Now headed into its third year, the SOMA Justice Learn to Swim Program is changing lives in South Orange and Maplewood — making residents safer and also changing the culture around swimming and the towns’ pools.
Tatiana John said she has been a resident of Maplewood for 31 years, and “ironically last summer was the first time I ever went to the pool.”
“I went to the pool through SOMA Justice, getting my kids swim lessons,” John told the Maplewood Township Committee in April, when she was officially appointed to the township’s Pool Advisory Committee. “My daughter is 15. My son is 12. And my kids were afraid to get into the water.” By the end of the summer, she said, her children were in the water “all day, every day.”
“I feel like I come with a new perspective, a new viewpoint — ideas of getting people like me who are in Maplewood who haven’t come to the pool for whatever reasons, whether they’re scared or just don’t know how to go about it,” John told the Township Committee. She joked about almost drowning at the infamous and now closed Action Park years ago, but now she said, she is in the pool frequently and has even enticed her husband to get in the water: “It was a great experience. It was welcoming. I got to meet other people in the community that probably live a street over for me, but I’ve never met.”
Find out more about SOMA Justice Learn to Swim Lessons here.
Leontyne Harry, another new member of the Maplewood Pool Advisory Committee, also came through the SOMA Justice Learn to Swim program — but as an adult swimmer. “I’m still learning,” she told the Township Committee. “One of the things that I noticed as I gradually became familiar with the pool is that folks didn’t look like me at the pool so often.”
Harry said her main interest in joining the Pool Advisory Committee is to examine what are the barriers to joining — whether it’s pricing, marketing or culture. She said she’s also asked her teenage children why they are not interested in going to the pool and their response was “the pool’s just for families.”
Harry noted that she just started going to the pool two years ago “and I’ve been a part of this community since 2019.”
An Idea Born From Loss
The SOMA Justice Learn to Swim program came about through an effort to save the Columbia High School swimming pool. Community members coalescing under the banner “Save Our Kids’ Pool” sought to restore and reopen the pool before construction began on the site to convert it into a student commons area as part of the South Orange-Maplewood School District’s current $160M+ Long Range Facilities Plan. (The district is hosting an official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Alumni Commons on May 27.)
Although the effort to save the CHS pool failed, members of SOMA Justice — a local grassroots non-profit — sought to create a means for all children in SOMA to learn how to swim: when the CHS pool was in use, all students were required to take swim lessons to graduate; that requirement no longer exists.
SOMA Justice founding Executive Director Dr. Khadijah Costley White, who is an alumna of CHS, said she was spurred on by the death of CHS student Omar Hutchinson by drowning in 2020. “I had heard that the pool had been closed and that seemed concerning to me and then I heard that a student drowned … and I had never heard of a student drowning before that.”
“When we failed to save the pool we started to think about ways to expand access to the community pools which had some major barriers for access — especially in Maplewood — because of fees,” said White.
That effort began with free lessons but also with lessons offered at times, such as weekends, that were accessible for working parents. Scholarship money was also awarded for existing paid swim lesson programs at other pools and facilities; and money was awarded to families to join town pools. Advocacy included ensuring that money raised to subsidize Maplewood pool memberships through Pool Pals went to families as well as seniors, and also advocating for the removal of some language in the Maplewood pool membership application that was discouraging families from applying. Additionally, White said, the SOMA Justice program wanted to make lessons available for adult learners and special needs children and adults.
“We wanted to make space for unconventional learners and also folks who could not afford private lessons.”
White credited local resident Linda Petros for creating a gofundme memorializing the life of her mother Maria Petros, who was “passionate about swimming and children learning to swim.” The money raised from Petros provided the seed money for the Learn to Swim program.
(SOMA Justice is hosting a fundraiser on June 7 at the Player Agency at The Baird in South Orange. More information about the fundraiser can be found here: https://app.aplos.com/
Passionate About Swim Lessons
“That seed money allowed us to hire Ellis,” said White, referring to South Orange resident and lifelong professional swim coach Ellis Peters.
“Ellis was the final, important piece that finally gave the program an instructor so that the lessons could move forward,” said White. “And leaders of both towns gave us the space to make that come true. This program was really a dream of mine to try to make good on our commitment to kids and other underserved folks in our community. I’m in awe of how it’s blossomed and that’s because of Ellis.”
Peters, who moved to South Orange from Brooklyn just before the pandemic, said he was surprised to see the lack of access to public pools in suburbia.
“What I’ve learned is there aren’t a lot of pools, not nearly as many pools as there are in Manhattan and New York City and in Brooklyn. So it’s a bit different,” said Peters.
“But there’s a lot of beaches and during the summertime, a lot of folks make it to the beach.” Because of that, Peters says that his instruction includes “making it my business to share water safety awareness with as many people as possible” including “how to swim in whatever situation you’re in.”
“I got my WSI [water safety instructor] certification, I think, initially in 1995,” said Peters, and he has been a full-time instructor ever since, working at “most of the major gym chains” in NYC as well as at the 92nd Street Y, with a union where he taught retired union members, and elsewhere.
“I grew up swimming [in Washington DC]. Your first job, you’re a lifeguard and you start teaching lessons. And the initial thing for me is that I love working with people, so it made sense for me. And I did this deep dive and I’m still on that journey. I absolutely love it. My youngest client has been six months old. The oldest swimmer I worked with was 102. That demographic, that’s most of humanity!”
Ellis Peters and Keats at the Maplewood pool.
“Particularly in the African American community, representation has always been a bit of an issue,” said Peters. “And for folks that aren’t African American, it might not be a big deal, but if you are, it is. Particularly learning from someone who looks like you. We know the data that an important part of teaching is your teacher looking like you or you see yourself in your instructor. So I’ve been doing my best to fill that role. That’s been my particular niche and I’m open to working with everybody.”
From water exercise with non-swimmers to training competitive swimmers, Peters has taught every kind of swimmer including those with physical disabilities, developmental and intellectual disabilities and the neurodiverse.
He got involved in SOMA Justice through his partner Tanisha who was active on local Facebook groups and saw White’s posts. When SOMA Justice put out the call for instructors, Peters said, “I can do that!”
“I absolutely love it and I see how important it is.”
“Like so many other issues, this is one that’s an ongoing issue. And particularly since the pandemic, the numbers of drownings have gotten worse. They’re increasing because you have a section of folks for two years who were taken out of the pipeline for swimming lessons, lifeguard training, all these things. … Where you look at students being behind at schools …well, students are struggling outside of school too.”
Peters’ work for SOMA Justice Learn to Swim has taken place mostly at the Maplewood Pool but now includes some lessons at the Boys and Girls Club in Union.
“That’s very new. We had a goal after last summer … to start seeing folks before the summer — to get some folks ready for the summer. And just to kind of keep the ball rolling. Swimming’s a year round sport. I know a lot of folks think it’s a warm weather sport because it happens mostly when pools open, but swimming’s year round.”
Peters noted that his mother, who didn’t know how to swim, didn’t have the same access.
“I know systemically my mom didn’t have the same access, but she wanted to make sure I had. … When we look at demographics — particularly because of the history of segregation in the U.S., this is a very real thing because it wasn’t only that you couldn’t use a certain water fountain and use a certain bathroom or sit at the counter. You couldn’t go to public pools.”
Peters noted that there are still barriers: “There’s a financial barrier. There’s also, a lot of folks on the outside of the situation look at it as, ‘Hey, this is a country club thing, and I don’t feel comfortable at these country club situations.’ And the thing is that when I say country club, I’m not only speaking about race, I’m speaking about socioeconomic status as well. And it’s a real barrier. And if you don’t have that issue, and if you’re fine and you have access to swimming lessons and you know how to swim and you’re safe, that’s great. My number one concern is all those folks that could use the support, that can use the advocacy, and that can really gain something.”
White said that fundraising efforts for SOMA Justice Learn to Swim lessons are now focused on “trying to do this year round… applying for grants and fundraising, building on Ellis’s knowledge.”
Changes at the Town Pool
Maplewood Deputy Mayor Malia Herman has lauded the work of SOMA Justice, most recently at a April meeting where the Township Committee approved a 10% reduction in membership fees for early bird registration for the Maplewood Pool. [South Orange residents pay a much lower recreational membership fee for the South Orange pool, but there is still a fee.]
Herman additionally listed these improvements to access, much of it owed to SOMA Justice’s advocacy and that of Melissa Renny, chair of the Pool Advisory Committee:
- Removing the requirement that residents must be a pool member to sign up for swim lessons. Now, anyone can sign up for lessons, regardless of whether or not they pay the pool user fee;
- Opening the pool as a cooling center to ALL Maplewood residents during Essex County-declared heat waves;
- Creating an adult learn-to-swim class — a class that is very popular and always sells out; and
- Scheduling swim lessons for kids on weekends to accommodate working parents. These lessons were offered last summer for the first time and completely sold out.
- Allocating money ($25,000 in the 2025 town budget) for the Pool Pal program to “ensure that the pool is affordable to more residents of our community.” Find out more about applying here. Donate to Pool Pals here.
Additionally, Herman told Village Green, “I give SOMA Justice a lot of credit for their Learn to Swim Program because they are offering lessons that the town doesn’t currently offer, such as private lessons and lessons for children with special needs.”
“Are there more things we can do? Absolutely,” wrote Herman.
White applauded the towns for taking up the issue of swim equity and allocating resources and money at a time when the school district and board of education stepped away. Along with current South Orange and Maplewood elected officials, White gave credit to former Maplewood Deputy Mayor Jamaine Cripe “with leading on making the pool more accessible during her time on the Township Committee.”
White is also pleased that the Learn to Swim program is flourishing when many thought it was an “impossible endeavor” — including another SOMA Justice leader. “I was just like — we can do this, we can figure this out. And it’s turned into this beautiful thing!”
“I’m still hoping to get the Township Committee to do a few community nights at the pool, in which the pool is open to all residents. Township Committee member Dean Dafis has expressed support for this,” said White. “We want to grow this program and hope folks who want to learn continue to reach out.”
Donate to the SOMA Justice Learn to Swim program here.
Early Bird registration for the Maplewood pool runs until June 2.
