Ed note: After two years of blogging from the pre-K and kindergarten corners of her school in Brooklyn, Claiborne Milde will also be "stepping up" and moving on to different endeavors. Here's her wrap-up of this pre-K year and the challenges that await next year's crop of newcomers to the public school system. Thanks Claiborne!
The end of a school year always feels strange, those last few days lingering after "Stepping Up" but the classroom emptied of artwork and personal effects: a blank slate awaiting next year’s pre-K class. School, just a week behind us, is already a distant memory for my daughters, who hauled home the last of their projects and mementos, rifled through them sentimentally for a day, and then whirled off to camp and play dates.
The garden at PS 29 is thriving and the playground is being renovated after vandals burned the jungle gym.But for many parents, the school year is not so easy to forget; it has been a rough one for the PS 29 community, which saw a theft of PTA money, a schoolyard fire, and just last week, the announcement of further deep budget cuts. Something has to give, and in this case it will be a kindergarten classroom for next year–expanding the numbers in the remaining ones to nearly 30 kids per class.
For the PTA, whose work never ends, it’s a scramble to come up with more ways to generate funds, to pay for assistant teachers in the larger kindergarten classes, to safeguard arts programs, to supply books and paper. After this punishing round of cuts, how much more can the school take? And another burning question: will much-needed restitution come for the roughly $100,000 in pilfered PTA funds?
On the upside, there are signs of healing around the school: the torched jungle gym has just been repaired, and the renovated schoolyard is newly decked in bright colors, a baseball diamond and track painted onto its surface. The school garden continues to grow and green one corner of the yard. My rising kindergartner, Leia, is blissfully innocent of all the trials her school has gone through. She’ll have wonderful memories from the year, such as the songs she learned from her guitar-playing teacher; trying healthy new foods cooked by Chef Lindsay for the Wellness in the Schools program; and the magical night the rain dried up just in time to watch “Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory” on the big screen, out in the school yard.
I feel grateful to our principal, school staff, and PTA for steering us through the year and making sure the kids don’t suffer in all of this. I feel fortunate my daughter lucked into a spot for pre-K and had the opportunities she did (for those still in line, a second round of applications is coming up).
With next year's belt-tightening across the city, schools–and parents–are going to have to rely on extra reserves of resiliency and creativity to ease the pinch of the cuts. I've seen this problem-solving in action at PS 29, and I'm confident the same determination will get the community–and others like it–through the challenges to come.
