Talk Bronx New York

Wholesale changes this week. Six spots out of 10 change and we welcome two new teams – both from the Bronx – to our rankings. The picture is still very cloudy and some of that should clear up this week, especially Tuesday when Wagner plays MSIT and Lehman takes on Kennedy.

Here’s how they break down:

1. Francis Lewis (2-0) (Last week: 1)

The Patriots have been sitting pretty in first the last three weeks. Can anyone in Queens 6-A knock them off? Not very likely. But watch out for upstart Bayside, which will attempt to upend Francis Lewis at home Friday. The Commodores have stepped into the division’s No. 2 hole after winning last month’s Seward Park tournament and beating Cardozo last week.

2. John F. Kennedy (3-0) (3)

The Knights have an interesting claim to fame: they’re the last PSAL team to have beaten Francis Lewis. That win came in the 2006 championship match. If the early season is any indication, those two teams could meet again in this year’s final. Kennedy, which won last week’s Tottenville tournament after a final victory over Lehman, will play the Lions again Tuesday in a huge match-up in Bronx 1-A, perhaps the strongest division in the city.

3. Hunter College HS (2-0) (2)

Hunter is very balanced, led by setter Francesca Sosnowski, and the Hawks have had little trouble in their first two Manhattan 5-A matches. They also boast a tournament win over Stuyvesant. Hunter’s real first league test will come Tuesday when it plays second-place and fellow undefeated squad LaGuardia, which has a pretty good setter of its own: Hannah Cassius.

4. Stuyvesant (3-0) (4)

Seward Park gave Stuyvesant a tough time last week, but the Vixens prevailed led by middle hitter Alexandra Albright, libero Alice Zhang and setter Tina Khiani. This week, Stuy doesn’t play until Friday when it travels to Murry Bergtraum.

5. , (4-0) (9)

The PSAL’s biggest gainer this week. Wagner followed a strong performance in the Tottenville tournament with dominant wins in Staten Island 9-A last week. JFK coach Iris Bromfield, whose team beat the Falcons in a tough one at Tottenville, was impressed with coach Marco Altieri’s team, which is led by do-it-all junior Amanda Fiore. Wagner faces its biggest league test to date Tuesday: McKee/Staten Island Tech.

6. McKee/Staten Island Tech (3-0) (6)

The Seagulls are a spot under their Staten Island 9-A rivals courtesy of a loss to the Falcons in the Tottenville tournament. MSIT, which is led by junior Kristen Markoe, will have a chance to erase that in a big rematch Tuesday.

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Public Housing Residents Face Loss of Their Community Centers

Ishmael Sylle, 12, focusing on a chess game at Parkside Houses’ community center in the Bronx. After-school programs are popular.

 Marc Anthony Reyes, 10, left, and Andre Delgado, 9, worked on a computer.

 Children made Father’s Day cards.

An average of 200 people of all ages use the center daily at Parkside Houses, where girls recently walked an imaginary fashion runway.

The community center at Parkside Houses, a public housing complex in the Bronx, has one floor, four rooms and many uses.

Adults work on their résumés on one of 10 computers or play Scrabble on Friday nights. Teenagers congregate around the pool tables in the game room or train for competition as part of the Parkside Knights track and field team. But the center, on the ground floor of a red-brick building across from a wooded stretch of the Bronx River Parkway, is really a children’s place.

After school on Thursday, about a dozen children sat in the multipurpose room making Father’s Day cards out of construction paper and buttons while several boys and girls played chess and video games down the hall. They ate turkey and cheese sandwiches. They got help with their homework.

Andre and Giovani Delgado spend their afternoons at the center, waiting for their mother, Ruth Delgado, to pick them up at about 5:30 p.m. Ms. Delgado, a building custodian and single mother, said she trusted the staff and liked the price: $80 a year to enroll Andre, 9, and Giovani, 11, in the center’s after-school program.

But Ms. Delgado and other parents are worried about the fate of the center. The city’s public housing agency, the New York City Housing Authority, announced last month that budget problems could force it to close Parkside and hundreds of other community centers, senior centers and recreational, job-training and educational programs throughout the five boroughs.

Ms. Delgado said that she made $11.10 an hour and could not afford to hire a baby sitter. She would be left with one option if the center closed: “I’m going to have to get my oldest one a key so they can be home by themselves,” she said, shaking her head.

The proposed cuts would affect hundreds of thousands of children, adults and older people who live in the city’s 343 public housing complexes, as well as thousands of others who are not residents but regularly use the centers. The plan has outraged tenants, public housing advocates and City Council members, focusing renewed attention on the New York City Housing Authority’s budget shortfall and its financial dealings with the city.

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