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City Rewards Grandparent School Volunteers With Free Broadway Show

By Amy Zimmer | April 26, 2016 10:33am
 The Department of Education is giving out tickets to the Broadway show “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
The Department of Education is giving out tickets to the Broadway show “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time."
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Joan Marcus

MANHATTAN — While New York City students are getting to see the smash “Hamilton” on Broadway, their grandparents are getting treated to the Tony-winning, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”

The Department of Education — which is sending 20,000 students to see “Hamilton” for just $10 — is now providing free tickets to eight performances of the “Curious Incident,” starting Tuesday night, to 400 families who are active as volunteers with their schools, school officials said.

Among these are the 15 members of the DOE’s Grand Connections, a newly formed grandparents advisory group. Chancellor Carmen Fariña — who often talks about her own grandchildren — noticed during her many visits to schools across the city that many grandparents have taken on the role of primary caretaker for their school-aged grandchildren. She wanted to find ways to provide support to this population of caregivers, school officials noted.

In response, the DOE’s Division of Family and Community Engagement (FACE) — which aims to strengthen relationships between families and educators — launched the advisory group, which has since had two meetings where the members have started discussing ways to address the needs of grandparents who are raising or helping take care of students in city schools.

“I hope perhaps we can serve as resources for parents and grandparents," said Stacey Bell, of Ditmas Park, who picks up her second-grade granddaughter from school every day and watches her until her parents come home from work — as she’s been doing since the 7-year-old was an infant.

One thing she hopes the grandparents will brainstorm is how to train their peers on how to provide homework help.

“I had to re-learn math,” Bell said, to help her granddaughter. “We don’t carry the one anymore. We use number lines now,” she said, explaining how the method of teaching addition and subtraction has changed.

Bell was tapped to be on the advisory team by the parent coordinator at her granddaughter's school, where she is a constant presence, attending school meetings, concerts and volunteering at lunch. (The other kids wanted to call her “nanna,” but her granddaughter forbade it.)

“Kids need whoever their surrogate is to have access to resources,” Bell said, adding that at school pick-up she’s surrounded by “grandparents, aunties and babysitters.”

She was excited that the DOE was showing its appreciation with a show, especially since she no longer goes to Broadway because tickets are “prohibitively expensive” for the retiree.

Some of the others getting tickets have never been to a Broadway show, DOE officials said.

Tickets are also going to parent volunteers who are part of Families Fostering Success, a program aiming to boost involvement in school districts with historically low parent participation, along with members of the Citywide Council on District 75 (the district for special needs students) and Citywide Council on special education.

Families Fostering Success launched in November as a collaboration between FACE and Learning Leaders, a nonprofit that helps recruit, train and place parent and community volunteers in schools.

More than 350 parents started their leadership training in January from 69 schools in seven school districts, including East Harlem’s District 4, the South Bronx’s District 9, Bedford-Stuyvesant's District 16, northwest Queens’ District 30 (which spans from Astoria to Jackson Heights, Long Island City and Woodside) and Staten Island's District 31.

The program seeks out and trains family volunteers to assume leadership roles at their schools, not only as a way for parents to help bring resources to schools, but also to build their own knowledge, confidence and skills in helping their children, according to DOE officials.

‎"Giving parents, grandparents and students the opportunity to experience ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ on the Broadway stage champions our commitment to engaging families in innovative ways,” DOE spokeswoman Yuridia Peña said. “Parents are critical partners in delivering an excellent and equitable education."