Talk Bronx New York

Former President Clinton Supports Bloomberg — But Not Over Hillary

December 7th, 2007

While in the Bronx with Mayor Michael Bloomberg Friday to unveil a new initiative to make public housing more environmentally friendly, former President Bill Clinton lavished praise on the mayor but admitted that he wouldn’t like to see the mayor as one of his wife’s presidential rivals. NY1’s Rita Nissan filed the following report.

Mayor Bloomberg versus Hillary Clinton in a presidential contest is a match-up former President Bill Clinton says he hopes never comes to fruition.

“He’s been a really good mayor. What he does with the rest of his life, he’ll have to decide. I have the highest regard for him,” said the former president. “Obviously, I hope they never wind up being opponents just because I like him so much.”

Clinton and Bloomberg teamed up in the Bronx Friday to announce an initiative to make public housing more environmentally friendly. Clinton was quick to pile on the praise on the mayor.

“None of this would be possible without the leadership of Mayor Bloomberg,” said Clinton.
“I think he’s a good man and a great mayor and I think he’s also been a positive change agent.”

Bloomberg insists he’s going to focus on philanthropy when he leaves office, but many think he is also flirting with the idea of running for president as an Independent candidate.

At Friday’s event he leaned towards giving away his billions, with this remark to the former president.

“I’m glad to see after public service you can still make a big contribution. So in 754 days, I’ll have something to do,” said the mayor.

Whether there’s even room for an Independent candidate, Clinton - a master political strategizer – would not speculate.

“No one knows the answer to any of those questions until they happen,” said the former president.

What is happening right now is a fierce contest on the Democratic side, with Clinton talking up his wife’s credentials with the same adjective he used to describe the mayor.

“We need to make a new beginning and I just think she’s the most proven agent of positive change,” he said of his wife.

Saturday, President Clinton will be in South Carolina, perhaps to bring some star power to the campaign trail, because Barack Obama will be campaigning there this weekend with Oprah Winfrey.

SOURCE: NY1 Bronx

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A new boss in the Bronx

As the parties convene to commemorate the historic document — Alex Rodriguez’s record-breaking contract with the New York Yankees — expect more sanctimony than celebration. This signing will be interpreted like an armistice.

Erstwhile über agent Scott Boras has already been cast as the capitulator, a peculiar role for someone whose client now has a contract worth as much as $300 million. The victor remains less well known: Hank Steinbrenner, the once reluctant heir. Whatever else Rodriguez’s contract portends — whether prescient, profligate or just plain unfair — Steinbrenner’s signature also signifies dynastic change. The new boss has arrived.

It was a job he never much wanted. But a little more than a month into this new reign (he shares power with his kid brother Hal, who tends less visibly to the business side), Hank Steinbrenner has distinguished himself as a worthy, if welcome successor to his father. He is quotable, sure, but also very much in charge.

Just last month, in the wake of Joe Torre’s departure, the sporting press was rife with predictions that the House of Steinbrenner was in for a great fall. It was thought that the beloved and much-admired manager would take with him the aura of stability and success that made the Yankees so attractive. The free agents would flee, it was said. There would be Yankee turmoil reminiscent of the Eighties, when Hank briefly served as an advisor without portfolio before leaving — chastened, disillusioned, and without question, relieved.

But none of those predictions have come to pass. The Yankees hired a much-desired manager for less than half the price of Torre. Jorge Posada will return to the fold for top dollar, as will Mariano Rivera. Still, in relation to those October forecasts, the biggest surprise of all is A-Rod.

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For South Bronx Academy for Applied Media, receiving an A in the city school rankings was a vindication, said the principal, Roshone Ault.

Emily Borges teaching English at South Bronx Academy for Applied Media earlier this month.

New York Grades Set Off Debate on Judging Schools

Not long after Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced plans last year to give grades of A through F to schools, principals at some of New York City’s coveted specialized high schools grew concerned. With the city looking to reward gains among the lowest-achieving students, how would the elite schools be judged?

The principals peppered the administration with ideas for extra credits for their schools: perhaps counting how many Advanced Placement tests students pass or the college credits they accumulate. In the end, the city decided to tie bonus points for these schools to high scores on state Regents exams.

That served the gold-standard Stuyvesant High School well, propelling it from a high B to a comfortable A. But the principal of Brooklyn Technical High School, Randy J. Asher, called the decision “ridiculous,” saying it contradicted a core principle of the report cards: the need to gauge how far students have come, rather than simply how they perform.

“I think we all really came to the table saying, let’s find something fair for schools like ours,” Mr. Asher, whose school earned a B, said in a recent interview. “And I don’t think we succeeded.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has called the report cards released this month the best way to “hold a principal’s feet to the fire.”

Behind the simple grades are several years’ worth of critical and painstaking decisions about how to measure achievement, what to measure, and when to acknowledge that certain qualities in a school cannot be measured.

But instead of definitively establishing how New York City’s public schools stack up, the grades have set off an impassioned debate about just how schools should be judged.

James S. Liebman, the schools’ chief accountability officer and the architect of the report cards, said that he welcomed the dialogue. “I have a number of e-mails that start with, ‘How could my school get this grade?’” he said in an interview. “And that’s exactly the right question.”

Such questions are also surfacing across the country and producing a variety of conclusions.

In Florida, where former Gov. Jeb Bush put in place a school grading system in 2002, hundreds of schools that have received A’s from the state have landed on the list of failing schools under the federal No Child Left Behind law. In California, the state’s Academic Performance Index, which has been repeatedly altered since it was instituted in 1999, has been criticized by some parents and business leaders as inscrutable.

“Discussion and debate is fine and healthy, but we need to quickly come to some consensus about how to judge schools,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Washington, which supports the school accountability movement. “If there’s anything an accountability system is supposed to do, it’s to provide transparency to the public.”

It took Mr. Klein and his staff several years to put together the report card system, which entailed hundreds of conversations with principals, statisticians, labor leaders, testing experts and scholars. Many of its basic contours have roots in other places.

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Man dead after Bronx knife melee

A Bronx man was killed and his brother was wounded during a knife fight with several men early Thursday.

Fernando Borjas, 24, died after being stabbed in the stomach and arm in a fight outside an East Tremont apartment building shortly before 1 a.m., police said.

Borjas and his brother, Jorge, 27, had gotten into a fist fight with three unidentified men outside the Adams Place building, police said.

Two other men, armed with knives, joined the fray and stabbed both of the brothers.

Fernando Borjas was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital where he died from his wounds. His brother was in stable condition at the hospital with a stab wound to his stomach, officials said.

No arrests were made.

SOURCE: NY Daily News

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Chris Moy

Members of Menudo (l. to r.): Emmanuel Velez Pagan, Chris Moy, Jose Monti Montanez, Jose Bordonada Collazo, and Carlos Olivero.

Bronx-born teen tapped as new member of Puerto Rico’s Menudo

Iconic Puerto Rican boy band Menudo has been reborn, and when the new members wave tomorrow from the Daily News Big Apple float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, among them will be hometown teenager Christopher Moy.

Bronx-born Moy, 15, won a spot in the group after weeks of ego-battering competition on the MTV reality show “Making Menudo,” which aired its finale yesterday.

On the show, boys from ages 13 to 19 were put through their paces by seasoned music manager Johnny Wright and unforgiving vocal coach David Coury.

Moy, an early favorite, looked to be in the lead until he temporarily lost his spot in the group due to some shaky performances. It was something that even taskmaster Coury didn’t want to see.

“It killed me to support him being yanked out of the spotlight,” Coury tells us, “but I felt it would make him work harder.”

Apparently it did. In the finale, Moy joined Jos (Monti) Montanez, 18, of Caguas, Puerto Rico, Carlos Olivero, 18, of Chicago, Jose Bordonada Collazo, 15, of Manati, Puerto Rico, and the show’s surprise late entrant Emmanuel Valez Pagan, 16 of Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico, as a member of the new Menudo.

“My mom was in Disney World when I called her,” Moy says. “We actually set up a vacation before I even entered the competition, so she was there with my brothers and I was over here working. She told me she was in the food court and she just started screaming like crazy.”

Now, Moy can count on continued hard work with Coury and the group that he calls his “new brothers.” In the months since the show finished taping, Menudo has been training and practicing choreography. The group also recorded an album.

“Recording is probably my favorite,” says Moy. “It has always been my dream since I was little to be on a track.”

Plus there’s always the other perks of fame: Moy is one 15-year-old who will grow up with more female fans than he would have had within the confines of his Dutchess County high school.

SOURCE: NY Daily News

“All of us from the show get fan mail from people who watch,” says Moy. “Somebody asked me to marry them. It was crazy! I don’t know how old she was, but over 18.”

Coury trusts that Moy’s talent will carry him through the hazards of fame.

“There was something I saw in him early, early on,” says Coury. “The talent was there and it needed to be smoked out.”

But that’s not the only thing that had him rooting for Moy. “I’m from Long Island,” says Coury, “and we couldn’t have planned it this way?but it’s really nice to have a New York boy in the group.”

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