Parents and teachers at schools in Dyker Heights are apparently fearful for their children’s safety around local motorists, according to a report from Brooklyn Daily.

Vincent D. Grippo Elementary School principal Jayne Marie Capatenakis recounted an incident several years ago that resulted in a student losing a foot after being struck by a car at 65th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway.

And Grippo at least has a crossing guard at Ninth Avenue: as a middle school, nearby Christa Mcauliffe  Intermediate School on 65th Street between 10th and 11th avenues is ineligible for crossing guards.

Christa Mcauliffe assistant principal Bill Nicoll said that cars have struck two students in the past year and a half alone, though both survived.

“You’ll have people who can tell we’re having a fire drill, and they’re beeping the horn at us, yelling, ‘Hey, get out of the way’,” Nicoll said.

Fire drills are also problematic for Grippo, according to Capatenakis, where people often try to pull sudden U-turns.

Since they can’t get crossing guards, Nicoll reportedly asked the Department of Transportation for “No U-Turn” signs, speedbumps, flashing lights, and a four-way stop near the school to try to slow reckless drivers.

“What we get is they’re ‘doing studies,’” Nicoll said. “A study does me no good.”

“I know we don’t want to disrupt the flow of traffic, but I think that’s a small price to pay for saving a kid’s life someday,” he added.

A Department of Transportation spokesperson reportedly told Brooklyn Daily that the DOT is looking into options like repainting the lanes and creating left turn bays along the roadway between Ninth and 13th avenues.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post Brooklyn parents, teachers fear local drivers appeared first on Metro.us.

The Panel for Educational Policy voted on Monday night to approve the closing of 22 city schools, The New York Times reports.

Twenty schools in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan will be phased out over the next few years. Two schools–M.S. 45 in Manhattan and Freedom Academy High School in Brooklyn–will be shut down this June, instead of being phased out. 

The panel, which consists of five members appointed by the borough presidents and eight members appointed by the mayor, rejected a proposal to stop the school closings. The proposal would have also placed a moratorium on the issue, which some of the mayoral candidates have rallied for.

The schools were selected for closure based on low-performance ratings.

“The goal is to have more quality choices for our students and we cannot just sit on our hands and allow poor performing schools to just exist for the emotional sake,” Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott told reporters on Monday.

Devon Puglia at the Department of Education told Metro, “Our policy is working.”

“Across the city, new schools are delivering resounding results, graduating students at roughly 20 points high than the schools they replaced,” Puglia said. “Families deserve great schools — and we’re delivering.”

According to Puglia, in 2006, all of the high schools that were phased out had a graduation rate of 38 percent. In 2011, all new high schools had a graduation rate of 70 percent, he said.

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Beginning this fall, students at 20 New York City middle and high schools will have the chance to add courses such as web design, 3-D printing and animation to their class schedules.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced on Monday the names of the schools selected to receive a comprehensive computer science and software engineering curriculum. First introduced in the mayor’s State of the City address earlier this month, the Software Engineering Pilot program is a part of the city’s efforts to prepare more students for careers in the growing technology sector.

“The tech industry in New York City continues to expand significantly under Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership, and our public schools are rising to meet the challenge,” said Walcott. “The Software Engineering Pilot will provide students with the foundational skills they need to compete for high-paying, career track jobs in a variety of professional fields.”

The announcement was made at the High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology in Brooklyn, one of the selected schools. One thousand students are expected to participate this fall. By 2016, the program will grow to 3,500 students.

The program will give students grades 6 through 12 access to courses covering topics such as computer programming, embedded electronics, web design and program, e-textiles, robotics and mobile computing.

The pilot also provides teacher training and ensures school have access to technology resources to support the courses.

The schools were chosen after a competitive application process. They are:

• High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology
• Brooklyn Technical High School
• The Bronx Compass High School
• The Renaissance Charter High School for Innovation
• Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology
• Queens Vocational & Technical High School
• Cambria Heights Academy
• Ralph McKee High School
• New Dorp High School
• Ditmas Intermediate School 62
• I.S. 30 Mary White Ovington
• Mark Twain I.S. 239 for the Gifted and Talented
• Bronx Park Middle School
• M.S. 223 The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology
• Tompkins Square Middle School
• Nathaniel Hawthorne Middle School 74
• J.H.S. 185 Edward Bleeker
• Pathways College Preparatory School
• J.H.S. 157 Stephen A. Halsey
• Eagle Academy for Young Men

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School buses will be back on the roads when students return to school from winter break on Wednesday, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said on Monday.

After a month-long strike that began on Jan. 16, drivers and matrons of Local 1181 of Amalgamated Transit Union return to work on Wednesday. Parents of more than 150,000 students who were affected by the strike no longer have to worry about how to get their children to school.

Walcott said parents and students should expect some normal delays on Wednesday, similar to the first day of school, DNAinfo.com reported.

The city spent more than $20 million as a result of the strike–reimbursing parents for transportation costs and providing free MetroCards–but it still saved nearly $60 million.

The city has received 65 bids to run the 1,100 bus routes for special needs students.

The DOE estimates the new contracts may save the city more than $100 million over the next five years, DNAinfo.com reports.

The post School buses return on Wednesday appeared first on Metro.us.

The Department of Education wants to sell two schools on the Upper West Side to developers, to be demolished and replaced with high-rise apartment buildings, DNAinfo reports.

The DOE apparently advertised the locations via a request in Crain’s New York in November, but did not mention that the “prime development sites” being hocked were P.S. 191 and P.s. 199.

Officials reportedly said students will be relocated during construction, and developers will be obligated to include a new school at the base of the towers.

The DOE is also offering up the School of Cooperative Technical Education, attended by 11th and 12th graders at 321 E. 96th Street. Developers can purchase all three schools as a package deal, or just one.

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Throughout its history, the National Rifle Association has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership.  Keeping our children and society safe remains our top priority.

The NRA will continue to focus on keeping our children safe and securing our schools, fixing our broken mental health system, and prosecuting violent criminals to the fullest extent of the law.  We look forward to working with Congress on a bi-partisan basis to find real solutions to protecting America’s most valuable asset – our children.

Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation.  Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy.

Hours before President Barack Obama was due to unveil proposals on Wednesday to prevent mass shootings like the one in Newtown, Connecticut, last month, the National Rifle Association released an advertisement that referred to his two school-aged daughters.

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” a narrator says in the 35-second television and Internet spot. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”

Obama’s two children, who attend private school in Washington, D.C., receive Secret Service protection.

The White House condemned the ad.

“Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the president’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs, speaking earlier on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, said the ad was “disgusting on so many levels.”

Gun control activists and gun rights advocates have said in recent days that they could find common ground, particularly over the issue of expanding background checks for potential gun owners.

The NRA ad’s tone, however, and the personal nature of the attacks speaks to the cultural gulf that divides both sides.

The clip, called “Stand and Fight,” promotes the leading gun lobby’s proposal to put armed guards in schools. The idea has been at the center of the NRA’s response to the December 14 shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, in which 20 children and 6 adults were killed.

The ad is airing on the Sportsman Channel, a cable network, but will likely receive a much larger viewership on news stations and through the Internet.

The NRA, which says it has about 4 million members, also announced earlier this week that it would produce a nightly one-hour cable talk show hosted by gun advocate Cam Edwards on the Sportsman Channel.

“I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools,” Obama said in a recent interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press. “And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem.”

In a survey released on Monday, the Pew Research Center found that people favor putting armed guards or police officers in more schools by a two-to-one margin, 64 percent to 32 percent.

The post NRA responds to Obama’s gun control proposals, says children remain vulnerable appeared first on Metro.us.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Wayne LaPierre, the head of the lobby group which opposes tighter weapons controls, told reporters.

The largest U.S. gun rights lobby has been under intense scrutiny since gunman Adam Lanza killed 20 young children and six adults as well as his mother in Newtown, Connecticut, last Friday before killing himself.

But the group has said little publicly, citing respect for the victims and their families, and a desire to allow time to investigate.

Although previous mass shootings have done little to tighten U.S. gun regulations, the massacre of so many six- and seven-year-old children and school staff prompted outpourings of grief and calls for action nationwide.

In Washington, mostly Democratic lawmakers called for tighter controls on weapons or high-capacity ammunition clips like those used by Lanza and the gunmen behind other recent mass shootings.

President Barack Obama set up an interagency group to study the problem and vowed to present a detailed plan next month.

The NRA’s LaPierre said discussion and new gun laws were not the answer during a 30-minute news conference that condemned the media and a culture that he said glorified violence through bloody video games and films.

He said the NRA was launching an effort to beef up school security through armed police, training and building design.

“The NRA is going to bring all its knowledge, all its dedication and all its resources to develop a model National School Shield emergency response program for every school in America that wants it,” LaPierre said.

The news conference was interrupted twice by protesters who were escorted out. NRA officials declined to take questions.

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The daunting trip to work or school aside, living conditions remained severe for tens of thousands of people unable to return to their homes, and close to 2 million in the region suffered through another night of near-freezing temperatures without the benefit of power or heat.

On top of that, an exhausted region now faces the prospect of a new storm: A strong “Nor’easter” was forecast to bring freezing temperatures and more rain and wind by the middle of the week.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Sunday 30,000 to 40,000 people in New York City were in need of shelter, including 20,000 in public housing.

Hurricane Sandy killed 69 people in the Caribbean before turning north and slamming into the U.S. East Coast a week ago with 80 mile-per-hour (130-kph) winds and a huge storm surge. The U.S. death toll has risen to at least 113.

On Monday morning, with sizeable legs of the region’s public transportation network still hobbled by storm damage, people stood for an hour or more on train platforms or street corners in New Jersey, Long Island and Connecticut waiting for trains and buses, only to find many of them already too crowded to board.

Service on many rail and bus lines was reduced and the subway was running at about 80 percent of its normal service.

The commute from New Jersey was particularly trying.

As a Northeast Corridor Line train on the NJ Transit network pulled into Newark, passengers wondered aloud how the hundreds of passengers who crowded the platform would squeeze into the already-packed train.

A conductor banged on the window, signaling passengers to squeeze together more than they already were. “Move in! It’s gonna be a tight fit,” another conductor yelled. Still, there was no room for about half of the passengers in Newark.

“I’m taking Amtrak back this afternoon, so I don’t have to deal with this,” said Gabrielle Nader, a 27-year-old human resources professional who boarded in Trenton. “It’s worse than a subway.” Nader, from northeast Philadelphia, said she had already made Amtrak reservations through Wednesday.

ELECTION DAY CONCERNS

Most New York schools were reopening on Monday. Some are still without power and others are being used as shelters, complicating efforts to reopen them for students.

Concerns are also growing that voters displaced by Sandy won’t get to polling stations on Election Day on Tuesday. Scores of voting centers were rendered useless by the record surge of seawater in New York and New Jersey.

New Jersey has said it will allow people displaced by the storm to vote by email. In New York City, some 143,000 voters will be reassigned to different polling sites. Both states are normally easy wins for Democrats.

About 1.9 million homes and businesses remained in the dark through Sunday night as the pressure mounted on power providers to restore electricity to areas hit hardest by the storm. An updated outage figure for the full region was due later in the morning, but PSE&G, the largest electric utility in New Jersey, said early Monday it had restored power to 78 percent of the 1.7 million customers blacked out by the storm.

In New York, utilities came under increasing pressure to restore heat and light to some 650,000 customers. More than half of those were served by the Long Island Power Authority, which was singled out for criticism by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Tab Hauser, deputy mayor of the still-dark Village of Flower Hill on the north shore of Long Island, said that not only has the clean-up been too slow, Long Island Power Authority “is doing nothing to prepare for the future.”

He would like to see the utility consider underground lines and metal rather than wood poles. “Every year it’s a Band-Aid,” he said. “This can happen next year and nothing will change.”

Lee Green, 45, a firefighter who owns a property management company in Westhampton Beach on the southern shore of Long Island, said there were parts of the coastline “where the dunes are just completely wiped out and there’s a 20-foot (6-metre) drop from the back of the homes to the beach.”

He said the fire department had been deluged with dozens of emergency calls around the clock. “Wires down, road hazards, car accidents, telephone pole fires, alarms going off,” Green said.

“The power grid out here is really old and quirky. And when it shorts out, it causes chaos all over town.”

In New Jersey, about a quarter of the state remained without power. For many, that meant they had no heat.

FINDING FUEL

After a peak of 8.5 million outages across 21 states affected by the massive storm, the rate of restoring power each day has slowed as line crews must work on increasingly difficult and isolated outages.

Another challenge was finding fuel, as power outages and supply disruptions closed many gas stations.

In New Jersey, where residents were waiting for hours in line at gas stations, Republican Governor Chris Christie tried to reassure people that refineries and pipelines were back on line and gas was being delivered. “We do not have a fuel shortage,” he said at a news conference on Sunday.

Over the weekend, New Jersey gas stations were besieged by people carrying red gas canisters and miles-long lines of cars, despite a fuel rationing system based on license plate numbers.

In Montclair, New Jersey, some stations ran out of fuel after pumping gasoline on Saturday for cars with odd-numbered plates. This left few stations with gasoline to serve motorists with even-numbered plates, who waited for hours on Sunday.

The New York Harbor energy network was returning to normal on Sunday with mainline power restored, but there were growing concerns about heating oil supplies with cold weather forecast.

The post Subways packed, schools reopened in NYC a week after Sandy appeared first on Metro.us.

The Irene-Wakonda district now joins a growing list of rural school systems across the country opting for a shorter week in order to save money. Peach County, Georgia adopted a Tuesday through Friday week in 2010. Pueblo County School District 70 in Colorado made the same move in May of 2010 in the face of a $5.8 million budget shortfall.

Parents, though, continue to voice concern about whether a shortened week means less education for students.

“The kids are going to suffer,” the Irene-Wakona PTA president told TIME. “Of course they will. They’re missing a whole day of school.”

The Peach county superintendent actually reported test scores and attendance improved on a four-day schedule. The district made tutors available on Mondays when students were off from school. In fact, Clark told USA Today that the graduation rate was likely to be 80 percent for the first time in years.

In South Dakota, other districts on the Monday through Thursday schedule have reported no decline in academic achievement, but a savings of more than $100,000. In Irene-Wakonda, the superintendent says students will still be receiving the state’s minimum instruction time.

Is the minimum enough? Would you be opposed to four-day weeks for your child’s school district?

The post Four day weeks: New school trend? appeared first on Metro.us.

Released earlier this month, “Who Wins? Who Pays?” was the work of two groups, Nexus Research and Policy Center and American Institutes for Research. Nexus is supported by the Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, a major chain of for-profit schools, and by the private foundation of John G. Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix.

The study looked at taxpayer money going to public, private (nonprofit) and for-profit schools. This money includes Pell Grants, a significant source of federal financial aid for undergraduates, and subsidies from state governments.

They compared those amounts to the amounts paid in taxes by graduates of these schools. Because college graduates earn more than high school graduates, they pay more in taxes. Another tax impact is that public and private colleges are tax-exempt, while for-profits pay taxes.

The study concludes that, on average, taxpayers subsidize students at public universities at a cost of $60,000 per degree and at private nonprofits at $8,000 per degree. In contrast, they conclude, for-profits add $6,000 per degree to the tax coffers.

“Strictly from a taxpayer perspective, for-profit institutions represent a better deal,” conclude study authors Jorge Klor de Alva and Mark Schneider. 

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The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, challenge the city’s ability to close the schools for poor performance, saying the Department of Education ignored an agreement to help the schools and did not obtain the necessary approval.

Other people joining the suit include parents and elected officials. Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott called the lawsuit “shameful” and said it focused on “protecting jobs for adults at the expense of what is best for our children.”

Mayor Michael Bloom­berg is already not on enviable terms with the city’s public educators.

He’s been fighting to change the state’s “last in, first out” policy, allowing him to keep newer teachers and fire those who have seniority.

Follow Alison Bowen on Twitter @AlisonatMetro.

The post Teachers sue to save schools appeared first on Metro.us.

Markowitz joined children from Nuestros Niños Child Development School, a program under the Administration for Children’s Services, where children did not previously have a playground within walking distance. The kids had a chance to design plans and draw the playground they wanted, then watched volunteers install a triple racer slide and rock-climbing walls.

Follow Alison Bowen on Twitter at @AlisonatMetro.

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Auditors from the comptroller’s office found that for the 2004 through 2008 school years, the dropout rate may have been as high as 16.5 percent, rather than the 13 percent touted by the city’s Department of Education.

These new numbers mean that the graduation rate may in turn have been as low as 62.9 percent, rather than the 65.5 percent reported by the DOE.

“The city school system needs to sharpen its pencils when it comes to knowing which kids are dropping out and which kids are transferring to another school,” said DiNapoli in a statement.

DiNapoli found some high school dropouts who were improperly categorized as “discharged” — a category for students who die or transfer to another school, said a Department of Education?spokesman.

Follow Emily Anne Epstein on Twitter at @EmilyatMetro.

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According to the New York Post, Imprescia’s issues with York Avenue Preschool began when her daughter was forced to spend too much time slumming with intellectually inferior two- and three-year-olds, her personal growth hampered by their mundane inanities:

The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, notes that "getting a child into the Ivy League starts in nursery school" and says the Upper East Side school promised Imprescia it would "prepare her daughter for the ERB, an exam required for admission into nearly all the elite private elementary schools."

But "it became obvious [those] promises were a complete fraud," the suit says. "Indeed, the school proved not to be a school at all but just one big playroom."

Imprescia withdrew her daughter from the school after three weeks, only to find that the $19,000-a-year tuition was nonrefundable; she is suing to get the money back.

The lawsuit also points out that data exists that shows "entry into a good nursery school guarantees more income than entry into an average school." This woman’s got it figured out: Life is a rat race, and the only way to beat the other rats is to start running as soon as you are physically able to! (Or even before! Quick, parents: What prenatal classes will get your kid into Princeton?) (via the New York Post)

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The mayor said the state’s $4.6 billion budget gap was so dire that layoffs are inevitable.

Teacher’s union chief Michael Mulgrew said the cuts were a “bogus strategy,” adding, “The mayor’s insistence on teacher layoffs becomes more and more bizarre.”

Even as he carved money from the city, Bloomberg chastised the federal and state government for stripping city programs like homeless shelters and senior centers.

“You started these programs, you funded them, people got used to them,” he said, addressing lawmakers in Albany and Washington.

“You shouldn’t be cutting back.” 

The post Bloomberg to ax 6K teachers appeared first on Metro.us.

Greeting them between 6 and 7 a.m. — students can pick the time — will be the voices of stars like Magic Johnson and Trey Songz.

The WakeUp! NYC campaign launches next week, a response to 20 percent of all city students missing one month or more of school last year.

“Good moooorning, it’s meee!” Magic Johnson proclaims in one recording. “School got me to where I am today.”

Others are Jose Reyes, Big Boi and Rocsi. Oddly, none of the celebrities are particularly known for using their education to break into the limelight.

The calls go to 6,500 students in 25 schools, with goals of eventually reaching 250,000 students constantly missing class.

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“There will undoubtedly be pressure on teachers either to make concessions or to accept the idea of massive layoffs across the Island,” said Jeff Rozran, president of the Syosset Teachers’ Association.

He said teachers might consider pay cuts, and students might sacrifice after-school programs. “It would be devastating,” he said.

Carl Korn, spokesman for New York State United Teachers, said state cuts would continue a two-year trend of taking state aid away from education.

Schools in poorer districts would be hardest hit, he said, because they most depend on the state aid. Other affluent districts can rely on local taxes for more funding, he added.

Cuomo’s announcement today will only be a proposal, so Korn stressed that parents could still call local elected officials if they wanted to criticize cuts. “This is an opportunity for parents with children in Long Island schools to make their voice heard,” he said. 

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Bloomberg said Sunday he may have to fire up to 15,000 teachers — every educator the city has hired over the past five years.

“And even if we didn’t have any cuts from Albany, it would call for downsizing 6,000 teachers,” Bloomberg said yesterday, adding that the city will eliminate 2,500 teachers through attrition and 3,500 in layoffs.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers are currently trying to work out a compromise that would enable Bloomberg to fire up to 4,000 “non-classroom” teachers — those facing disciplinary charges who have been removed from the classroom and those from schools closed due to poor performance. Both groups of teachers still get paid a full salary.

The compromise would be unprecedented, and allow Bloomberg to keep some new teachers. But the mayor said it still doesn’t solve the problem of skyrocketing educating costs.

“It was a nice thing, but it does not solve the problem,” the mayor said yesterday. “A small change in Albany is relatively meaningless.”

“Last hired, first fired” makes sense because younger teachers need time to perfect their teaching skills, said a spokesman for the teachers’ union.

The post Why all new teachers could soon be jobless appeared first on Metro.us.

Nearly 50 years ago, the city started offering buses to seventh- and eighth-graders at 70 schools where public transportation is limited. But the city cut the special bus service to save money.

The post SI pols fight for school buses appeared first on Metro.us.

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“There are a lot of parents who said schools should be open,” Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said yesterday. “Principals will be understanding if kids arrive late.”

But Black’s decision drew ire from some parents, especially in the outer boroughs. “It was not the right decision in terms of safely getting kids to school,” said Rosamaria Giaimo, who lives in Bayside, Queens, on the border with Nassau County where a foot of snow fell. “If they insisted on opening, they should have had it delayed.”

Other parents pointed to mixed signals from the Department of Education, the MTA and the mayor’s office. “If you don’t need to travel tomorrow morning, please don’t,” pleaded MTA Chairman Jay Walder on Tuesday.

Schools are open, but who’s going?

Attendance yesterday:

» Citywide: 46 percent of students showed up
» Elementary: 55 percent
» Middle school: 47 percent
» High school: 37 percent

Compared to last Wednesday, when it didn’t snow:

» Citywide: 89 percent
» Elementary: 93.9 percent
» Middle school: 92.3 percent
» High school: 80.3 percent

6: The number of times New York City public schools have closed since 1978.

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A Health Department vaccination audit by the state meant that 150 schools were randomly selected to be surveyed for compliance statewide, like North Babylon. The audit is geared toward ensuring that schools are meeting state law, which requires students to be vaccinated to protect others.

Students from Selden Middle School were also taken aside after they didn’t have confirmation of their vaccinations, and were taught apart from other classmates.  

School officials said they won’t be allowed back into class until the provide proof of their necessary shots.

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A Manhattan judge ruled that the Department of Education can release the names and job ratings of 12,000 public school teachers, a move that had been challenged by the city’s United Federation of Teachers.

“We intend to appeal as soon as possible,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement.

The Education Department referred calls to the city’s Law Department, where senior counsel Jesse Levine said, “The court has affirmed the city’s belief that the public has a right to this information.” He said they’d wait for the appellate decision.

Teachers don’t have to panic today — the data won’t be released until the appeal is decided, which could take months.

Since October, when the city said it planned to release the rankings in response to news group’s Freedom of Information Law requests, the union’s argued that the data are inaccurate.

The reports, Mulgrew said, “will only serve to mislead parents looking for real information.”

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