Holiday events at PS 811, Manhattan

Dave Sanders

Posing with the check for $10,000 are (from left) Chapter Leader Allister Johnston, O’Leary, Daub, Assistant Principal Vilma Melendez, and Peter Ohser, Bob Taylor and Juan Melendez of MoneyGram.

Dave Sanders

A 4th-grader receives his gift from Coast Guard members James Maduro (left) and Carlos Dominguez.

Some schools are lucky to get one visit from Santa’s helpers. East Harlem’s PS 811, the Mickey Mantle School, housed in PS 101, got two, and both on Dec. 7. First, executives of MoneyGram, the Dallas, Texas-based money transfer company, presented the school with a $10,000 check to be used to purchase iPads and other instructional supplies and educational technology items for the school’s population of special needs children. The grant was part of MoneyGram’s “Spreading Holiday Magic" program, in which the company distributes more than $50,000 in much-needed money, school supplies and learning tools to 11 schools in the United States and seven other countries. Later that day, and for the second holiday season in a row, members of the Staten Island Coast Guard distributed toys to the school’s special education students. They were “toys relevant to their functional make-up” said UFT District 75 Representative Walter O’Leary, who, with Principal Barry Daub, was on hand for both gift-givings.