January 31, 2001

For Immediate Release:

Nyack Partners in Education (PIE), a grass roots non-profit educational group, has received a grant for more than $10,000 from the Joseph and Claire Flom Foundation. Along with matching contributions from individuals, the grant is funding a tutoring project which is currently reaching more than sixty children in a variety of innovative programs.

The PIE tutoring project for the 2000-01 school year includes a Saturday Morning reading program designed to teach elementary school children basic reading skills. The program is also offering the parents of these children tutorials in English. At the same time, PIE is collaborating with the Nyack Middle School in conducting writing workshops for over thirty low-achieving eighth graders. PIE is also providing individual tutors for a number of children in the district, as well as "homework helpers": secondary school students acting as mentors for younger children. All of these programs are free of charge.

The Joseph and Claire Flom Foundation, which awarded PIE grant money for this and other projects, is a private, independent grant-making foundation whose goal is "to strengthen the nation’s educational system by stimulating new approaches to learning." The Foundation’s primary focus is on "programs for gifted disadvantaged children and youth, and programs designed to promote tolerance and understanding and counter prejudice among the young."

"The Flom Foundation was interested in PIE’s track record for modeling innovative projects," says Rich Guay, a long-standing member of PIE. "The more data that comes out, the clearer it is that the recent over-emphasis on state tests will disproportionately hurt low income children. Our tutoring programs are trying to provide for these children what the district’s better-off students have always received. We’re very excited about and grateful for the grant."

Nyack PIE began in 1993 with parents and community members in the Nyack School district coming together to explore models for educational change. It has sponsored a number of programs intended to serve as models for educational reform, including a district-wide foreign language program for elementary students (a program since adopted by the Nyack school district), the Saturday Project which featured hands-on educational opportunities and community involvement, as well as numerous field trips, guest speakers, and parent organizing events. PIE has also been deeply involved in the ramifications of the Nyack School District’s achievement gap, and the 1998? report it co-produced with the Nyack branch of the NAACP helped bring local and national attention to this issue.

PIE’s current tutoring project is reaching many of the families traditionally disenfranchised under the present system. ".With my husband and me both working two jobs, " says Danie Cange, parent of a sixth-grader and a first-grader who are taking part in the PIE program, "we couldn’t provide all the help our children needed. The individual attention they’ve gotten through PIE is making all the difference."

PIE hopes its current project can serve as a model to Nyack and other school districts. "Public education is going to have to do this kind of intensive, individualized tutoring -- and soon," says the coordinator of PIE’s tutoring program, Marta Renzi. "Or else write off a large group of children. Summer school and staying after school aren’t going to be enough. We’re trying to create a web of support that includes professional and volunteers to connect the school with the home."

For more information on Nyack PIE, call 845-358-2033, or visit the web site at nyackpie.org.