Results tagged “schools”

Let there be cake! Actually, the Department of Education has the opposite sentiment, and is banishing the age old tradition of school bake sales to the history books. The new regulations will also trim the fat from vending machines, and aims to limit how much sugar and fat students digest during the school day.

With kids back in the classrooms, parents and teachers have been complaining about overcrowding. According to the UFT, the number of jam-packed classes has increased by 20 percent this year. Many students end up sharing books, while others are made to learn inside converted closets. "It's like on the subway at rush hour," said Erin Flanagan, a P.E. teacher in Flushing, "when the doors open, there's no room. That's what the hallways are like."

Not that it's good for anything. [Daily News]

Some three decades after polychlorinated biphenyl [PCB] was banned, the stuff is still found in rivers, plants, and human bodies, where it can suppress the immune system, alter the reproductive system, cause asthma, cardiovascular disease, enhance the effects of other carcinogenic substances, and reduce IQ, according to City Limits. In April 2008, the Daily News found PCBs in window sills and door frames in dozens of city public schools, but city health officials determined that in most cases the PCBs in the caulking had not leaked into the air and weren't dangerous. State regulations permit the caulk to remain in place until renovations take place, though some experts warn that PCBs left undisturbed can still leach out. Now one Bronx mom, Naomi Gonzalez, is suing the city to force it to remove all the tainted caulk from Public School 178, where her 6-year-old daughter attends school. Last year former City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden insisted the PCB caulk was perfectly harmless: "Do PCBs pose a health risk in the schools where they're present in intact caulk sample?... The findings clearly indicate they do not." Of course, this is the same guy who shrugged off reports that swine flu could kill 90,000 Americans nationwide.

Though the Department of Health and Human Services is warning that swine flu vaccines may not take full effect until Thanksgiving, city officials say they don't think the flu will shutter schools.

While aggravated Brooklyn residents near McCarren Park have launched an organized campaign against the insipid jingles incessantly blaring from parked ice cream trucks, parents in other parts of the borough are taking aim at Mister Softee not for how he sounds but for what he sells to their children. Well, two parents anyway; a Bensonhurst mom tells the Daily News she takes her 7-year-old daugher to Seth Low Park for exercise, but an ice cream truck parked there is tearing her family apart: "I’ve had fights with my daughter in the past about it. You kind of feel like it’s pushed on you. It’s one thing if they’re just in the neighborhood, but to be here by contract [with the city], they might as well be selling drugs." (They've been known to do that too!)

Mayor Bloomberg sought to calm worried parental units at a City Hall press conference yesterday, telling the press that most of the people going to the hospital with swine flu symptoms aren't sick, just scared: "While there are an abnormal number of people going to the hospital who are worried, virtually none, a very tiny percentage of them, have any symptoms whatsoever." But the mayor's downplaying of the outbreak comes as the city closes an additional three schools (bringing the current total to 25), and mourners bid farewell to Queens assistant principal Mitchell Wiener, swine flu's first city victim.

Mayor Bloomberg reassured the city would have clearer roads—100,000 tons of salt! 1,400 plows!—after today's winter storm, pointing out, "New York City has nearly 6,000 miles of streets. So to plow all our streets, just think about this, it's like plowing form here to Los Angeles, and back. It is really quite an amazing job that the sanitations workers have to do and that they do do." (If your street hasn't been plowed, call 311.) Schools Chancellor Joel Klein explained the rare snow day, "A lot of those streets weren't passable. We have kids, young kids, walking to schools. We transport 150,000 or so students on yellow buses. With the wind and the snow blowing and the traffic issues that we were hearing about, we thought this was the right decision. As I said, it's never the preferred decision, but the right decision." And the Mayor had a message for the school kids: "For those kids who were hoping for two consecutive snow days in a row, things can always change, but my suggestion is to do your homework."

New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein (not pictured) brought a gloomy forecast to Albany yesterday, pleading with state lawmakers to reduce proposed budget cuts and to give the city more flexibility in how state aid is spent. According to Klein, a proposed $84 million cut from the current school year’s budget could "really wreak havoc" and force school administrators fire an estimated 15,000 employees, many of them teachers.

14 Catholic elementary schools in Brooklyn and Queens will close by this time next year due to plummeting enrollment, and other schools will merge in an attempt to adapt with changing trends nationwide. If the proposal announced yesterday by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn (which also includes Queens) is carried out, the diocese will have shut down nearly one-third of the elementary schools it had just half a decade ago, the Times reports.

The Department of Education's new round of school report cards showed 82% of high schools getting A's and B's, "up from 65% last year," according to the Daily News. (Grades of schools K-8 were released in September.) However, there some struggling schools, like Washington Irving near Union Square, which received an F for a second year in a row. You can find the "school progress reports" here. And the Independent Budget Office says it costs the DOE $130 million/year to grade schools; initially private money funded the endeavor but the NY Times reports the IBO estimates NYC "will spend $105 million" next year.

There's not one, not two, but FOUR relatively negative stories about the Department of Education today. The Daily News reports that more than a third of public school students are in overcrowded classrooms; a report says 167,000 new seats are needed, but the city is only planning on 63,000 more. The News' Juan Gonzalez also finds that the DOE spends $5 million on couriers--double what was spent in 2002--mostly due to the couriering of tests. The NY Times finds that even the DOE tried to make gifted programs more accessible, a new policy resulted in half as many gifted students--"with 28 schools lacking enough students to open planned gifted classes, and 13 others proceeding with fewer than a dozen children." Finally, the Columbia Spectator wonders where promised arts programs for schools are. Remember--reforming the public school system is a major part of Mayor Bloomberg's platform.

It was the trifecta when the FDNY responded to three different schools where pepper spray had been released. NY1 has the rundown: The first was at A. Philiip Randolph Campus High School in Harlem. It's unclear what the circumstances were, but one student was taken to a hospital with chest pains while 16 others had burning eyes and itchy throats. The second was at a Chelsea high school, where a "14-year-old sprayed pepper spray in the cafeteria"; five students were taken to the hospital for treatment and the 14-year-old was arrested. The final one was at St. Francis Prep in Queens, where a "student claimed it fell out of her purse and discharged." She was taken into custody as 11 people were taken to hospitals.

Kids returning to school Tuesday were handed pamphlets outlining Mayor Bloomberg's new "Respect for All" policy, intended to reduce bullying, particularly harassment in public schools based on ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability. Every principal is now required to designate a staff member to whom students can report incidents, with schools required to report complaints to the Department of Education within 24 hours. According to WNBC, an accounting of all the incidents will be put online at the end of each school year, thereby sharing the humiliation with the world wide web.

As the city is stripping away 50,000 teachers' parking permits, out of the current 63,390 (apparently there are only 10,000 parking spaces near schools), now principals are faced with potentially many unhappy teachers. The NY Times finds that some schools have extra parking spaces while others have to share spaces with other schools. The the principal of P.S. 21/Crispus Attucks School in Bed-Stuy explained why many of his teachers drive, though the subway is a block away, “There’s a lot of shootings around here. They take cars because of the chances they take walking through the neighborhood. I hope they understand when they don’t get parking permits.”

In upholding the city's controversial ban on cell phones in public school, a Manhattan appeals court suggested adults are partially to blame. The opinion included, "If adults cannot be fully trusted to practice proper cell phone etiquette, then neither can children."

Yesterday, the Daily News revealed that an East Harlem high school principal told teachers to effectively pass more students. Principal Bennett Lieberman's report card stated: "If you are not passing more than 65% of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities. You are setting your students up for failure, which in turn, limits your success as a professional...most of our students ... have difficult home lives, and struggle with life in general. They DO NOT have a similar upbringing nor a similar school experience to our experiences growing up."

If you thought noticed a group of bicyclists playing dead on 6th Avenue near 33rd Street, your eyes weren't fooling you. Time's Up led a Bike Lane Action to "dramatize the fatal last moments of David Smith’s ride up 6th Avenue." Smith was killed when a passenger in a truck, parked in the bike lane, opened a door; Smith was knocked off his bike and into the path of a truck.

A couple of real estate agents are seriously deluded and declaring Montclair, NJ as "Park Slope West" (something The NY Times covered two years ago). They stand by their claim and the town's "urban-suburban setting" which boasts a theater, a museum, shops and even a "great commute". Suckers Prospective buyers are brought to the suburbs in a limo, and are wined and dined at the “Park Slope-style” restaurant, Raymond’s. Recently a curious Brooklynite and a...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an armed robbery on Washington Ave. in the Bronx, a bank robbery on 18th Ave. in Brooklyn, and a pedestrian struck on 69th St. and Queens Blvd. in Queens.
• Amidst "barbs and accusations," talks between studios and the writers guild appear to have broken down. Repeats will continue, as will Seth Meyers' long circular picketing sojourn.
• Animals at the Queens City Zoo will be receiving special holiday culinary treats to chow down on every weekend this month.
• Some news outlets use the word "reorganized," but three more city schools are being closed due to disappointing performance. The total is now 13.
• Tomorrow is a great opportunity to visit five historic homes in Flushing, Queens that are generally not open to the public, as part of a holiday tour.
• NBC is refusing to air an ad asking viewers to remember and thank members of the military for their service because it refers to the spot's sponsor's web site, which it deems too political.
• Police are searching for someone who shot a woman in Queens late yesterday. The victim was shot in the chest and found clutching a knife in her hand.
• SantaCon was today; we'll have extended coverage of the bearded bacchanal tomorrow.

A middle-aged man held several workers hostage at Sen. Clinton's New Hampshire campaign office in the town of Rochester yesterday, before surrendering to police. The alleged bomb he had taped to his chest turned out to be simply a number of road flares. Leeland Eisenberg's motivation for seizing Clinton's field office is unclear, but he appears to be a disturbed individual. The New York Times declined to speculate on Eisenberg's purpose ("[Police] would not discuss...

WWOR/channel 9 got a wake-up call that it's supposed to be a New Jersey TV station when the FCC held a hearing about the station's license renewal. Critics say the station's license shouldn't be renewed because it has failed to discuss NJ news and issues. The station, owned by News Corporation whose local media holdings include WNYW/Channel 5 and the NY Post, was moved to NJ in 1986 due to FCC law that each state...

Die Romantik (myspace, website) is a guitar, drum and keyboard trio with a knack for weaving lush, elegant melodies that never lose the element of surprise. Brooklyn by way of France, the group has developed a local following that recently earned them a spot on the lineup for Malajube’s show at Bowery Ballroom. Their debut full-length album, Narcissist’s Waltz, was summed up by Stylus magazine thusly: “An album of sophisticated arrangements and lullaby melodies that...

City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein characterized last year's assessment test scores as "good," but critics say that they represent a lack of progress and a failure of Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to reform city schools. City kids' scores stayed flat on national assessment exams in math and reading, with a slight improvement in 4th graders' math scores and a drop in 8th graders' reading scores. "New York City’s eighth graders have made no significant progress in...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a construction accident on East 46th St. in Manhattan, a stabbing on Grand Concourse and Bedford Park Blvd. in the Bronx, and an industrial accident on Quentin Rd. in Brooklyn.
• New York jeweler Tiffany & Co. is accusing online auction site eBay of pawning off bogus baubles as the genuine item.
• Fark.com may have failed in its bid to re-name a Boston sports stadium UFIA Arena, but it did get itself its own "Jeopardy!" category.
• Developers are falling over themselves to build housing on the Brooklyn site of a former fuel plant, which is considered environmentally contaminated.
• What could be of more importance than a proposed fare hike to board members of the MTA? Practically anything, as half of them didn't bother to show at a hearing to discuss jacking up ride prices.
• Brooklyn Tech got a "B"-grade on its first ever public rating. It's the first of New York's specialized high schools not to get an "A" rating.
• Robber suspected in more than a dozen city robberies taped while holding up an ice cream shop.
• Tickets are being distributed for free to an upcoming mass with the Pope at Yankee stadium, and the Vatican wanted to emphasize that scalping would be discouraged. Ticket holders who receive them for free are thus faced with an economic moral hazard.

The Chronicle of Higher Education released its annual salary survey of the heads of educational institutions and the value of a college education is evidenced in the paychecks being cashed by institutions' presidents. More than a dozen heads of private universities took home more than $1 million during the 2005-06 school year. According to the New York Post, the dean of higher earning was Donald Ross, who took home $5.7 million--most in deferred compensation after...

Yesterday was the city's day to honor and remember veterans of the U.S. armed forces. The 88th annual Veterans Day Parade started with the Eternal Light Monument Ceremony in Madison Square Park, followed by a parade up Fifth Avenue to 56th Street. An estimated 20,000 gathered for the parade, and there were veterans from World War II, Korean War, and the Iraq War. Mayor Bloomberg said, "You should know that 70 New Yorkers have given...

The city is showing the door to a daycare facility that has called P.S. 122 its home for 26 years. The Children's Liberation Daycare Center (CLDC), which serves 88 kids between the ages of 2 and 6, is going to court later this month to object to its ejection from the building, with no plan for the daycare center's return. The CLDC shares P.S. 122 with three arts organizations and it's the city's Dept. of...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A police impersonation on Ocean Parkway and Quentin in Brooklyn, a car vs. Pathmark at 107th Avenue at 105th Street in Queens, and an evidence search at 13 East 12th Street.
• The new report cards for public schools may mean principals will be fired and schools closed.
• A stop work order didn't stop a construction crew from tearing up the building where Gertel's once stood on Hester Street.
• Giuliani sticks up for his pal, embattled former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik: "if I have the same degree of success and failure as president of the United States, this country will be in great shape."
• A Rockland County church isn't very forgiving to the homeless man who broke in to call sex hotlines.
• Speaking of sex, the National Organization for Women's NYC chapter succeeding in getting New York magazine to stop running sex ads in the back of the magazine. It was really convenient, since New York says they were thinking of getting rid of them some time anyway.
• Was the poker heist that left one player dead an inside job? The victim's friend thinks yes.
• City Council Speaker Christine Quinn would prefer to reform the St. Patrick's Day Parade to tout inclusion, versus green beer.

It's Election Day, which means it's time for people to go to the polls. City offices and public schools are closed, and alternate side of the street parking is suspended, as are garbage and recycling pick-up. It's an optional state holiday; federal offices are open and there is mail delivery. While there aren't many big races, there are a few notable ones, namely the Staten Island District Attorney's race which pits incumbent Daniel Donovan (R)...