Roland Park Elementary Middle School has been around for almost a century.
Throughout the decades the building has had different renovations, big and small, but the most recent is one people who have attended Roland Park in the past notice the most, the cafeteria.
In the past, the walls were filled with large murals all over; now all of the old artwork is gone.
“It wasn’t cohesive, and everything and also the murals had been up for decades; a lot of my friends went here, and that was about 20 years ago,” says Jamal Ruffin, community school site specialist.
Dr. Dina Sanchez, an orthodontist in Roland Park, led the project.
She had children who attended Roland Park years ago and felt she needed to give back to the school.
So, with the help of her husband’s contracting business, she helped renovate the cafeteria, making the space more inviting to all the students from kindergarten to eighth grade.
“Inclusion is more than just creating a space for everybody; it’s about creating the feeling and the sense of being included and valued and heard and seen,” says Dr. Sanchez.