2014 POWERS PARK SUMMER PROGRAM INFORMATION!

Registration on Saturday, May 24th from 3-5pm

and

Friday, June 20th 10:00am-12:30pm 4:30pm-6:30 pm At the Powers Park Pool in Lyndonville.
Activities for the 8 week summer program include: Swimming Lessons Monday - Friday from 9:00 am 12:00 pm Open Swim Monday - Friday from 1:00 pm 4:00 pm Night Swim Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:00 pm 7:30 pm Daily Sports and Games Monday-Friday 1-3 pm Arts and Crafts Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-11am Tennis Lessons Monday Friday 8:30 am 12:00 pm (Beginners M/W; Intermediate T/Th; Friday-Games!) End of Summer Sports Olympics and Tennis Tournament Swim Team Practice Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:00 pm 5:00 pm includes 3 swim meets Also: 3 Pool Parties! Cobleigh Library Bookmobile Tuesday/ Thursday 11:30 am 1 pm Free bag lunch!
Lunches are provided for free by the State of Vermont every week day at the park. This is NOT connected to the swim program and is available for all kids 18 and under.

A chance to ride on the Powers Park Float in Stars and Stripes! Friday Ballet Classes by Elizabeth Mahnker 8 Sessions/$40
Ballet Information will be available at REGISTRATION DAY

ALL ACTIVITIES start: Monday June 23rd and end on Aug 15th!!

$85 per child

- All fees are required to be PAID IN FULL at time of registration. Questions? Please email us at: powersparkplayground@hotmail.com or visit us on our Facebook page

March 18, 2014 To all the members of our Powers Park Community: The following is the letter we sent to each of our CNSU towns. It explains some of our financial situation and gives information about our programs, staffing and maintenance. Last summer was a big transition time for us. With the loss of an experienced pool manager, we hired three employees to cover each of the three parts of the previous job: Swim instruction manager, overall pool/staff manager and pool maintenance manager. (Next summer our pool manager plans to return with his WSI certification and also manage the staff and be in charge of the pool maintenance.) We continued with our successful afternoon sports program, adding a Monday afternoon basketball drills camp, and Friday afternoon sports with two pool employees and two Upward Bound volunteers. We also added a day to our Arts and Crafts program so two days a week our AmeriCorps volunteer and his assistant did projects in the pavilion. The staff from the St Johnsbury School had another record year with the Free Summer Lunch program, often serving over 150 lunches a day. Abbie and the Bookmobile came on Tuesdays and Thursdays during lunch and with our new picnic tables from Richard Berry, it was quite a site to see so many kids eating their lunches and reading their library books. We had three pool party fundraisers, one big raffle, and in October we finished the playground! We are so grateful for our community members and businesses generous donations to our fundraisers, the playground looks great! We will install three benches and a few more trees in the spring and have an official ribbon-cutting ceremony with a sign designed and built by the Lyndon Institute welding class on Saturday, May 24th followed by an early registration day from 3-5 pm. We had three hundred and eighty-five children enrolled in our swimming and tennis programs this year. Roughly 60% were Lyndon children, 20% Burke, 10% Wheelock /Sheffield, 5% Sutton, 4% St. Johnsbury, as well as participants from Waterford, Danville, Kirby, Peacham, Walden and Concord. In 2012 we had over 280 children enrolled in swimming and tennis at a cost of $75 per participant, and 130 enrolled in just swimming at a cost of $60 per participant. In 2013 we experienced almost a complete switch in these numbers with only 130 enrolled in swimming and tennis, at a cost of $85 per participant and over 250 enrolled in just swimming at a cost of $60 per participant. There were a variety of reasons that fewer children participated in both programs, some of it daycare transportation issues, but this switch in numbers resulted in a loss of expected revenue of almost $4,000.00 for our summer program. Combined with an extremely rainy summer which affected our three pool-party fundraisers and afternoon and evening swim participation, the summer of 2013 was not financially friendly to us. Our rates will again be $85 per participant next year but we will not be able to offer a separate Swimming Only or Tennis Only option; all are welcome to participate in one or both options. This fee still includes the Monday-Friday afternoon and Tuesday/Thursday evening swim pass as well as the Sports and Arts/Crafts. With a program that offers 40 days of activities, this is still just a cost of $2/day. A sliding payment scale for families of three or more will continue to be offered.

Using some of our 2013 Lyndon appropriations funds, we purchased new instructional tools for the swim classes, outfitted all of our staff in new suits, t-shirts and sweats and updated some of our maintenance equipment. We also updated the wiring for the vacuum pumps, installed new outlets and updated the fuse box. We painted all of the tables, benches, pavilion floor and siding in time to host a June 22nd wedding at the park. Throughout the summer, our staff did a fantastic job teaching and helping swimmers to improve their skills as they moved through the Red Cross swimming levels. We really tried to focus on positive feedback between instructors and participants so that each child could see improvement in their swimming skills. We again invited feedback from parents/guardians/daycare providers using our in-house evaluation which the staff also used to self-reflect and improve their own teaching skills. We continued our Progress Report for each swimmer at the end of the summer with personal feedback from staff and things to work on for next summer. We finally got all of those progress reports mailed out to all the families we didnt see in the last few weeks of the summer! Next summer all of our staff will be Red Cross Water Safety Instructor or Water Safety Instructional Aide certified and our pool will continue to be an authorized and certified Red Cross provider swimming pool. Thanks to Lyndon Rotary, we were able to paint the basketball court; a dedicated community member who wishes to remain anonymous did all that work! In addition, Rotary also provided funds to purchase a portable basketball hoop and all new basketballs for our Monday afternoon basketball camp. We also purchased portable soccer goals that were used for soccer and some pretty fun water-polo games. We have two significant maintenance issues to address before we can open for the 2014 summer season: we must repair the pool and update and maintain the tennis courts. Last summer a small hole in the pool surface in the shallow end went from a quarter size to over 3 feet in just a two weeks. The marcite pool surface peeled up and water got underneath the pools surface causing further problems. Although Fairbanks Mills was able to repair the hole temporarily, we must get this fixed completely before we can open next summer, or the damaged area will become larger; this will become a safety issue and make the pool unavailable for the summer program. The tennis courts are also in need of repair as they both have dozens of major cracks and concrete degradation. Recent estimates from two local businesses to fix the pool and the courts are $16,000.00. We are working on grants and fundraising for these two repairs but will undoubtedly need the extended generosity of our community to help us. This year at Town Meeting we were very excited to receive appropriation funds from the towns of Burke, Newark, Kirby and Sutton. This will help to off-set some of the repair expenses for the pool and tennis courts. On behalf of the Directors at Powers Park, we again would like to thank the taxpayers and the area businesses for their continued support. We take great pride in our summer program and each year the program continues to improve the lives of our communitys youth because of your generosity and support. Thank you! Sincerely,

Adrienne DOlimpio, President; Chris Thompson, Vice-President; Benjie Tessier, Treasurer; Jen Mitchell, Secretary