I could look out my bedroom window into the school yard. I lived right next door in the projects at 1117 S. Throop. That school yard where I learned to ride a two wheeler, the same yard I played in during the day, I played there on the weekends and evenings. I could play basketball there. I remember my kindergarden teacher putting up the screen to watch some movie and  she fell off the little wooden chair she came down and all the sparkles from the sceen came with her which made it seem so surreal like fairy dust. The school was beatiful and huge they don't make schools like that anymore the walls where decorated with these old marvelous paintings that I can still see in my mind, I remember walking down the hall once looking at one of the pictures and walked right into a wall. The projects where new, life was new and there stood Riis School like a giant. I drove past there many times and wanted to go in and see it before they tore it down. I didn't but I suppose its best left the way I remember it.

It made me so very said that they have torn down Riis. I feel like a part of me has been lost to the sands of time. I attended Riis from 1968 to 1976, and the seeds of the person I am today were planted there at Jacob A. Riis.

Christopher M. Vaughn, Class of 1976

My kintergarden teacher for half of the year was Ms. Alcalde. She was my favorite teacher. I loved being in her class. I remembered when used get a huge piece of paper and write the letters of alphabets on them, color them and hang them on the wall. I had some good times in that class.