Results tagged “middleschool”

At Junior High School 126 in Brooklyn, middle schoolers who want to use their library are only getting two, maybe three, hours of partial access a day! The Daily News reports that they "have severely limited access to the cozy, mural-painted reading spot this year so the three charters sharing the Greenpoint building can use the space for planning, meetings and small classes." One student whose local public library is in a dangerous area, lamented, "We have no way of researching. There's this whole library full of new books bought for our school, and we can't even use it."

Just before the end of the day school bell at a Brownsville middle school yesterday, shots rang out in front of PS 189 when a woman driving by was shot in the face and nearly crashed into the school. The 24-year-old woman is in critical condition at Brookdale Hospital after being ambushed and shot six times by the shooter waiting for her outside the school around 2:30 p.m. Sparkle Jones, a woman who was near the intersection of E 96th Street and East New York Avenue to witness the shooting, told the News, "I heard shots, and the car hit the pole. The blood ran down her face."

A Westchester County middle school social studies teacher and former lacrosse coach has a $500 a week crack addiction and a penchant for underage girls, prosecutors say. Gregg Cavaluzzi, who has taught at six schools (some in NYC) over the last decade but was recently dismissed from Pelham Middle School, was caught in a sting by cops posing as 15-year-old girls in online chat rooms. Thinking an undercover cop was a teen, he allegedly texted, "At a motel in Bronx partying you smoke? Can you get down here" and asked what's "one thing you like to do very dirty." Cavaluzzi was busted when he showed up in Elmsford, NY, for the rendezvous and was charged with enticing a minor for sex, which could get him up to life in prison if convicted. A previous student of Cavaluzzi tells CBS2, "[The girls] used to talk about how he was such a pervert and they all found it very disgusting. He might look at different body parts thinking the girls wouldn't notice but everybody noticed." Cavaluzzi denies the charges; his lawyer says his client suffers from depression and cocaine addiction.

A middle school in Connecticut has raised eyebrows with its strict "no touching" policy prohibiting students from any type of physical contact with one another—from pushing and shoving to "hugging and horseplay." Students may face detention, suspension or even expulsion if they are caught sharing some personal space. The policy began being enforced because of several recent groin-kicking incidents, including one that put a student in the hospital. Twelve-year-old Patrick Abbazia said, "I even have a couple of teachers who've pulled me aside and said, 'Don't high five, I'll have to report you,'...I feel less safe walking through the halls than I did when people were pushing." Abbazia felt so strongly that he waged a protest against the rule by showing up at school with his arms wrapped in duct tape. His father supported him saying, "He is using his freedom as an American citizen to protest. Those are the kind of people who get ahead in the world."

Students at a 90% black and Hispanic middle school in Park Slope say their white teacher upbraided them with racial slurs when they disrupted a movie shown in class on Wednesday. 12-year-old Pryce-Gary Forbes tells the Daily News, "She said, 'You don't know how to act. You're acting lower class. You're acting like a whole bunch of n------.'" 14-year-old Tyasia Knight was also in the class, and says, "Our reaction was like, 'What did you just call us?'" And according to Forbes, the teacher offered him candy to keep quiet about the incident! The Department of Education is investigating, but the unidentified teacher, who's employed at the Secondary School for Journalism, denied any wrongdoing when questioned by some low-class reporter: "No, I did not use the N-word in class and that's a fact. You're taking an allegation and you're making something out of it, and that's what it is, a goddamn allegation."

Who said preteens don't know how to party? Oh that's right—nobody. Well, a few Connecticut middle schoolers really stepped up to the plate and turned their school bus into a booze cruise on wheels, selling mixed drinks to the other students on board for two dollars each. The Norwalk tween trio used juice, iced tea and Gatorade as mixers, but there was no confirmation of our suspicion that Miley Cyrus thermoses were turned into shakers. School officials are playing party patrol and disciplining the students without police intervention after being tipped off by parents. They claim that none of the students on board the party bus became intoxicated. Which makes us wonder: have these kids already built up a preteen tolerance or were these drinks watered down, thus officially making the junior bartenders the greatest young entrepreneurs since the Olsen twins?

Mayor Bloomberg's announcement that he would reduce the number of parking permits for civil servants by 20% has annoyed yet another group. Joining police officers, fire fighters, and other emergency workers are teachers.

While the jury is still out on whether Mayor Bloomberg's improvements to the public school system have really worked, he, along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and School Chancellor Joel Klein, announced new initiatives to help middle schools improve academic performance and provide better resources for students, parents, and teachers alike - plus $5 million to fund them. The money will go to the 50 lowest-performing middle schools, so they can staff up with guidance counselors, offer mentoring programs to less experienced supervisors, and offer Regents-level classes.

The police made middle schoolers cry! The NY Times has a great article about the mother lode of electronic gadgets that the cellphone police seized during a visit to Middle School 54 on the Upper West Side. While the police were probably more interested in weapons, since public schools prohibits cellphones and other electronic devices, the NYPD came up big.

The Police Department was there to carry out a random sweep for prohibited items, requiring all 900-plus students at the school to walk through metal detectors before entering.

Continue reading "Police Make a School Call"

City schoolkids are woeful underperformers when it comes to taking a statewide history exam. Just over a quarter proved capable of passing an 8th grade exam that covered the U.S. Constitution, major wars the U.S. has fought in, and native cultures. The passing average for the rest of the state was 55%, which is hardly impressive, but twice as good as city kids' scores. We sympathize with the 2006 test takers, because we tried to take the test and quickly became incredibly bored around the time we reached question #7, which reduced an interesting subject to a stultifying two-tone diagram.

Every once in a while, Gothamist comes across a news story that brings back fond memories. There was one pathological criminal kid in our rural upstate high school. One year we had the bad luck of being assigned a hall locker to which the criminal kid knew the lock combination. He would steal the cookies Gothamist and our lockermate would bring in with our lunches. Only the cookies --the nutritious parts of the lunch were always left untouched. Let's just say that our locker was left alone for the rest of the school year after we left a *special* batch of cookies in our locker.

Femme Generation is a hard band to describe. Indie-pop-rock-synth dance music is what we would say upon listening to their song "Semper Fi Little Guy". It's more complex than even that however, with listens to their entire catalog. With harmonies, chants and noises we don't even recognize, the music never stays at the same tempo or pace. They can slow it down just as fast as they speed it up. One thing is for sure though, their live performance is an amazing one. We've heard reports from the front lines of past shows, and you better be ready to dance when they close out our Movable Hype show tomorrow night.

I've just discovered that all the Brooklyn Papers, including my favorite, the Park Slope Paper, are available online as PDFs. Finally! Now I don't have to trudge all the way back into Brooklyn just to read the 78th Precinct's Police Blotter. BrooklynPapers.com. Other small circulation papers I try to read every week? The Columbia Spectator and The Stuyvesant Spectator (best article this week: Students Burnt by Bakesale Rules). Any one have any newspapers to add? [Jen, 11:00AM]: My old hometown of Basking Ridge has its news reported in The Bernardsville News...there is also a police blotter. I was sad to hear that my old middle school principal, Joan Tonarelli, was retiring. She was a former nun who ruled Willam Annin Middle School with an iron fist.