A joint town hall meeting got heated last week as parents, educators and the District 3 Community Education Council (CEC 3) demanded answers from Chancellor Dennis Walcott and his team regarding a variety of issues facing schools in the district.

Frederick Douglass Academy II Secondary School located at 215 West 114th Street.

The principals of both the Frederick Douglass and Wadleigh schools were present and said their schools have made radical comebacks in recent years. The suspension rate at Wadleigh has dropped by 80 percent and changes have focused on college and career readiness, while Frederick Douglass, which recently faced closure, has seen a turnaround with the support of parents and the CEC.

Walcott said he hoped to continue to emphasize college and career readiness in the district schools and do away with the notion that low income students and those with housing issues present extra difficulties for the schools or “don’t belong” as some believe.

“I do not allow anyone to talk ill of our students,” said Walcott. “They all have the ability to learn at a high level with the proper support.”

In response to the issue of admissions to middle and high schools and the fact that several district 2 schools have district 2 admissions priority while being some of the highest rated and highest applicant rate schools, Walcott said the high school admissions process has improved significantly over the years.

“We have made more options throughout the city with the creation of small schools and new schools,” he said. “There are more schools to choose from, 85 percent of selections are in students’ top five choices.”

Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing & Visual Arts located at 215 West 114th Street.

“We have been able to encourage choices and give more quality choices,” he added.

Still Walcott maintained it’s difficult to go back on outdated processes of grandfathering which tend to give unfair priority.

Carl Pressley, a district 3 parent, asked the chancellor and his team why some of the same successful practices used in charter schools cannot be used in district schools. Walcott assured community members the same practices are being used in district schools, many of which are performing well and are “very creative.”

Walcott also addressed the recent PCB leaks in schools across the City and plans to remediate all schools.

“Two years ago we set aside 800 million dollars to address the PCB issue throughout the City, we are the only city that has done something along that line,” said Walcott. He added the two year plan is no longer viable, however, particularly with the current court case on the issue pending.

“This has been a priority for several years and we are working with the EPA,” said Walcott.

Other issues discussed included student privacy and concerns over data-mining and publicizing students’ information, school redevelopment and demolition, class size and overcrowding, general space concerns, the common core curriculum, standardized testing and gifted and talented programs.

The chancellor’s partners assured parents potential redevelopment and demolition processes are still in their infancy in the district and community members’ concerns will be addressed and input solicited before any plans move forward and before the issuance of an RFP.

Anthony, a teacher at Whadleigh, expressed his frustration with remodeling in district 3 schools and its impact on the students.

“We’re having to do more with less space,” he said.

CEC member Joe Fiordaliso agreed overcrowding is a serious issue in the district in addition to a general loss of space due to construction.

Fiordaliso said 1,300 parents signed a petition to create new middle schools in the district, to which the chancellor replied he has committed to developing more middle schools throughout the entire city.

“I set a goal to create 50 middle schools; we’re at 61,” said Walcott. “We are open to new middle schools in D3 and we are starting our portfolio process. Beacon will become available in 2015.”

With regard to the implementation of common core curriculum, parents expressed concern their children were being penalized emotionally by not understanding the new curriculum. There was also general agreement less emphasis should be placed on high stakes standardized testing.

“How can standardized testing determine a kid’s entire future?” asked Elizabeth Rivera, a parent and teacher in district 3.

Walcott said, “We have a responsibility as a system to make sure [our students] are getting a higher course of learning so while I understand the anxiety and pressure, it’s a pressure as a result of making sure students are getting a higher style of learning in schools and are being prepared to take tests.”

“We have a responsibility to teach them why we use the core curriculum and lower their anxiety,” he added.

With regard to high stakes standardized testing, Walcott described a balancing act.

“Our students will do better and better and better but we have to put [the new test] in place and we’re doing that this year,” he said.

While parents worried also about gifted and talented programs and inadequate space for qualified students at schools for accelerated education, Walcott responded that schools are best served by a blend of students.

“I always struggled with this,” he said. “Quite frankly with seat matching and gifted and talented, we need to look at the possibility of a separate system.”

“Invest in us; we’ll rise to the top. Give us a little, we’ll grow a lot!” This was the rally cry of the 700 children and after-school advocates that attended the March 28th rally outside City Hall to save child care and after-school programs. Dozens of after-school programs citywide, including Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood Center on East 93rd Street, brought representatives to the rally to protest the extreme proposed budget cuts. Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed fiscal plan in 2014 would cut $130 million from after-school programs and leave 47,000 children without a place to go after the school day.

“I think what we want to look at is how kids are staying in school and how our and how these programs build the skills of our youth,” said Cathleen Fitzgibbons, of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of the sponsors of the rally, along with the Campaign for Children. “These programs are critical for their overall development, and for shaping them as they’re going through middle school and high school.”

The rally was packed with hundreds of advocates, who brought signs and posters pronouncing their love for the after-school programs: “Help Keep After School Alive!” and “Do Not Close Child Care!” Matt Phifer, Director of Educational Services from the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side, led the rally as MC. He brought to the stage numerous council members like District 6’s Gale Brewer, as well as District 8’s Melissa Mark-Viverito, who both touted the educational importance of these programs. Gale Brewer explained that every year for the past 12 years, the mayoral office has done this “budget dance” where they cut programs they know the City Council can restore.

“The uncertainty is still scary,” said Council Member Brewer.

Children from the after-school programs showed off their extracurricular skills on stage – from double-dutch, to singers and traditional drummers, making for quite an exuberant scene. As for the kids in the crowd, many of the younger students said that they loved playing sports like dodgeball and rugby in their after-school programs. But the older teenagers conceded that the programs keep them off the streets and out of trouble.

“Visibility was great. It was a perfect storm of different concerned parties,” said Phifer. “Hopefully we will be able to make some change.”

Mayor Bloomberg has not yet responded to the pleas of families impacted by these budget proposals. “We’re working with the City Council to deliver an on-time, balanced budget that keeps the city’s fiscal house in order, while also protecting vital services,” said City Hall spokeswoman Lauren Passelacqua.

The budget right now has not included any of the City Council’s one-year funds, which would cause hundreds of programs to have to shut their doors completely. In addition the $10 million proposed cut would slash after-school slots by 75 percent.

This struggle is not new – just last year, similar budget cuts were proposed. But after several rallies last year, many of the funds were actually restored for one more year, according to Phifer.

Emma Woods, a representative from the Campaign for Children, an organization that was started last year in response to the budget difficulties and one of the rally’s sponsors, said that the Mayor should just baseline the money for these programs in his budget, so that this fight would not have to happen year after year.

“In the long term, the goal would be to no longer put these programs on the chopping block,” said Woods. “As the number of kids served goes down, poverty increases.”

And there are other measurable benefits too. A Wallace Foundation Evaluation of Out of School Time Programs in 2006 found that 56 percent of program participants felt that the programs really got them interested and involved in activities outside school. Plus 69 percent of participating students said that they made more friends in the program. Besides social skills, most of the students surveyed felt that their schoolwork improved.

So what would happen to those benefits if budgets were slashed? For Stanley Isaacs Center, the Upper East Side organization at the rally, budget cuts would be devastating. They have four after school programs, and would basically have to chop one completely (P.S. 112), if the budget proposal passed. At P.S. 112, right now, they can only serve 80 kids, with a waitlist of dozens of students who want to participate in the program, said Jeanine Glazewski, the Director of Development at Stanley Isaacs, which oversees a low-income area. She also said that these programs decrease delinquency. One of their board members is Marianne Hedges, the woman who was hit in the head with a shopping cart thrown from the roof of a building over the summer.

“These are just kids with nothing better to do we after school,” said Glazewski. “We would much rather have them doing homework, arts and sports.”

Plus, she said, the after school programs allows parents to go to jobs or do job training/searches. Many of these parents, she said, cannot afford caretakers. So, if there were no after school programs, the parents would have to quit their jobs in order to provide an environment for their children.

“Parents feel strongly about this, but it becomes more and more difficult,” said Glazewski.”People think ‘oh this again? Didn’t we fight this last year?’ When you have to go and argue for something that is creating longterm benefits of the city, you know there’s a problem.”

The Upper West Side community has come down hard on the Department of Education for not communicating to the public about possibly demolishing and rebuilding P.S. 191 on West 61st Street, and P.S. 199 on West 70th Street. At a meeting last week with Community Board 7 and the Community Education Council for District 3, the DOE revealed that it only plans to rebuild one of three schools: P.S. 191, P.S. 199 or The School of Cooperative Technical Education on the Upper East Side, and that the plans are only in the preliminary stages.

“Why are we concerned? The incredible lack of notice,” said Mark Diller, the chair of Community Board 7. “We only found out about the project because a P.S. 199 parent who reads Crain’s noticed an ad announcing expressions of interest for three city owned sites. They gave addresses but never said that they are public schools. But the parent was savvy and recognized the school’s address.”

According to Diller, the whole project has been backed by the Education Construction Fund, a city entity that is used to find and utilize unused air rights of public school buildings – or the number of square feet, both horizontally and vertically that are used on the site. They buy up the air rights, and build a 40-story building in its place. The developer has to in turn agree to use the bottom floors for the school. For this specific project, the DOE has only just sent out a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) to potential developers, said Diller.

In an email, David Pena, a representative from the Department of Education, explained that the DOE will continue to engage with the community on the project. The DOE has also maintained that the project, unless it was designated as a special “As of Right” project, would have to go through the Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP) just like any other city development, before it came to fruition.

“In the past four years, this construction process has developed four brand-new, state-of-the-art school facilities in Manhattan’s Community School District 2 at no cost to taxpayers,” said Pena. “For this project, there will be a two-year planning and engagement process if any of the responses are found to be worthwhile enough to advance to the project level. There is no reason to suggest that either DOE or ECF will not follow the same levels of engagement as in the past for any future ECF projects.”

But despite their proclamations of good intentions, parents at P.S. 199 and 191 are still not convinced, especially parents like Gigi Galen Grobstein, who moved to the district specifically to have her daughter attend P.S. 199.

“I was horrified; I felt like we were blindsided,” said Grobstein.  “How can this benefit any of us? It will benefit the city because they can sell the rights of the building.”

Grobstein, whose daughter is supposed to attend kindergarten at P.S. 199 in the fall, said that if the DOE does knock down their building, she will move out of the neighborhood, because she does not want her daughter to attend a temporary replacement.

Susan Stein, who lives in Lincoln Towers directly behind P.S. 199, and whose granddaughter attends the school, said that she is not surprised to hear that people will move out of the area if DOE goes through with their reconstruction plan. But, she said, the frustration goes beyond the school community.

“There’s already a high rise being built on Amsterdam, and a nearby synagogue’s building will rise 50 stories,” said Stein. “This neighborhood can’t take that many more people. The subway platform is dangerously overcrowded, and it’s narrow too.”

Stein said that she and the Lincoln Towers community plan on continuing to write letters to the DOE, and organizing petitions to keep P.S. 199 away from the wrecking ball.

But Olaiya Deen, a parent at P.S. 191 and member of Community Education Council 3, does not believe that the P.S. 199 community has anything to worry about.

“I think P.S. 191 is more likely to go, because we are a struggling school and P.S. 199 is a historically upper class school,” said Deen.  “I don’t trust the DOE. They will say the want community input on paper, but they go right along and do what they want anyway.”

Deen said that at the meeting with the DOE, they had already speculated Beacon High School as a temporary location for P.S. 191, if it were to be rebuilt. As a high school, however, Beacon would not have a playground or an auditorium for the students.

Regardless of which school the DOE decides to demolish, they have drawn up a plan in the RFEI that outlines what the new buildings would look like. The project is described as featuring “large residential units” and would require developers to build a 105,000 square foot school on the lower levels. At both the P.S. 191 and P.S. 199 sites, the new school should be capable of housing additional students. According to the speculative blueprints, part of the new school would be below ground on the same level as the building’s parking garages.

“Who wants their children to go to school in a basement where there’s no light?” said Susan Stein.

The next step is for the Department of Education to analyze all of the developers’ bids, and issue a Request for Proposals (RFP). Mark Diller said that the process of developing the new site is excpected to begin by the summer.

By Vanesa Vennard

Success Academy Charter Schools are looking to add another elementary school on the Upper West Side in District 3 for the 2014-2015 school year.

A representative from Success spoke at a recent Community Board 7 meeting to get preliminary feedback on the idea. Members of the board, Community Education Council District 3 reps, and a few parents expressed a unified opinion at the meeting: they weren’t interested.

Bruce Markens, a grandfather and Upper West Side resident for most of his life, was at the meeting when Upper West Success was being considered to co-locate in Brandeis High School in 2011, a decision that was very unpopular and led to a lawsuit against the Department of Education by a group of parents, elected officials, and other organizations to stop the construction. This time around, Markens said he had déjà vu.

“I’m very frustrated,” Markens said during the meeting. His grandchild goes to a District 3 school and so did both of his kids. “The political reality is that you guys are going to go to the authorizing agency, and since they don’t require that you give them a site, or give very many specifics about the program, you’re going to get approval. It’s a con game.”

The charters are approved by SUNY Trustees and are presented to give options to children and parents in an overcrowded community. According to Helen Rosenthal, a member of the community board, there is a major disconnect between Success Academy and the Upper West Side community.

Rosenthal said she feels the charters should go into an open, underutilized parochial school such as Holy Name, instead of co-locating in an overcrowded public school. According to Success Academy Charter, the DOE has the say as to where the charter goes.

“By bringing in a charter that brings in kids from other districts, they are taking away seats from the public school kids right in that zoned area,” Rosenthal said.
During the meeting, Rosenthal asked if Success Academy has thought of opening a charter in an independent, vacant building.

“Our model is we operate in underutilized public schools,” Suchanek said. “Our model is not to seek out other spaces.”

Rosenthal also asked if the Success Academy has yet identified an underutilized public school in the area they plan on using. Suchanek said they have not.

Kerri Lyon, spokesperson for Success Academy Charter Schools, said the reason for co-locating is to fill excess seats, or the controversial underutilized space, in public schools.

“Across New York City there are school buildings with hundreds and hundreds of excess seats,” she said. “And we should be maximizing the existing space we have to make sure children and families have access to as many high-quality options as possible.”
PTA President for P.S. 191 Eric Shuffler also reiterated that co-location wasn’t a popular choice with him and the attendees at the meeting.

“This is District 3, our seats are precious,” he said during the meeting. “You’ll probably find that it’ll be much easier to embrace a proposal if you’re not cannibalizing or digging into space that other people need and want. And then we’ll all get along.”

According to a December study on NYC charter schools provided by Lyon, 58 percent of NYC public schools share buildings and only 8 percent of co-located public schools are co-located with charter schools. The study also found that co-located schools are considered the least crowded schools in the city.

But according to Community Education Council District 3 President Christine Annechino, co-locating negatively affects public school children.

“When you walk into the school, it’s just so sad to see,” she said, using P.S. 149 in Harlem as an example. There, the charter students’ classrooms are freshly painted and they use better technology than the public school kids in the same building, she said.
In 2010, Albany raised a cap on charters so that capital improvements the charter makes have to be matched by the City for the public school side.

Lyon said Success Academy Charter is trying to meet the overwhelming demand for the charters in District 3. For September, Upper West Success has 130 available seats and already has received 1,800 applications, according to Lyon. The application deadline is April 1.

“All the schools we share space with share the same mission, to give our students the best education possible,” she said.

The meeting ended with a resolution asking Success Academy Charter to consider opening a charter in its own location.

“The resolution basically says, if you’re serious about our community, and helping our community, we ask you to locate in a space other than an established public school,” Rosenthal said.

The public advocate calls on the administration to find alternate solutions for struggling schools

By Public Advocate Bill de Blasio

If something is broken – fix it. Sadly, Mayor Bloomberg adheres to a different philosophy where our city’s education system is concerned. The Administration’s default response to struggling schools has been to close them, without first investing enough time and resources into turning them around. And instead of laying out a thoughtful plan for multiple schools to share facilities in the same building when they “co-locate,” the Administration turns a cold shoulder to community input. Clearly, we need a new approach for our city’s one million students.

There is a time and place to close a troubled school. But that should not be treated as an end goal in itself, nor an accomplishment to boast about. When all other options are exhausted, it should be the last resort. In 2011, the Department of Education (DOE) proposed for Canarsie’s P.S. 114 to be phased out. Yet the unwavering voices of students, parents and teachers of P.S. 114 were eventually heard, and the DOE resolved to work on lifting the school back up. Collaborating with community members like this – and really listening – should serve as a prerequisite for potential school closings. Too many of the schools doomed for closure have not been given the tools to improve, or the time to apply them.

Students at low-performing schools need the most support. But the Administration constantly misses the opportunity to pinpoint troubled schools, invest in them and turn them around. Too often, the Administration opts for the easier route, which is ultimately school closure. DOE’s policies have actually amplified the core problems that contribute to chronic poor performance. Adding more high-need students to poorly resourced and already underperforming schools is just one example. The end result? Performance results for our highest-need students have hardly budged, and educational disparity continues to besiege our city.

We see the same heavy-handedness in the way the City often shoehorns charter schools into existing public schools, without a well-considered strategy for both institutions to thrive. Co-location can be – and has been – successful in this city. Students at four high schools in the Brandeis Educational Complex, on the Upper West Side, learned beautifully side-by-side – until the DOE squeezed a charter elementary school into the building, despite staunch resistance from the school community. Successful sharing of space and resources can only be carried out through meticulous planning and input from all key stakeholders – students, parents, teachers, administrators, community activists and education advocates. Instead, the DOE has alienated school communities by neglecting their input and depriving them of a venue for meaningful engagement on educational policy.

As a public school parent, I know the difference of being involved in your children’s education can make in their academic success and self-confidence. That’s personal to me, and that priority is reflected in the recommendations my office put forth in 2010 to modify Educational Impact Statements and boost parental engagement. But the Administration failed to take our recommendations on community involvement and use of physical space seriously, resulting in a co-location process that is consistently divisive and poorly attuned to the physical demands of mutually-sited school communities.

That’s why, following Mayor Bloomberg’s latest announcement on school closures, I called on the Administration to freeze school closures and co-locations for the rest of the Mayor’s term. Until we can offer a comprehensive, community-driven plan for co-locations and school turnaround, I urge you to join me in pressuring the mayor to put a one-year moratorium on these divisive tactics. After years of disruption instead of progress, inequity instead of opportunity, haste instead of prudence. Enough is enough.

Some NYC schools are cutting down on recess just as studies show how integral it is to students’ development

It turns out that taking a break from fractions to play football in the schoolyard has more than just physical health benefits. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently released a statement emphasizing the importance of recess, and touting its benefits for the “whole child,” including academic improvements and the opportunity for the child to grow and learn social skills that cannot be taught in the classroom.

“We went into this study with the attitude that recess was good for preventing childhood obesity,” said Dr. Robert Murray, one of the authors of the study. “We discovered it had a lot more influence than we thought.”

But still, Dr. Murray says that in schools across the country, as many as 40 percent are cutting down on recess, or doing away with it all together, partially because of pressure to perform well on standardized tests.

“Teachers assume that they can teach kids more if they cut recess, but their best bet is to use these recess breaks to allow the child to process,” said Dr. Murray. “Adults take breaks throughout the day, but we just don’t call it recess.”

In Manhattan, a child’s recess experience is as varied as the schools themselves. But of almost two-dozen recent graduates from The City College of New York’s teaching program, 14 out of 16 current New York City elementary school teachers have recess where they work, and most have it every day.

At Ascension School on West 108th Street, a private Catholic School, recess is taken very seriously, and students rarely play inside. In fact, the street in front of the school is shut down every day just so kids can play outside. This has stirred up controversy in the community over the past couple of years from neighbors complaining about the noise. But, Principal Christopher McMahon said, they will continue fighting for their children.

“This struggle will not deter us because recess is too important to our program,” said McMahon. “Recess is a time for kids to release energy. It needs to be unstructured because it gives kids a chance to express themselves.”

According to Dr. Murray, unstructured recess, like the program at Ascension, is actually the best way to go.

“Unstructured recess gives kids maximum control over their own time,” he said. “Some kids may want to read, some may want to play kickball or dodgeball. It forces the kid to be creative.”

At Yorkville Community School on East 91st Street between First and Second Avenues, recess is just as important. The difference is four coaches come to the school every day during recess to organize sports games with the students, thus making the recess experience more structured.

“It keeps every child directed and they have someone supervising them so no one’s straggling off or not keeping active,” said Principal Samantha Kaplan.

Principal Kaplan has also observed that recess has had a positive influence on Yorkville students’ social abilities. She once observed a new student who was shy to make friends bond with classmates through a game of basketball.

“Once kids find common interests they become members of the community pretty quickly,” she said, referring to the atmosphere on the playground.

But despite good intentions, many schools simply do not have the budget for a regular recess program. The Lillian Weber School on West 92nd Street would not have a recess program if the PTA had not intervened. With all of the DOE budgetary restrictions, PTA president Jeanne Moreland said the school could not pay for teacher aides to watch kids on the playground. So, the PTA had to scrape the money together to hire teacher aides on their own.

“There’s not enough money for anything right now. We have enough money for the teachers’ salaries basically,” said Moreland. “I don’t think it’ll fix itself unless there’s a culture change on education and how things are funded.”

Schools have certainly had to get creative to keep recess in their programs. At P.S. 76 on West 121st Street, interns from Americorp come every day to watch the kids during recess, as well as teach them games and sports. As a result, said Principal Charles De Berry, recess budgets are usually not a concern.

Dr. Robert Murray did mention that school budgets were a factor that contributed to quality and quantity of education. And poorer schools, he said, are most likely to cut recess in order to get test scores back up. Ironically though, he said, it’s the kids in troubled areas who need recess the most.

At P.S. 46, on 8th Avenue and Harlem River Drive, recess has always been an important part of the school day. Principal George Young said this is especially important because most of the students come from housing projects and many parents do not want their children playing outside.

“I work in a challenging area. Recess is the only time they get to actually play outside,” he said. “When you see the children getting along and playing with one another, it reinforces the fact that we’re all in this together.”

Jenny Gensterblum transforms cafeteria food into healthy and delectable meals

By Alex Mikoulianitch

Jenny Gensterblum isn’t your ordinary lunch lady working at Léman Preparatory School and flipping hash browns. She’s got an impressive arsenal of cooking skills up her sleeve, all backed by a degree from the French Culinary Institute in New York, which she deploys in earnest to provide delicious, nutritious meals for the school’s students and faculty on a daily basis.

From a young age, Gensterblum was surrounded by a culinary atmosphere. Starting from the garden her family owned, to her mother’s cooking talents, the young Michigan-born girl began budding an affinity for the kitchen that eventually proved to be part of her career.

“Mom was a big cook and really influenced how I like to eat and what I think about food,” Gensterblum said.

She admits it was unexpected for her when she realized her path was going in the direction of the culinary arts, though looking back on it now, it seems all too obvious.

“It definitely surprised me, but I realized I was spending all my free time learning recipes and having dinner parties and spending all my money on exotic ingredients, so it’s definitely something that occurred to me later on,” Gensterblum said.

This realization prompted Gensterblum to travel to the Big Apple and enroll at the French Culinary Institute, which she believes was the most enriching experience she had ever had.

“I think it was the best year of my life,” Gensterblum said. “It’s one thing to enjoy cooking and being able to doing it on your free time. But being able to do it every single day was so amazing. I learned so much and I met so many great people. I think it was a challenge trying to figure out what I was going to do once I graduated, but luckily I found a place.”

Gensterblum didn’t automatically stumble upon a position at the school. She went the traditional route, working at a few restaurants first.

“I started working at a restaurant in the East Village, and I was there for probably around seven months after I graduated,” Gensterblum said. “It really wasn’t something that was resonating with me. I was seeing a lot in the news about school food lunch reform and ways that you could get involved with it, and I ended up finding an opening at [Léman] and I came straight here.”

It was here that Gensterblum began focusing her efforts on school lunch reform. The kind of lunch kids eat at Léman is much different from the average lunch you’ll see at a New York public school. The students go crazy for her kale chips, and she routinely makes healthier versions of traditional favorites, like corn chowder and marinara sauce, from scratch. She’s even compiled her team’s recipes into a cookbook, Secret Sauce, to bring her kid-pleasing fare to the masses.

“I think, for us here, and I know there are a lot of schools out there, especially private schools where they have dining services companies that come in and [they] can change from week to week, but everyone that works here works solely for the school,” Gensterblum said. “We really, really care about the kids. [We want] to make sure they get a good meal and make sure that it’s something that they look forward to. We really take pride in what we put out for them.”

These efforts, which Gensterblum heavily credits to the help of the school administration and the rest of the staff, are what brought her recognition for her outstanding service to the culinary field.
“My staff and I are really honored,” Gensterblum said. “[We] work really hard every day to make sure that the kids are learning something about food and getting a good meal and look forward to coming to lunch. I’m just really grateful and honored to getting some recognition for it.”

Parents in Lower Manhattan say that overcrowding at Battery Park City School (P.S. 276) is nearing a breaking point, and they have launched an online petition demanding that Mayor Bloomberg and the city’s Department of Education take decisive action and limit the number of incoming kindergarten classes for next year and beyond.

Started late last month, the petition has already garnered more than 600 signatures in the hopes that city officials will limit to three the number of incoming kindergarten classes at BPC and help preserve the school’s noted science, music, art and pre-K programs.

Parents and teachers at the school say that continued overcrowding will jeopardize specialized programs simply due to the fact that the classrooms may have to be used to accommodate increasing numbers of students at the school.

“Next year marks the first year we won’t have enough classrooms to maintain programs if we continue to admit kindergarten students beyond our capacity,” said Matt Schneider, a PTA co-president at BPC, via email.

“Our pre-K program could be eliminated entirely. Our science, art and music rooms could be converted to regular classrooms,” he added. “The quality of education for our kids diminishes.”

The three-year-old BPC School was designed to handle only three classes per grade, but Schneider said the school has been forced by the DOE to handle four classes in 2010 and five classes in both 2011 and 2012.

Posting comments to the school’s online petition, BPC parent Tracie Basch wrote: “Both my children attend this well-regarded school and love going to school. It would be a disservice to our children to alter our well respected science, art and music programs as well as discontinue our pre-K program.”

She added, “For our children to be able to compete in this new global economy, we need to find ways to improve our science and arts programs—not take away these specialized classrooms and revert to them being on a cart. That is not how you get children excited about learning.”

At a recent Community Board 1 meeting, BPC’s Principal Terri Ruyter said that for the coming school year there may not be enough classrooms for students in pre-K through 8th grade. She also said that the time is at hand to develop both short and long-term solutions to the school’s dire overcrowding problem.

Solutions suggested by Schneider and the school’s overcrowding committee include, in addition to limiting classes and class sizes, find and lease more interim classroom space to address shortages now, and build more schools in Lower Manhattan as a long-term solution.

“I think the persistent school overcrowding in Lower Manhattan points to inadequate planning or worse, a lack of planning post 9/11,” said Shino Tanikawa, president of Community Education Council 2.

“We need population projections at the neighborhood level, which neither the DOE nor the School Construction Authority currently undertakes. And, we need better methodology for projecting school-age populations, as has been advocated by Dr. Eric Greenleaf for the past several years,” Tanikawa said.

Greenleaf is an NYU professor, a downtown parent and a member of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s school overcrowding task force.

As of press time, the DOE did not return calls seeking comment on overcrowding at BPC.
However, most recently the DOE has said it is “on track” to meet growing demand for school seats in Lower Manhattan, and will make 700 seats available with the addition of the Peck Slip School opening in 2015.

In the meantime, the overcrowding at BPC seems to be taking a toll on students and performance. A DOE progress report for 2011-2012 gave the school an overall grade of C. The progress reports measure a variety of factors including student’s performance on standardized tests from year to year.

One parent at the school, who requested their name be withheld, said, “What I would love to read is how this beautiful state-of-the-art school based in upscale Battery Park has so very quickly become an uninspired disappointment.”

Asked about the school’s less-than-stellar DOE progress report, Schneider did not fully concur with the report’s findings. “There are a host of problems related to the way schools are measured by the progress report, and I don’t believe that report accurately reflects teaching and learning in our school,” Schneider said.

“That said,” he added, “it’s hard to argue that large class sizes don’t negatively affect learning for some students.”

Moreover, Schneider said that teachers at BPC work hard to overcome large class sizes, but time is limited, and teachers can only find one-on-one time with a certain number of students. “That,” he said, “has to have an impact.”

On Monday, Dec. 3, 11 students locked themselves in the Peter Cooper Suite at the top of the school’s Foundation Building. They originally intended to remain there (fueled by food, water, a bathroom and laptops) until three major demands were met: Free education must remain, a stronger democratic decision-making process must be implemented, and the current president, Jamshed Bharucha, must resign.

The administration remained tight-lipped throughout the ordeal, issuing a single statement: “The 11 art students who have locked themselves in the Peter Cooper Suite do not reflect the views of a student population of approximately 1,000 architects, artists and engineers.”

On Monday, Dec. 10, the students ended the stand-off, citing the media attention and large turnout at a rally held on Saturday in Cooper Square, and telling reporters that they felt their stunt had made enough of a differene to possibly affect the school’s tuition decision. Cooper Union administration issued no statement.

Menin Seeks Borough President’s Seat
Julie Menin, former chair of Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan, has officially announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Manhattan borough president, following months of buzz about her potential run. Menin said in a statement that she is “running for borough president because I believe my strong track record of leadership and solution-driven approach is what is needed in the challenging times our borough faces.”

She also cited a desire to guarantee the opportunity of great schools, parks and playgrounds to all families and give a stronger voice to the average New Yorker.

Her leadership and practical-solution approaches have lead her to many successes as a lawyer, owner of a small business and community leader. Her track record includes helping with downtown’s post-9/11 revival, attaining three new K-8 public schools in Lower Manhattan and working with the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to allocate over $200 million to job-creating infrastructure projects.

Menin, a mother of three, has already finished her fundraising for the 2013 race and has picked up endorsements from over 200 grassroots community leaders all over Manhattan, including from judges, CEOs, activists and former elected officials.

Although Menin has been the first to formally announce her campaign, other candidates in the sure-to-be competitive race are expected to include Council Members Gale Brewer (Upper West Side), Robert Jackson (Washington Heights) and Jessica Lappin (Upper East Side). As in many Manhattan races, the likely contenders are all Democrats and no Republican challenger is imminent, so the winner of the party primary can expect an easy ascendency to the position in November, forcing the real battle to play out earlier in the year.

Menin has announced that she will be spending her campaign time meeting with potential constituents around the borough to garner support.

Compiled by Jessica Mastronardi

“I think our school system is largely stalled right now,” asserted New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, one of the forum’s three undeclared Democratic candidates along with City Comptroller John Liu and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. “We need a very serious reset.”

De Blasio focused on the importance of early childhood education throughout the discussion, an issue which all potential candidates supported. He called for universal pre-kindergarten programs and expanded extracurricular activities across the city, arguing “that’s the kind of investment we need to make, or we’re not serious about turning the corner with our school system.”

Liu emphasized the necessity of preparing students to not only enter college, but to graduate from it as well. To keep students on track, he proposed hiring more guidance counselors and reducing the current system’s heavy focus on standardized testing—another issue that the potential candidates uniformly agreed needs to be addressed—as well as cultivating better communication with students’ families, whose voices, he argued, are too rarely considered.

“We need to engage the public more in terms of what the schools need, what communities need, what families and parents need,” he said.

Quinn, who is considered an ally of current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, agreed that the current administration still has many shortcomings that need to be overcome. She supported an evaluation system that would weed out bad educators, and argued that reducing testing would grant teachers more freedom and creativity in their lesson plans. “For a child who might not learn in the traditional way,” she said, “having that level of attention on standardized testing significantly reduces or eliminates the moments where that child’s mind might get passion or a spark might get set off.”

She noted, “Clearly progress has been made, but not enough.”

Tom Allon, CEO of the forum’s sponsor Manhattan Media and a declared Republican candidate, advocated what he called a “medical model” of teacher training to ensure that they have proper experience before taking over a classroom. Through a tier-track system and mandatory three-year in-class training period, the city would boost its low teacher retention numbers, he asserted.
“What [the Bloomberg administration] has missed is the fundamental problem of education,” said Allon, “which is that we’re just not properly training teachers before they get into the classroom, and we’re not giving them proper instructions once they get into the classroom.”

The only declared Democratic candidate, former city comptroller and 2009 mayoral candidate Bill Thompson, focused his criticism on chronic school closures, the root of a tension between public and charter schools. He spoke of the particular difficulties of the recently popular “co-location” of public and charter schools in the same buildings, where public schools are often inferior in resources and appearances. “The children feel as if they’re second-class citizens,” he argued, which creates disruptive rifts in what is supposed to be a mutually beneficial approach to learning.
Thompson agreed that early childhood education is essential, and that teachers need more professional development opportunities and support. “Education is collaborative,” he said. “The schools that do better are the schools that have individuals who work together with one teacher to help improve another teacher.”

The forum, held at Fordham University, was the first joint appearance of the five mayoral hopefuls since the presidential election earlier this month, and also since Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, a presumed mayoral candidate, announced that he would run for city comptroller instead. The forum was considered an unofficial and symbolic start to the 2013 race, which will conclude next November.