The Co-op Commitment
In the links below you’ll find all eight committees, what each one actually does, when the work happens, and roughly how many hours it asks of you. We’ve tried to be honest about those numbers.
A few things worth knowing before you read on. You don’t have to pick the thing you’re best at, you can pick the thing you’d enjoy. You won’t be doing it alone; every committee has co-chairs and other families beside you. And if the year gets away from you, tell us. We would much rather move you than lose you.
If you have questions — please reach out.
- Interested in being a Co-Chair? Sign up here.
- Ready to sign up for a Committee? Sign up here.
- Do you prefer to share your expertise? Please let us know!
1. School & Class Life Welcoming, connecting, and keeping classrooms humming
This is the committee for families who like being the first friendly face. You’re the ones who remember what it felt like to walk in not knowing anyone, and you want to make that easier for the next family.
Good fit if you’re a returning family, if you’re comfortable striking up a conversation, or if you’d rather help steadily all year than work one big event.
Ambassadors / Admissions / Tour Greeters
You talk with families who are thinking about joining us — at our tours, open houses, on the phone, over coffee. You answer the questions only a current family can answer honestly. You also help welcome new families once they say yes, and you’re a name they can reach out to before school starts.
Friends & Family Day + Community Table
One of the warmest days of our year. You help set up, greet the grown-ups and grandparents and neighbors who come through, run the Community Table, and put the building back together afterward.
Class Parents
You’re the connective tissue for your child’s class — sending the reminder everyone forgot, coordinating a potluck or a teacher gift, gathering questions families are too shy to ask, and passing them along to us. You work closely with your class’s teaching team.
Field Trip Reporters
You go along on a field trip, help keep eyes on our kids, and come back with a few photos and a short note about the day so the families who couldn’t come still get to see it.
2. Fundraising & Gala The events that close the gap tuition doesn’t cover
Every year, tuition doesn’t cover everything our school wants to be. This committee helps close that gap. If you like planning, selling, soliciting, decorating, or just working a busy table with good people, you belong here.
Good fit if you have event-planning energy, connections to businesses who might donate, or you simply love a well-run fundraiser.
Fall Festival
Our big fall gathering. You help plan the games and food, run a station on the day, and handle setup and breakdown. It runs alongside the family photo booth, so you’ll be working next to the Media & Story folks.
Marathon Bake Sale
The NYC Marathon runs past us, and we sell to the crowd. You bake, you staff a shift at the table, you help with setup and cleanup. It’s a few hours on a Sunday morning and it’s genuinely fun.
Fundraising Gala
Our biggest night of the year. There’s a job here for almost everyone: soliciting auction items and sponsors, assembling the silent auction, designing the space and the invitations, and running the room on the night itself. You pick the piece that suits you.
Radio Bingo
You help run the night — calling numbers, managing cards and prizes, setting up and cleaning up.
Annual Giving support
You help make the case to other families — writing a short personal note, making a few calls, or sharing why your family gives. We give you the language; you make it yours.
3. Facilities & Garden Hands-on work on our building and our gardens
Our building and our gardens get better because families show up with shovels, tools, spreadsheets, and grant applications. It’s satisfying work and the kids notice it.
Good fit if you’d rather work with your hands than run a room, if you garden, if you build, or if you’re a strong writer who could go after a grant.
Learning Gardens
You tend our garden beds alongside the kids and teachers — planting, watering, weeding, harvesting, and getting the beds ready for winter and then for spring.
Earth Day Planting
One good afternoon of getting dirty with our kids. You help prep the beds and materials, work alongside a group of students, and clean up.
Improvement Projects
You find and write the grants that pay for the things we keep wishing for — soundproofing the gym, curtains for the library, new cushions in the reading corner. You’ll also help scope the projects and see them through.
Summer Workshifts
The two weeks before school starts, when we get the building ready together — cleaning, moving, sorting, setting up classrooms. This is where a lot of families meet each other for the first time.
4. Library & Learning Books, curiosity, and the events where kids show their work
It’s books, curiosity, and the events where our kids show grown-ups what they’ve been working on. If you’re the family whose home is full of books, or the one who lights up at a fourth-grader explaining their science project, this is your place.
Good fit if you love books, if you’re organized enough to run a fair, or if you want to be near the learning without being in a classroom every week.
Library Committee
You help keep our library alive — shelving and organizing, building out the collection with an eye toward books that reflect every family here, and hosting read-alouds.
Book Fair
You set up the fair, staff the tables, help kids and grown-ups find something they’ll love, and pack it all down. This year’s fair centers anti-racist books and authors, so there’s real thought in the selection work too.
Science Fair
You help set up the space, guide families through the projects, and — if you have a science or engineering background — spend time with students talking about their work. That conversation is often the best part of a kid’s year.
Museum of Uniqueness
Our kids curate an exhibition about who they are. You help build and hang the displays, host visitors on opening day, and take it all down afterward.
Read-a-Thon
You help launch it, track the reading, cheer the kids on, and celebrate at the finish.
Moth Night
A storytelling night for our community. You help find and coach the storytellers, set up the room, and run the evening.
5. Celebrations One great day at a time — good for full weeks
The work is mostly hands and hearts on the day itself, which makes it a good fit for families whose weeks are already full.
Good fit if your schedule is unpredictable and you’d rather commit to one great day than a standing monthly meeting.
School Sing
You help set up the space, welcome families in, manage the flow of classes on and off, and reset the room afterward.
Talent Show
You help run rehearsals, manage the backstage (which is exactly as chaotic and wonderful as it sounds), handle sound and lights, and put the room back.
Carnival
The last big gathering of our year. You run a game station, help with food, set up, and break down. This is also where returning families sit at the host tables and recruit next year’s committees — so if you’re here, you’re part of that too.
Field Day
It’s a students-only day, and the grown-ups make it run. You set up and staff a station, keep water and snacks moving, and help with cleanup.
Graduation
You help set up the space, greet families, manage the program and the food, and clean up. It’s a tender day and it deserves careful hands.
Middle School Dances
You chaperone, run the snack table, help with music and setup, and stay for cleanup. Our middle schoolers need us to be present and slightly invisible, which is its own art form.
6. Media & Story Photos, video, and the tech behind our gatherings
Our school does beautiful things and most of them go unphotographed. This committee fixes that. It’s also where our tech-minded families land — the folks who can fix a projector, run a livestream, or organize five thousand photos into something a family can actually find.
Good fit if you shoot, edit, design, or troubleshoot. You bring your own gear and your own eye.
Video / Photography
You cover our events with a camera and hand the files back to us, organized and ready to share. We’ll set the schedule together in the fall so you’re only at the events you signed up for.
Technology
You help with the practical tech of our gatherings — sound, projection, livestreams — and lend a hand with the systems behind the scenes when something needs a person who knows what they’re doing.
School Picture Day
You help move classes through on schedule, keep collars straight and hair reasonable, and manage the paperwork and ordering.
Family Photo Booth & Portrait Sessions
You run the booth alongside the Fall Festival — setting up the backdrop, shooting, and getting images back to families afterward.
7. Community Partnerships Lasting ties with our Bed-Stuy neighbors
This committee builds real, lasting connections with the neighbors, businesses, and organizations around us. This work happens alongside our DEIB role, and it asks for patience more than hours.
Good fit if you can commit for more than one year, if you’re comfortable representing us at a meeting where we’re guests, and if you believe depth beats breadth. We ask co-chairs here to serve multiple years and bring along someone who’ll take over.
Neighborhood businesses & Bed-Stuy associations
You build and hold relationships with the businesses and organizations around us — the deli out front, the Magnolia Tree Earth Center, the schools on our block. This means showing up more than once, remembering names, and asking what would actually be useful to them.
Presence at community meetings
You represent our school where our neighborhood makes decisions — CEC 16, local block associations, Built in Bed-Stuy. You go, you listen, you report back.
Hosting Block Association meetings
You open our doors and help set up the space, greeting people, making sure our neighbors feel like guests rather than visitors.
Food & clothing drives
You organize our drives in partnership with local organizations — getting the word out, collecting and sorting, and delivering. The Coat Drive launches December 1, with a food drive in the spring.
8. Connection & Care The gatherings where families actually meet each other
It runs the gatherings where families actually meet each other, and it holds the spaces where families who share something — an identity, an experience, a question — can find each other inside the bigger community. It’s quiet work and it’s the reason people stay.
Good fit if you’re a natural host, if you notice who’s standing alone at a gathering, or if you want to help build a space our community doesn’t have yet.
Sunset Soiree
Our first gathering of the year, and one of the best. You help set up, welcome new families and introduce them around, keep the food and drinks moving, and clean up.
Vaccination Clinic
You help run check-in, keep the line moving, sit with anyone who’s nervous, and handle the paperwork.
All-School Summer Slice
Pizza in the park before school starts. You help pick the spot, order the food, and host — which mostly means introducing people who haven’t met yet.
Prefer to share your expertise?
Some of what our school needs isn’t an event. It’s an hour of your professional judgment at the right moment — a contract read, a logo fixed, a network problem solved, a document translated so a family can read it in the language they think in.
You tell us what you do and how you’re willing to help. We keep an internal directory — shared only with the staff who need it, never published. When something comes up that fits you, our expertise coordinator reaches out directly. You can always say not this time. This path counts fully toward your commitment.
- Legal
- Design & branding
- IT & technology
- Healthcare
- Accounting & finance
- Photography & video
- Translation & interpretation
- Grant writing
- Construction & trades
- Something else — tell us
Not sure where you fit? Email me. Tell me what your week actually looks like, what you like doing, and what you’d rather never be asked to do again. We’ll find you something. — Maria, maria@thecoopschool.org