HELL'S KITCHEN — A mother of a P.S. 51 first-grader is running the New York City Marathon to raise funds for school art supplies and extracurricular activities — and so it can keep its part-time gym teacher.
Elaine Keating-Brown, 42, a 10-year Hell's Kitchen resident, secured a spot in the marathon through her volunteer work with the New York Young Runners program that she helps organize at the school. It will be her second marathon.
"The school really needs as much help as it can get for fundraising," said Keating-Brown, 42, who was a teacher before her first son was born, in a plea for support.
"I am hoping, with your help, we can make a difference to a really wonderful school."
Pledgers don't donate per mile but by items — $50 buys two recorders, $250 pays for a school bus for a field trip, $500 buys a year's worth of acrylic watercolor and oil based paints for visual arts classes and $1,000 buys a year's worth of books.
She's also hoping that what she raises will go towards defraying the cost of the a gym teacher, she said.
This is the first year the school managed to collect enough money to secure a part-time physical education teacher, according to school administration. The breakthrough came mostly thanks to a parent donation, according to the principal and assistant principal.
Before this year, they had been satisfying the physical education requirement with classroom teacher instruction and partnerships with outside organizations that taught dance classes for the kids, according to the school's principal Nancy Sing Bock. The school had opted to use their scarce funds to hire full-time art and music teachers instead of P.E. teacher, she said.
Now the school is still working to piece together funds in order to keep the teacher into next year, said assistant principal Cathy Meyers.
"We're a school in transition, [though] we still have many families who are at or below the poverty line," said Meyers.
While there are many more middle class families at the school than when it opened 15 years ago, P.S. 51 is still considered a Title 1 School, meaning it gets federal funds because of the amount of low-income students.
"Every little bit helps," Meyers said.
For more information about Keating-Brown's efforts to raise money for P.S. 51, visit her Crowdrise page.
