Happy feet are here again.
When school officials made her daughter give up dance class in favor of academic help, Kelly Sinisgalli did not get mad, she got logical.
“She was at the top of her class,” Sinisgalli said of her daughter, also named Kelly. “She was doing great work and I felt she was being punished for no good reason.”
Department of Education (DOE) officials declined to comment, but Sinisgalli’s mother said that after she showed up at the Howard Beach school with her daughter’s report card, officials relented and allowed her to reenroll in the after-school dance program.
“After report cards came out, the school reevaluated the situation,” she said. “How do you make a child with her grades give up a dance class?”
School officials kicked the fourth grader at P.S. 207 out of her after school dance class on October 5 because they thought her grades, which were above average, needed some improvement.
Instead of receiving dance instructions, the school wanted her to receive tutoring.
“It became such a stupid battle,” she said. “She was doing great work.”
The mother of three blames the DOE, not the school, for placing unrealistic demands on young students. She feels the city is in a testing frenzy and they’re forgetting about other important aspects of a child’s education.
“With all this testing we’re doing to the children, we’re forgetting about their youth,” she said. “They want to dance, they want to go to gym. They want to have fun.”
The attention garnered by her removal made Sinisgalli’s daughter nervous about returning to dance class, but her trepidation quickly wore off once she allowed herself to have fun again.
“She was nervous at first, but now she’s very excited and jumping for joy,” her mother said.
“I really felt passionately about it,” she said. “She’s the type of kid that can learn a one-handed summersault and have it down in five minutes.”
