LYNN — Jean Charles Academy’s youngest students presented their vision on the local parks and their budget to Mayor Jared C. Nicholson, who visited the school Friday.
After the event, the kids submitted their letters and cards to the mayor.
“Mr. Mayor, we want better parks in Lynn, please,” said one of the cards with glittering flower stickers on it.
The aspiring young landscape architects offered two park plans: a kindergarten and first-grade plan featuring a lot of trash cans, and a second-grade plan featuring a maze, a rollercoaster, and a concert venue.
Jean Charles teacher Adilene Lorenzo said the students started exploring the topic of park construction at the end of February.
The exploration ignited students’ interest, said Lorenzo, in “fielding a better park and coming up with incredible ideas about what should be included in a park, because it is such an important community place.”
On one of their field trips the students noticed that “although the equipment was there a lot of it was broken, a lot of it was unable to be used, and apart from that there was a lot of trash, so we heard a lot of them talking about trash cans,” said Lorenzo.
“We talked about people who are home insecure who rely on local parks sort of as a home and as a place to be within the community,” she said.
Park cleanliness did seem to occupy the minds of the students, and they put an abundance of trash cans in their park plans.
“I put lots of trash cans; I put nine, but I wanted to put more, so no one can litter,” said one of the students, Zynalia Phoung, 6.
“And everything clean, and no part dirty,” added Kaydence Washington Cierra, 8.
His classmates’ suggestion for a multi-trillion-dollar park budget prompted one student to suggest park cleanup does not necessarily need to be expensive.
Jean Charles students are preparing for the school Academy World Fair planned for June 16.
Students in kindergarten through second grade are focusing on the local parks as a community asset, and grades three to seven are imagining park planning at the country or state level.
For older students, the lessons are focused on how countries operate around the world; how states are structured, and who has the power to make change in their communities as part of its humanities program.
“They learned about voting systems, Indigenous people, and how colonization has harmed them, economy, socialism, and capitalism, and they are going to choose or create their own constitution, their own voting systems for their states and their countries,” said Academy founder Nakia Navarro.
She said she built her school because she wanted a school where the kids could be seen. Jean Charles Academy is a financially-accessible, private school that is designed to meet the needs of students of color by building a racially-equitable curriculum within an inclusive dual-language educational program.
“This is like my dream,” said Navarro.
According to the teachers, the kids were working hard to put their ideas about park construction on paper, and the next step would be to create a prototype of what their dream park should look like.
“It’s clear how deeply you care for our community, our city, and how important it is when we have places where we can play and relax,” said Nicholson.
