Talk Bronx New York

Nearly every level of the Bronx criminal justice system was racing on Wednesday to deal with the ramifications of an appellate court decision that declared the 2004 merger of the borough’s Criminal Court and Supreme Court unconstitutional.

Lawyers for the State Office of Court Administration filed for a stay of the decision. The Bronx district attorney’s office was working on the appeal of the ruling, which came in a criminal case it prosecuted.

Administrative judges moved quickly to transfer 10,000 misdemeanor cases and 8,000 unindicted felonies from Supreme Court to Criminal Court, where such cases were heard before the merger. In addition, 26 judges who had been working in Supreme Court were reassigned back to Criminal Court.

It all made for a hectic day, said Judge Efrain Alvarado, the top administrative judge for criminal matters in the Bronx. “I think it has gone very well considering there was no notice.”

The cause of all the tumult was a decision by the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, issued on Tuesday, ruling the merger of the two courts unconstitutional. That threw into question tens of thousands of misdemeanor convictions over the last five years. Read more..

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City officials said Monday that they were scrapping a controversial plan to replace some vocational programs at a Bronx high school with a troubled 18-month-old charter school.

The decision, a rare instance of the city changing course on a proposal to place a charter school in a public school, was made after a meeting last Wednesday between Joel I. Klein, the schools chancellor, and construction industry representatives. The construction executives expressed concern that the charter school would not be able to replicate the construction trades programs at the high school, Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School, said Gregg B. Betheil, who is in charge of the city’s vocational educational programs.

The city still plans to close Smith’s construction trade programs — in heating and ventilation, plumbing, electrical installation, carpentry and architectural engineering — because of low graduation rates. But instead of moving the charter school, the New York City Charter School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries, into the space, the Department of Education will work with industry representatives to develop an appropriate replacement school, which may be a city-run school or a charter, Mr. Betheil said. Read more..

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 The line between Bronx and Westchester counties separates the sickest New Yorkers from those with some of the greatest chances of staying healthy, U.S. data show.

Bronx, encompassing the New York City’s northernmost borough, ranked the worst of all 62 counties in the state in two broad indicators, according to data released today by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. Nassau, on Long Island, and Westchester topped the list of New York counties in a measure that looks at how behavior, access to care, economics and environment influence health.

The institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ranked counties within all 50 states. While they avoided a national ranking of the more than 3,000 U.S. counties, the researchers found common reasons for differences. People in counties with a high ranking had better access to primary care providers and healthier foods. Poorly ranked counties showed high rates of smoking and obesity.

“Our focus is that everybody should be able to compare the health of where they live to their neighbors and other places in their state,” said Patrick Remington, associate dean for public health at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, and lead researcher of the study, in a phone interview yesterday. Having the information on a local level makes it easier to find out who “can address these health problems.” Read more..

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Maurice Samuels, left, and Dennis Badillo, in a class in Bronx Park. They are participants in a job-training program for arborists.

 In New York, a city where tree climbing in public parks is officially considered disorderly conduct, the art of hauling yourself skyward, branch by branch, may be endangered for children and adults alike. Add the modern diversions of mobile gadgets and video games and, as Idiongo Okoro said, “you never really notice the trees.”

But now he does. For the past four months, Mr. Okoro and 10 other New Yorkers from some of the toughest neighborhoods have spent time in patches of urban forest to learn how to care for, prune and — yes, — climb trees as part of an intensive seven-month job training program.

There are jobs for professional tree-climbers (a k a arborists), and although New Yorkers raised amid concrete and brick might not make the likeliest candidates, Mr. Okoro, 25, and his group are learning how to walk on branches and shin up trunks.

The program is part of an unusual outreach effort by the city and a collection of private tree-care companies and nonprofit groups to train urban young people for “green-collar” jobs.

The program, now in its second year, has already had success, parks officials say. Graduates from last year’s class now work as apprentice arborists with the parks department and the New York City Housing Authority, horticulturists with the Prospect Park Alliance, and grounds custodians at Wave Hill and the Central Park Conservancy. Read more..

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Angry parents protest the closing of schools at a Department of Education hearing at Brooklyn Tech High School.

 Over the objections of thousands of protesters, the city Education Department’s panel voted early Wednesday morning to close 19 failing city schools.

After more than eight hours of testimony, the Panel for Educational Policy gave the go-ahead shortly after 3:00 a.m.

The four panel members representing the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan voted against most of the closings.

Mayor Bloomberg’s eight appointees along with the representative from Staten Island supported the decision.

At the beginning of the hearing, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein defended the proposals.

“The sad reality is that the schools we must close tonight are not meeting the standards,” he said, barely audible over boos from the crowd.

At one point he left the stage for several minutes, and the crowd interrupted testimony, repeatedly chanting, “Where is Klein?”

Only after he returned did the crowd allow testimony to continue.

Renee Donaldson holds up a sign as she yells against the closing of schools. Read more..

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