By Eileen Oldfield Staff Writer
MANVILLE — The Roosevelt School teachers’ room used to be cramped and ugly, with just a few mismatched chairs and broken tables, a coffee maker perched on a broken filing cabinet.
”It was really depressing,” Roosevelt Parent-Teacher Association President Dayna Camacho said. “It was like a closet with a table, not a lunchroom or a lounge for teachers to eat their lunches.”
But thanks to a summer project and approximately $1,600 in donations, including a $1,300 dining room table and 10 chairs, Ms. Camacho has given the room a complete makeover.
Ms. Camacho said repainting the teachers’ room was the first step in the makeover, and said Roosevelt School Secretary Jennifer Sanders helped her with the painting job.
”If it weren’t for her, I’d still be painting,” Ms. Camacho said.
After completing the painting, Ms. Camacho began securing donations for new furniture or décor to brighten the room. Since most of the furniture in the room was either mismatched or falling apart, Ms. Camacho decided to replace as much as she could via local businesses’ donations.
According to Ms. Camacho, the Home Depot in Bridgewater donated $25 for wood glue, the Home Depot in Bound Brook donated laminate for a table, Unclaimed Freight in Somerset donated $50 toward redoing the room, and Value City in New Brunswick donated the dining room table and chairs.
Ms. Camacho paid any difference between an item’s price and the donations herself, rather than using PTA funds, and enlisted her husband to build a new table for the room, she said.
Curtains for the windows, which Louise Upshaw, secretary to the business administrator, hemmed, and photographs for the walls topped off the makeover, Ms. Camacho said.
”We like it,” special education teacher Carol McGinley said. “We’re very happy and it was a lot of hard work.”
”We’re very grateful to our PTA,” fifth-grade teacher Cindy DeVos said. “It came at an especially good time.”

