Welcome to the 2020-21 Academic School Year at BPhx!

8/6/2020 2:51 pm

For our new families, let me introduce you to our wonderful Booster parent organization!

As far back as I can remember (as far back to when there were only 2 schools in AZ), BASIS schools have always referred to their parent organizations as ‘Booster Clubs’.  So think of our organization as a cross between a PTO/PTA organization, and the sports-oriented collegiate booster organizations.  Our BASIS Phoenix Booster organization is a non-profit parent/family volunteer organization that is constantly looking for ways to enhance/amplify our students’ experience at BPhx, whether it relates to extracurriculars such as clubs and sports, to social events such as prom or school dances/outings.

As for myself, my name is Carlos Urcuyo and I am the proud father of a 7th grader.  I was the Vice-president for the past academic year (2019-20).  My wife Alicia and I have now been associated with BASIS Phoenix, BASIS Phoenix Primary, BASIS Goodyear, and BASIS Scottsdale (we also have a 20-year-old Barrett graduate). Throughout the next few weeks, we will have other Boosters members share a brief bio as well.

In addition, I would like to explain what Membership Toolkit is and how it relates to ParentSquare:

MembershipToolkit, or simply MT, is our Booster platform, and can be reached by simply going to: https://basisphoenixboosters.org  We kindly ask you to sign in and update/create your family account.  We use to conduct the majority of our ‘business’ such as selling gear, selling e-tickets to events, selling lunches, and publishing information to our BPhx community.  This year, we are expanding the support of multiple family accounts as well as staff accounts  so that students are also able to access the platform (for instance, we plan to encourage student clubs to use it for volunteer hours tracking, and even selling club related merchandise!).  It is important to note that the BPhx administration does not conduct any official school-related business on MT, they use ParentSquare (PS)

Parentsquare is the official BASIS.ed communication platform, and it is used by all BASIS.ed schools to communicate with parents/guardians.  BPhx administrators have graciously allowed us access to BP as well but it will normally be for sporadic announcements, or simply to provide links to our MT platform for your convenience.  To summarize, as a parent, you need to have access to both, the ParentSquare platform (PS), and the MembershipToolkit platform (MT).

For the immediate future, our goals will be centered around supporting our teachers and their delivery of the virtual curriculum that they are required to provide.  We also understand that these are extraordinary times, and as such, we are going to offer families a voluntary membership (normally, $50 per academic year).  The idea is that you give us what you are comfortable with, and we will use it as diligently as possible to complement the BPhx experience!

As you select your contribution to the Boosters, I would encourage you to consider that events such as graduation, prom, and other activities will be greatly impacted by our organizations’ sharp decrease in lunch revenues.  We will certainly try to make up for lost ground as soon as possible, but we hope you are able to put yourselves in the shoes of those families that have Seniors graduating this year, not to mention those families who had graduates last year.

We are planning to continue to offer BPhx gear at competitive prices, and are currently figuring out what would be the best way to get it to students since the front office is currently not an option (We will keep you all posted!)

Lunch is (as of now) going to be offered, but all the details are still not available.  The emphasis is being placed on brown-bag type offering to adhere to the current environment.  We are realistically looking at seeing how our the first couple of weeks of school go, before we have the all the finalized information (per vendor’s request)

We do want to remind you of our ongoing fundraiser through Amazon via AmazonSmile.  To contribute, Instead of simply going to Amazon, go to smile.amazon.com and look for us (BASIS Phoenix Boosters as the nonprofit).  We also have it set up via this link: https://bit.ly/BoostersAmazonSmile

To wrap up, we were unable to hold elections last year.  We will be reaching out shortly to the entire parent community to solicit some new candidates for all positions.  For the foreseeable future, most of our work and meetings will be conducted virtually via the Google Meet platform

Once again, Welcome/Welcome Back to another exciting BPhx year!!