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Bronx Students Scramble To Find School 

Parents are stunned to find their children shut out of the Bronx Early College Academy due to building size accommodation.

New York City’s Department of Education said in a letter to parents that it could not find a building big enough to house the increasing number of students. A department representative said that splitting the school in two is one of the proposed solutions.

Parents and teachers have said the academy has been struggling due to a shortage of resources, support and leadership, reported the New York Post.

The academy opened in 2006 for students in grades sixth and seventh and was to expand this year to include grades up to twelfth. Officials expect to reopen the school for its first class of ninth graders in 2009, but parents are doubtful.

In the meantime, the department has recommended that eighth-graders apply to other schools.

A part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Early College Initiative, the Bronx academy was created to prepare middle-school students for college courses by earning course credits through advance placement. The school is supported by the City University of New York and partnered with Lehman College.

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High Test Scores, and Criticism, Follow a South Bronx Principal

A South Bronx elementary school that adopted the motto “The Best School in the Universe” on the strength of soaring tests scores is being investigated for allegations that teachers helped students cheat on state tests.

Several students who attended P.S. 48 said last week that teachers would examine their answers during official test administration periods and point out mistakes and how to correct them.

“They would give you the answers on the state tests,” a graduate of P.S. 48, who is now in seventh grade, said. “You’d say, ‘I need help,’ and then they’d tell you what the answer was.”

The Department of Education is also investigating cheating allegations at a nearby school, M.S. 201, which this year was taken over by P.S. 48’s former principal, John Hughes.

Mr. Hughes moved to the middle school after running P.S. 48, to great acclaim. He told the Web site InsideSchools.org that he oversaw a 30-point jump on a math test in 2004, and that year Chancellor Joel Klein spoke at the school’s graduation — reportedly while wearing a “Best School in the Universe” T-shirt.

The test scores subsequently oscillated, but the general upward trend won Mr. Hughes favorable profiles in the New York Times and on PBS, and he has developed a good rapport with a teacher-recruitment nonprofit, Teach For America.

In his first year at M.S. 201, scores have also shot up; the percentage of students passing math tests this year jumped by 17 points, and the percentage passing reading increased by nine points. (Citywide, scores rose by nine points in math and seven points in reading.)

Yet Mr. Hughes has butted heads with many of the teachers at M.S. 201, many of whom have not been invited to return next year when the school is restructured.

Some of those teachers said in interviews that they fear Mr. Hughes is importing a culture of cheating to their school.

In a recent letter to the Department of Education, a group of teachers reported that Mr. Hughes asked several teachers to help students during the state tests.

One teacher, Sandra Ameny, who came to M.S. 201 through Teach For America, said Mr. Hughes asked her to help her students on the math test, but that she refused.

“He asked me to guide my students to the right answers during the test, and I said that’s helping them; I’m not supposed to do that. And he said, ‘Well, just guide them towards the right answer,’” Ms. Ameny said.

She added: “He basically said during the exam that I should go over close to them, and for example if they mark ‘D’ and ‘D’ is not the right answer, tell them, you know, ‘That’s not the right answer, try something else,’ and just keep guiding them until they get the right answer.”

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“Learning Landscape” Prototype Constructed at Bronx Public School

On Tuesday, June 10 at 2 p.m., students and teachers at the Adlai Stevenson Campus at 1980 Lafayette Avenue in the Bronx completed a 16′x16′ prototype of a rooftop “learning landscape” planned for their building with materials provided by Pittsburgh Corning and Tremco.

The prototype is the forerunner of a 20,000-square-foot project that will transform the concrete surface of the school’s roof into a living laboratory for hands-on study.

Fundraising for the full-sized landscape is being led by the Stevenson Green Roof Consortium, a group including public and private entities, and is currently reaching its final stages.

Key contributors include Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. and Council member Annabel Palma. When completed, the landscape will be one of the largest monitored green roofs ever realized in the city and among its most innovative, featuring a structural system designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects’ first annual Research Fellow, Joe Hagerman (2005).

Located in an area in which enrollment and graduation rates are a constant challenge, the Stevenson Learning Landscape is designed as a suite of interactive classrooms for teaching and outdoor experiments in math and science.

The curricula, developed by the Salvadori Center and New Visions for Public Schools with the participation of Stevenson Campus teachers, will be supported by the Federation of American Scientists.

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City controller’s report blasts Bronx school overcrowding, lack of relief

Bronx schools are bursting at the seams and “flawed” planning is to blame, a new report by the city controller’s office charges.

“There are too many neighborhoods with overcrowded schools, elementary schools in particular, and no relief for years to come,” Controller William Thompson said in releasing the report.

The report compares the new seats provided in the city Department of Education’s 2005-09 Capital Plan with expected neighborhood population growth.

The study highlights several Bronx neighborhoods, including Soundview-Castle Hill, Throgs Neck and Highbridge, where activists have been advocating for a new middle school.

In District 10 in the northwest Bronx, Thompson’s report charges that “schools were over capacity in virtually every CSD 10 neighborhood.”

That finding mirrors the calls of local activists who have been pushing to include two new schools in the Kingsbridge Armory redevelopment project.

The DOE, however, has said it sees no need for new schools in the area.

Its 2005-09 capital plan provides for 36,500 new elementary and middle school seats in new school buildings or additions to relieve overcrowding.

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Bronx Principals Say Students Getting Shortchanged On Gyms

Some Bronx educators say their students are getting the runaround when it comes to physical education.

Borough President Adolfo Carrion surveyed the principals of over 200 Bronx schools and found that more than two thirds had either no gym or the gym was in poor condition.

“When 70 percent of school principals in the Bronx say that they can not meet the minimum standard of 120 minutes of physical activity a week for the children of the Bronx and for that matter New York City because we understand that this problem is larger then we have a serious problem we need to address,” said Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion.

Carrion plans to tell the Department of Education that these shortcomings are illegal, and more money needs to be allocated for physical education in the DOE’s five-year capital plan.

The city says fitness is a priority and it is spending $232 million in upgrades over the next five years.

SOURCE: NY1.com

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