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Kids Imagine Playground Into Reality
October 19, 2006
By Shazelle Goulet
For years, PS 246 held phys-ed classes and recess in a concrete lot behind the school, but on July 24, construction workers broke ground at the school at 2641 Grand Concourse school to make way for a brand new student-designed playground. It’s slated for completion this December.
The new playground will include park space, a track, convertible tennis and basketball courts, an artificial turf field, game tables, a stage, and a drinking fountain so students don’t have to run back inside.
Trust for Public Land, a national non-profit that develops new community playgrounds for schools and neighborhoods through its City Spaces program, worked in conjunction with Deutsche Bank to award the school a $650,000 grant for the state-of-the-art project. The Robin Hood Foundation and Deutsche Bank, who helped build the school’s library 15 years ago, recommended PS 246 for the program. Trust for Public Land was looking to build playgrounds for 25 schools around the city and said they were pleased with PS 246’s progress.
One class was chosen from each of the fourth, fifth and sixth grades to be involved in the design process. Students met with Trust officials and architects during the day and after school, creating construction paper models of their ideal playground.
“Before work began in the yard, it was pretty much a parking lot,” said Kritsalak Tangsuwan, a student representative.
Surveys were sent to all PS 246 students asking them to rate their favorite playground equipment — the top picks would be included in the final design. According to gym teacher Emily Sanderson, who played a lead role in the project, many students requested a splash pool or a rock-climbing wall, but school officials vetoed those for safety reasons.
For the student designers, it was all about teamwork.
“When we had meetings, we would have to say what we liked about one idea and what we didn’t,” said sixth-grader Kevin Fich. “We wanted to include things that would benefit the yard after we left the school.”
Around the PS 246 campus, anticipation is mounting and construction appears to be on schedule.
“Students have been very patient.” Sanderson said. “They love looking out the windows and watching the daily progress. The yard is for them. It was important we include the things they cared most about. Part of the idea was if they had a sense of ownership in the yard, they would take care of it.”
Mentor Group Recruits Volunteers
Technology-based youth mentor program, iMentor, a city-based nonprofit, is now recruiting volunteers for their 2006-07 program.
Founded in the fall of 1999, iMentor works to improve the lives of teens from low-income neighborhoods by approaching youth mentoring and education through technology. E-mail communication is what drives iMentor. With today’s technology, e-mail can be accessed almost anywhere, allowing adults to mentor students even when their schedules won’t allow them to volunteer in the traditional fashion.
This year, the company is working with 235 students from New York schools, including many from the Bronx. Students are placed with a mentor based on shared career goals or personal interest. They interact via e-mail, one-on-one meetings and job or classroom visits. Recruiting and training volunteers from a variety of professional fields enables students to work with, and observe closely, careers that they otherwise may never have come in contact with.
To learn how to become a mentor, visit the iMentor Web site at www.imentor.org/get_involved/be_mentor.php or call (212) 461-4330 for more information.
The Norwood News High School Preview
October 19, 2006
By Alex Kratz
Fall is in the air. Temperatures are dropping, leaves are changing, footballs are flying, the Yankees are vacationing and the Norwood News is writing about schools. Two issues ago, we reported on what’s new at local elementary and middle schools. Now, we’re back with our annual high school preview.
Thousands of local eighth-graders, with their parents’ help, will soon be deciding where to spend the next four years of their young lives and they need all the information they can get. Most schools will be opening their doors to prospective students with open houses and other events (see sidebar), but this will give parents and kids a head start.
Schools not listed did not respond to our persistent inquiries. Here’s what we did find out:
Discovery High School – Walton Campus, 2780 Reservoir Ave.
Now in its fourth year of existence, everything is coming together in the eyes of Discovery Principal Scott Goldner. Next June, the art-technology school on the Walton campus will be graduating seniors for the first time. Discovery also becomes an Empowerment school, which means Goldner is free to take chances and run the school the “Discovery way,” as he likes to describe the school’s progressive and aggressive approach to education.
This year also marks the first time Goldner will be able to fully implement and integrate the four Discovery themes that each class will emphasize. For freshmen, it will be “discover myself.” For sophomores, it will be “discover my community.” For juniors, it will be “discover my world.” And for seniors, it will be “discover my future.”
“All the themes involve creative arts integration,” Goldner said in a phone interview. “We want all of our kids to graduate with a sound creative and technical arts education.”
To go along with the four themes, Goldner will continue to focus on Discovery’s “four pillars,” which are academics, technology, creativity and collaboration.
As part of the Empowerment program this year, Goldner is also instituting advisory classes for each grade, which meet twice a week to work on college applications. These classes will be smaller and grouped by grade.
Goldner says Discovery is also committed to continued partnerships with various outside arts organizations, including Manhattan Class Company, an off-Broadway theatre group; the Lehman Art Gallery; and DreamYard, a non-profit arts group that works with public schools.
The first senior class at Discovery will focus on the art of film. All seniors will take a film class, create a film of their own and organize a film festival. Later this school year they will be showing, discussing and dissecting films by Spike Lee.
Discovery’s enrollment is now up to 370, but will expand to around 420 over the next few years.
Kingsbridge International High School
Walton Campus, 2780 Reservoir Ave.
Students at Kingsbridge International come from more than 20 different countries – Ecuador, India, Mexico, Guinea, Senegal, Venezuela, Jordan, Bangladesh, and Yemen just to name a few – and they all have one thing in common: they can’t speak English. At least not very well.
In fact, once a Kingsbridge International student’s English skills reach a certain proficiency level, they are encouraged to transfer to another school. And once they do, it means Kingsbridge International teachers, many of them former immigrants or ex-Peace Corps volunteers, have done their job.
“It’s full-on immersion into the English language,” said Naveen Kanithi, International’s coordinator of special programs. “Even if you’re a physics teacher, you’re also teaching English.”
International, located on the Walton campus, is now entering its second year of existence. This year, with a full load of ninth and 10th graders, the school is up to 216 kids, which is exciting, Kanithi says. Now, some of the kids who have been there can informally mentor new students coming in, he says.
The growing high school is working on creating more outside partnerships this year and continuing to expand its gardening program (they have a partnership with the New York Botanical Garden). To further students’ outdoor education, the Sierra Club is helping out by sponsoring a group trip to Vermont.
The green-friendly school is attempting to beef up its in-school and after-school arts and music programs. The school just bought a bevy of new instruments for the school band, which, Kanithi says, thrives because of its diversity.
Wherever these kids come from, hip-hop seems to be a universal form of communication at International. Kanithi says he often sits in during music class and finds kids freestyling in their native tongues. “One kid will spit some rhymes in French and then the next will be speaking Arabic,” he says. “It’s great.”
Celia Cruz School of Music – Walton Campus, 2780 Reservoir Ave.
At Celia Cruz, it’s all about the music. The school recruits mostly from middle schools with stellar musical reputations. Prospective students must audition as if they were trying out for a part in a Broadway musical. During the auditions, which happen in December and January, kids have to sing a song of their own choosing, tap rhythms and sing a scale. Those who play instruments must do the same, but with their tuba, guitar or whatever they play.
Three days a week, the budding musicians in the ensemble groups go to Lehman College (the school’s community partner as arranged by New Visions for Public Schools which helps Celia Cruz with funding and guidance) where they receive an hour and a half of intense instruction.
The school has several bands of varying levels and genres that play all over city and sometimes around the country at events and competitions.
Last year, Celia Cruz made it all the way down to Florida. Two years ago, at a New Jersey competition, the school took home almost all the hardware. In the spring, they will be at the Showcase Music Festival at Lincoln Center. And the jazz band always plays the St. Peter’s Church Jazz Festival on Manhattan’s East Side.
Now entering its fourth year, Celia Cruz will graduate seniors for the first time next June. They now have the entire third floor of Walton for its 350 students, which is nice, says Assistant Principal Jerrod Mabry. But eventually they would like their own building, he says.
Mabry is counting on a host of new teachers to help students improve academically as well as musically. “We really want our kids to be as academically sound as they are in music,” Mabry says.
Academy of Mount St. Ursula – 330 Bedford Park Blvd.
The big news out of this small all-girls Catholic school in Bedford Park is that it is separating administrative responsibilities. For the first time in Mount St. Ursula’s 150-year history, a layperson, Jane Martinez Dowling, will be entrusted with advancing the school’s mission as chief executive officer, while Sister Mary Beth Read will remain in charge of education as the principal.
“This structure has been adopted by many schools to address the divergent demands of managing a school today – the day-to-day oversight of the education of our students versus financial management, development and public relations responsibilities,” said Jean Hannigan Moran, an Academy alumna and chair of the Board of Trustees, in a statement.
“I am excited to work with Mary Beth Read, MSU’s outstanding principal, the staff, and all of the Ursulines to help achieve MSU’s mission, as we strive to give so many deserving students the excellent education they deserve,” Dowling said in a statement.
Ursula is the oldest Catholic girls school in New York State. MSU’s 2006 graduates gained acceptance to 127 colleges and were awarded more than $5 million in scholarships and financial aid.
The Marie Curie High School for Nursing, Medicine and the Allied Health Professions – 120 W. 231st St. (the old MS 143 building).
Marie Curie likes to refer to itself as a “junior high-high school” though it’s not completely either. Of course, that will change come next year when the health care-based school in Kingsbridge takes on its first senior class. But for now, Marie Curie remains a work in progress with seventh to 11th graders.
This year, Marie Curie is expanding its internship program at area hospitals. Every Wednesday, most 10th and 11th graders go to one of several different hospitals – Our Lady of Mercy, Jacobi, and North Central Bronx to name a few – where they assist nurses, doctors and other health care professionals. The goal is to give the students an idea of what it would be like to go into a career in health care.
While the upperclassmen participate in internships, ninth graders learn HIV awareness, CPR and first aid skills. Eventually, Principal Rodney Fisher says, they would like students to venture out to other high schools and do some peer health education.
Fisher says the school is still working on how to incorporate more health-related learning into the seventh and eighth grade classes. For now, students learn mostly about nutrition, fitness and child obesity issues. Every month, Fisher brings in a different speaker to talk about a specific health-related topic. In October, for example, someone will come in to talk about diabetes.
As an Empowerment school, Fisher is using his additional funds to pay for full-time math and literacy coaches and to bolster after-school activities such as art and sports clubs. Fisher is very interested in exploring the connection between art and healing – a burgeoning field called art therapy.
Right now, Marie Curie doesn’t participate in any varsity sports, but Fisher says this year the school will be evaluating interest with an eye on possibly joining some of the Public School Athletic Leagues (PSAL) next year.
Enrollment at Marie Curie is up to around 425 students this year. There will be an open house for potential ninth grade students for the 2007-08 academic year on Tuesday, Oct. 24 at 6:30 p.m. in the Marie Curie auditorium.
DeWitt Clinton – 100 W. Mosholu Parkway South.
There is good news coming out of DeWitt Clinton this year. The safety issues that clouded the 4,600-student school for much of last year have died down significantly, according to Principal Geraldine Ambrosio.
However, the school remains short on school safety agents. This problem is amplified in the morning when kids are being processed through metal detectors before school starts. Because they are short-staffed, the line often gets backed up, causing frustrating delays.
This year, Clinton has opened up a new future teacher program for ninth graders. The program allows students to use their regular ninth-grade curriculum to help tutor elementary school kids at local community centers and other organizations. Then, later in the year, those same ninth graders go to local elementary schools to read to the kids.
Ambrosio is happy to announce that 2006 graduates from Clinton received a total of $52 million in scholarships and financial aid.
Bronx Aerospace Academy – Evander Childs campus
800 E. Gun Hill Rd.
The Aerospace Academy (located on the Evander Childs campus) is looking to build on the tremendous success it achieved with its first graduating class last June when the military-style public school graduated 93 percent of its seniors (see previous issue of the Norwood News).
The Educational Counseling Center of Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, which is Aerospace’s community partner, provides guidance to graduating students looking into colleges. All 53 of Aerospace’s 2006 graduates went on to either college or the military. But that doesn’t mean Aerospace leaders are satisfied and will sit back on their laurels.
“We want to take this thing to a whole new level,” Captain Barbara Kirkweg, the Academy’s principal, told the Norwood News over the summer.
One new program that Kirkweg is implementing this year is “The Oliver Project,” which is an Empowerment School Initiative (Aerospace was happy to become one of the 300 plus schools to join the Empowerment Program) designed to address the literacy deficit in males. The school has selected a cohort from each grade level to participate in the project.
“This project will use a series of new teaching strategies and relevant, engaging literature to get boys reading!” writes Kirkweg in an e-mail.
Kirkweg is also looking for additional funding to keep her young flyboys and girls in the air. A New Visions grant allowed students to get significant air time at Farmingdale Airport on Long Island, but the funding ran out after last school year.
Evander Childs – 800 E. Gun Hill Rd.
Assistant Principal Linda Resnick has been at Evander Childs for 30 years and she will be there for two more to oversee the school she’s grown to know and love as it fades away.
As part of the Bloomberg administration’s plan to break big schools up into smaller, themed schools (like the Bronx Aerospace Academy), Evander Childs is going the way of the dinosaur. Two years ago, Evander Childs stopped accepting new students. Now, the school is made up of only juniors and seniors. Next year, there will only be seniors. The year after that, Evander Childs will only be a campus for six other small schools and Resnick will retire.
[In an interesting side note, the individual schools rarely mix, but they all come together to compete in varsity sports as Evander Childs. The same is true of the small schools that now make up Walton.]
The jovial administrator could have retired a couple years ago, but she wanted to stay until the end in order to make the last students’ final years seem as normal as possible. But, it’s still sad, she says.
“We’re trying to keep spirits up,” Resnick says. To do this, Resnick says, the school is trying to continue long-standing traditions like senior parties and college trips. She says despite its drop in numbers, Evander Childs continues to compete on a high level in debate and mock trial competitions.
As Evander Childs fades away, the other schools on the campus will take on more students to fill up the space. Or as Resnick says, “As we implode, they explode.”
Even Off the Field Mets Outclass Yankees
October 19, 2006
By Editorial
We’ve learned there’s another difference between the Mets and the Yankees that has nothing to do with payroll or their relative performances in the post-season.
While both teams succeeded in wrangling deals for new stadiums, only the Mets seem to have recognized that, along with some public financing, comes a degree of community responsibility.
During the playoffs, which the Mets are still participating in by the way, the evidence is on the giant TV screen at Shea where fans can see star players Carlos Delgado and Tom Glavine promote, of all things, the Mets’ home borough of Queens!
The spots include plugs for area parks and attractions, Flushing restaurants, and the borough president’s Discover Queens campaign.
And in stark contrast to their Bronx rivals, the Amazins strongly encourage their fans to take the subway to the games. The Yankees on the other hand, with the city as their accomplice, are taking public parkland to create more parking spaces even though they’re offering fewer seats and higher ticket prices in the new stadium!
It’s unclear whether the Mets came up with their creative promotional campaign (the spots also run on their new cable network SNY) to alleviate some initial political opposition to their construction plans. Mets Marketing executive David Newman told us there was no connection. The timing is probably a little too coincidental for that to be totally true.
Regardless, the point is that the Bombers are not running a similar campaign to promote Bronx neighborhoods and attractions and have no plans to. The contrast also illustrates how totally uncreative Bronx politicians were in exacting concessions from the Yankees.
How easy it would have been to capitalize on the Yankees’ need for a city signoff to finally make them pay a little attention to the borough they’ve maligned and threatened to leave for decades.
Now with the hands all dealt, the wealthiest franchise in sports history has gotten a free pass to ignore the Bronx — at least until they want another new stadium in another 80 years.
What a shame.
Armory Victory
Whatever happens at the Kingsbridge Armory, there is one clear lesson from almost more than a decade of community efforts.
These things take time — much too much time. A similar facility in the middle of Manhattan, for example, would have had emissaries from City Hall climbing all over it, pushing its redevelopment until the job was done.
That kind of powerful political attention came to the Kingsbridge Armory only after years of agitating — by community groups like the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, by politicians like Jose Rivera who helped secure money for a new roof and nudged the governor to visit, and also by this newspaper which has covered the Armory since 1993 and ran the Armory Clock, frequently cited by Rivera and others at public meetings.
The disparities among the boroughs notwithstanding, community residents learned that if they are persistent — and we mean the kind of persistence that follows children from kindergarten to high school — they can effect meaningful change.
Residents who participated in a community planning session at St. James Church in 1998, for instance, may have been frustrated over the years that their brainstorming that day, and lobbying and organizing afterwards, didn’t come to much — if they stopped paying attention.
But if they were paying attention last month, they would have seen their labors rewarded by a request for proposals that is widely viewed as having been uniquely shaped by community participation.
That’s what a community victory looks like.
Garden’s Garage Plan Draws Concern
October 19, 2006
By Alex Kratz
In an effort to satisfy an increasing demand for off-site parking, the New York Botanical Garden is in the final stages of purchasing a site to build a $37 million, 784-car garage on the corner of Webster Avenue and Bedford Park Boulevard.
The proposed six-story garage would replace the Atlas Welding building, a block-wide brick building that has been a Webster Avenue mainstay since the 1970s, and an abandoned gas station right next to it.
Officials from the Garden presented the plan at a Community Board 7 Parks Committee meeting on Oct. 7 to mixed reviews.
Parks Committee Chair Barbara Stronczer, who has recently been battling the construction of a Comfort Inn just a few blocks north of the proposed parking garage, says the design for the building is “beautiful.”
A Vertical Garden
According to Garden spokesman Karl Lauby, “This will be a well designed, aesthetically pleasing parking facility, reflecting the design requirements of the Botanical Garden and the design talents of the architects.”
Most notably, the building’s four exterior walls will be covered by “vertical gardens” that will change with the seasons, mirroring the actual Botanical Garden.
“We fully expect this garage to set the design standard for parking garages in the city of New York,” Lauby wrote in an e-mail last week.
Standard-setting beauty aside, there are two pieces of the proposal that Stronczer takes issue with.
For one thing, the plan is to use the parking facility for Botanical Garden patrons only, which won’t benefit anyone else feeling the parking crunch on Webster Avenue, Stronczer says. She pointed out that Fordham University’s new 1,500-car garage that opened on Sept. 9 allows area shoppers to park there, as well as visitors going to the Botanical Garden, Bronx Zoo and the college.
“It should be a pickup for Bedford Park and Webster,” Stronczer said in an interview. “It could be very positive for the merchants there and parking is very scarce.”
‘Should Be for Everybody’
Ana Torres is a waitress across the busy Webster-Bedford Park intersection from Atlas Welding at the Webster Café, a diner that is rarely frequented by Botanical Garden crowds. When told the Garden didn’t plan to open the garage to the community, Torres shook her head.
“It’s not good,” Torres said. “It should be for everybody.”
Webster Café patron Joe Malloy often stops by the restaurant for a quick bite. Malloy, a car owner, says parking in the area is tough, but not more so than other places in the Bronx and certainly not as bad as Manhattan, where he lives.
Malloy said it would be “a great asset” to an establishment like the Webster Café to have easy parking across the street.
On the other hand, Malloy said, pointing at the abandoned gas station next to Atlas, “[the site’s] not being used for anything anyway.”
Malloy’s last point is exactly why the Garden says the facility will benefit the community in ways other than adding convenient parking. “An industrial site containing a commercial welding company and an abandoned gas station will be replaced with a garage built to the high standards of the Botanical Garden,” Lauby wrote in an e-mail.
“Furthermore,” Lauby continued, “by accommodating visitor parking in one structure, the garage will reduce traffic through local streets as Garden visitors search for parking in the neighborhood and reduce on-street parking use by Garden visitors.”
Because plans have not been finalized, the Garden couldn’t comment on any operational aspects of the facility. Atlas didn’t return calls requesting comment.
Exit Issues
The other problem, Stronczer says, is that the design calls for an exit onto Botanical Square South, a one-way (going away from Webster) semi-circle residential street that would be affected by the increased traffic.
“It’s residential, they shouldn’t have to inhale the fumes from the cars,” she said.
Lauby says the design engineers on the project propose turning Botanical Square South into a two-way street. There would then be a left-turn-only exit from the garage that would filter traffic back onto Webster and not disrupt the most heavily-populated section of Botanical Square South.
The proposal in its current form is being reviewed by the City’s Board of Standards and Appeals because it calls for a change in zoning. If all goes according to the Garden’s plan, construction will begin in mid-2008 and be completed in late 2009.
In the meantime, Stronczer thinks they can work out their differences. “It has to be tweaked a little,” Stronczer said. “They need to show a little respect for the community.”
Armory Maintenance Unit Moves to Staten Island
October 19, 2006
By David Greene
Lockers belonging to nearly 200 members of the 145th Maintenance Company were quietly placed onto two military trucks on Saturday and delivered to Staten Island as the National Guard unit slowly moved out of the Kingsbridge Armory to its new base on Manor Road in Staten Island.
“We’re moving finally,” Specialist Charlie Ojeda of Washington Avenue said, as soldiers removed personal items and placed lockers onto the two waiting trucks.
“I don’t want to move,” Ojeda lamented. “I’ve been here for 15 years. This is home.”
He’s also not happy about the commute members will be making two days a month.
“Wow, by public transportation you’re looking at two and a half hours. If you miss the ferry, you’re talking another half hour,” Ojeda continued. “I think it’s best if we stay here. We’re a Bronx unit and we should be representing the Bronx right here.”
Ojeda and other members of the 145th had responded to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in lower Manhattan and more recently to hurricanes in the Dominican Republic and upstate New York.
Specialist Galo Luna of Castle Hill, who has decided not to go to Staten Island, said, “I’m going to miss the people I used to work with, but it’s time to move on.”
Military spokesman Kent Kisselbrack declined to say whether the move to Staten Island was a permanent one. He said the unit’s relocation is indicative of the military’s desire to restructure to be more flexible and meet “21st century needs.”
Kisselbrack said the move is not connected to the upcoming redevelopment of the Armory, which will soon become a mixed-use commercial complex.
Members of the 258th Field Artillery are still housed in one of the Armory’s annex buildings, which are slated to be torn down and turned into schools.
Kisselbrack said it’s up to the city to find the 258th a new home. “New York City needs to find us a suitable alternate site before we can move,” Kisselbrack said.
Back in June, developer Peter Fine, who has been open about his desire to take on the Armory project, said he had purchased a site in the Zerega industrial district to relocate both National Guard units. At the time, Kisselbrack said the site appeared to meet military guidelines.
Community leaders said Fine’s ability to relocate the homeless military units would give him an advantage in the bidding process, but in the Armory project’s request for proposals, the city said that relocation plans would not factor into their final decision.
Construction on the Armory is set to begin in the second quarter of 2009, so the 258th must be relocated before that happens.
Mosholu Station Closure to Begin Oct. 30
October 19, 2006
By Jordan Moss
While service has resumed at the Bedford Park Boulevard station on the No. 4 line after a four-month rehab project, the Mosholu Parkway station is about to undergo a similar facelift.
Beginning on Oct. 30, the northbound side of the station will close for three months and the southbound side will close for a similar length of time beginning next summer, according to a New York City Transit spokesperson.
Subway riders who usually stop at Mosholu will now have to take the train an extra stop to Woodlawn and then travel downtown one stop back to Mosholu.
The project will include the reopening of the southern entrance of the station, which has been closed for years. Tracey Towers residents and commuters who transfer from the 4 train to the Bx1 and Bx2 bus lines, or vice versa, will benefit from the new entrance.
Both the Bedford Park station and the Burnside Avenue station reopened on Oct. 16. Both stations were closed on June 17 for renovations, including new mezzanines, platform floors, windscreens, canopy roofs, as well as electrical upgrades and the installation of fluorescent lighting.
Aerospace Academy Takes Flight
October 4, 2006
By Alex Kratz
Following its first-ever graduation ceremony in late June, the Bronx Aerospace Academy, a small military-style high school on the Evander Childs campus, found itself as the poster child for New York City’s education reform plan — a thriving, small, themed, public school, with a low-income minority population, that is taking full advantage of private partnerships.
Last year, the Academy graduated an astounding 93 percent of its students, all of whom will be going on to either college or the military, said Principal Barbara Kirkweg, a former Air Force captain. Most of Kirkweg’s staff simply calls her “the Captain.”
Of the remaining 7 percent of last year’s class — which amounts to only three students — one graduated in August, another should finish in January 2007 and the third will be done by the end of the next school year.
The success rate is even more remarkable given that in June 2002, when Evander Childs was one giant 3,500-student high school, only 31 percent of students who began as ninth graders graduated on time, according to Department of Education (DOE) statistics.
“Great school,” said Samira Ahmed, a spokesperson for New Visions for Public Schools, a non-profit funded by the Gates Foundation that, along with Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, helped mold Kirkweg’s vision for the Academy.
“Bronx Aerospace is a great example of how a visionary leader, dedicated partners, teachers and parents can come together to really achieve something special,” Ahmed said in a telephone interview. “[Kirkweg’s] really created a community there, in every sense of the word. People care about one another.”
The Academy, on East Gun Hill Road just east of White Plains Road, boasted the highest success rate of the 15 small high schools (14 in the Bronx) graduating students for the first time last year. Combined, the graduation rate for those schools was 73 percent. In 2005, the citywide graduation rate was 58.2 percent.
“We’re very proud of the great outcomes our small schools are producing throughout the city,” said DOE spokesperson Alicia Maxey in an e-mailed statement.
According to Kirkweg, the biggest reason for the Academy’s success is that students take ownership of their education and dedicate themselves to the aviation-themed school. She said five of her students never missed a class during their four years. Even during the MTA strike last December, she said, the Academy enjoyed almost perfect attendance.
Sometimes students even have to be kicked out of the building. “I had kids here until nine, ten at night,” Kirkweg said.
Students at the Academy are called cadets and are required to wear military-style uniforms. They are also required to take a leadership training class for their first three years at the Academy, which Kirkweg says instills confidence, discipline and the concept of citizenship. In addition to flight and leadership classes, Academy students take math, science, English and art courses.
School starts for cadets at seven in the morning, and for many, it doesn’t end until seven at night.
In between classes on a recent Thursday morning, a group of cadets practiced marching in the Academy’s hallways just for fun.
And like the real military, the Academy is set up with a chain of command. At the top of the chain is Cadet Captain Herberto Haddock, a small Latino senior with braces and stylish glasses. Teachers at the Academy say Haddock commands more respect from students than much of the faculty. He coordinates most of the Academy’s student activities and also oversees school safety and discipline.
Dressed in his immaculate “dress blues” and wearing a fanny pack stuffed with papers and notebooks, Haddock took a break from his command duties to talk about how the Academy differs from traditional public schools. In addition to being exposed to the wonders of flight (most of the students learn how to fly on simulators and many have logged a handful of hours piloting small planes at Farmingdale Airport on Long Island), Haddock says students are judged based on their performance and leadership skills rather than how cool your clothes are.
“At other schools it’s all about your sneakers and what you wear,” Haddock said. “Here, because of the uniforms, everybody’s the same. You can be whoever you want to be.”
Junior Nigeria Rollock wants to go to Princeton where she plans on studying business or law. She says the other kids at Evander Childs (now a campus of seven different small schools) tend to stereotype Aerospace students as rigid because of their military appearance, but she says they aren’t so different.
“We’re a regular high school,” Rollock said. “We like to joke and have fun just like everyone else.”
Headed by Kirkweg, the Aerospace Academy began as a junior ROTC training program at Evander Childs in 1996. It morphed into an independent school as part of the city’s Small Schools Initiative, which sought to break big schools, like Evander Childs, down into separate themed schools.
Based on her Air Force background, Kirkweg envisioned an aviation-themed school infused with military-style discipline. She said the idea was met with apprehension and that the Aerospace Academy nearly failed to launch.
“They [school officials] wanted ideas to appeal to everyone and not be controversial in any way,” Kirkweg said, adding that critics opposed a military-like environment. “The school had a lot to prove. There was much responsibility on those small shoulders.”
Four years later, Kirkweg looks like a genius. The Gates Foundation, which pours millions of dollars into public schools in New York City, including the Academy, is hyping the Bronx school as well as a handful of other experimental small high schools from similar urban settings in Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles.
The city is holding the Academy up as a shining star in its reform efforts as well. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has visited twice and attended the June graduation ceremony, which took place on an aircraft carrier, thanks to Kirkweg’s military connections. Earlier in the year, Klein took a turn in the school’s $50,000 flight simulator, a giant realistic video game, which the Academy purchased from a Sacramento company and students helped put together. At the end of the day, students stood in line to hug the chancellor.
“Even the boys,” Kirkweg said. “And my boys aren’t the hugging types.”
It’s indicative of the warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from success. “Our goal was achieved,” Kirkweg said. “We changed the experience of a Bronx high school student.”
MPC Celebrates
October 4, 2006
By Editorial
Mosholu Preservation Corporation (MPC), the nonprofit group that puts out this newspaper, celebrates its 25th anniversary this week. MPC was formed in 1981 by the trustees of Montefiore Medical Center to combat widespread housing deterioration in Norwood.
When other area groups reach such milestones, we often mark them with a profile in the paper.
But MPC created the Norwood News to report on the community, not to report on itself. So, we try to refrain from using the paper to toot MPC’s horn. We do occasionally cover MPC projects in the community, like our work in Reservoir Oval and the redevelopment of various neglected properties in the area. But hopefully, we give the same or more coverage to scores of other area groups and individuals doing important neighborhood improvement work.
That’s because this paper exists to provide a way for local residents, organizations and institutions to communicate with each other and to amplify the agenda set by the community itself.
Much of MPC’s success has been working in tandem with a wide variety of Bronx organizations, whether it be the Norwood Street Fair in the ‘90s, the Jerome-Gun Hill Business Improvement District, improvements to Oval Park, or regular graffiti removal on several local thoroughfares.
So, we consider the celebration of our anniversary a celebration, too, of all the tremendous work that all of us have done together to make Norwood, Bedford Park, North Fordham and University Height better places to live, work and play.
About Those Trees…and Dogs
After our previous issue, we wondered if there would be any support for our idea that trees are not the place to put one’s trash or walk one’s dog. Lo and behold, early one morning about a week later, while picking up trash around our offices at the Keeper’s House, a Sanitation officer, in plain clothes, pulled out a badge to make sure we weren’t just throwing the dog poop into the street. So, we showed him the plastic bag filled with pounds of beer bottles, takeout containers and soda cups.
The officer told us he had been out since 4 a.m. ticketing dog walkers who don’t clean up because “we get a lot of complaints in this neighborhood.” We were surprised. So were the dog walkers. The officer told us people thought that dog droppings just disappear into the ground somehow. They don’t kill the plants that they’re left on top of, people said. They thought letting their dog urinate on the sidewalk was just fine! (It’s not; it’s supposed to be washed off with water or at least done at the curb so people don’t track dog urine on their shoes into their homes.)
And we know that when we pick up around the Keeper’s House we’re supposed to pick up and dispose of the little presents dog owners leave on our sidewalk and grass — grass that is turning brown because dog droppings kill it. Well, we will. We promise. And we’ll replenish the supply of bags in the “Dogi Pot” dispensers, and our friends at the Parks Department and Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation will help.
And it looks like Sanitation will enforce the law if we demand it. Just call 311.
Pressure Increases for More Bronx Filter Plant Jobs
October 4, 2006
By Alex Kratz
When the city and local politicians tried to sell Norwood residents on a plan to build the massive Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park, they offered two benefits in exchange for years of traffic interruptions, lost parkland, and increased air pollution – $240 million in Bronx park renovations and the promise of jobs for local residents.
The park renovations are under way now.
But what about all those jobs? Or, as Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz said in an interview last week, “Where’s the beef?”
The Bronx has the highest unemployment rate in New York and one of the highest in the country.
After nearly two years, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is about to finish digging a massive hole in what used to be Mosholu Golf Course and complete the first phase of the filtration plant. In the process, the DEP has employed an average of about 100 workers, about 25 to 30 of them Bronxites.
Now, with phase two set to start in early 2007, the DEP is in the process of handing out the next fat filtration contract, which is worth in excess of a billion dollars and will create 600 to 700 new jobs.
Charles Sturcken, the DEP’s director of Public Affairs, says he hopes to see the agency approach the same percentage of Bronx hires in phase two as they achieved in phase one.
“I think we’ve done pretty well with [local] labor,” Sturcken said. “The next stage will be more difficult.”
Sturcken says the sheer amount of people that the new contractor will have to hire will make it difficult to guarantee that a large percentage of those jobs will go to Bronxites. He says contractors for the plant are bound by a project labor agreement to hire union workers first, wherever they may reside. The labor agreement says nothing about hiring people in a certain geographic area.
State Law
According to New York State General Municipal Law 103, it is illegal to require contractors to hire workers based on where they live. According to the city’s lawyers, “municipalities may not use contracts to advance social goals, however noble.”
Members of the Croton Filtration Monitoring Committee (CFMC) and others in the community expressed displeasure with the local job numbers during the first phase. Now, they are faced with the prospect of the DEP delivering possibly 25 percent or less during the second phase.
“During the [filtration plant siting] process, the [DEP] commissioner promised hundreds and hundreds of jobs,” said Dinowitz, whose district is being affected most severely by the plant.
Dinowitz said he and the community feel duped. “I’m not sure they ever intended to deliver those jobs,” he said. “It was a big fat lie.”
“All we are trying to do is hold the DEP to the promises they and the mayor made,” said local activist and former CFMC member Lyn Pyle. “Over and over they offered ‘good jobs for Bronx residents.’”
With the new contract being handed out sometime in the next month, Pyle and current CFMC Chair Greg Faulkner are trying to ratchet up the pressure on the DEP.
At the last FMC meeting, two young men seeking full-time employment — one with a child to support, the other, a student at Monroe College — expressed their frustration with the lack of opportunities being provided by the filtration project.
Two weeks later, three unemployed Norwood residents walked to the DEP Community Office on Jerome Avenue (adjacent to the plant site) after being alerted by Pyle that the office was only 10 minutes away. The Community Office was designed to help local residents find jobs (at the plant or elsewhere) and provide information about the project.
“We had no idea the [Community Office] was even here,” said Isac Gil, 24, who shook his head and shrugged when asked about job opportunities in the Bronx. “There’s nothing,” he said.
Raymond Rodriguez, 25, summed up the employment situation in the Knox-Gates section of Norwood, where he and Gil live. “You see them all on the corner, right? Nobody works on Mosholu.”
Applying for Apprenticeships
At the office, DEP staffer Robert Barnes gave the unemployed three employment inquiry forms and highlighted some of the apprenticeship programs and upcoming job opportunities. “We’re here to help,” he told them. “I know how it is growing up here in the Bronx.”
Faulkner and Pyle want to put the onus on the DEP and the unions to produce for the community, whether they are legally bound to or not. They want the DEP to help the unions step up their apprenticeship programs and give local residents who have completed apprenticeship programs a portion of the filtration plant jobs.
“The unions have to say ‘yes’ we’ll give them a portion,” Faulkner said. “We don’t expect them all to go to new union members, there are seniority issues. We’re just saying, ‘give us a piece.’”
Several unions involved with the filtration plant project were contacted for this article, but none returned calls seeking comment.
For its part, Sturcken says the DEP’s job efforts during the first phase put five people into union apprenticeship programs, while 20 others are going through the interviewing process to join a program. He says five others recently graduated from the city’s STRIVE Construction Skills program and that 45 people were put to work on CUNY construction projects. The DEP did not say where any of those people were from.
In October, the DEP is setting up a free GED program for local residents looking to become members of the union (you can’t get into a union without a high school diploma or GED). They are also working with the city’s small business agency on creating a workshop for local businesses on how to bid on contracts and subcontracts for city construction projects. Up to this point in the plant’s construction, $17 million has gone to Bronx businesses, according to the DEP.
Those numbers don’t impress Faulkner. This time around, with jobs for carpenters, plumbers, electricians, laborers, elevator installers and more up for grabs, Faulkner says he wants more than empty promises. He wants jobs. If nothing happens and the DEP and unions continue with the status quo, Faulkner plans on making it difficult for anyone to work.
“If there’s no progress, you’ll see a parade of angry protesters marching down Jerome Avenue and I’ll be leading the pack,” Faulkner said. “If this plant gets built and it doesn’t change the community at all for the better, we should hang our heads in shame.”
The Long Road to the RFP (Timeline)
October 4, 2006
By Jordan Moss
From the time it was clear the state would hand over the landmark Kingsbridge Armory to the city in 1993, it took 13 years for the city to issue a request for proposals (RFP). With the help of the Norwood News archives, here’s a look at what happened along the way.
Early 1993 – Assemblyman Oliver Koppell secures $100,000 grant for the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. to study “potential for the development of a world-class sports facility to function as a regional sports and exhibition arena.” (The study was never completed and funding was returned.)
Nov. 1993 – Norwood News publishes a broad overview on armory situation. In anticipation of city inheriting landmark the following year, District 10 Superintendent John Reehill outlines his vision for “educational park,” and Koppell champions a plan to convert the landmark into an amateur athletic facility.
Sept. 1994 – In Norwood News interview, new Superintendent Irma Zardoya said she supports “educational park” concept of her predecessor, but wondered, “Will the players come together?”.
Jan. 1996 – After 16 months, Zardoya brings various school officials and community leaders together for a tour of the armory.
Summer 1998 – Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition begins working with Pratt Institute to develop re-use proposal and facility study. Armory deteriorates; drill hall roof falling plank by plank onto the puddle-covered floor.
Oct./Nov. 1998 – Pratt drafts architectural drawings for armory incorporating ideas generated in summer planning meetings. Includes three 800-seat schools inside armory, a sports complex, a park and green market, restaurants, a bookstore and community center. Coalition holds first rally.
Dec. 1998 – Buildings Department declares armory “unfit.” City and state officials duel over ownership. Each says the other is in charge.
March 1999 – Giuliani administration forms armory task force of nine agencies. Residents complain they aren’t represented; elected officials are excluded, too.
June 1999 – Coalition meets with Councilman Adolfo Carrión who tells them their organizing is shaping the debate. “Every proposal I’m seeing [has space for schools],” he tells them. “This community’s proposal is now influencing every other proposal.”
Nov. 1999 – Carrión blasts administration’s “secrecy.” The Coalition and Pratt develop a more detailed proposal with the help of a grant from Booth Ferris Foundation.
Nov. 1999 – Carrión says city reviewing proposal that excludes schools; urges city to issue an RFP. (Two other proposals EDC receives, from Rosenshein Associates and Oval Economic Development Corp., incorporate some school space.) Scaffolding collapses on Jerome Avenue side of facility.
Dec. 1999 – Rosenshein Assoc. presents their proposal to Community Board 7. Calls for shopping mall, movie theater, athletic facilities and two schools.
Jan. 2000 – Mayor releases armory plan that calls for massive retail and entertainment center, but no schools. RD Management and Basketball City given lead role in redevelopment. Carrión: “A lot of pluses to mayor’s plans. The big gaping hole is, how do we address overcrowding? We must do that.” Pratt, Coalition continue to push their plan and explore use of federal tax-free bonds (QZABs) to aid redevelopment.
June 2000 – Coalition meets with RD Management in hopes of brokering a compromise on the schools issue. Don’t reach agreement.
Aug. 2000 – Several elected and school officials speak at Coalition Armory rally. While it’s in progress, EDC and engineers survey the condition of the armory.
Nov. 2000 – EDC outlines plan for new armory roof – a 13-month project funded by the City Council – which is now a patchwork of sky and wooden planks.
March 2001 – Carrión says he’s heard that RD Management is balking at the higher-than-expected redevelopment costs. Basketball City confirms to Norwood News that the “cost of construction” is a problem. Plan appears to be on life support as Giuliani administration enters its final months.
Feb. 2003 – The Richman Group, a national developer, picks up the Coalition’s proposal. DOE and EDC meet to discuss plan with encouragement from Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff.
July 2003 – EDC says it expects a “decision” on armory by mid-summer. RD plan reemerges, reportedly including more community space.
Sept. 2003 – City announces it will issue “an RFP sometime this fall.” Renovation of the 240,000-square-foot roof is completed.
Oct. 2003 – Schools at armory gains broad support in closed-door meeting at BOEDC. School Construction Authority insists, however, that schools be built outside the main facility “because of air quality.”
Dec. 2003 – Carrión holds armory hearing to influence RFP, but EDC pulls out at last minute. Assemblyman Jose Rivera and Council Member Maria Baez don’t show and EDC cites this as reason for their withdrawal.
Jan. 2004 – Coalition holds another armory rally. Jose Rivera says he’d like to see movies, schools, shops and athletic center.
Jan. 2004 – RFP indefinitely postponed, apparently due to political infighting. But State Senator Efrain Gonzalez says, “Bronx has been written off.” “Waiting is all we can do,” says Bill Traylor of the Richman Group.
June 2004 – City Council Hearing at Lehman College. Education emphasized. First time EDC, elected officials and community residents meet together. “We’re all on the same page,” declares Coalition’s Ronn Jordan. EDC still does not have date for RFP.
July 2004 – Relocation of National Guard unit stationed in annex buildings behind the armory emerges as a stumbling block.
Jan. 2005 – Focus shifts to state to find new home for Guard. Peter Fine of Atlantic Development Group, a contributor to Bronx politicians and the 2004 Republican convention, is recruited by officials as possible developer for a Guard space. Richman Group in discussion with Fine about joining forces on the project.
July 2005 – Norwood News launches Armory Clock after Governor Pataki tours armory with Jose Rivera and other officials. Pataki pledges to continue working with local officials counting the days from the governor’s visit to when an RFP is developed.
Nov. 2005 – Coalition forms
the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment
Alliance, an umbrella group of
institutions and community groups.
April 2006 – Richman Group and Fine say they’ve identified a potential Guard site. Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff slated to tour the armory.
May 2006 – Doctoroff tours armory. Promises RFP by August. “We’re ready to get rolling!” he says.
June 2006 – Fine and Richman Group tell Community Board 7 they’ve identified a site for Guard in Zerega section. At public meeting, they seek the Board’s support of their proposal, which includes 2,000 school seats, movie theater, retail stores and a YMCA. Board reserves judgment.
Sept. 2006 – RFP released! Norwood News stops the Armory Clock.
Armory RFP Released at Long Last
October 4, 2006
By Alex Kratz
New York City finally delivered on its promise to release a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the redevelopment of Kingsbridge Armory last week. The milestone marks the beginning of the end of a 12-year community crusade to transform the vacant 575,000 square foot former military complex into a valuable community resource.
The city inherited the vacant landmark from the state in 1994 when the National Guard left the main Armory facility. The ensuing years were marked by missed deadlines, discarded proposals and political inertia.
The goal of Armory RFP, released on Sept. 26, “is to transform the Armory into a unique mixed-use facility that will anchor the local community and create a unique destination to attract visitors from throughout the city and region,” according to a statement by the Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the city agency that drafted the RFP and is responsible for the Armory project.
Produced with significant input from the Armory Task Force, a loose group of elected officials, city agencies and community representatives, the RFP provides the guidelines for a mostly commercial complex that will include retail, entertainment and recreational uses. It also calls for some community space and two new public schools.
The RFP envisions the new Armory as a strong and sustainable economic development vehicle that won’t muscle out existing area businesses. The RFP also implores developers wishing to develop the Armory — reportedly the largest armory in the world — to create well-paying jobs for local residents and incorporate “green,” or environmentally friendly, design plans.
“In addition to serving as an economic catalyst for the surrounding community, the redeveloped Kingsbridge Armory will serve as a model for the adaptive re-use of historic buildings, especially armories, throughout the country,” said EDC Interim President Joshua J. Sirefam, in a statement.
Local activists are hailing the Armory RFP as an historic collaboration between a city agency and community stakeholders. Never before, activists say, has the EDC been as responsive to input from the community. And for the first time ever, the city has released an RFP that includes language calling for the creation of “living wage” jobs, which is defined by the city in 2006 as $10 an hour, plus $1.50 an hour in benefits.
An EDC spokesperson called the language “unique” to this particular RFP.
However, like most of the RFP language, the living wage provision is merely a strong suggestion to potential developers.
“NYEDC will view favorably development plans that maximize the number of jobs that meet the city’s living wage and health benefits standards,” the RFP states.
The Bronx has the highest unemployment rate of the five boroughs and one of the highest of any county in the United States.
Local elected officials, union representatives and community leaders expressed their pleasure over the long-in-coming release of the RFP, but warned that there is still much work to be done.
“It’s long overdue that this space be productively employed,” said Council Member Oliver Koppell, adding that he would have liked to have seen more of an emphasis on community space, a sentiment echoed by other community leaders. Community space is not mandated by the EDC, but the RFP states, “provision of space for various community uses is strongly encouraged.”
Jeff Eichler, an organizer for the Retailers, Wholesale and Department Stores Union, said he was thrilled with the unprecedented living wage language.
“Wage standards is a big step forward,” Eichler said. “Now we’re working to go beyond that and make sure [the living wage language] becomes a reality.
“The RFP lays the groundwork,” Eichler added. “It’s a launching pad.”
Ronn Jordan, the president of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, which has been pushing a community vision of the Armory since 1998, also stressed the jobs issue. “I hope that the developers will address the community’s needs for living wage jobs,” he said.
Because of overcrowding problems in local schools, the Coalition pushed for the creation of four small schools and 2,000 student seats. The RFP calls for two schools and only 1,000 seats.
“We have a high population there,” said Assemblyman Jose Rivera, who worked closely with the Coalition and was instrumental in pushing the Armory project on both the city and state level. “Whether we get 2,000 [seats] in there or not, we’re going to push for it. It’s not over until it’s over.”
Community Board 7 Chair Greg Faulkner, who, along with Jordan served on the Armory Task Force, said he, too, was disappointed with the lack of community space outlined in the RFP. On the other hand, he said the lack of hard requirements allowed developers to be creative when drafting their proposals.
“If you narrow it down too much, it kind of locks things down,” Faulkner said. “[The RFP] gives developers a chance to outperform what the city proposes.”
Faulkner, Rivera, his son, City Council Majority Leader Joel Rivera, and a hefty union contingent showed up at a Saturday rally organized by the Coalition on the Armory’s massive drill floor to celebrate the RFP and to emphasize the need to keep the pressure on the city and potential developers.
For the moment, however, the RFP means hope in a community that had reason to despair as residents toiled away putting their dreams on paper but with little attention paid by City Hall.
Wendoly Marte, an 18-year-old youth activist and college student who lives just blocks from the facility and has long participated in the Coalition’s Armory Committee, hopes she won’t have to take the train to Manhattan just to buy a book once the Armory is redeveloped.
“We need a lot of things in this area,” Marte said. “I love to read, but there’s no bookstores here.”
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