Students, faculty and parents of the Curley K-8 School were joined by Mayor Marty Walsh and Boston Public Schools staff to celebrate the long awaited reopening of the school’s library on Thursday.
The reopening of the library was due to more than $100,000 being raised by the Curley Library Committee, which was formed in the fall of 2015 when Principal Katie Grassa asked a group of teachers and parents to explore the possibility of reopening one central library to replace the school’s two closed libraries. The library was closed in 2012 due to budget cuts under a previous school principal.
“Donations of note include a JP resident who saw the ‘Bring back the Curley Library’ sign in the school yard, and expressed interest in donating $10,000, if we would design a matching fundraising campaign and market it throughout JP, not just within the Curley community,” said Pam Yosca, a parent of two Curley School students, who also happens to be a librarian (not in Boston Public Schools), to Jamaica Plain News last year. “We launched that in [June 2017], to great success — many JP residents contributed, often with notes citing their support for library services in BPS, or with dismay that the Curley libraries were shuttered.” Yosca and fellow Curley School parent Ashely Rao are co-chairs of the library committee.