News from the Board - Re-cap from the Annual Corporation Meeting 

The Board of Trustees would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the Corporation members who attended this week's annual meeting in person and via Zoom. Together with the school's leadership and administration, we appreciate your interest and dedication. For those who could not attend and for the larger community, we would like to share a summary of key insights and developments.

As reported by the Treasurer, Roman Wandl, GISNY is in a healthy financial position thanks in large part to the administration's careful cost management and strategic investment efforts. The positive financial standing enables GISNY to embark on a significant renovation project with confidence and according to the timeline the school set for itself. To significantly improve our students' educational environment and the building's energy efficiency as outlined by the President, Dr. Katja Simons, we will strategically allocate a portion of our net-free cash exceeding our target liquidity, in conjunction with a loan and fundraising efforts, to finance this substantial project.

A trend that the Board is monitoring closely in relation to this capital building project is a significant drop in the school's enrollment in 2024/25, especially in the pre-K and Lower School levels. The Board works hand-in-hand with school leadership and the administration to support all of GISNY's efforts to remedy the situation. Indeed, the most recent numbers show that these outreach and marketing efforts are already bearing fruit. 

In addition to these efforts, our new Head of School, Volker Ovelgönne, spoke about numerous academic initiatives that should help ensure families of all backgrounds (expat, local) to see in GISNY not only an academically excellent but well-rounded choice for their students. Among these initiatives are

• a current deep review of the English curriculum in the pre-K and Lower School
• the May/June 2025 exchange for Bilbao for a group of tenth graders
• the implementation of a robust AP program
• facilitation of a direct dialogue between representatives from GISNY's business and educational network and our students, such as a recent interactive workshop on design thinking

In closing of this summary, we are delighted to announce that all five candidates - Christopher Brown, Kenia Bustamante, Luise Mahler, Bruni Topete-Raeder, and Dirk Zemke - running to maintain their seats on the Board were successful and have accepted their re-election.