Excellence Award funds donated to child care, arts nonprofits

Earlier this year, the Tompkins Trust Company honored four groups and two individuals with the James J. Byrnes Award for Excellence. The awards are given to people and organizations with outstanding track records of volunteer service in the local community.

Trumansburg’s Gemm Shop, nominated by Peggy Haine, was chosen as one of this year’s winners.

The Gemm Shop is a nonprofit secondhand store run entirely by volunteers. It sells gently used clothing, housewares, books and toys at affordable prices and uses the profits to fund scholarships and to make donations to community groups. In the course of the Gemm Shop’s history, it has awarded more than $130,000 in local scholarships and grants.

Every Excellence winner is awarded $2,000 from the bank’s endowment fund through the Legacy Foundation of Tompkins County. Each winner may donate their share of money to a not-for-profit of their choice. The Gemm Shop split its prize and donated to two local institutions: the Trumansburg After School Program (TASP) and the Trumansburg Conservatory of Fine Arts.

Chair of the Gemm Shop Board Karen Powers said that she and other staff were honored to be recognized this year for the first time, in their 50th year of business. She said that TASP and the Conservatory were easy choices for where to distribute the funds.

“We debated it and discussed it at a board meeting,” Powers said. “Obviously, there are many wonderful places it could go out here, but in the midst of COVID, the after school program provides a crucial role. And with the Conservatory having to be almost shut down during COVID, that’s certainly an institution we don’t want to lose in Trumansburg.”

The Conservatory of Fine Arts is housed in a historic building on McLallen Street and offers instruction in visual arts, dance and music. It is also a venue for public performances and art exhibits. Managing Director Mark Costa said that the recent donation is much appreciated and will be used for operational expenses.

“It’s been a challenging time for all arts institutes and performance venues,” Costa said. “But we are proud to have adapted in the situation.”

Costa said that music lessons have gone virtual and that the dance program now functions as a hybrid, both online and in-person. The Conservatory developed its first virtual art show this past spring and plans to include the format in art shows in the future.

Costa said that local composer John Bunge recently completed a piece specifically created to be performed at the Conservatory called “A Canon For Reunion.” In place of a public performance, a recording will be debuted on the Conservatory website Dec. 6 at 3 p.m. Costa said that he believes music and art are more important than ever during the pandemic.

“John wrote this as a response to the separation that we all feel in the time of COVID,” Costa said. “Music can be shared and enjoyed together, even if it’s online. It›s a wonderful way to still feel that sense of community.”

While the Conservatory struggles to keep its programs going online, TASP has overcome multiple large obstacles this year, with more to come. Director Lisa Collins said she doesn’t know how they will spend the money quite yet.

“This has been a tumultuous year,” she said. “After School has had to make a lot of changes in a short period of time. It’s not spent yet; we’re just excited to have a little more security.”

TASP has functioned as a nonprofit day care in the Trumansburg School District for 35 years, much of it spent in the middle school and elementary school cafeterias. The school let the organization use the building for free, but when COVID hit in March, the building and TASP had to shut down.

Later in the year, unrelated to COVID, the district sent out a request for a proposal for not only after school child care but also supervision before school. Collins said staff had never offered care before school and never been asked to fill out a proposal. Her proposal was ultimately rejected when the school accepted a proposal from Healthy Kids Programs, a statewide, for-profit company.

After 18 years running the program, Collins said she was surprised by the decision.

“But then I thought, ‘They have every right to go and find a different program if they have a different need,’” Collins said. “They wanted a before school program, and in general, I didn’t give the school what they wanted.”

After the initial shock wore off, Collins decided that there was room for two child care options in town and got busy looking for a new venue. Using her experience in education and her deep ties to the local community, she was able to secure a space in the First Presbyterian Church on Main Street.

The next obstacle came from the state. After filling out paperwork to run a registered day care out of the church, Collins said she was alerted that they “didn’t meet the requirements.” She was advised to transition to a “single-purpose program,” with a curriculum based on STEAM — science, technology, engineering, arts and math.

Collins said the transition wasn’t a big one, as TASP already did many activities that fit with the new requirements, like making slime and creating erupting volcanoes. She said the most difficult part was the looming uncertainty of the whole year. On the Friday before school started this fall, she didn’t know if TASP was going to start.

“The hardest thing overall was not knowing where it was all going,” Collins said. “I’ve been the head of a registered day care for 18 years, so to be told it wasn’t going to work was hard. I thought, ‘How much do I try?’ But you talk to another person and they say, ‘Do this,’ and you keep going.”

TASP did open at the same time as school after all, albeit with registration numbers down from 60 to 11 kids. Collins said that they require masks, try to be outdoors as much as possible and have the space professionally cleaned every day. During the most recent school closure at T-burg, TASP was able to stay open, offering an alternative to parents keeping kids home all day.

Powers commented on the importance of TASP at a time when many parents are struggling to work and watch kids at the same time.

“We want quality after school care for our children all the time,” Powers said. “Now, with the additional complication of things being shut down and the T-burg schools being closed right now, having Lisa’s nurturing environment for kids that need some time while their parents are trying to work, it serves a lot of families in this area.”

The Gemm Shop is holding a raffle this holiday season in honor of its 50th year. Tickets cost $2 and prizes include more than 40 gift certificates to Trumansburg businesses. Tickets are available at the Gemm Shop, The Beauty Barn on Halseyville Road and on certain days at Shursave. Winners will be announced Dec. 12, and all proceeds go to the Trumansburg Food Pantry.