Schools
Robin Hood Comes to Long Beach JCC’s Rescue
Charitable foundation gives $100K grant to city daycare center for four classroom portable at St. Mary's Church.
Fr. Brian Barr, head priest at St. Mary of the Isle Church in Long Beach, called it a “no-brainer.”
The Catholic parish has opened its yard on East Park Avenue for four portable classrooms that house 30 young students and staff from the Hurricane Sandy-damaged Barry and Florence Friedberg Jewish Community Center on National Boulevard. Classes began there Monday.
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The Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization that has helped New Yorkers since 1988, gave the JCC a $100,000 grant to rent the portables while their building is rebuilt. During the storm six feet of flooding invaded the basement and destroyed five classrooms and a therapy gym.
“We just felt we could fill in the need for the JCC, the kids and their families,” said Barr, whose parish maintains a close working relationship with the organization that provides childcare to families across southwest Nassau County.
The JCC is among a number of Long Beach-based recipients of more than $1 million in grants from Robin Hood. Pre-storm, the JCC schooled about 150 students, from 18 months to pre-K, in nine classrooms, but after Sandy they were moved to temporary locations in Oceanside and Rockville Centre.
“When the storm hit, daycare and child care became a huge issue because everybody was impacted,” said Roni Kleinman, vice president of Long Beach JCC operations and early childhood program. “There are people that operate day care centers out of their homes and there are centers, Magnolia Center and the Martin Luther King Center, the People’s Church, Temple Emanu-El — we were all out. So we had to do something quickly to establish some normalcy to their lives and the lives of their children.”
When JCC students and staff return to their Long Beach building, the basement’s facilities were moved to the large room upstairs, with the rest of the center’s classrooms and offices, which were sectioned off by dividers. “It’s certainly not an optimal fitting for children and staff; it’s open and loud,” Kleinman said of the overcrowding.
In early November the JCC and similar area organizations were invited to meet with Robin Hood representatives. Each organization explained their post-Sandy needs.
“I explained to them our need of somewhere to put our children,” said Kleinman, who wrote and submitted a grant. “People can’t go to work if they have nowhere to put their babies.”
In December, more than $50 million was raised through the star-studded 12-12-12 Concert for Sandy Relief at Madison Square Garden, a benefit for Robin Hood. The foundation, which already had $15 million in the pot prior to the concert, announced in February that $4 million was earmarked for Sandy Relief.
After a lot of back-and-forth with Robin Hood, the JCC was granted $100,000 for four portables, which were delivered to St. Mary’s April 1. Among other Long Beach grant recipients were Círculo de la Hispanidad ($125,000), Long Beach Medical Center’s Family Care Center ($200,000), Long Beach MLK ($50,000), and City of Long Beach’s Magnolia Daycare Center ($150,000).
The JCC spent $70,000 on start-up costs and necessities such as electrical, fire alarm, water and sewage services, as well as desks and chairs and other furniture. The portables are available until the end of the school year in June.
“This has been a big undertaking, bringing those portables in, with the electrical and plumbing hook ups,” Barr said.
During the storm the tiled floor throughout St. Mary’s was destroyed, and Barr said JCC employees, including Orlando Ariza, vice President of house and grounds, worked alongside nuns and out-of-state youth volunteers to help reconstruct the facility. He hopes Mass services can return to there by late June.
Kleinman said that after Sandy, the JCC has worked mainly with St. Mary’s, the MLK Center and Long Beach Latino Civic Association.
“We’ve been working with them for years,” she said, “but the storm made it more important for us to all work together and pool our resources and making sure we have the whole community together.”
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