Results tagged “privateschool”

The new Bravo reality show NYC Prep has been ridiculed in many places, but it's mostly bringing shame to the schools where the students/reality show's players attend. In a NY Times Styles section article, parents are uttering things like, “Absolute garbage,” and "Like a bad ‘Dynasty’ episode," about the show that features spoiled teens (including ones who are amazed that teachers wants students "to, like, study during Christmas break") at private schools Nightingale-Bamford School, Dwight School, Birch Wathen Lenox School and the Ross School (in East Hampton) and public school (GASP!) Stuyvesant High School. Administrators are aghast while some parents are upset seeing the show's teens "spend most of their time scheming, partying, eating in expensive restaurants and shopping for $2,000 skirts." But the best quote is from the author of a private school guide, who says, "The schools on this show are all at the bottom"—top schools being Dalton, Brearley, and Collegiate—"There would never be a Brearley girl on this show." Thank goodness for snobbery!

Life imitates Gossip Girl tonight as the teens from six of the city's most elite private schools join together for a prom in the Waldorf's Starlight Roof (the Waldorf ballroom is where public high school Stuyvesant's prom will be this Friday -- ground floor for the plebes!).

There's a lesson that parents should learn before signing contracts for a private school: always read the fine print. The NY Times tells the story of a Soho couple (David and Michele Bender) whose daughter won a coveted, if pricey--$26,000/year--spot in the kindergarten program at the West Village's Little Red School House (pictured).

continues to embarrass the book publishing industry. Writer Margaret Jones, who told her publisher she was a half-white, half-Native American raised by a black foster family in South Central L.A. and former Bloods gang member, was exposed as Margaret Seltzer, white private school graduate from Sherman Oaks, California.

A mother is upset that last week her five-year-old son was allegedly handcuffed to a chair after throwing a temper tantrum in his Queens kindergarten class. The incident occurred last week at PS 81 and Jasmina Vasquez said her son Dennis Rivera was terrified. Rivera, who is quite large for a five-year-old at 68 pounds, reportedly was having a fit and knocking things off desks, when a school safety agent cuffed his hands behind him while seated in a chair.

Cathedral High School has a top reputation as an all-girls high school of the Archdiocese of New York. However, this past week has been rough: Teachers from Cathedral, as well as from nine other Catholic high schools, had a sickout. Plus, a former teacher admitted to assaulting students.

Norman Siegel, former NYCLU director, is taking the city to court today on behalf of Harlem residents opposed to the city’s plan for sports fields on Randall's Island. The city is building 63 new fields on the island in addition to the 36 fields already there; the construction is being partially financed by a consortium of private schools who will be given exclusive access to most of the fields between 3pm and 6pm on weekdays.

Gross! A former assistant principal at I.S. 72 in Staten Island is accused of asking a 12-year-old student for massages - and then trying to buy her and her mother's silence with promises of private school payment! Lawrence Siegel was put in a district office job - not his usual gig at Rocco Laurie Intermediate School - while the Department of Education investigated him after a DOE parent support coordinator, per the Staten Island Advance,...

The Trinity School, a private school on the Upper West Side that charges annual tuition of $30,000 a year, is prepared to cash in on the rise in property values by opting out of the Mitchell-Lama housing program. That program was designed to reserve housing for middle-class tenants in New York through government subsidized loans and tax breaks. The disparity in below-market rents required by Mitchell-Lama and the value of the building that houses the...

The Supreme Court essentially upheld an Appeals Court ruling that said New York City must pay the private education of disabled students. The twist is that the students and their parents don't even need to try to see if the public school programs are adequate for them.

Six years ago, the prospects for downtown Manhattan seemed uniformly bleak. A persistent fire that burned for months amidst the wreckage of the World Trade Center filled the air with an acrid smell that was a constant reminder of 9/11. Restaurants and shops shuttered for lack of business. And many firms considered moving across the river, fearing that every tower in the financial district had a virtual target painted on its facade. The New York Times has an article today, however, that not only has the area below Chambers St. recovered to 2001 levels, the neighborhoods of downtown Manhattan are thriving like they haven't in decades, if not centuries.

This is a crazy story. Two Harlem teens were detained as truants because two cops didn't believe that they were going to their private school on the Upper West Side. The Post reports that Latrice Jenkins and a classmate were taken to a truancy center in Riverdale because cops thought they should be going to Alfred Smith High School, a public school in the Bronx. And what's worse, the kids were on their way to taking a final exam!

Last year around this time, the Observer pitted Williamsburg hipsters and Park Slope yuppies against each other. This year, the Observer tackles the yearning some native New Yorkers have for when NYC was bad (sorta like Michael Jackson video Bad!). Summer of Sam, Needle Park, Ford telling the city to drop dead, all of it seems better than it is now. Here's what some people told the Observer:

- “I was flashed all the time—that’s how a true private all-girl kid learned about the male anatomy,” wrote Liz Alderman, 32, a television producer and former Brearley lass, in an e-mail.

Continue reading "Old Naughty NYC Vs. Current Boring, Safe NYC"

The city's Franchise and Concession Review Committee is scheduled to vote this coming week on whether or not to approve a proposal to have twenty Manhattan private schools pay for part of the renovation of Randall's Island athletic fields in return for exclusive use of a majority of the fields. The plan, which is separate from the controversial water park, calls for schools such as Dalton and Spence to pay the city $52 million dollars over twenty years. The city would kick in an additional $18 million for the fields, and $53 million for island infrastructure. In return for the payment the schools would get exclusive 3-6 p.m. use of at least two-thirds of the 63 playing fields.

We thought of one thing after reading the NY Times article about 92nd Street Y nursery school students' drivers clogging up the streets outside the school: Home schooling. Actually, we also thought "congestion tax," but reading about chauffeured SUVs for tiny children would drive most anyone crazy.

EVENT: Housing works is opening their new store in Brooklyn today. With great events and thrifty finds and a way to support the HIV-positive homeless community, it's nice to see the store is expanding.

A horrifying tragedy in Brooklyn: Sadier Jean Noel, who had jumped in front of a train on Monday as her 9 year old son's dead body was found in her apartment, admitted that "demons overtook her" and that she killed her son. Sadier Jean Noel said that son Knil was brooding about his birthday celebration from the day before - the family went to Junior's but Knil was upset an invited friend wasn't able to come. Noel told police that she reacted by smothering him with a pillow.

This week, New York focuses on moolah in a number of ways: The difficulties when friends make different amounts of money, five spending diaries of different New Yorkers, a story on a security guard who earns $10/hour, and more. But the real time-sucking feature is the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Cost-of-Living Calculator.

The NY Times examines the growing trend of holding back children a year before kindergarten. Some parents feel an extra year of pre-school has many benefits, as their kids are more confident and have more skills under their belt - not to mention their kids won't be the littlest or youngest in the class anymore. The practice helps with getting children into private schools (implication: private schools rather deal with more mature kindergarteners) and with sort of gaming the NYC pubilc school's rules. From the article:

Unlike many suburban districts, the New York City public schools are generally strict in placing children who turn 5 by Dec. 31 in kindergarten that year, and not the following year. Kindergarten is not mandatory, but children who are old enough for first grade will be placed in first grade. That rigidity has angered some parents, who maintain that in this day and age, kindergarten is no place for a 4-year-old.

Continue reading "Why School Kids Seem So Much Bigger These Days"

-- Whoops! 330 students were incorrectly made to repeat the fifth grade.

Last month, a young woman was killed by thieves in her boyfriend's Flatbush apartment, and it turned out her boyfriend was a pot dealer, making police wonder if the boyfriend had been the true target. The victim, Tiesha Sargeant, had grown up in Flatbush, went to a Manhattan private school on scholarship, graduated from Wesleyan, and worked at Conde Nast and most recently at CSFB, making her the pride of her family. Her father, Henry, spoke out about the murder to the Daily News, saying he believes that boyfriend Keeve Huggins has not been telling the truth. Sargeant is upset because Huggins was "vague" about the details of the day and Huggins' wavering on taking a plygraph test (the boyfriend had initially agreed to take a test and then backed out; his lawyer now says he will). The Sargeant family also refuses to let Huggins know where Tiesha is buried. Henry Sargeant expressed his family's sorrow:Her mother will never get over that he was dealing drugs out of a home he shared with our daughter. But [Tiesha] loved him, that was clear, and ironically seemed to feel safe with him. She always showed empathy for people who were on the so-called fringes of society. There was something good about her in that way, but it could have been her own undoing. She was the epitome of our life's work as parents, our gem, our yardstick for what we hoped would be the success of our family here. And now we are waiting for them to find who killed her.It's heartbreaking as is the the alleged account of what happened - that the robbers broke into the bedroom, threw Tiesha Sargeant and a sheet over Huggins, and then shot Sargeant.

- And city teens "most affected" by September 11 drink and smoke more than others, so expect some lawsuits against the country in another five years

As usual, Thursday morning finds us trolling the Stuyvesant Town Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association bulletin boards, looking for tasty morsels of real estate gossip. Today's find was a doozy-- one of the tenants posted a note asking for people to anonymously post their rents, and a frenzy of revelation ensued:

Mos Def, the rapper-turned-actor, is having child support problems. His estranged wife, Maria Yepes-Smith (Mos Def's real name is Dante Smith), says that he's failed the pay the full $10,000-a-month for their two daughters that he's owed for the first two months of the year, only paying $8,000 each time. Mos Def's lawyer claims that his business obligations, plus supporting three other children, are making it difficult. Def even spoke up during the hearing, much the judge's annoyance, saying, "I'm the only person who's providing for my children." Def also claims his wife said she would homeschool the girls, but isn't, so he should pay less in support. Hey, private school costs money, too!

- Ooh, here's the list of other GOP seats the Mayor may look to knock into the Democrat's ring

Forget Henrietta Hudson-- the new lesbian hotspot is the second floor of Stuyvesant High School during 10th period (after 3pm.) Of course, that's only if you believe the slightly tittilating cover article in this week's New York Magazine:

This is awesome: A Queens woman is asking a judge to make the state pay for her five children to get a private school education. The basis for Dianne Payne's claim is that since the state owes the city about $5.6 billion to give public school students a basic education, the city is currently failing her kids and therefore, the $12,500 the city reportedly spends per student should just be given directly to her! Payne, who sends two children to private school in Queens, told reporters, "I'm doing my job as a parent. The problem is that the city is not doing its job." While people don't expect her motion to gain any traction (the city calls it "obvious grandstanding"), Gothamist imagines this will pave the way for people suggesting that the city give them the money it uses to maintain the parks because they know how to take care of lawns better. This actually sounds like an extension of the credits for parents who would send their kids fo private school that we think Giuliani floated (it was some politician) a while back - does this still exist?

If you ever want to figure out how to get the construction noise in your neighborhood reduced, look around to see if there's a school in the vicinity with a motived PTA. Parents at P.S. 234 in Tribeca are the subject of a NY Times article that highlights how parents were able to convince developers to meet their demands to make sure their kids' reading, writing and 'rithmetic wouldn't be unduly disturbed. They got the change the 200 Chambers Street (Sir Norman Foster!) developer to change the kind of hammers they would use at the construction site (from "pile-driving hammers" to "vibrating hammers"), which then empowered the PTA get builders at 270 Greenwich to pay $2 million for noise abatement of construction at that site - including a 20 foot sound wall. One of the parents behind the effort explains, "The competition for prime middle schools in the city is very, very intense. It's a very high-pressure situation that didn't need pile driving as a soundtrack." Yes - those kindergarten records totally matter. And let's not get started on Mayor Bloomberg's third and fifth grade social promotion tests.

Shonali Bhowmik, Leader of indie band Tigers and Monkeys, member, Variety Shac

A woman passed out not once but twice during the Mayor's press conference about Summer Success Academy. During the woman's second collapse, Mayor Bloomberg actually "rushed to her side," perhaps concerned how it would look if a constituent, though a government employee in the Department of Education, fainted twice during his speech. And luckily the woman woke up a few seconds later - no need for CPR or anything! No word on whether or not the paramedics checked on other audience members (they could have been doing the "sleep with eyes open" thing), but the woman will be fine. [Related: The NY Times on how it has been hard for the Mayor's rivals to challenge him on education issues.]