Alexander Muravyov, Staff Writer, The Cypress • November 18, 2025
The Galarama fundraiser celebrated Britt Steven’s culinary pathway. From left: Stevens, Rob Lawrence and Ben Stern pause to take a photo and capture the moment.
With over $7 million invested in over 30 programs at the high school, the BHS Innovation Fund impacts nearly all of us, even if we don’t know it. Through creative new courses to pilot programs, the Innovation Fund is behind many of the opportunities that define the high school.
The Innovation Fund originated 27 years ago and provides grants for teachers to develop innovative programs and curricula. From fundraisers to workshopping the programs themselves, the Innovation Fund is deeply committed to creating new and creative opportunities for students.
Anne Le Brun, who is on the Board of Directors, said the program makes a difference in teachers’ jobs.
“I think where we excel is in empowering teachers. I strongly believe that what we’re doing here is putting teachers’ ideas on the table and giving them the time and the ability to execute on their cool, creative ideas and making them the best teachers possible for our students,” Le Brun said.
Projects within the Innovation Fund begin when teachers pitch their ideas early in the school year. Le Brun said the board gives educators feedback on their proposals, and the teachers meet with them again later in the fall.
“They come back with full presentations; then we decide which ones we’re going to fund for the coming year,” Le Brun said.
Spanish teacher and faculty liaison for the Innovation Fund Erica O’Mahony said the reason teachers go through this lengthy process is because it can be difficult to receive funding from their department through grants.
“There’s lots of courses [teachers want to run] that maybe a department [will] say, ‘this is a little risky,’ or it’s innovative and so it’s often cross-departmental,” O’Mahony said.
While the Innovation Fund has been a reliable source of funding for teachers over the past few decades, consistent fundraising is necessary to keep the program running. Each year, multiple fundraisers are held, the largest of which was held on Nov. 6, 2025.
Le Brun says the goal of the event is to raise $125,000 through ticket sales, sponsorships and an auction.
“Every year in the fall we host a big [event]. It’s called Gallerama, and it’s a party. And every year we honor a different program that the fund has sponsored. So this year we’re honoring the culinary pathway and rethinking the restaurant programs,” Le Brun said.
To go along with this, the Innovation Fund holds a fundraising 5K in the spring and runs campaigns to solicit donations.
The programs funded by these donations go on to impact a wide variety of students. Spanish teacher Marta Fuertes said she has been a part of two programs, both of which she has found very beneficial to students. A few years ago, she helped develop a program to teach advanced Spanish speakers to be medical interpreters. Additionally, she took part in developing a program for students who speak Spanish in their homes, to help prepare them to test into higher-level Advanced Placement (AP) language classes.
“[The students in the heritage Spanish speaker class] have a much stronger sense of identity and pride of their identity as Hispanic Latino students,” Fuertes said.
Additional classes that the fund has helped implement include the reimagining of the 9th grade physics curriculum, Justice in Action, The History & Science of Sex and Gender and the culinary pathway (the courses that allow students to learn about the culinary arts, especially through working at the Tappan Green Restaurant). Le Brun highlighted the culinary pathway for the students it impacts.
“[The culinary pathway] speaks to a very different group of students who find a home in a particular part of BHS that is not AP Physics or AP whatever. It’s a very different avenue,” Le Brun said.
Le Brun emphasized that while the fund isn’t widely discussed, it has deep roots in the community.
“I think it kind of flies under the radar at BHS, but 10 percent of the [course] catalog started from Innovation Fund ideas or sponsored ideas,” Le Brun said. “And we really have touched the lives of every single student in some way, shape or form. So I think it’s a unique organization among public schools, and I think it’s part of what makes BHS so special.”