New charter school gets a tech boost

By Kate Pastor

Educators are practicing what they preach. That’s right, they’re sharing.

Riverdale Country School will donate a dozen of its older-model eMac computers to the brand-new Bronx Community Charter School opening up in the Northwest Bronx.

One of the new school’s founders, Kendra Sibley, was an assistant teacher at Riverdale last year and put a request in the electronic school bulletins asking for surplus classroom supplies for her new school: the first charter elementary school to open in Community School District 10. The school, located on Webster Avenue, will start out with 100 students.

That’s when John Ment, Riverdale’s director of technology, suggested that the hilltop school could make computers available free of charge.

That was great news for Ms. Sibley. “We have to make every dollar stretch,” she said, noting that charter schools receive the same per-pupil funding from the state as public schools but have to pay for their own facilities.

“They asked, ‘How many do you want?’ and we said, ‘12 means we can have two in every classroom plus two for the arts teachers,’” she said.

Founders Ms. Sibley, Sasha Wilson and Martha Andrews were all teachers at the Bronx New School, PS 51, off Jerome Avenue, and wanted to create another, “quality, progressive” school for kids in the Bronx.

Mr. Ment said Riverdale answered Ms. Sibley’s plea for help not only because she was a familiar face. The practice of private-school donations to schools less well endowed, he said, is common.

“We give them away to schools that otherwise wouldn’t have any,” he said, noting that the last set of donations consisted of 60 computers given to a public school in Queens. Riverdale, he says, gives away between 60 and 80 computers every year.

The school’s hefty budget allows him to replace technology as it ages. Broken computers are recycled and working computers are given away — some to schools, some to financial aid families within the Riverdale community and others to “people who work in our kitchens, clean our buildings and do maintenance for our landscape and buildings,” said Mr. Ment.

But he was quick to dodge praise. “It’s the only environmentally and social right way to do it,” he said. Plus, he says he’s far from alone. His own network of private- school educators, especially within technology departments, has yielded countless examples of such generosity, and he says Riverdale participates in many charitable programs.

“Although we are private school educators we want to do the best we can to support widely available, high-quality education for all,” he said.

This is part of the August 14, 2008 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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