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School News
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October 5, 2008 15:15:48
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Jersey City school gets a little TLC
Volunteers team up, help clean up facility
Sunday, October 05, 2008
BY SHARON ADARLO
Star-Ledger Staff
Julian Elliot could have slept in yesterday and watched Saturday morning cartoons. Instead, the 13-year-old Jersey City student was putting the finishing touches on a mural of a smiling leprechaun at his school's library.
"Now that it's painted, it's going to look even more cool," said the eighth-grader, while all around him, other volunteers were busy working on large wall paintings at Julia A. Barnes Public School 12 on Astor Place.
As part of an innovative community program, about 175 volunteers converged on the school for several hours yesterday to paint walls, put together picnic benches and install rubber mats in the playgrounds, among other projects.
The K-8 school is part of HandsON Schools, a nonprofit program that seeks to revitalize schools as educational and community centers, according to volunteer coordinators. Other projects include schools in Seattle, Atlanta and Chicago.
P.S. 12 is especially important for the surrounding neighborhood because its 420 students are mostly from lower- and middle-class families, said Annie Graham-Smith, the school's principal. She said she's had to help families evicted from their homes or if they needed clothes.
"We are a community school," she said. "We host the Boys and Girls Club and after-school programs."
Jersey Cares, a community-based group in Newark and affiliated with HandsON, coordinated the volunteer work yesterday and had corporate sponsor UBS, the global financial firm, donate $16,000 in materials and bring in scores of employees who wanted to pitch in.
"This is just a wonderful act of kindness," Graham-Smith said. "We never expected this to happen to us."
In the gymnasium before people went to work, volunteers milled about, munching bagels and drinking coffee.
"Who's ready to get to work?" asked Brian Dean, executive director of Jersey Cares, as the large crowd screamed and clapped.
Volunteers, drawn from UBS, students and school employees, mixed paint, drew basketball court lines onto the asphalt playground and put together storage sheds for tricycles and red wagons.
Marten Hoekstra, head of UBS' wealth-management department in the United States, was busy installing a short, squat plastic shed in the playground.
"It's good for UBS," he said. "It gives our employees a great outlet to give back to the community."
That's what Subbiah Rajagopalan, a UBS worker, had in mind. Last year, he helped refurbish the gymnasium at the Boys and Girls Club in Hoboken as part of his company's community program.
"I very much enjoyed it," he said while taking a break painting flowers on a large plastic planter that will be placed in one of the school's stairwells. "I wanted to do something similar."
That meant a lot to Margaret Sampson, a school aid and the mother of a fourth-grader, who was helping install a rubber mat in a corner of the playground.
For a long time, Sampson said, students would come in from a rough game of tag with scrapes on their knees from the asphalt surface. The new rubber mat will help.
"I am so happy people are helping," Sampson said as she looked at the busy volunteers around her. "I am happy it's finally getting fixed."
Sharon Adarlo may be reached at sadarlo@starledger.com or at (732) 293-4921.
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