Major Mid-Year Budget Cuts Avoided in Deal Negotiated by the City Council « News from CM Melissa Mark-Viverito

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The City Council has negotiated a deal with the Bloomberg administration to avoid mid-year budget cuts to core services, from case management for seniors to shelter beds for homeless youth, as well as to defer increases in recreation center fees and parking meter rates. This deal only applies to the current fiscal year, which ends in June.

By proposing alternative cuts, such as a reduction in the Department of Education’s private contracting budget, the Council was able to:

• Defer proposed nighttime fire company closures
• Restore funding for nearly 200 ACS staff positions in the areas of child welfare and child protective services
• Fully restore case management services for seniors
• Fully restore runaway and homeless youth programs and preserve the number of available slots in other afterschool programs
• Defer parking meters increases above 86th Street and outside of Manhattan
• Defer the doubling of recreation center membership fees

The City still faces a $2.4 billion deficit for the next Fiscal Year and the Bloomberg administration is already proposing over a billion dollars in cuts for Fiscal Year 2012 (which begins in July). Melissa strongly maintains her position that the only way to fully address these recurring budget deficits is to ask thewealthiest New Yorkers to put in their fair share through progressive taxation.

Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer and Mr. Met Play Ball With Ravenswood Kids...

City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer with  youth from Ravenwood Houses..
.Click on photo to enlarge...

On Wednesday, July 28^th Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer and Mr. Met of the New York Mets Major League Baseball team joined children from the Ravenswood “I Have a Dream” Foundation in a game of Wiffleball at the Ravenswood Houses to celebrate their organization’s community involvement and continued success.

The "I Have a Dream" Program motivates and empowers youth from the Ravenswood Houses to realize their dreams by providing a long-term program of academic support, mentoring, and cultural enrichment, while guaranteeing the resources needed to achieve their education and career goals. "Dreamers" have volunteered at local food pantries, senior centers and various other community service projects.

The fun and games were concluded by Council Member Van Bramer and Mr. Met in a Mets Game ticket giveaway for the youngsters.

City Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer and kids from the Ravenwood Houses-
Click on photo to enlarge..

“Nothing means more to our communities than empowering our youth to strive for their dreams,” said Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer. “I want to thank the Mets organization for their gracious donation and the “I Have a Dream” Foundation for the invaluable resources they provide in our communities.”

 

“These children have participated in more than 30 days of Community Service projects over the past 2 years,” said Assistant Program Director Matthew Wright. “We are honored and excited to receive recognition from Councilman Van Bramer and the New York Mets organization.

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Assemblymember Mark Weprin Announces New York’s Toy Recall Law in Effect...

Assemblymember Mark S. Weprin (D-Little Neck) announced that the Children’s Product Safety and Recall Effectiveness Act of 2008 took effect this month. Over the past couple of years, millions of toys have been voluntarily recalled because of manufacturing defects. In one instance Mattel recalled over 18 million toys worldwide, including more than 9 million products in the U.S. The new law will help curb the sale of recalled toys and other children’s products. It also requires retailers to post recall notices.

“The toys we buy for our children are supposed to be fun and educational, and we shouldn’t have to worry that toys could harm our children,” said Assemblymember Weprin. “It is unacceptable that in recent years so many toys have had to be recalled because of safety issues. This law will help ensure that dangerous toys are kept off shelves and out of the hands of children.”

A recent state study proves that we need more than voluntary compliance. In June 2007, the state’s Consumer Protection Board (CPB), along with other state agencies, surveyed thousands of businesses on the effectiveness of recall notifications. Many followed the safety commission’s directives, but there were also many who didn’t receive recall notices or if they did, posted recall signs out of sight for most consumers. In addition, many people receive gifts or buy used toys at secondhand shops, where it is difficult to monitor product safety.

This legislation requires manufacturers to provide better safety and recall information for consumers by establishing a labeling and notification system that helps consumers know if the crib or toy they bought is defective, so they can return or discard the product. It also imposes civil penalties for manufacturers or retailers who don’t follow recall directives, which should result in more businesses complying.

Youth Service Providers in Queens Hold Press Conference on the Devastating Impact of Budget Cuts...

“BUDGET CUTS HURT YOUTH!”

In support of Richmond Hill Public Library, NY Alliance for Healthcare Reform (AHR) speaks against the devastating proposed budget cuts to essential services in communities across the state. Rafael Gomez Luna and Jocelyn Bueno, outreach committee members of AHR stood in solidarity with a contingency of community-based organizations. The message sent was: "Stop Draconian cuts that will hurt the future of our youth with Fair Share Tax Reform"

Black, Latino, Filipino, and South Asian immigrant youth service providers throughout Queens gathered today at the site of the Queens Library in Richmond Hill to speak out against the massive cuts on youth services. The Queens Library is a place many youth in Queens turn to for homework help, after-school programs, yet the Queens Library stands to face over 18% in state budget cuts that will be augmented by city budget cuts. This will cut the number of hours the Library is open as well as the number of free programs to youth it can provide. Groups spoke about how the youth service cuts will cut off windows of opportunity in their communities.

“The Queens Library is not just a place to keep books but a full-service community center,” said Children’s Librarian Laura Bultman from the Corona Branch. “We provide homework help to kids whose parents don’t speak English. The library is a quiet place for these kids to work if they don’t have a place to do schoolwork at home.”

Chief External Affairs Officer of the Library, James Van Bramer sent a clear message to elected officials in the Capitol: “The Queens Library serves more children in Queens County than any other organization. We implore our friends in Albany to find a more equitable way to avoid these drastic service cuts.”

The Executive Directors of South Asian Youth Action (SAYA) and Filipino-American Human Services, Inc. (FAHSI) were joined by Peter Fontanes of the League of Latin-American Citizens (LULAC) in describing how cuts in library and after-school services will affect their communities.

Fontanes warned of consequences from the Governor’s proposed cuts: “The after-school programs provided by this library open up the minds and spirits of our people. Children and immigrant families are being told that the doors of opportunity will be shut on them. I ask the Mayor and Governor not to budget out families. If our kids don’t have a library and community center to go to, they will end up on the street.”

Community member Buddha Allah had the last word: “Youth service cuts are of concern to me as a grandfather. There is an alternative. The cuts can be avoided by fairly taxing those 3 percent of New Yorkers making more than $250,000 annually. New York State already has a form of progressive taxation because a couple making $30,000 doesn’t pay income taxes. Passing Fair Share Tax Reform will be in keeping with the progressive tax philosophy we already have in New York.”

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News Release: Federal Funding for New York City Summer Jobs Takes a Dive - Anthony Weiner - New York's 9th District

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OFFICE OF REPRESENTATIVE ANTHONY D. WEINER

**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**

June 24, 2008

John Collins, 917-496-4587

Rep. Weiner Fights for Federal Funding for Queens Summer Jobs

Representative Anthony D. Weiner (D – Brooklyn and Queens), co-chair of the Bipartisan Congressional Caucus on the Middle Class, released a study on Sunday which found a 50% cut in federal funding to the Summer Youth Employment Program over the past 5 years. At the same time as these cuts, summer job applications are at their highest level ever. Rep. Weiner will introduce legislation to double funding to $6 Billion a Year.

Full report...

New York City – Federal funding for summer jobs in New York City has been slashed in half over the past five years, according to new analysis released today by Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a chair of the Bipartisan Congressional Caucus on the Middle Class. Weiner's study found that the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) only received $3.8 million in federal funding in 2007. That is nearly a 50% cut from the 2003 federal funding level of $8 million. SYEP saw 20,000 more applications in 2007 than 2006, but it was only able to enroll 150 more participants that year.

Overall, federal funding for Workforce Investment Act (WIA) youth development programs in New York City have been slashed by 35%, or $14 million in funding from 2002 to 2008. New York City has over 200,000 youth between 16 and 24 years old who are either not in school, not working, or not connected to any government support program.

WIA is a federal initiative to train workers to enter or re-enter the job market. As more and more middle class and entry-level workers lose their jobs, the need for skill development and training has become critical. The City's six federally-funded WIA career centers provide aspiring workers job training skills, help develop resumes and workplace skills, as well as help identifying and applying for local available jobs.

A broader look at WIA funding cuts found that overall funding has been cut by 30% over the last five years – a total of $30 million from 2002 to 2008. Cuts to City programs are three times national cuts. The study also found that:

- In 2008, WIA was cut by nearly 15% – the second largest cut over the five-year period;
- Funding for job training in New York City has been cut by three times the average cuts to national funding – 31% cuts to the City programs compared to 10% nationally;
- WIA cuts forced the City to close a Career Center and reduce the adult and dislocated worker allocation by about $20 million, a 34% cut of the budget;
- In 2006, nearly 190,000 New York City workers utilized programs at the WIA Centers, including more than 10,000 14 to 21 year olds; and
- New York State has fared much better than the City – with cuts totaling only 13%.

Rep. Weiner announced new legislation to boost WIA funding to $6 billion a year – more than double the $2.95 billion allocated in 2008.

Rep. Weiner said, "The Federal government is giving away billions in tax breaks to big oil companies, but is unwilling to invest in people or our children. Aspiring workers are doing their part. It's time the Federal government did theirs.

Little League Back On The Field by Lee Landor - Queens Chronicle

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The Ozone Howard Little League is back on the field for baseball season. Teams practice daily in the hopes of getting to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa.

At almost 50 years old, the Ozone Howard Little League is in great shape. Having more than 925 registered area children, four ball fields and an immaculately maintained two-and-a-half acre complex, it is always bustling.

About 70 percent of the league is made up of kids from Ozone Park, according to its president, Guy Losito. But the league is just as important to the Howard Beach community: it gets children off the streets after school, provides a social environment for both kids and parents, and upholds a reputation of which the community can be proud.

“We try to be their support system,” Losito said. The Ozone Howard Little League teaches the children more than just the rules of baseball and softball: they learn conflict resolution, team work, sportsmanship and community involvement — demonstrated by the league’s sponsors whose names are written on signs that decorate the complex.

Children and teens from ages five to 17 are divided into about 80 teams. Each age group is its own division, and within each division are several teams — depending on how many children in that age group are registered with the league.

The Ozone Howard Little League is one of the only baseball little leagues that has a large division of 13-year-olds, called “Juniors,” according to Losito. It also attracts more girls than most leagues, with 70 girls, ages 14 to 17, this year.

Open seven days a week, from 5:30 to 7:30 on weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday, this league is like a second home to many of its members, some of whom joined at age five and continued through to 17. “This is their utopia,” Losito said, making a wide gesture toward the complex where dozens of children were playing and dozens of parents were cheering.

What differentiates the Ozone Howard Little League from others is that it is more like a family than a structured after-school baseball program. “You’re not gonna find a complex like this anywhere,” said Frank, a parent who did not give his last name. That is due, in part, to Losito and his colleagues who have what they call loyalty to these children. “They want to be Mickey Mantel, A-Rod,” Losito said, “but they’re never going to fulfill that dream without (this) little league.”

There is one goal that all league participants want to reach: getting one of their teams to the Williamsport, Pa. Little League World Series where they would compete with teams from the U.S. and around the world. The challenging task of preparing his players and coaches for such an event is exciting for Losito, who has played baseball all his life.

While the Ozone Howard Little League members work hard toward that end, they never fail to find the time to enjoy themselves. “We want to have a fun organization where kids (and parents) don’t have to worry,” Losito said. Judging from the mustard-stained baseball uniforms, large crowd of cheering parents and number of children practicing in the complex even though they’re not scheduled to do so, there appear to be no worries on anyone’s mind.

OMG! :( It Ain't Write by Anick Jesdanun, AP- New York Post

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It's nothing to LOL about: Despite their best efforts to keep school writing assignments formal, two-thirds of teens admit in a survey that emoticons and other informal styles have crept in.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project, in a study released yesterday, also found that teens who keep blogs or use social-networking sites like Facebook or MySpace have a greater tendency to slip nonstandard elements into assignments.

The results may give parents, teachers and others a big :( - a frown to the rest of us - although the study's authors see hope.

"It's a teachable moment," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew.

"If you find that in a child's or student's writing, that's an opportunity to address the differences between formal and informal writing. They learn to make the distinction . . . just as they learn not to use slang terms in formal writing."

Half of the teens surveyed say they sometimes fail to use proper capitalization and punctuation in assignments, while 38 percent have carried over the shortcuts typical in instant messaging or e-mail messages, such as "LOL" for "laughing out loud." A quarter of teens have used :) and other emoticons.

Overall, 64 percent have used at least one of the informal elements in school.

Teens who consider electronic communications with friends "writing" are likelier to carry the informal elements into school assignments than those who distinguish between the two.

The study was co-sponsored by the National Commission on Writing at the College Board, the nonprofit group that administers the SAT and other placement tests.

The chairman of the commission's advisory board, Richard Sterling, said the rules could possibly change completely within a generation or two: Perhaps the start of sentences would no longer need capitalization, the way the use of commas has decreased over the past few decades.

But defying conventional wisdom, the study also found that the generation born digital is shunning computer use for most assignments. About two-thirds of teens say they typically do their school writing by hand.

ACT - Queens Youth Board Meeting on Novemer 21st at Queens Borough Hall...

Bloomberg.com: Springsteen Concert Aids Music Education for Needy Kids in NYC by Patrick Cole...

Bloomberg.com: Muse:

July 16 (Bloomberg) -- The next Bruce Springsteen may have the original to thank.

Music for Youth, bolstered by a Springsteen tribute concert that raised $150,000 for the foundation, is giving $350,000 to 14 music education programs for underprivileged students in New York City.

Springsteen, who grew up and lives in neighboring New Jersey, made a surprise appearance at the Carnegie Hall concert in April and sang ``The Promised Land'' and ``Rosalita'' with guest artists such as Ronnie Spector and Pete Yorn. Springsteen also donated an unspecified amount to Music for Youth, a division of UJA-Federation of New York.

``Bruce's philanthropy and his music are a beacon to people,'' said Jon Marcus, Music for Youth's director. ``They respect him as artist, and the performers were just thrilled to pay tribute to his music.''

Among the programs receiving $25,000 grants are the New York Pops' Salute to Music, which provides free Saturday music lessons to 125 junior-high school students; the Harlem School of the Arts, which helps needy music students attend college, and the Young People's Chorus of New York City.

The Bloomingdale School of Music, Bronx House Jewish Community Center Music School, Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy and Opus 118 Harlem School of Music also will receive money.

``This grant really helps support a program that's costly to run,'' James Johnson, executive director of the New York Pops, said in an interview. Johnson said the money will cover about a third of the $75,000 needed to provide weekend classes this year.

Scholarships

Opus 118 Harlem School of Music provides after-school instruction in voice, violin, guitar and piano to about 150 children. Philip Willis, the program's executive director, said the grant will fund scholarships for students who can't afford to pay $1,000 for the lessons.

``There's virtually no one here who is paying full price,'' Willis said in an interview.

Music for Youth, founded in 1995, is trying to fill the gap left by the cutting of music classes in public schools. In the 2001-02 school year, about 75 percent of third-graders in U.S. urban areas received weekly music instruction, down from about 85 percent when they were first-graders, according to a U.S. Department of Education study published in 2006.

``Schools choose not to offer music because they don't understand how important music education is,'' said Charles Feldman, Music for Youth's chairman and vice president of writer-publisher relations at BMI, which represents composers and publishers. ``If children learn how to play a musical instrument, it helps their cognitive ability.''

Music for Youth receives support from leading record labels, including Arista, EMI and Capitol.

To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Cole in New York at pcole3@Bloomberg.net .

NY1: Bronx Middle Schoolers Get Free Computers From Non-Profit...

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Not many things in life come for free, but something did for students at a Bronx middle school this weekend, and it's something that will help them prepare for the 21st century. NY1’s Cheryl Wills filed the following report.

It's not everyday you see sixth graders and their parents sitting in a classroom on a hot Saturday morning, but on this particular day, it's worth their while. "Our sixth graders are getting free computers,” said MS 219 Principal Dominic Cipollone. The classroom training is part of a program called Computers for Youth, a non-profit that distributes computers to low-income children and their families for use at home. All of the students and parents have to take part in the training before they can take the computer home. "I'm teaching them basic Windows operation, understanding the computer,” said CFY master teacher Berkis Cruz. “We start from scratch, from assembling the computer to how to use the Internet for learning purposes." Computers for Youth gets donations primarily from major corporations. The technical staff then wipes out the hard drives and puts on educational software. Internet access is also provided free for one year. "We believe very strongly that the home holds the greatest untapped potential to improve children's learning and life-long success,” said CFY President and Co-Founder Elisabeth Stock. Training doesn't stop once the computers are given out. CFY also provides Family Tech Nights at the school that are designed to give parents strategies to engage in home learning activities. Saturday marked the ten thousandth donation for CFY, since it started in 1999. That computer went to Jonathen Berrios and his family. "I'm really excited,” said Jonathen. “It's my first time getting a brand new computer." "It's grateful to have someone outside of the school system think about education,” said Jonathen’s father Eduardo Berrios. “A lot of us are in a very dis-advantaged.” To find out more about Computers for Youth, log on to www.cfy.org.

NY Daily News - Juan Gonzalez: Mike Ready to Give Kids Greenbacks, Not Gold Stars, for Good Test Scores...

Mayor Bloomberg is about to start paying public school students for better test scores.

Hundreds of principals have been informed during the past few weeks that City Hall is getting ready to unveil a cash "incentive" plan for thousands of low-income students who will take new assessment tests the city plans to roll out in September.

Under the unusual program, pupils in as many as 400 autonomous public schools that are part of Chancellor Joel Klein's Empowerment Schools program will be rewarded with money for results. Fourthgraders would get $25 and seventh-graders would get $50 for nailing a perfect score on a new battery of assessment tests from CTB/McGraw-Hill.

The new assessments, announced by the Department of Education last week, will be administered a whopping five times a year to all city students from the third to the eighth grades. This will be in addition to the existing high-stakes New York state English language and math tests, though the McGraw-Hill tests are not meant to determine student placement, officials say.

Under the cash incentive plan, all participating students will receive smaller amounts of money just to take the McGraw-Hill tests, according to internal Department of Education memos obtained by the Daily News.

"Every kid gets an incentive just for taking each assessment; $5 for fourth graders and $10 for seventh graders" says one e-mail sent this week to principals by Roland Fryer, the Harvard consultant Klein has hired to oversee the program.

"For each correct answer, students earn an additional reward," Fryer's note explains. "All students will earn something, but those that perform better will earn more."

You may be wondering why the city would offer money for students to take tests they are required to take anyway.

The reason is simple, sources tell me.

Principals in the 400 Empowerment Schools - about a third of the entire system - currently enjoy greater autonomy than other schools and so are free to choose alternative assessment tests. The proposed incentive plan, which also includes a $5,000 cash "gift" to every school that uses the McGraw-Hill tests, is meant to woo parents and principals from the empowerment schools.

"It's pretty horrendous that they want to pay children to get a perfect score on a test," said Jane Hirschmann, who heads Time Out from Testing, an advocacy group that opposes the growing national trend toward more and more testing.

"They could use this money to bring more resources into the schools," Hirschmann said. "It really makes clear what education under Klein has become in this city."

It was unclear why the city is going to such lengths to lure schools to the McGraw-Hill tests, which all non-Empowerment Schools have to use. Money for the incentive program will come from the city's Innovation Fund, a $150 million project Bloomberg announced recently to finance pioneering programs to fight poverty.

Top officials refused to talk yesterday about the cash reward plan.

Fryer, a 29-year-old Harvard economics professor who directs a project called the American Inequality Lab, did not return my telephone and e-mail requests for comment.

The Department of Education referred all questions about the new program to the mayor's office, while over at City Hall, a Bloomberg spokeswoman refused to confirm or deny the plan.

"We're still looking at a number of things," said City Hall spokeswoman Dawn Walker. "Nothing has been finalized yet."

The e-mails from Fryer and other DOE officials in charge of the Empowerment Schools, however, along with a meeting held this week at Frank Sinatra High School in Queens to inform principals about the project, all indicate the idea of the cash rewards is moving ahead rapidly.

"We plan to give fourth and seventh graders short term incentives to do what is in their long-term interest; crack the books and increase their achievement," Fryer wrote in a May 22 memo to principals.

jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

EduStat: Kevin Johnson - NBA Star and Founder of St. Hope Academy:

Kevin Johnson, NBA star and Founder of St. Hope Academy, is giving an interesting speech about education and his organization. In his introduction, he stated, “This is even more difficult than trying to guard Michael Jordan.”

St. Hope Academy’s approach to improving education involves a three-prong approach:

-Economic development
-Community revitalization
-Academics

The most controversial part of Johnson’s speech was his discussion of the political environment surrounding charter schools. He explicitly stated that the main reason he is opening a charter school in Harlem is because Joel Klein has been more supportive of the charter movement than California’s school board.

Johnson has also given large support to one of his funders, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the overall social entrepreneurship movement. He stated, “10 to 15 years ago, there was no industry here. There was no social entrepreneurship…we are on a tipping point.” Coming from an MBA school that has a strong social enterprise program, I was very happy to hear that.

NY1: New York City In Running For Nation's Best School District by Michael Meehan...

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It's called the Nobel Prize in education, the top honor for the nation's best school district and this year New York City is hoping to win the crown.
NY1 Education reporter Michael Meenan went along as the schools chancellor showed off a Bushwick High School to the people who get to pick the winner.

Bushwick's streets are tough. For a long time, nearly all the big high schools here were just as tough. But some young people say things are looking up.

"There's some high schools that are good; some that's bad,” said public school student Joe Lewis.

This is a story about one of the good high schools, the EBC High School for Public Service, and how it could help decide if the city wins the nation's most prestigious education award.

"Especially in a city of this size, it's incredible to see the gains we are seeing. There is so much that other districts can learn from what's going on in New York,” said Erica Lepping of the Broad Foundation.

Lepping works for the Broad Foundation, an organization set up by a wealthy philanthropist, Eli Broad, to improve the nation's schools, especially for Latino and African American students.

She and other school exerts toured the Bushwick high school to see if New York deserves top honors.

"I started off in the slow, and the not so -advanced math classes, and through the years I made it into the AP [advanced placement] math classes,” says high school student Wilmer Ramirez.

Improvements like that, as well as test score gains, better graduation rates, and innovative teaching are exactly what judges look at to pick a winner from four city finalists.

"What I am so impressed with and so interested about are his reform efforts around empowerment for schools and around accountability measures he's putting in place,” says Barbara Jenkins of the Broad Foundation.

But the way Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has pushed to hold principals and teachers responsible for better results, has met with opposition in New York City, especially from some parents groups who say they've been left out of the decision-making.

Klein points to results in schools such as EBC High School for Public Service under principal Victor Capellan.

"He's got a graduating class of 140 people and I bet better than 80 percent graduation rate," says Klein.

Bridgeport, Jersey City and Miami Dade are the other finalists in a competition for half a million dollars in scholarship money for its kids and lots of prestige.

The foundation will consider its choices over the summer and announce a top winner in September.

– Michael Meenan

AM New York: Sikhs: Schools Turn Blind Eye to Bias By Michael Y. Park..

An alleged bias attack against a Sikh student at a Queens high school has civil-rights groups and city councilmen pointing fingers directly at Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

On May 25, 17-year-old Umair Ahmed dragged 15-year-old Vacher Harpal, a practicing Sikh, into a bathroom at Newtown High School in Elmhurst, where Ahmed used scissors to cut Harpal's hair to the neckline while a younger boy stood watch at the door, according to police.

A key religious tenet of Sikhism is that males keep their hair unshorn. Ahmed and the other boy are Muslim.

Queens prosecutors used hate-crime statutes to charge Ahmed with unlawful imprisonment, aggravated harassment and menacing, as well as harassment and criminal possession of a weapon. Ahmed could face up to seven years in prison. No one else was charged.

But politicians and activists said prosecution wasn't enough and said the Department of Education needs a systematic overhaul of the way it handles bias.

"The Department of Education is as guilty as these boys in that bathroom for what happened," Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) said at a news conference Monday at the Tweed Courthouse in Manhattan.

Several civil-rights groups, representing Sikhs, South Asians and Muslims among others, said bias attacks against minorities have only gotten worse since 9/11.

"Almost half -- half! -- of our Sikh children face harassment," Sikh Coalition executive director Amardeep Singh said. "That is unacceptable."

Singh, Liu and councilmen David Weprin (D-Queens Village), Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan) and Hiram Montserrat (D-Corona) blamed Klein for failing to follow through on the Dignity for All Students Act, which the council passed in 2004 and calls for cultural-sensitivity training for school staff and for data to be collected on bias-based harassment.

In an e-mailed statement, a spokeswoman for Klein said that the criticism was unfounded, and that the department takes discrimination and harassment very seriously.

"School leaders have worked to create a safe and nurturing environment for all students," Dina Paul Parks wrote. "They have supported the student and his family and met with representatives from the Sikh Coalition the day after the incident. Their leadership has brought the school community together and will ensure that it continues to move forward in a spirit of unity."

According to a report released Monday by the Sikh Coalition, 58.4 percent of Sikh students in New York City public schools have been physically harassed because of their religion, and 30.2 percent of complaints to school staff are ignored.

According to Singh, Harpal had complained of harassment by other students five times before the May 25 incident but administrators did nothing or little about it.

Metro: Report: Sikh Students Face Abuse From Classmates by Joshua Rhett Miller

TWEED COURTHOUSE. More than three-quarters of male Sikh students in Queens said they are teased or harassed in city schools due to their identity, according to a report released yesterday.

The report revealed that 62 of 80 Sikh boys polled over the last six months said they were subjected to name-calling, threats or physical abuse. Citywide, 58.4 percent of 197 male and female Sikh students surveyed said they’ve been harassed, including 18.9 percent who said other students have said they look like a terrorist.

“That is not acceptable,” said Amardeep Singh, executive director of the Sikh Coalition, which conducted the study. “That is not what New York is about.”

The report was released less than two weeks after a 17-year-old Pakistani student at Newtown High School was arraigned on felony hate crimes for allegedly removing the turban of a 15-year-old Sikh student and chopping his hair off on May 24. Umair Ahmed, of Elmhurst, remains free on bail but faces up to seven years in prison.

Ahmed allegedly forced Vacher Harpal into a school bathroom following a verbal dispute and told the boy, “I have to cut your hair,” according to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. When Harpal asked why, Ahmed showed him a ring with Arabic inscriptions and said, “This ring is Allah. If you don’t let me cut your hair, I will punch you with this ring.”

Harpal’s hair, which had never been cut and fell past his waist, was then cut to the neckline by Ahmed, who allegedly threw the locks into a toilet and on the floor.

City Councilman John Liu, D-Queens, said he and other lawmakers sent a letter to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein asking him to “pay attention” to such incidents. Liu accused Klein and the DOE of turning a “blind eye” to the issue and said “they have passively encouraged and allowed this kind of harassment to continue unabatedly. This is no trivial matter. This is comparable to having an arm or a leg cut off.”

DOE spokeswoman Dina Paul Parks said no record of Harpal’s alleged complaints has been found.

“The Department of Education does not tolerate discrimination, harassment or bullying,” according to a statement released yesterday. “Any student who engages in this kind of behavior will face disciplinary action up to and including expulsion.”

Liu was unmoved.

“I will not let the Dept. of Education off the hook on this,” he said. “Heads have to roll.”

The New York Sun: Group Blames Education Department for Queens Hate Crime by Elizabeth Green...

A group of activists and City Council members yesterday blamed the Department of Education for an alleged hate crime at a Queens high school, citing a pattern of "turning a blind eye" to discrimination.

The latest case — a bathroom scrap that the Queens district attorney said ended with a 17-year-old Pakistani cutting his Sikh classmate's hair — should serve as a wakeup call, the group said. "The department is as guilty as those two boys in that bathroom," City Council Member John Liu said. "Heads have to roll."

A department spokeswoman, Dina Paul Parks, defended Newtown High School's handling of the incident, saying the school had no record of prior complaints from the alleged victim, Vacher Harpal. A Sikh community group, the Sikh Coalition, said Mr. Harpal wrote five complaints but did not receive a reply.

The executive director of a group that does youth programming in Queens, South Asian Youth Action, Annetta Seecharran, said complaints from Sikh students are typical. A survey released yesterday by the Sikh Coalition found that more than 77% of Sikh boys in Queens schools have been harassed about their faith.

Ms. Seecharran said she has been contacting Newtown administrators with offers to do tolerance work for six years but has been repeatedly refused, though her group volunteered to cover all costs.

Tolerance programs and enforcement of a 2004 city law intended to track school bullying are at the top of Mr. Liu's list of requests. The 2004 law requires the department to keep a list of all reported bullying and harassment complaints. But Mayor Bloomberg has refused to enforce the law, calling it a poor use of resources and illegal because it conflicts with state law.

In a letter yesterday, Mr. Liu and eight council members urged the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, to meet with Sikh leaders. Ms. Parks said Mr. Klein would attend such a meeting.

New York Times: Albany Discovers Obesity

Children learn a lot at school, not all of it for the better. As the Institute of Medicine reported in April, too many children pick up very bad eating habits, habits that can eventually kill them. Part of the problem is what the institute calls “competitive foods.” Instead of choosing the standard lunch, students choose junk food, much of it loaded with sugar, fat and salt — the fuel for future diabetes or heart disease.

Armed with mounting data on these dangers, lawmakers in Albany have finally started looking seriously at new guidelines for what young people eat or drink on public school property. Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the Assembly Democrats and the State Senate have each come up with proposals this year for better fare for students.

It is very good news that somebody is at least bringing attention to the issue. But there are problems with the proposals. One is that the governor and Assembly seem to be encouraging the use of sports drinks in schools. As the Center for Science in the Public Interest has noted, most sports drinks are heavy with sugar and salts. A better option would simply be plain old water.

Moreover, Mr. Spitzer’s bill, which is probably too detailed to be workable, would require students to exercise for an hour before they could buy something like Gatorade. Huh? Some schools don’t even have proper gyms and offer little opportunity for students to work out 30 minutes a day, much less an hour. Furthermore, sports drinks are designed for marathoners or football players, not the middle school dance class.

The Senate bill offers little more than goals and guidelines. The Assembly version would allow state health and education officials to set guidelines for better nutrition in schools, which makes sense. But the Assembly bill also makes trouble. It would allow a la carte items with too much fat, sugar or salt as long as the rest of the food offered at the cafeteria is acceptable.

The Institute of Medicine has recommended that only low-fat and nonfat dairy products be sold in schools. All of these bills sidestep that issue, particularly the Assembly’s, which boots the decision down the chain of command to local school districts. Finally, somebody should figure out how to keep bake sales during school hours from becoming the place where students can gorge on goodies that are forbidden elsewhere.

In earlier sessions, when the loudest voice against obesity was Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, who wanted to tax high-fat food, the whole idea of legislating against obesity was seen as a sideshow. Since then, the data has steadily become more alarming, with obesity rates tripling in adolescents since 1980. And those young people grow into sickly adults — almost one-third of America’s adults are obese.

Albany is right to focus on the problem in the early years. But legislators must listen to the health experts and not the lobbyists for the food, drink and dairy businesses. That means banning sodas, candy, sports drinks and high-fat dairy products.

It’s not what is good for business that counts here, it is what is good for New York’s 2.8 million public school children.

USA Today: Opposing view: 'Too Destructive to Salvage' - Law Overemphasizes Standardized Testing, Doesn’t Improve Learning by Alfie Kohn

It's time to say in a national newspaper what millions of teachers, students and parents already know: No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is an appalling and unredeemable experiment that has done incalculable damage to our schools — particularly those serving poor, minority and limited-English-proficiency students.

It's a stretch even to call the law "well-intentioned" given that its creators, including the Bush administration and the right-wing Heritage Foundation, want to privatize public education. Hence NCLB's merciless testing, absurd timetables and reliance on threats.

Let's be clear: This law has nothing to do with improving learning. At best, it's about raising scores on multiple-choice exams. This law is not about discovering which schools need help; we already know. This law is not about narrowing the achievement gap; its main effect has been to sentence poor children to an endless regimen of test-preparation drills. Thus, even if the scores do rise, it's at the expense of a quality education. Affluent schools are better able to maintain good teaching — and retain good teachers — despite NCLB, so the gap widens.

Sure, it's senseless for Washington to impose requirements without adequate funding. But more money to implement a bad law isn't the answer.

Indeed, according to a recent 50-state survey by Teachers Network, a non-profit education organization, exactly 3% of teachers think NCLB helps them to teach more effectively. No wonder 129 education and civil rights organizations have endorsed a letter to Congress deploring the law's overemphasis on standardized testing and punitive sanctions. No wonder 30,000 people (so far) have signed a petition at educatorroundtable.org calling the law "too destructive to salvage."

NCLB didn't invent the scourge of high-stakes testing, nor is it responsible for the egregious disparity between the education received by America's haves and have-nots. But by intensifying the former, it exacerbates the latter.

This law cannot be fixed by sanding its rough edges. It must be replaced with a policy that honors local autonomy, employs better assessments, addresses the root causes of inequity and supports a rich curriculum. The question isn't how to save NCLB; it's how to save our schools — and kids — from NCLB.

Education writer Alfie Kohn's 11 books include The Schools Our Children Deserve and The Homework Myth

The New York Sun: Not as Proficient as They Say - May 31, 2007 -

That year, Mayor Bloomberg asked voters to judge how well he had improved the schools. He had taken control of them during his first term. His May 2005 press release hailed a nearly 10-point increase in the ELA scores by fourth-graders. Mr. Klein cited "tremendous gains" by minority students as evidence that their leadership was paying off for those who previously had been left behind.

Their joint news release announced that scores for Hispanic and Black fourthgraders shot up by 11.5% and 9.7% compared to 6.5% and 6.4% for White and Asian pupils.

But the Department of Education didn't disclose enough information for the public and press to examine these facts. It turned out that two changes were made that removed thousands of low-performing students from the test population. This significantly inflated the electionyear results. Nowhere was attention called to the shift.

Sadly, minority students did not make huge gains. It was illogical to take credit for this feat and deceptive to suggest the gap was closing.

In capitalizing upon the city's 9.9-point overall "improvement," the mayor failed to report that 4.2 points were due to taking 5,182 low scorers out of the equation. Instead, a positively skewed impression was created. Much of 2005's publicized record-setting increases were a phantom — a case of addition by subtraction.

In third grade, 3,012 Level 1 students were held back as the chancellor's new promotion policy was implemented. They were retained because of scores that marked them as having "serious deficiencies."

Some 2,170 more ELL test exemptions were granted in 2005 than 2004. I filed a Freedom of Information request and waited nine months for the department's division of accountability to provide the details. This allowed the holdovers and exemptions to be analyzed by ethnicity to determine what impact their exclusion had in 2005.

Among the retained third-graders, 1,706 were Black and 1,099 Hispanic — making up 93% of the students denied promotion. All were Level 1. Had they advanced to fourth grade, they would have lowered their sub-group's scores. Of the language-exempt students, 1,674, or 77%, were Spanish-speaking. I assumed that due to limited fluency in English, virtually all would have failed to reach Level 3, the ELA test's proficiency cutoff point.

Recalculating the 2005 results with these children returned to their respective ethnic cohorts appreciably diminishes the celebrated strides made by Hispanic and Black students. Instead of the 11.5 point and 9.7 point increases ascribed to them, their one-year gains would have been a more modest 6.2 points and 6.1 points. In contrast, there were few White, 82, and Asian, 90, student holdovers. Including them reduces their gains less than a point to 5.9 points and 5.5 points.

While the ethnicity of 496 non-Hispanic exempt students could not be determined from the data, my reconstruction of the test population holds that the differences among the four groups would have been minimal.

By the way, last week's press release made no mention of the achievement gap. But one graph, not referenced in the release, shows the remaining chasm — fewer than 50% of minority students are proficient in English, while 75% of White and Asian children combined have reached this plateau. This is in stark contrast to the 2005 press release, which blared misleading news about closing the gap.

Mr. Smith, a retired Board of Education administrative analyst, is writing a book about New York's testing program called "Failing the Test."

MSNBC Hardball: Liberal books for kids?

Liberal books for kids?

June 1: Publisher Eric Jackson says most books geared to children have a liberal bias and he's working to change that. Chris Matthews talks with Jackson and author Frances Moore Lappe.

This guy is a real jerk...he's really scary..and a typical lying right-winger...