neat

in the news

• NEAT CELEBRATES YEAR WITH GARDEN PARTY - Middletown Press

• PARENTS ALARMED THAT MIDDLETOWN'S MACDONOUGH SCHOOL MAY CLOSE - Hartford Courant

• NEAT FOCUSES ON DRUG DEALING-Middletown Press

• CHARITIES ASSESS NEIGHBORHOOD'S  NEED Hartford Courant

• FERTILE SOIL, FRIENDLY SITE - Hartford Courant

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in the news

Neat Celebrates Year with Garden Party

08/11/2008
By: JENNIFER SPRAGUE , Press staff
MIDDLETOWN - It's a fundraiser, yes - but more importantly, NEAT's eighth annual Garden Party is about celebrating the accomplishments of a neighborhood organization, said Izzi Greenberg.
"The importance of this event is to showcase what NEAT has done the past year," said the North End Action Team executive director.

About 20 Middletown restaurants have donated food, desserts and drinks for Thursday's affair, which begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Erin Street Community Garden at the corner of High Street in Middletown's North End. With vegetables and herbs harvested from the garden, the planning committee will prepare additional menu items. "We have a lot of tomatoes and basil, so we will probably be serving dishes with those ingredients," Greenberg said. Bar tables will be set throughout the garden, and Erin Street will be closed while about 300 guests mingle and enjoy live jazz and hors d'oeuvres passed out by neighborhood kids.

The trio The Three Hats - organist Sammy Myers, guitarist Lance James and drummer Bill Carbone - will perform a mix of original jazz tunes as well as "some funkier jazz," said Carbone, a Pearl Street resident. "We're part of the North End, so it's more than just a gig," Carbone said. "I live in the North End, and I enjoy the good things about it and suffer from the bad things about it."
Carbone, who also runs Wesleyan University's steel drum band, said "NEAT is a voice" for the people of the North End.

"Lydia Brewster, community organizer for NEAT, and Izzi [Greenberg] serve such an important purpose for people who live in the North End," he said. "There have been a lot of major issues on our block. If you report it to NEAT, they advocate for you. They're so huge. They give me hope for the North End."

Funds from Thursday evening's garden party will benefit NEAT's programs, but more importantly, Greenberg said, it will give people a chance to see "what this neighborhood is all about."
"It's a really special place," she said. "It's important to realize what good neighbors and what incredible beauty can be achieved in a neighborhood."

When NEAT first began working at the Erin Street garden, a collaboration with the city of Middletown, the lot was overgrown and filled with junk cars, Greenberg said. Now there are 20 plots, tended by groups and individuals. "It's really a testament to the committee that runs this garden," Greenberg said. "They're a force to be reckoned with." Neighborhood kids, proud of what the garden has become, sometimes give tours during the party, she said."That's a really powerful feeling for a neighborhood that's often criticized," Greenberg said.

The garden party is open to anyone. A donation of $20 is suggested for individuals and $35 for families. Donations benefit NEAT's programs. For more information about the garden party, call (860) 346-4845. For more information about NEAT, visit neatmiddletown.org.
The North End Action Team is a neighborhood organization that began in 1997 to develop grassroots leadership in the North End. NEAT is made up of residents, business leaders, property owners and stakeholder groups. NEAT's mission is to provide neighborhood-based participation and leadership, to identify concerns, define strategies and develop resources to improve the quality of life in the North End.

Jennifer Sprague can be reached at jsprague@middletownpress.com or by calling (860) 347-3331, ext. 222.
 

Parents Alarmed That Middletown's Macdonough School May Close

By CHARLES PROCTOR

Courant Staff Writer

May 13, 2008

MIDDLETOWN

— With one hand pressing her 3-month-old baby to her chest and her other handing out fliers to passing parents, Izzi Greenberg waged a battle to keep the doors of Macdonough Elementary School open Monday.

"Are you coming to the council meeting tomorrow?" Greenberg, executive director of the North End Action Team, asked a parent in front of the Spring Street school Monday afternoon. "Here, did you get one?" she asked, thrusting a flier at another woman with a kid in tow.

Activists like Greenberg and parents have grown increasingly alarmed at talk that the board of education might shutter Macdonough because of the city's budget crunch. It's a move they said would deal a blow to the North End and guillotine a campus that serves some of the city's most disadvantaged children.

Closing Macdonough is one of three options the board of education is weighing as it faces a possible $3.2 million gap between what the superintendent requested in funding and the $69.3 million Mayor Sebastian Giuliano allotted the district in his March budget proposal, said Ted Raczka, the board's chairman.

The other two options are closing the sixth-grade-only Keigwin Annex, layoffs and cost-cutting across the district.

The board will know more after tonight, when the common council sets a city and school budget. Raczka said the district could save $1 million a year by closing Macdonough, which he said was singled out because, with an enrollment of 224 students, it's the smallest school in the district.

"Do I want to close any school? No. Closing schools is not what I got involved with the school board to do," said Raczka, who praised Macdonough but said there was a 60 percent chance it would close.

"But I'm almost $3.2 million short, and something is going to have to be done. So what's the least detrimental to the district as a whole?"

That does not satisfy parents, activists, or even Giuliano, who mentors Macdonough students and said the board should mothball Keigwin before it considers closing Macdonough.

He said it would be "irresponsible" to take "the most disadvantaged kids in the system and bus them all over town, instead of going to a neighborhood school that provides them with the services they need."

Macdonough has long been a point of pride for North End residents. Housed in a two-story brick building with a stone archway that proclaims it was built in 1924, it is one of the city's last true neighborhood schools, where parents still stroll down the block to pick up their kids.

The school also serves a high number of minorities and low-income students. This year, 68 percent of the student body are minorities and 77 percent qualified for free or reduced-price lunches.

That makes having a school that's close by of paramount importance to neighborhood parents, said Greenberg of NEAT. "Low-income people may not have access to transportation," she said, "so it's important that we have a school that's walkable and accessible."

Its neighborhood appeal aside, though, Macdonough is also one of the district's lowest-performing schools. Last year, it tested at or near the bottom in the district on the Connecticut Mastery Test in math, reading and writing.

Given that, Macdonough supporters like Greenberg acknowledge that some parents might support closing the school and busing students to higher-performing campuses.

But they also argue that Macdonough is on the cusp of a turnaround. They praised Jon Romeo, the principal hired this year, as high energy and innovative, and they said the board of education should lend the school support.

"They should be devising a plan to improve the school," said Ed Corvo, a parent who has twin sons who attend Macdonough. "Not walk away from it."

Ariel Santos echoed similar sentiments as he waited outside Macdonough Monday afternoon for his son and daughter to emerge. A repairman in Hartford, Santos recently moved to a house across the street from the campus.

As he clutched Greenberg's flyer, which proclaimed "The Future of Macdonough School is in Danger!", Santos reflected on how his kids had learned more at Macdonough in eight months than they had in Hartford schools over the course of years.

"They've been good to my kids," said Santos of the school's teachers. "I don't want to see the school close."

The common council meets tonight at 6 in the council chambers at city hall.

Contact Charles Proctor at cwproctor@courant.com.

Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant
 

NEAT Focuses on Drug Dealing
JAMES TINLEY, Press staff
July 13, 2007

The Bridge Street neighborhood is being targeted by NEAT as an area of heavy drug activity. Brad M. Horrigan/The Middletown Press

MIDDLETOWN - The area behind St. John Church has fallen to highly visible drug activity, unsightly trash and a sense of hopelessness, according to Lydia Brewster, community organizer for the North End Action Team.

In response to these problems, NEAT is focusing its efforts on the area surrounding Bridge, Portland and Miller streets, which it considers to be a historic but often overlooked part of the city.
NEAT dedicated much of its meeting Wednesday night, and will focus again during its next meeting, on finding ways to stop drug dealing and to improve the area.

Many residents who attended the meeting live in the area behind St. John's and see blatant drug dealing - they also say it's getting worse.

NEAT members said the area's location makes it ideally suited for the drug trade.
The area is easily accessible from Route 9 and St. John's and several blocked roads near the railroad tracks serve to isolate it from the rest of the city.

Residents expressed frustration that police aren't doing more to stop crime in the area.
"If we all know what's going on, then the police have to know, so why aren't the police doing more?" said Bruce Kilgore, a NEAT member.

Police Lt. Rick Siena attended the meeting and said the police are aware of the problem and are doing what they can to combat it. The police, however, cannot completely eradicate a problem like drug dealing on their own, he said.

"This is really an issue that takes a cooperative effort," Siena said. "We hear you and we're doing everything we can, but a problem like this one requires the community to take an active role."
While there was a consensus that a coordinated community effort needs to take place, how that effort would take shape was left unresolved by the end of the meeting.

One member suggested they pressure police to "get some search warrants and break down some doors," while others suggested getting town officials to "lean" on the landlords by enforcing building code violations and pressuring them to take responsibility for what's going on in their buildings.
Izzi Greenberg, executive director of NEAT, suggested a beautification of the streets to help dissuade drug dealers from setting up shop there.

"We need to take small, visible steps to show that we know what's going on and we're tired of it," Brewster said. "And make it not quite as convenient a place for drug dealing to take place."
While no specific plan was adopted Wednesday, the issue was put back on the agenda for next month's general meeting. NEAT will work in the interim to come up with a specific plan that is practical.

After the meeting, Siena said NEAT is doing exactly what it should be by continuing to focus on the problem and continuing to try to organize the community and push police to address it.

Fertile Soil, Friendly Site
Community Garden Draws People From Neighborhood

By GAIL BRACCIDIFERRO
Special to The Courant

June 6 2007

MIDDLETOWN -- Where most saw a weed-choked lot pocked by rusted cars, rain-soaked mattresses and garbage, Izzi Greenberg saw fertile ground in which to grow tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and friendships.

The trash is gone from the corner lot at Erin and High streets, replaced by mounds of chocolaty topsoil, tomato cages, barrels of pansies, still-tiny vegetable plants and a vinyl banner proclaiming the site as home of the North End Action Team's community garden. There are now 15 garden plots on the lot, in the middle of a neighborhood of tightly packed century-old homes.

"We have no place to garden at our house," North End resident Amy Waterman said on a recent evening as she put some finishing touches on the 10- by 20-foot garden plot she and her husband, Daniel Long, are working. "And I can get to meet my neighbors here."

The garden is fast becoming an after-work meeting spot for neighbors. Waterman, who moved to Middletown from Wisconsin last August and is a teacher at the nearby Macdonough Elementary School, was joined at the corner lot by more than a dozen of her adult neighbors, along with a medley of children from toddlers to 'tweens and a white Samoyed named Zsa Zsa.

Steve Lapenta and Freddy Carroll, who were busy at their plot scraping out a trench in which they would soon plant carrots alongside the lettuce, kale, broccoli, summer squash and cabbage, said they also were discussing the garden blooming into a social gathering spot.

"In the past, I was involved in a community garden and I found it was a great way to make connections to other people," said Lapenta, who owns a tofu shop in the city. "I am in awe when things grow. It looks like a Norman Rockwell painting."

Greenberg, who lives in the neighborhood and is the action team's executive director, said community gardening serves a number of purposes. It provides fresh, nutritious food and an opportunity to connect to the soil, and it creates a neighborhood showcase where there once was blight and brings neighbors together.

The garden's success hinged not only on the gardeners themselves, Greenberg said. Long before a spade turned over a single inch of soil, individuals and organizations came together to help, she said.

The action team received some $3,000 in grants from organizations such as the Middletown Garden Club and the Middlesex County Community Foundation. Businesses and the city donated supplies such as fencing, topsoil, fertilizer and compost. The city ensured water was brought to the site and worked out a lease for the state-owned land. Local residents and members of a Wesleyan University fraternity cleaned, cleared and prepared the lot.

"It was an incredibly collaborative effort," she said.

Work began about 10 months ago and the garden replaces another North End community garden on Ferry Street that became part of an apartment complex construction site.

Joanne Krekian said she read about the community garden in the action team's newsletter and signed up for one of the plots that residents were asked to claim for a $25 per season donation. After planting tomatoes, peppers, basil and cilantro on Memorial Day, she was busy watering. She said she would drop by the site at least once a day throughout the summer.

"I am starting small," she said, although her sunburned shoulders were testimony to her time in the sun. "This is the first time I've ever had a vegetable garden. I've had flowers in pots on my porch before, but that's all."

A Middletown native, she has lived in the neighborhood for about a decade, she said. She often works up to 70 hours a week at her job for the Red Cross and so has not met many of her neighbors.

"I like this a lot," she said. "I've met some really nice people here."

Jen Byrd and Chaelyn Lombardo, who both work in the Middlesex YMCA's before- and after-school program called Kids' Corner at Macdonough school, said they also were just learning about gardening. They had lined the Kids Corner plot with stones and placed flat steppingstones through the center, to allow the children who will help weed and tend the garden easier access to the plants.

"We are very much novices," Byrd said as she dug a garden claw into the earth and examined a rock-like clump of soil.

At a nearby plot, Crystal LaPointe and two of her three sons were busy with shovels, a wheelbarrow and a pitchfork. They screened rocks out of the topsoil and prepared their garden for planting.

"I was married to a farmer for 10 years," she said. "We lived on a farm in Cromwell."

She estimated her so-called seasonal garden - a combination of early ripening vegetables such as radishes and green beans and later ripening ones such as root vegetables - would be planted by the weekend. The garden should save her money at the grocery store and also be a place for the family to spend time together, she said.

"We can get away from the TV here," she said. "And what boy doesn't like dirt?"

While his mother was a veteran gardener, 12-year-old Donahven said this was his first garden. He was quickly getting used to wielding both a pitchfork and wheelbarrow.

"I can't wait until we have the party here," he said.

Greenberg said there is a barbecue grill on site already for impromptu cookouts, but a more formal end-of-summer gathering is planned. It will be on Aug. 15, a time when many of the vegetables should be ready for harvesting.