Forestville school is ready for summer recreation
FORESTVILLE — The Forestville Board of Education is thrilled that the Forestville Youth Rec program is in the final stages of reinstatement, with friendly partnership with Silver Creek and Hanover, officially forming the Silver Creek-Hanover-Forestville Youth Center Association Incorporation.
Board President Carol Woodward spoke during her board report about the sometimes tedious process of trying to reinstate the youth recreation program. The task was met with persistence and, eventually, payoff.
“Since the village was dissolved, the town of Hanover could not legally fund the former Forestville youth recreation program, so it had to go into an incorporation,” said Woodward.
There was an old incorporation from back in the ’90s that the town of Hanover dug out of storage, and it has been tweaked so that the new program could use it as a format.
“We finally got to the point now that we can move along, because we really didn’t know if we were going to have a summer program or not, because Hanover couldn’t legally fund us, but all the paper work is going in place,” said Woodward.
“It was a lot of work. I was really nervous about it. But I’m pretty sure we can get our summer program going again, otherwise our kids would have no summer program. We’ll all work together as a town entity — they’ve got some grant ideas to make it bigger and better than it was.”
Forestville School Board Vice President Amy Drozdziel, who is also the official Silver Creek-Hanover-Forestville Youth Center Association Incorporation president was excited at the possibilities of the program, and can’t wait to see where it could go with a little bit of elbow grease and a ton of cooperation from everyone involved.
“I see a lot of potential, in the fact that its already incorporated, there’s already that foundation there for us to build on, and the fact that we’ll be able to work with everyone in the town, and from both school districts, and I see a very bright future for our youth,” said Drozdziel.
Drozdziel hopes that eventually the youth program can gradually move from a summer recreation program to a year-round recreation program.
Additionally, with a number of children going outside of the town and the county for certain recreation programs — like travel leagues — a defined recreation program could make Forestville a hub for the area so that kids will stay in that area, stay busy and keep the parents in the area, where they’ll maybe spend their money in the town instead of taking it elsewhere.
“I have a big vision, so sometimes I have to take a step back and obviously focus on what the concern is right now, and that’s having our summer program as it has been for years now,” said Drozdziel excitedly. “So once we have that going, it’s going to be a lot of fun to see what more we can do for our kids in this area.”
The only thing the incorporation has left to do is fill out the application for the EIN number, because the former number was reportedly reassigned, or there possibly never was one. However, that process is fairly quick, and once the paperwork is submitted, the program can start to work on getting the ball rolling.
Most importantly, though, the trio wanted to thank the people who helped run this entire process, and worked tirelessly to try and keep the program going.
“Bernie Feldmann and Louis Pelleter were awesome, came every week for the last two months, met with us, and they were long meetings, just trying to iron this all out, and they realized that our program was important to us,” Woodward said gratefully.
“I want to thank them and everyone that showed up and stayed there through the whole process to keep it happening, because the first question was, will there be enough interest, and it was shown that there was not only enough interest, but commitment,” added Superintendent Renee Garrett. “Very impressive.”
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