WINNETKA : School Uses Grant to Open Parent Center

When Marian Reimann, assistant principal at Sutter Middle School, was asked if her school might be interested in a $50,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, she said she was glad that she was sitting down.

With the grant, the school created a Parent Community Resource Center at an abandoned agricultural site at the edge of the Winnetka campus.

Sutter also was able to hire a full-time nurse with the grant.

“It’s seed money,” said Reimann, explaining that the money will help germinate a host of programs for school children, their parents and members of the community, who may not necessarily have kids of their own at Sutter.

After the Jan. 17 earthquake devastated the neighborhoods around Sutter, the middle school became something of an emergency center where food and clothing were distributed to the community: a function that Reimann and others at Sutter thought should be expanded.

Reimann and the president of the Sutter PTA, Ellen Eckard, said they do not know exactly how the resource center, which opened this week, will serve its community.

But they’ve got lots of ideas.

Among them is having the Winnetka Chamber of Commerce hold its meetings at the center and encouraging the members to start programs or workshops there.

Eckard said she also expects classes in first aid, self-defense and foreign languages to be taught at the center.