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Parents launch enrichment-focused group

Parents launch enrichment-focused group



• By Kris DiLorenzo Aug 18, 2023 

A dozen Ardsley School District parents have formed a new parent-teacher organization: the Ardsley Community Enrichment PTO.

Last June, Danielle DiMeglio, Marissa Fiordimalva, Suzanne Formato, Sophia King, Pam Lancellotti, Christina Lang, Alyssa Paolucci Mills, Diana Raniolo, Donielle Stanton, and sisters Ashley and Brianne Maranino founded the group, known by the acronym ACE. Their mission is “to strengthen, enrich, and encourage the educational and social environment” of the district, and its goals are “to complement the school curriculum with additional opportunities for students to learn, socialize, communicate, and grow.”

In April, ACE conducted a survey, titled “Bring the fun back to Ardsley!” The results will be shared with Ardsley Middle School Principal Stuart Horlacher and Concord Road Elementary Interim Principal Anthony DiCarlo, the latter of whom took up his new position on Aug. 14.  Lang, the vice president of ACE whose three children are starting kindergarten, sixth grade, and eighth grade next month, spoke with the Enterprise on Aug. 14 about the new organization.

“Parents want community events brought back to the schools,” Lang asserted. “A lot of field trips have been taken away… and just your normal school events, like a Spring Carnival — we don’t do that. We don’t do a ‘Trunk or Treat’; we don’t do any kind of parent dances… The Ardsley Education Foundation does a Spring Formal, and the PTSA pretty much holds all their events in school, except for the Harlem Wizards [basketball exhibition team].” (The Village of Ardsley sponsors the annual “Trunk or Treat” event.)

“Covid took a lot of things away,” Lang acknowledged, “but that can’t be used as an excuse anymore.”

Field trips are a priority for ACE, and the board has a list of ideas, including an eighth-grade overnight trip to Washington, D.C.; a stay-awake-a-thon fundraiser; hatching birds in elementary school; a 100th day of school celebration, and more. Lang noted, “We would plan more current, more modern field trips… we have a huge list of where they can go. Our kids don’t even go to Manhattan to see a Broadway show.” Teachers accompany the students on field trips, she added, and she sees the trips as ways for children to socialize. “We’re filling a gap,” Lang said.

ACE will first focus on Concord Road. Before ACE existed, Lang, Brianne Maranino, and DiMeglio had organized events, such as the fourth-grade graduation picnic in 2022; Amy Stollerman-Hayden, fifth-grade chair for fundraising (not a founding member) and parent volunteers planned the 2023 picnic;and Fiordimalva planned this year’s eighth-grade dance at the end of the school year, at LIFE in Ardsley.

ACE will create fundraising events for kindergarten through grade 12 classes; each grade will keep the fruits of their labor to finance their events and field trips. Some events will help support ACE itself.

The group has an ambitious agenda that includes two unusual events: a “Graffiti Fundraiser” for the middle school, and the “Me and My Special Person” dance for Concord Road students. At a fall event paid for by parents, Graff Lab Studios of Holtsville, Long Island, will bring its graffiti workshop to the middle school: using supplies and tools from Graff, students will design their own sweatshirt or T-shirt.

“The ‘My Special Person’ dance is for the younger kids and a parent or a special person,” Lang explained. “The whole idea of it is that it needs to be inclusive,” she elaborated. “The Girl Scouts already have a ‘Me and My Guy’ dance with their fathers, so we need to do something that’s more inclusive, because maybe a student has two moms or two dads; maybe they don’t have parents, maybe it’s grandma or an aunt. Ideally, I would like to have it on Valentine’s Day.”

Proceeds from the Graffiti Workshop and the “My Special Person” dance will support ACE and subsidize other events.

Lang emphasized that her group isn’t trying to compete with other school-related fundraising entities, and that ACE has “great support” from both the PTSA and AEF. “We’re here to support and to join forces, and even to do things together… we want to make sure that we work together.”

Parents and teachers can belong to both the PTSA and ACE, but can serve on the board of only one. The ACE board comprises Lang, co-presidents DiMeglio and Brianne Maranino, secretary Ashley Maranino, treasurer King, high school VP Stanton, and Stella Urban, liaison to the school board. The positions of middle school VP and Concord Road VP are still open. As of Aug. 14, 30 individuals had signed up to serve on committees, and 45 people are on ACE’s mailing list.

Running a nonprofit organization is like running a business, Lang noted: “We need money; it’s not free to have a nonprofit organization; it costs money to run. We need to have a lawyer, insurance, do our taxes at the end of the year — we need money to survive.” ACE is waiting for New York State to return its paperwork before the group officially becomes a not-for-profit organization and schedules its next meeting.

ACE welcomes volunteers; its website, ardsleycommunityenrichment.org, contains a “Get Involved” link. Email: Ardsleyfuncommittee@gmail.com.