Hamilton Post JANUARY 2020
HAMILTONPOST.COM
Pajama project reaches milestone
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Adapting school for a changing district
English Language Learner population nearly doubles since June 2015
Tradition started by sisters at Morgan Elementary has provided comfort to 10,000 children
By Julia maRnin
By BRianna colantoni “I’m Mackenzie and that’s Lauren, and together we are LaLa and MiMi’s Pajama Project.” Mackenzie and Lauren Multari have come back to Morgan Elementary School. It was here nearly nine years ago that they started a tradition of asking for children’s pajamas to donate instead of presents for their birthdays. This tradition eventually became a nonprofit, one that has exploded in recent years. It took them just two years to match the number of donations they had in their first seven. The girls’ goal was to donate 10,000 pajamas by the end of high school. Now freshmen at the Peddie School, they met it three-and-a-half years early. It was during an assembly at Morgan Dec. 11, that the Multari sisters donated their 10,000th pair of pajamas. Ashely LaRose, the guidance counselor at Morgan Elementary School, received the donation, which then went to Morgan students in need as part of the school’s annual giving tree. LaLa and MiMi’s Pajama Project looks for pajamas for kids aged newborn to 18, with the See PAJAMA, Page 9
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Hamilton native Russ Chell splits his time between New York and Los Angeles now, working with some of the biggest names in music today.
From Hamilton to hitmaker Nottingham grad Russ Chell works with the biggest names in music By samantha sciaRRotta ssciarrotta@communitynews.org Russ Chell is having a year. With his guitar skills and musical savvy, the 27-year-old Hamilton native has become a mainstay in the hip hop production scene, and now he has the formal recognition to prove it— Chell co-produced a track on rapper Lil Nas X’s debut EP 7, which was recently nominated for six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. He also
worked on YBN Cordae’s The Lost Boy, another Grammy nominee for Best Rap Album. The Grammy Awards will be held Jan. 26 in Los Angeles. Chell currently splits his time between New York and Los Angeles, but his path to the studio started in Hamilton. He first took guitar lessons at the Music Box and then at the Princeton School of Rock, where he also taught. He also plays bass and keys. Chell cites cites Kurt Cobain, Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai as his musical influences. “My first music experience was discovering the music of Nirvana through friends,” he said in an e-mail. “I was really in awe of Kurt Cobain’s guitar
sound. I knew I wanted to start playing guitar from that point.” Chell graduated from Nottingham High School in 2010 and went on to attend Mercer County Community College. He moved to New York when he was 19 and joined The Skins, a Brooklyn-based, genre-defying band. His best friend, Daisy Spencer, was a member of the group and encouraged him to audition when she mentioned they were looking for a guitarist. The Skins created some buzz performing at the South By Southwest festival, playing shows around New York City and touring with Albert Hammond, Jr., Jake Bugg and DNCE. The band also worked See CHELL, Page 14
Growing up speaking Spanish and English in the home has proven to have many advantages for senior high school student Venus Rodriguez. Throughout her four years at Hamilton West High School, she has noticed an increase in the number of students that do not speak English as a first language, especially Hispanic students. Rodriguez has noticed these students—classified as English Language Learners (ELL) by schools—have an additional barrier to overcome in order to be part of the student body at large, due to language differences. However, being bilingual makes it easier for Rodriguez to communicate with many of the ELL students. “I speak Spanish sometimes to them to help them out but I also speak English so that they can learn the language,” she says. The need for bilingual students like Rodriguez has become vital, especially as the Hamilton Township School District continues to serve as a microcosm for a national trend. School districts across the country have started to adapt in order to accommodate the fastest growing demographic of See ELL, Page 10
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