feature stories
Everybody into the pool!
Oct 29, 2009 2:07 PM
Bronx elementary school teacher works to keep kids, community afloat through swimming
It’s the crown jewel in the Castle of Learning.
Inside turreted, Gothic-revival PS 32, there it glitters, a $1.7 million 20-foot-by-40-foot rectangle of flawless aquamarine.
Children discover when they touch its glassy surface that it opens into a magic universe of water: swimming, playing and diving for treasure.
They also get a workout and learn about safety and cooperation.
For others, the pool is about conquering fear.
The Belmont section of the Bronx is hardly a village on the seacoast. Most people there grow up without ever learning how to swim.
But physical education teacher and swimming instructor Bill Payret has been working to remedy that for the eight years he’s been at the school.
“A lot of kids don’t get the opportunity to go swimming because of lack of funding at home,” he said during recess behind the tall brick building, also known as the Belmont School.
The 111-year-old school is also known as “The Castle of Learning,” according to Payret, who pointed up to the gargoyles.
The gargoyles, he theorizes, are the reason why it’s said that the school is haunted. Or so it’s sworn to be by the bigger kids living in the surrounding area, the kind of homey neighborhood where rumors spread quickly and where the cotton-candy man and the helados lady show up like clockwork before the last bell.
If it were up to Payret, the kids wouldn’t eat much of that stuff. But, if they do, at least they can swim it off the next day. Payret, a trim athlete who’s been teaching for 22 years and does a mile of laps three times a week at the Lehman College pool, is a strong force against childhood obesity and diabetes.
“Our kids are beautiful,” he says, “energetic, diverse, and really wanting to learn.”
Payret wants them to stay that way, to be fit and healthy well into their grown-up years. And he wants to make sure they get to grow up. Drowning prevention is an important part of what he calls “the lifetime skills” of physical education.
Haunted or no, the school did have for many years a creepy, moldy dark place where no one dared go: the old swimming pool.
“The pool was closed in 1992. In fact, I closed it,” said retired phys ed teacher and swimming instructor John Neuner, visiting for the day. The renovated pool is Neuner’s baby, said Chapter Leader Jerry Power, also a phys ed teacher and swimming instructor.
Neuner kept the old pool going even after the skylights were tarred over to keep cat burglars from breaking into the school. But when it started smelling like a flooded basement, he knew it was over.
In 1996, he reached out to several venues to get funding for renovation. The project was finally completed in 2002.
The result, designed by DVL Consulting Engineers, is stunning.
A jewel-box of a place, the shimmering pool is surrounded by sparkling white tiles accented with designs in sea blue. It’s maintained by a state-of-the-art humidification system and lit by soaring skylights, restored and secured with unobtrusive grilles.
Physical education teacher and swimming instructor Bill Payret (second from right) teaches poolside every day at PS 32 in the Bronx. With him are (from left) Chapter Leader Jerry Power, paraprofessional Dolores Garcia and former swimming instructor John Neuner, now retired.
It’s not a dolphin at Sea World, it’s a child who has learned to trust and relax enough to glide through a hoop underwater at the hands of swimming maestro Payret.
The Jose Rivera Pool was named in honor of the assemblyman who helped get funds to renovate the pool, which was completed in 2002 with additional funding from the Department of Education.
In some cases Payret’s first task is to help city kids conquer their fear of deep water.
Even more important than learning new strokes is learning safety and cooperation.
On this day, Payret is already in the water, gliding with the effortlessness of a true swimmer. He’s teaching 2nd-graders, “a great age to work with because they’re not fearful of water yet,” he says.
After stretching, the kids get into the pool ecstatically. One kid cuts quite a figure with his long braids and neon-pink goggles. Only one child is a bit hesitant. Payret has her sit on the edge and kick her feet in the water, praising her highly.
At last she slips into the pool to join her classmates, all learning about floating, and blowing bubbles from the mouth, and why it’s never a good idea to dive in shallow water, and how to cooperate with each other. Now they swim, knowing it’s OK if you have to go on your tiptoes sometimes while moving your arms. They play Treasure Hunt, diving for the bright plastic objects Payret scatters on the bottom of the pool.
Presiding over one of just two or three elementary-school swimming pools in the city, as far as anyone knows, Payret has taught thousands of children to swim. He runs a junior lifeguard enrichment program, and has trained the staff in Red Cross First Aid, CPR and using defibrillators.
According to Principal Esther Schwartz, Payret involves parents in pool safety workshops and Red Cross training and “has helped build a community with other schools through the after-school swimming program.” She is proud that a 10-year-old saved someone’s life at a municipal pool using the skills he learned at PS 32.
Payret, who grew up in the Norwood section of the Bronx, feels fortunate that he was raised in an active family, that his dad was a lifeguard and that he had a childhood of swimming at Jones Beach.
Power, also a native of the borough, learned how to swim in the pool of the parochial school where his father taught. Neuner is from City Island, the Bronx’s answer to a seaside village.
They talk about their aquatic histories not without a touch of pride.
After all, the three admit, they’re among a rare breed: guys from the Bronx who swim.
