above) from our Executive Director, Chad Cooper, regarding BKCM’s contingency plans in response to the growing coronavirus concern.  As a follow-up to this letter, we also wanted to address some questions that are arising in response. Please thoroughly read the information in the letter as soon as possible and let us know if you have any questions.

CURRENT SCHEDULING INFORMATION

• All sessions on Saturday 3/14, Sunday 3/15, and Monday 3/16 are moving forward as planned.
• All sessions on Tuesday 3/17, Wednesday 3/18 and Thursday 3/19 are cancelled.
  • The above closure is a planned measure purely to allow BKCM staff time to prepare for administrative needs that may arise in the coming weeks.
  • All sessions scheduled to occur during these 3 days will be rescheduled to Make-Up Week on 6/23, 6/24 and 6/25.

ATTENDANCE

• As stated in Chad’s letter, if your school has closed due to an exposure to the coronavirus:
  • Please do not attend your session.
  • Please immediately email both your music therapist and myself to inform us if you are unable to attend your session due the above protocol.
• We are working to prepare additional make-up time for absences incurred in compliance to the above protocol, more information on this will follow in the weeks to come.
• All other absences that occur for reasons other than the above protocol are still subject to our usual absence and make-up policy.
• If you are unsure whether or not your child should attend a session, please email Toby, Melissa and myself immediately, and one of us will get back to as soon as possible to address your concern.

MOVING FORWARD

• As stated in Chad’s letter, “The decision regarding video conference-based music therapy will be made on a case by case basis in consultation with your therapist, and the MT leadership team.” 
• We are working to determine which individual sessions are suitable for video conference and will be in touch with each of you by the end of next week with our determinations.
• If it is determined that your child’s individual session is suitable for video conference, you will also be receiving a survey next week to assess video conference accessibility in the home.
• Please note the above does not apply to the closure to take place during 3/17-3/19.  All individual sessions during that window will be moved to Make-Up Week on 6/23-6/25.
• Please also note that as stated in Chad’s letter ” We will not be able to accommodate group lessons or ensembles via video conference, nor will there be any special accommodations for make-ups.”

As you can imagine, information is changing day by day, so we unfortunately do not have any additional information (i.e. longer term contingency plans, etc) beyond the contents of this email.  Please know we are and will continue to be making every effort to keep you updated as we go.  We appreciate your patience and support during this process.  As always, our priority is to serve the well-being of you and your families to the best of our abilities.

Warm regards,
Christina Sterrett Caliz MA, MT-BC, LCAT
Music Therapy Onsite Coordinator

•••••

3.12.20 1:00PM

Dear BKCM Community,

BKCM continues to closely monitor the COVID-19 outbreak. We are receiving daily informational updates from local (Dept of Health & Mental Hygiene, Dept of Education, Dept of Cultural Affairs), state (NY State), and national organizations (CDC). We are also actively receiving information from the many schools and cultural institutions with whom our students, staff and faculty affiliate.*** For the time being, BKCM will continue to operate under normal business hours.  Please note: We will be closing BKCM for three days next week —Tuesday March 17th through Thursday, March 19 — to plan, train staff and faculty, and take other necessary steps to prepare for a potential transition to online learning. We intend to resume lessons on Friday 20th as scheduled. Any changes in our plans will be communicated to the community by 5 pm on March 19th. ***

Anyone whose lessons are impacted by next week’s three day closure, should plan to make up their lesson during the make up week (June 23rd – 25th). If that is not possible, we will work with you on an individual basis to reschedule your lesson.

We have prepared a detailed FAQ with critical information (updated at 1PM 3.12.20) on BKCM’s recommendations and plans related to COVID-19. Please take a few minutes to read the document. Any updates will be hosted on this page, and update notifications will be sent via email to everyone in our community.We will continue to send out frequent updates as the situation continues to evolve. We appreciate your patience and your flexibility as we prepare for potential disruption to lessons and classes. These are certainly extraordinary times, but we believe in the power of music, particularly during adverse times, to bring us joy and to bring us together (virtually, if need be!).

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Best,

Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

10.7.20 9:00 PM

Dear BKCM Students & Families,

I am writing as a follow up to my note dated October 3rd.  As promised, please find attached a copy of the BKCM Reopening Plan 2020-21 10.8.2020. The handbook contains our most up to date building operating policies and health and safety protocols. This will be a useful reference for our upcoming Town Halls and further communications from your respective Program Directors.

Reminders, clarifications and updates:

1. Most of our Community Music School (CMS) and Suzuki students, beginning on October 19th, will have the opportunity to resume in person lessonson a rolling two weeks in person, two weeks remote, basis.

2. Please note that Suzuki will start on Oct 19th as well (not Oct 26th as previously indicated) to begin concurrently with CMS.

3. If you opt in to hybrid lessons, you will get further communication from your Program Director regarding your specific in person start date.

4. The hybrid in person / remote lesson program applies to the Suzuki program, and CMS private lessons. CMS group lessons will generally continue remotely.

5. Please note that Music Therapy will continue remotely, at least through year end.

6. To reiterate from my last email, just as students may continue their lessons remotely, we are not requiring our faculty to return for in person teaching. We know and expect many exceptions and unique circumstances, all of which will be handled with the utmost consideration.

7. Last, as noted in the handbook, all students, faculty, staff and family members will be required to present a negative PCR Covid-19 test in order to start in person lessons. The test must be taken within two weeks of the in person start date.

Reopening details will be discussed in a series of town halls. Please join if you can.

• Oct 8 – Suzuki Families Reopening Town Hall @ 8:30 pm
• Oct 13 – CMS Families Reopening Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 14 – Open / All Families Town Hall @ 7:00 pm

Complete this Hybrid Opt-In Form & Survey By Oct 9th (Specific to CMS & Suzuki)

To help us better understand your specific plans, we ask you to complete this form by October 9th for every member of your household who is enrolled (or plans to enroll!). The survey asks you to choose one of three options:

• Begin hybrid / in person lessons starting with the October 19 – December 21 block
• Begin hybrid / in person lessons in a later block (one starting in January, and one in April)
• Stay remote the entire year

The options to begin hybrid lessons at a later date (Jan or April) or stay remote all year are not binding. In other words, you may elect now to start at a later date and ultimately decide to stay remote all year, or vice versa. However, if you wish to start in person during the first phase, you must make that election now and join at the appointed start date. You will not be able to join a reopening phase in progress.

There is so much more to share about our reopening. Please join us for a town hall, stay tuned for more communications from your program directors, read our forthcoming reopening handbook, and complete the opt-in form / survey as soon as possible!

The staff and faculty truly look forward to seeing you (masks and all!) in the next few weeks, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to open our front doors again.

See you soon,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

10.3.20 3:19 PM

Dear BKCM Students & Families,

Happy October. I am excited to share news of the Conservatory’s reopening plans. If you’ve been holding off on registering, I encourage you to read on — we have much good news to share.
 

In-person lessons will resume on October 19th on a hybrid, low density basis, phased in by program. Most of our Community Music School and Suzuki students, beginning later in October, will have the opportunity to resume in person lessons on a rolling two weeks in person, two weeks remote, basis. This approach allows us to operate the building at a very low density, while accommodating the majority of our on-site private lesson and Suzuki students. For a high level summary of reopening our plans, please read through this presentation.

As we note in the presentation, decisions about resuming on site lessons vary from program to program, by class format, and even by instrument. The nature of what we do at BKCM, and the physical attributes and limitations of our building, requires a very granular level of decision making. Program Directors will be communicating more specific information and guidance to their students and families in the coming days.

Just as students may continue their lessons remotely, we are not requiring our faculty to return for in person teaching. We know and expect many exceptions and unique circumstances, all of which will be handled with the utmost consideration. Ultimately, our goal is to safely welcome back as many of our students and faculty as possible.

You can still register for the 2020 – 2021 school year! While many of our Community Music School groups and ensembles are meeting remotely, we still have private lesson availability for both in person and remote instruction. For information on enrollment and to sign up for a trial lesson, please call our registers (718 622 3300).

Complete reopening details will be shared and discussed in a series of town halls. Also, keep an eye out for our comprehensive reopening handbook. Here are a few key dates for reference (Zoom links hyperlinked):

• Sep 28 – Soft reopening begins for faculty and staff
• Oct 7 – BKCM distributes reopening handbook
• Oct 8 – Suzuki Families Reopening Town Hall @ 8:30 pm
• Oct 13 – CMS Families Reopening Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 14 – Open / All Families Town Hall @ 7:00 pm
• Oct 19 – In person Community Music School private lessons resume
• Oct 26 – In person Suzuki lessons resume

Please complete this survey! To help us better understand your specific plans, we ask you to complete this survey by October 9th for every member of your household who is enrolled (or plans to enroll!). The survey asks you to choose one of three options:

• Begin hybrid / in person lessons in October
• Begin hybrid / in person lessons at a later date (two other windows to begin hybrid / in person lessons are planned – one in Jan and one in April)
• Stay remote the entire year

The options to begin in person at a later date (Jan or April) or stay remote all year are not binding. In other words, you may elect now to start at a later date and ultimately decide to stay remote all year, or vice versa. However, if you wish to start in person during the first phase, you must make that election now and join at the appointed start date. You will not be able to join a reopening phase in progress.

We bought the vacant parcel of land adjoining our garden! One especially exciting development that will greatly assist with our reopening: we acquired the vacant parcel of land that adjoins our garden. Our immediate goal is to activate the site and use it as waiting area and gathering / circulation space. We want our students, families, caretakers and other members of the BKCM community to be able to attend classes and events as safely as possible – so every extra square foot of space gives us more operational flexibility. There are a range of things we can do with the site over time to make it more attractive and more public depending on the needs and wishes of BKCM and our neighbors. The intent is certainly for the space to function much like our existing garden—to be open to the public for block-wide events and broader community use.

I know you will have many questions… and there is so much more to share about our reopening. Please join us for a town hall, stay tuned for more communications from your program directors, read our forthcoming reopening handbook, and complete the survey as soon as possible!

I truly look forward to seeing you (masks and all!) this fall, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to open our front doors again. Most of all, I’m thrilled that students and teachers will have opportunities to connect in person again! Until then, I leave you with this pic of one of our (15!) newly crafted portable plexiglass partitions.

See you soon,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••
3.31.20 2:21 PM

Dear Friends,

I hope that you and your loved ones are well during this tremendously difficult time.

I’m writing with an update on the state of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, as we begin the second week of our reinvention as a virtual music community. I am deeply encouraged by what I am seeing across all of the Conservatory’s programs. Still, there is much to do in the coming weeks as we endeavor to relaunch our programs at our 70+ community-based organization and public school partner sites—many of which are under tremendous pressure.

Our onsite programs have made terrific progress in transitioning to remote learning. Across our Suzuki, Community Music School and Music Therapy divisions, we are now providing remote private music lessons and music therapy sessions to 740 students and clients. When you add our group music classes and ensembles, we are reaching 950 out of 1,000 students, or 95% of our pre-pandemic onsite student/client population.

When it comes to our offsite Music Partners and Music Therapy schools and community organization partners, there are many unknowns. These partners—including the New York City public school system, City and State agencies, social service agencies and many other smaller community organizations—are under-resourced and facing enormous pressure to reinvent themselves. We are doing everything we can to coordinate with our partners and create options for engaging the students and clients we serve. We will continue to keep you posted as these plans develop.

Onsite and offsite, we are developing, adapting and refining our online learning curricula in real time to make our programs as robust, interactive and engaging as possible. We are also adapting and refining our understanding of what it means to be a community. For BKCM, the concept of community has always been intertwined with our physical home in Park Slope. Today our community comes together virtually, from the homes of students, staff, faculty and music therapists across Brooklyn and beyond. Our building remains an integral part of the Conservatory’s identity; now, though, it is our strengths as an organization—our passion for our mission, our extraordinary people, our entrepreneurial spirit and our deep expertise in music education and music therapy—that are sustaining and even growing our BKCM community.

Thanks to your generosity, the financial health of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music improved significantly in the years prior to this crisis. This made a crucial difference in how we have been able to respond. As the crisis has mounted, you have been unfailingly encouraging, gracious and supportive with your offers of help, expertise and financial support. We will take you up! As we adapt to our new reality, I look forward to being in touch with ways to engage with you to help BKCM navigate through this enormously challenging time.

Some additional details about our programs and progress:

Onsite Music Therapy. In our first week of virtual learning, we conducted remote Music Therapy sessions for almost all of our 110 on-site MT clients (excluding our dayhab groups). While remote therapy may not ultimately work for everyone, we have been encouraged by the interest from our clients, and the thoughtful and creative approaches our therapists are taking to this format.

Community Music School. Of our 389 private lesson students in the Community Music School, all but ten are moving forward with online lessons. Group classes are a heavier lift. Each is unique, and we are experimenting with different formats and platforms to create the best learning experience. As we begin our second week of remote learning, I am happy to share that 36 of 40 of our group classes and ensembles are convening in some capacity.

Suzuki. Suzuki had a solid opening week. Virtually all of our 240 Suzuki students have transitioned to online. Group classes are the next wave; they are being rolled out by instrument group. Our Suzuki Early Childhood program, SECE, also kicked off this past weekend.

Music Partners. NYC public schools reopened via remote learning a week ago. Several of our Music Partners schools will resume their music programming with BKCM this week. Most are still in a holding pattern. For now, our teachers are experimenting with different approaches and working with our school partners to be ready with a plan and curriculum that we can plug into whatever platform our schools elect to use. We want to make it easy and additive for our partners to bring our programming back into the fold for our 4,500 Music Partners students.

Offsite Music Therapy. Similar to Music Partners, our offsite Music Therapy partners vary widely in their resources and their ability to retool themselves for remote learning. Our largest offsite program, the Manhattan Childrens Center, has already resumed. The Jackson Developmental Center (Queens) has cancelled. Of our eight CAMBA-funded programs, the four that rely on the City’s Department of Youth & Community Development (DYCD) are in the process of restarting. We hope the other four will resume in the coming weeks as well.

Developing Our Tech Prowess. In two short weeks we have made substantial progress on the tech front. Most private lessons are taking place on Google Hangouts Meet. Group classes are taking place on Zoom. Music Partners is looking into platforms such as FlipGrid, Acapella, ClassDojo and BandLab, among others. We are investing in software subscriptions (such as Zoom licenses) and hardware (including Chromebooks and web cameras) to ensure that every faculty member has a high-quality device to provide lessons. We have set up a two-tiered tech support team, with our registrars acting as the frontline. The most complicated requests are transferred to our two IT specialists.

Looking After the Welfare of Our Staff & Faculty. We are greatly concerned about the well-being of our staff and faculty. They are the lifeblood of BKCM, the number one reason our families come to the Conservatory. For many of them, we are their livelihood. The inequities in COVID-19’s affect on differently resourced communities reverberate through our faculty. Our on-site faculty have largely resumed their prior teaching schedules, while our offsite teaching artists and music therapists are in limbo, as the fate of their programs rests largely with our partners and will take weeks to resolve. This is not to say they are idle; on the contrary, these faculty members are working diligently to develop new skills and pedagogy to engage students and clients remotely. My view is that we are one institution, not four P&Ls, and that we should look after as many of our people for as long as possible without putting the organization at financial risk.

Funding Needs. As of now, we don’t know what the shortfall in our revenues will be relative to our 2020 fiscal year budget. We are analyzing multiple financial scenarios. Historically, the three biggest drivers of spring revenue are our spring fundraiser, our revenues from offsite spring programming and our registration revenues for the following school year. The duration and intensity of the economic fallout from COVID-19 will have varying effects on these three streams. At the same time, we are making necessary but unbudgeted investments in hardware, software, professional development and training—all of which are critical to our new remote learning plan.

Funding Sources
We are looking at five sources to help plug the shortfall to the greatest extent possible:

– Emergency funding sources created specifically for COVID-19 response including the CARES Act

– Charitable donations from our Board, Advisory Council, families and friends

– A retooled Spring fundraising campaign

– New revenue opportunities, such as expanded private and group lesson enrollment; and

– Short-term borrowing.

Even in this enormously difficult time, I believe there is an opportunity to offset some of our lost revenue with new enrollment. I am keen to open enrollment wherever possible, as soon as possible.

Music has the power to change lives and build community. This is true now, more than ever. For many of our students and clients, music education will be a source of inspiration, expression, joy and stability during this time. With your continued partnership, we will do everything in our power to make this possible.

With gratitude,

Chad Cooper

Executive Director

•••••

3.13.20 5:28 PM

Dear Friend,

As a supporter of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (BKCM), I wanted to reach out to you directly to let you know how the Conservatory is responding to COVID-19.

As you well know, the situation is changing rapidly — a decision made 4 pm one day feels outdated by 9 am the next morning. If anything, this drives home the importance of being nimble, adaptable, and as communicative as we can with all of our stakeholders.

Our four programs—Suzuki, Community Music School, Music Partners and Music Therapy—are all operational at the moment, but this will undoubtedly look different in the coming days.

Our onsite music education programs, Suzuki and the Community Music School, are preparing to implement a remote learning model. This will initially be rolled out for private lessons. As the private lesson program finds its footing, we will explore ways to offer more online programming with groups classes as our next priority. For our onsite Music Therapy clients, music therapy will be offered remotely where it is logistically feasible and clinically appropriate. For many of our onsite clients this will not be an option.

Our community outreach programs, Music Partners and Music Therapy, are subject to far different dynamics. Decisions with respect to the ongoing operation of these programs lie largely with our partner organizations, and in the case of Music Partners, almost entirely with the Department of Education.

Given all of this, at the highest level, our goals right now are:

• To make the right decisions in consideration of community health and safety.
• To ensure the ongoing viability and health of the Conservatory.
• To ensure the continuity of music education and music therapy for as many of our students and clients as possible.
• To be communicative, transparent, consistent and fair.

Operational decisions will be made in consultation with the Board, our program leadership, and partners, using the best information and the resources we have at our disposal.

Like many of our peer organizations, we are choosing to postpone our Spring Benefit, currently scheduled for May 18^th.  It is still very much our intention to deliver the one-of-a-kind event experience that you expect from the Conservatory. We will announce a future date as soon as we can.  Until then, two things we know for sure:

• The event, in whatever form it takes, will surprise, delight and inspire (read: it’s going to rock); and
• Our fundraising needs will be as vital than ever, as the Conservatory absorbs significant, new financial strains.

With all the unknowns right now, one thing I can say with certainty is that for many of our students and families the continuity of their music education will be one of the bright lights during an otherwise difficult time. It’s not so far-fetched to think that many of the people we touch through their music education and music therapy in the coming days and weeks will reflect back on this later in their lives and think of their music education as a source of inspiration and stability.

Thank you for your continued support in this time of uncertainty. We are so grateful to count you among our supporters.

Please reach out at any time with questions or suggestions.

Sincerely,
Chad Cooper
Executive Director

•••••

3.12.20 1:00 PM

Dear BKCM Community,

BKCM continues to closely monitor the COVID-19 outbreak. We are receiving daily informational updates from local (Dept of Health & Mental Hygiene, Dept of Education, Dept of Cultural Affairs), state (NY State), and national organizations (CDC). We are also actively receiving information from the many schools and cultural institutions with whom our students, staff and faculty affiliate.*** For the time being, BKCM will continue to operate under normal business hours.  Please note: We will be closing BKCM for three days next week —Tuesday March 17th through Thursday, March 19 — to plan, train staff and faculty, and take other necessary steps to prepare for a potential transition to online learning. We intend to resume lessons on Friday 20th as scheduled. Any changes in our plans will be communicated to the community by 5 pm on March 19th. ***

Anyone whose lessons are impacted by next week’s three day closure, should plan to make up their lesson during the make up week (June 23rd – 25th). If that is not possible, we will work with you on an individual basis to reschedule your lesson.

We have prepared a detailed FAQ with critical information (updated at 1PM 3.12.20) on BKCM’s recommendations and plans related to COVID-19. Please take a few minutes to read the document. Any updates will be hosted on this page, and update notifications will be sent via email to everyone in our community.We will continue to send out frequent updates as the situation continues to evolve. We appreciate your patience and your flexibility as we prepare for potential disruption to lessons and classes. These are certainly extraordinary times, but we believe in the power of music, particularly during adverse times, to bring us joy and to bring us together (virtually, if need be!).

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Best,

Chad Cooper
Executive Director