Former I.S. 89 principal Ellen Foote, left, and principals Ronnie Najjar, P.S. 89, and Zeynep Ozkan, I.S. 89, give laudatory remarks about the P.S./I.S. 89 custodial staff. From left: Jose Velez, Derick Henry, James Willie, Frank Diorio, David DiGiacomo and Mike Clark. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
They are the few who have made a difference in the lives of the many. That is the spirit behind the annual Downtown Community Awards, given each year by Manhattan Youth.
Last month at the Downtown Community Center, it was the custodial crew of P.S./I.S. 89 in Battery Park City and the multivolunteering Wendy Chapman, a P.S. 150 parent in Tribeca, who took home the plaques.
And so, before a room filled with celebrants, there were laudatory speeches about broken toilet fixes and Hurricane Sandy heroism for the six custodians, and Taste of Tribeca chairing and new school lobbying for Chapman.
“They love the building as much as I do. They love the kids in that building as much as I do,” P.S. 89 Principal Ronnie Najjar said of her facilities team. “And they make sure that that space is a safe and clean environment for all of us. I can’t thank them enough.”
Najjar, who was joined by former I.S. 89 principal Ellen Foote and the school’s current leader, Zeynep Ozkan, especially lauded the custodians for their efforts to keep the school dry during Sandy.
“They sacrificed [being with] their families and their homes and stayed and lived at P.S./I.S. 89 for the entire weekend to make sure.”
“We walked into a space that was pristine,” added Ozkan.
Manhattan Youth Director Bob Townley called Chapman “a fixture in our community and a fixture in our community center.”
Chapman, a Manhattan Youth board member, is co-president of the P.S. 150 PTA, a former longtime co-chair of the Taste of Tribeca (and still an active volunteer) and an activist co-founder of Build Schools Now, an organization lobbying to help relieve school crowding in Lower Manhattan.
Chapman helped lead a successful campaign by P.S. 150 parents last year to reverse the Department of Education’s plan to close the school and send its students to a new school in Chelsea.
But in her self-effacing speech, Chapman gave much of the credit to others. More important, she said, the experience led her, along with fellow P.S. 150 parents Buxton and Lisa Midyette, to start Build Schools Now.
“We made a promise that if we won we would give back,” she said, “and keep helping.”