YOUNGSTOWN Former pupils, nun, attend reunion

Children at the preschool are making great progress, Sister Jerome said.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
YOUNGSTOWN -- When you drive south on Market Street from downtown Youngstown, a bright-colored playground behind a fence catches your eye off to the right.
It is new, clean and inviting -- and so much in contrast to the rest of the neighborhood. It belongs to the Millcreek Children's Center Preschool, and inside the 12-year-old building it is just as inviting as the playground: clean, polished and beautiful.
It is this type of oasis that Sister Jerome Corcoran has been trying to provide to area children for the 30 years since she opened the nonprofit center on Glenwood Avenue in 1976.
The 89-year-old executive director got to reconnect Saturday with some of the people who attended the preschool throughout the years and with all of the people who helped her run it.
"Our kids are poor. Ninety-five percent of them qualify for free breakfast and lunch. But the parents are all working or going to school," she said during the anniversary celebration.
"They have dreams of their kids getting a good education, and they know that's the only way out," Sister Jerome said. "The kids in our school are making tremendous progress, and they have to. You can flunk kindergarten now."
An encouraging trend
Recent statistics indicate failing won't be a problem for the school's pupils.
The preschool, which has 50 children ages 3 and 4, cites statistics from the Metropolitan Readiness Test indicating the children there will achieve at the 76th percentile in kindergarten, above the national average.
Brandy Brown-McBride, 30, from the Cleveland suburb Warrensville Heights, brought her husband, Thomas, and her 2-year-old son, also named Thomas, to meet Sister Jerome.
Brown-McBride attended Millcreek Children's Center in 1978 and 1979 with her younger brother, she said. She said Sister Jerome "remembered that I went here with my brother."
Her recollections
Brown-McBride, who works for Thrifty Car Rental, said Sister Jerome was "the one you remember" from having attended the school, but she also remembers the holidays such as Christmas and Easter there, and the driver who brought her to school.
"I remember sleeping on the green cots and the graduation hats," she told Sister Jerome as they reminisced.
Brown-McBride attended kindergarten at Cleveland Elementary. "I think I was pretty well advanced by the time I got to kindergarten," she said. She graduated from East High School.
Sister Jerome is executive director of Developing Potential Inc., which sponsors and owns the Millcreek Children's Center Preschool and the Youngstown Community School next door. The buildings are at Breaden Street and Essex Avenue.
Sally Stacy, development coordinator, said she believes the center is important because something has to be done to help inner-city youths succeed. Statistically, just half of inner-city youths graduate from high school, she said.
Rita Wilson, who handles registration at the preschool, said most children who attend receive benefits from the Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services, and they redeem those benefits at the preschool.
She said the waiting list is long enough that parents sometimes have to register their children by age 2 to get them in.
"They're getting top-quality day care and an excellent preschool education at the same time," she said.
runyan@vindy.com