YESTERDAY, WE ATTENDED AN ANTI-VIOLENCE WORKSHOP FOR NEW YORK CITY SCHOOL TEACHERS. Being that the workshop is required for all 70,000 teachers in the largest school system in America, and being that workshops are run by the teachers union–perhaps the most empathetic and caring organization in the history of the world–and being that workshops are usually a little more interesting than a discussion about airline ticket prices, and given that every teacher pays $10 for the two-hour workshop, we didn’t [...]
Posted in The City on January 13th, 2007 | 
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schools
Again, we gotta know why, after treating schools as dumping grounds for the students no one else wants, the Department of Education closes them–in effect, blaming the victims. Next fall, five failing high schools, including three in Brooklyn—Lafayette, South Shore, and Samuel J. Tilden; two in Manhattan—Urban Peace Academy and School for the Physical City–will get the ax.
Although the schools’ principals graduated from Mayor Bloomberg’s much-touted, privately-funded and grandiose-sounding principal training program, The New York City Leadership Academy, [...]
Posted in The City on January 5th, 2007 | No Comments »
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schools Tatyana Gimelshteyn
New York parents are so hungry to get their kids into good public schools, they bend residency rules with increasing blatancy, blaming crummy schools for their lawlessness. “My kids are entitled to the same education as a kid two subway stops away,” insists a mom who lives in the Elliott-Chelsea Houses in Chelsea. She gives the Department of Education a false address so that her youngest son can attend a better school. “The difference between one school and another school [...]
Posted in The City on January 3rd, 2007 | No Comments »
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Aleksandr Shusterman schools
SO CHANCELLOR JOEL KLEIN FAILED TO STOP KIDS FROM USING CELL PHONES IN SCHOOLS; NOW HE’S READY FOR PLAN B.
The Post reports the new plan will allow students to check phones at the door, where they will be stored in lockers for twenty-five to fifty cents a day, a compromise between Klein’s wishes for an orderly school system and parents’ wishes for safety.
Says David Cantor, Klein’s shockingly eloquent press secretary, “If we find this addresses the problems parents have with [...]
Posted in The City on January 3rd, 2007 | No Comments »
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schools Tatyana Gimelshteyn
Less than a year after the resignation of long-time principal Lee McCaskill, Brooklyn Technical High School has not lost the traits that make it the sorriest of the NYC Specialized High Schools. New principal Randy Asher has overseen a new science lab and, in a display of unusual courage, the installation of vending machines to feed students who, held prisoner by the school’s no-one-leaves-the-building-ever policy, cannot eat lunch.
But negatives remain: staircase explosions and police state conditions give the school a [...]
Posted in The City on January 3rd, 2007 | No Comments »
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explosions Josh Shnayer schools
