BCYF And Roslindale Community Center Council
Partner To Improve Your Community Center

As we head into a new year, the BCYF Roslindale Community Center is celebrating new additions to the facility that have been made over the last few months, and planning for more.

In the fall of 2011, Boston Centers for Youth & Families (BCYF) installed new aluminum seating in the gymnasium.  The fold-up units can be rolled in or out as necessary depending on what sport is being played.  This will allow more parents to stay and watch their children play basketball and other sports.

Additional seating has also been made available thanks to the Roslindale Social Security office.  “When the Social Security office started the move to their new facility next to the Roslindale Public Library, they approached us to see if we could use some of their old fixtures,” said Dennis Kirkpatrick, president of the Roslindale Community School Council, Inc., a non-profit organization that partners with BCYF in facilitating programming at the Roslindale Community Center.  “As a result, we obtained their lobby seating which will be used in our own lobby and as supplementary seating in the gym.”

“The fold-up seating provided by BCYF was a most welcome addition to the gym; so much so that we are considering rallying our parents to raise some funds to get one or two additional units so as to expand the seating capacity,” said Kirkpatrick.

The council also recently invested their own funds to acquire new exercise equipment for the third floor fitness area and walking track.  The commercial grade equipment, similar to that found in a health and fitness center will replace older equipment that had fallen into disrepair.  The new equipment includes a treadmill, elliptical work out unit, a recumbent bicycle, and a rowing unit.  A universal weight unit is also available, as well as an indoor walking track which measures 22 laps to the mile.

“It is a small start but we hope to eventually expand on this depending on demand,” Kirkpatrick said. “If this works well we can look at expanding it.  We are not a health and fitness club by any means, but having a few machines will offer our members the option to remain in shape at a much-reduced rate.  The old equipment is still on site and we are talking with BCYF now to determine if it is worth additional investment, and there are some other options we are exploring toward additional equipment acquisitions sometime in 2012 if all goes well.”

For now the fitness equipment is being offered to adult members of the Roslindale Community Center as a part of their annual low-cost membership fee.  A small fitness area access fee is eventually planned to help offset the cost of the lease of the new equipment.

Elsewhere in the building, new technology is on the rise.

In 2012, the Roslindale Community Center is slated to become a public access internet site as a part of the City of Boston’s ‘Public Computing Centers’ project, itself facilitated by a grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.  As a part of this upgrade, the center’s computer lab will be upgraded to newer Windows 7 systems.

According to Dennis Kirkpatrick, the Council’s president, “We hope to also expand the number of computer work stations at the same time.  We presently have 14 computer work stations that are not all that old.  With the new investment from the City of Boston, we would like to increase the lab to 20 or 24 stations.  Toward that end, we have just purchased a new 48-port (connection) Internet signal distribution box.  This will allow us to expand capacity in the lab and throughout the building.  We also have a wireless Internet transmitter that will also be added to the mix.”

Some of the existing computers now in the center’s technology lab will be repurposed elsewhere in the building.   The after school program and the teen program have dedicated computer lab access time, so one option for the repurposed computers is to create a small homework station with several computers in the after school area.

At the top of the changes at the Roslindale Community Center is Thomas A. Regan, the center’s new Administrative Coordinator.  Tom comes to the center from the BCYF Ohrenberger Community Center in West Roxbury where he served as programming supervisor.  Tom noted, “I am excited to be working at the Roslindale Community Center.  I look forward to creating positive partnerships with the many organizations that make up Roslindale.”

The Roslindale Community School Council, Inc. is a non-profit corporation which partners with BCYF on the community center’s programming.  Membership in the Council is open to residents and employees of the Roslindale community. For more information see:  http://www.roslindalecc.org  or look us up on Twitter and Facebook.

The Roslindale Community Center, located at the intersection of Washington Street and Cummins Highway in Roslindale Square, is one of 35 facilities operated by Boston Centers for Youth & Families (BCYF).  For more information about BCYF programs, please visit http://www.cityofboston.gov/bcyf.

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The Roslindale Community Center still has an opening for an after-school teacher in its kindergarten group. 

Details at:  http://www.roslindalecc.org