From the EV Grieve inbox...
Last year, families at The Neighborhood School on East Third Street (aka P.S. 363, aka TNS) found out that due to a perfect storm of craptastical budget crises on both the local and federal levels, the school had lost funding for its library. We now have to raise an additional $40K a year to keep our library and wonderful librarian Cheryl Wolf — no small feat for a school in which a third of the children qualify for free lunch and many more live just above the poverty line, and the PTA is already stretched to its limit.
So we're doing an online auction of children's book art to raise funds. Some of the amazing artists who’ve donated original paintings, prints and/or autographed books include Maira Kalman, Sophie Blackall, Paul O. Zelinsky, Mo Willems, Calef Brown, Betsy Lewin, Jaime Zollars, Javaka Steptoe (whose psychedelic portrait of Jimi Hendrix from Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow will thrill music fans), Betsy Lewin, Beth Krommes, Emily Arnold McCully, David Milgrim, Raina Telgemeier, Dave Roman and many more.
The auction runs though June 21. New items will be added regularly, and of course, straight-up donations can be made here — fully tax-deductible, as The Neighborhood School PTA, which funds the library, is a 501(c)3 charitable organization.
Why bother? Because research shows that having a school library and librarian is strongly correlated with student achievement, and the less wealthy the school, the stronger that correlation is. Our school also has one of the largest percentages of children with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) in our district, and Cheryl is a magician at reaching reluctant and emerging readers.
Our PTA is already stretched to its limit providing art, music, field-trip subsidies and supplies for students. That's why we're reaching out to the public. There’s nothing left to cut from the budget: In the last three years, we’ve cut our Reading Recovery program, our math coach, our literacy coach, our assistant principal, a school aide, all professional development contracts and our supplies budget, and we’ve increased class size in all grades. We don’t want to lose our library too!
Previously
4 comments:
thanks, grieve!
don't anybody bid on that Flying Rat by Anna Raff (from World Rat Day, a collection of rat-centric poetry by J Patrick Lewis, the current U.S. Children's Poet Laureate)-- that one is MINE. lots of other cool stuff tho. some of the prints (tho not the limited-edition maira kalman) are very affordable...
With all the wealth in this city it is obscene that a school has to have an art sale to raise funds for a library.
nygrump,
Hopefully that is just venting and not an excuse.
yesterday the poetry foundation announced the new US children's poet laureate, kenn nesbitt. a) i don't trust anyone with double consonants in his first AND last names and b) i'm hoping that means no one but me will bid on the winged rat illustration from the book World Rat Day, by the OLD children's poet laureate.
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