A Small Preschool gets a Not-So-Small Reminder

To the teachers, school board, and especially the 25 young students, the large quilt hanging on the classroom wall at has always been just that – a quilt. But there's a much bigger story behind that quilt.

Adorned with colored handprints and the year the school opened, this quilt actually has a deeper sentimental meaning than even the school board president, Bridget Carlson, could have imagined.

“The quilt has always been something that’s just hung on the wall,” Carlson explained.  “We were doing an open house a couple of months ago and a family came in.  The woman looked up and said, ‘That’s the quilt one of my relatives made!’  We were so surprised because we never knew the story behind it.”

That woman is Tara Serebin who was touring the preschool with her brother-in-law.  Serebin’s mother-in-law made the quilt in 1999 to celebrate the 50 years the school had been in business.  It opened in 1949. 

The quilt was then sold at the annual auction in 1999, called Growing our Bright Future. The quilt even started an intense bidding war that went up to $350.  Along with the other funds raised, it was enough to keep the threatened programs afloat. This year's acution is scheduled to take place March 26.

“It was amazing when I saw the blanket after all these years,” said Serebin.  “At the time, Rainbow was in danger of closing some of the programs, so we took advantage of the annual auction to raise money.”

But the tides have turned since the lull in enrollment in ’99.  Carlson says the small school is doing excellent, and discovering a story behind the quilt is a testament to how important families are to its success.

“It makes me feel really warm and fuzzy because we see families stepping forward in 2011 to volunteer and make our school tick, and it’s great to be reminded that that’s been happening for a long time,” Carlson explained. 

“We don’t know the stories from 1949 when the school opened,” she continued, “but we have a really cool story from 1999, and we know the generosity has been going back many years before that.”

The generations who have attended the school shows how dedicated the families can be.  Along with others, Serebin attended the preschool, sent her children there, and now her nephew attends.

Serebin’s mother-in-law, who sewed the quilt, passed away last January, leaving behind a memory at Rainbow Preschool that Serebin was surprised to see.

“It was just neat to see that little piece of her still around,” said Serebin.  “When you look at the blanket, it’s cool for me because I can see my daughter and son’s hand-prints on it.”