Spruce St. Kids Give Change to Help Make Change in Big Coin Drive

With principal Nancy Harris leading the ceremony, kindergartner Shane O'Connor presents a check for $1,465 to Theseus Roche, the director of Manhattan Youth's after school program. Many of the Spruce Street students attend the program at their school. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Students at the Spruce Street School, PS 397, learned that pennies, nickels and dimes can add up to big money and even bigger hearts when they gathered last week to distribute the fruits of a recent coin drive.

In the school's packed auditorium on Thursday morning, May 9, the kindergartners, first and second graders screamed with delight as the tallies were announced, all the money going to three Hurricane Sandy-related causes.

The school had first held a drive for coats, food and other essentials soon after the hurricane (some of the children themselves were out of their homes for weeks) and then the coin drive began in January.

"Do you want to hear how much money we raised?" principal Nancy Harris called out to the children. "Do you actually want to give a check with that money?"

"Yeah! Yeah!" the kids yelled back.

First up was Theseus Roche, representing Manhattan Youth and the heavily damaged Downtown Community Center.

The pre-kindergartners and kindergartners, it was announced, collected $1,465.

"No! Wow!" Roche declared. "Thank you so much!"

"We hope that can help rebuild the Downtown Community Center," Harris said, "so that these kids and the other kids in the neighborhood can keep going there."

The first graders raised money for the New York Aquarium in Coney Island because they had visited the aquarium just days before the hurricane devastated it. (The aquarium will reopen on May 25.) A check for $1,010 was presented to Kate Fitzgerald, the aquarium's manager of community relations.

Fitzgerald told the children how the staff worked heroically to save the sea creatures during the storm. "This money is going to help them to help the animals," she said.

The second and third graders raised $975 for South Street Seaport businesses through a Downtown Alliance fund. And Harris announced, to her own wide-eyed surprise and the shrieks of children, the total the school raised separately for the businesses last month with its Spirit Project, a street fair featuring food, drink and music.

"Five-thousand-dollars!" she exclaimed.

Before the students returned to their classes, the New York Aquarium's Fitzgerald summed up her feelings about the acts of kindness she had witnessed that morning.

"When I go back to the aquarium today I'm going to tell all the animals how great your school is," she told the children, "and all the good things you do for your community."