Several dozen children in pajamas, their parents in tow, snuggled into the second-floor library at PS 30 in East Harlem on a cold March 26 evening to hear Principal Teri Stinson read Dr. Seuss’ madcap flight of imagination, “Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!”

They were back at school for Family Reading Night, one of the outreach activities of this Community Learning School, and they were erupting in giggles after every line that Stinson read. When she finished, the principal had the children make up their own “thinks.” (“A horse with 100 wings!” “A salami with green eyes!”)

“It is silly,” librarian Brenda Shufelt said to parents after the children had left for pizza down the hall. “You probably didn’t find it that funny, but did you notice? The kids found it hilarious.”

Shufelt, who served as the first resource coordinator when PS 30 started its community school in 2012, encouraged the parents to read with their children without feeling they must instruct. “Just enjoy it and read to them as long as they want you to,” she recommended.

From there, she reviewed a tip sheet, in English and Spanish, of suggestions for home-based prereading and reading skill development that the parents discussed.

“We cannot do the work you do at home; we cannot replace you,” she said. A soft-spoken dad confessed that he sometimes makes up words when he reads to his daughter. Was that OK? “I think it’s wonderful,” Shufelt answered.

 

Separate and unequal

PS 30 is close to the FDR Drive on 128th Street, and its prekindergarten through 5th-grade students come mainly from the nearby Jackie Robinson Houses. Since 2010, a Success Academy charter school has been co-located in its building, an uneasy pairing that has meant not just a loss of space for PS 30 but palpable inequality.

A Fresh Direct van pulls up each week to deliver high-quality food for the charter as students from PS 30 and the District 75 school that also shares the building watch.

The Success Academy’s first move was to take over the playground. It also took the top floor with the computer and science labs, the newly renovated library and the hall bathroom, relegating PS 30 to smaller rooms on the second floor.

The students in grades 3 to 5 are now in former early-grade classrooms where the bathrooms are right in the classroom.

The charter, Shufelt said, “pulls out the upper level of poverty,” leaving the neighborhood’s poorest kids only the district school option, children who “don’t have glasses, whose teeth hurt.” The staff of PS 30 wanted to counteract that sense of being second class.

“That’s why we wrote the Community Learning Schools grant,” said Shufelt, “because Community Learning Schools is the alternative to charters.”

 

Fertile soil

The school does not have the shiny frills of the charter, but it has strengthened its community with the help of the UFT grant, new partners and programs like reading nights. A financial counselor is available at the school one full day a week to help parents with budgeting, credit report disputes or college-saving plans.

Food Bank For New York City runs a nutrition and cooking program out of the school. Gym teacher LaTaejha Borden conducts adult fitness classes after school. Isabel Tierra, a parent of two children at the school, helped start an after-school soccer program, with a coaching pro from a local sports club, for students in grades 3 to 5. Other neighborhood kids are welcome to participate in the program.

Shell Lewis, a former nonprofit manager, was hired by the UFT in November as the school’s permanent resource coordinator. Her first steps were to canvass the parents about their needs and build parent leadership.

“The school is great. I landed in fertile soil here,” she said, with active parents and a staff that “really pitches in.”

Lewis says a top priority is expanding a Harlem Hospital-affiliated health clinic in the building and adding mental health services, although space is a big problem. Meanwhile, she and the staff got the fitness class going and arranged for mobile health vans to stop by.

Shufelt credits Lewis with helping the new programs take firm root. “Shell is looking at the sustainability,” Shufelt said. “She’s getting parents to volunteer in an organized way, having each parent responsible for calling 15 others.”

In addition, Lewis has built an advisory board of parents, staff and leaders of East Harlem’s faith-based community to help with decision-making and outreach. She is in constant contact with parents through a steady flow of emails, notices, mailings and word of mouth.

Her work is exhausting, Lewis admits, but rewarding. Lately, she has been planning the opening of PS 30’s brand-new playground, which the school will share with the District 75 program and — in contrast to Success Academy’s playground — make available to the whole community.