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Dream Playground for PS 246
December 28, 2006
By Alex Kratz
Finally, the 800 kids at PS 246 in North Fordham have a place of their own to run around, shoot hoops and simply play.
Originally built as a school for the blind, PS 246, located on the Grand Concourse across from Poe Park, doesn’t have a gym or auditorium, and the only place to play or gather was a cracked asphalt lot in back of the building.
On Dec. 20, the school unveiled its new state-of-the-art playground and community park that includes courts for basketball, volleyball and tennis; a running track; synthetic turf field; fitness and play equipment; benches and tables with game boards; and a garden with trees.
A team of students, teachers and parents from PS 246 spent the first half of the year designing the playground. Construction started over the summer. The cost of the project was around $1 million.
At the sunny but frigid opening, partnership was the theme.
“This is the realization of our collective dream,” said Principal Beverly Miller.
That collective includes sponsors the Trust for Plan Land’s City Spaces group, a national non-profit that focuses on building playgrounds in low-income communities; Deutsche Bank; the Department of Education (DOE); and, of course, the students, teachers, parents and administrators of PS 246.
This is the seventh of 25 playgrounds City Spaces plans to build in New York City in the near future.
Stakeholders and children gathered for the grand opening, which was emceed by charming sixth-grader Kevin Fich, a budding entertainer with natural stage presence.
“Children learn through play and that’s what this is all about,” said Stephanie Dua, CEO of the DOE’s Fund for Public Schools, during the ceremony.
When the speakers finished, the kids treated those gathered to a basketball game, a relay race and a dance routine. Toward the end, Miller wanted to especially thank Emily Sanderson, PS 246’s gym teacher, who worked extensively with student representatives to make their vision a reality. Both Miller and Sanderson wiped their eyes afterward.
“A tear came to my eye, but it’s too cold to cry,” said Kevin, lightening the mood and ending the ceremony. “I’m going to play.”
CAP: PS 246’s track team, the Lightning, races for the first time on the new rubberized track.
CAP: Students at PS 246 in action during an exhibition on the school’s new basketball court.
The Seeds of Community
December 28, 2006
By Editorial
It began as many good and great community things do – from humble beginnings.
Barbara Stronczer, one of Bedford Park’s community pillars, remembers working with her neighbors to tie a tree (illegally she admits) to a lamppost in the 1970s. That was a time when the city, unable to ensure the most basic of services like heat and hot water for tenants, was actually considering shuttering the 52nd Precinct. Ceremonial tree lightings, with all the attendant glee and festivity, were, to put it kindly, not on the agenda.
But that small Bedford Park gesture of community and holiday spirit paved the way for the legal, official and very well attended Christmas tree lighting on Mosholu Parkway that has become a staple of the holiday season.
(A couple of years ago, Bronx Parks Commissioner Bill Castro had a Christmas tree planted in the spot where the event takes place every year at the intersection with Bainbridge Avenue.)
This year, with the organizing help of Community Board 7 staff, three local schools (the New School, PS 56 and PS 280) made tree decorations. The Parks Department provided the lights and the Wenger Wagon and the 52nd Precinct delivered Santa Claus. Council Member Oliver Koppell and Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz showed up as did 52nd Precinct Commander Joseph Hoch. And the St. Brendan’s School of Music, led by Renee Guerrero, provided musical entertainment.
Not far away on Marion Avenue, Elba Flores began building community on a smaller but no less important, level on Marion Avenue 30 years ago. She decorated her door and urged her neighbors to do the same (see photo on this page). Now virtually everyone in the building gets into the act and gathers together for a building-wide celebration.
“We take this day to put all our worries aside,” said tenant Jeanette Figueroa. “It doesn’t cost anything to unite people and become humble with one another.”
There are so many examples of how the seeds of tradition planted by individuals have grown and deepened the sense of community in our buildings, on our blocks, and in our neighborhoods.
We’re just telling you about a couple this holiday season so that you may be inspired to start your own.
We wish all our readers and advertisers a wonderful New Year!
More News Than Ever
If you missed our previous issue or the Metro Section story in The New York Times highlighting an exciting new project spearheaded by the Norwood News called the West Bronx News Network, we hope you’ll take the time to check it out on the Web at thebeehive.org/wbnn.
Working with the Highbridge Horizon, our sister nonprofit newspaper in the southwest Bronx, and the Mount Hope Housing Company, we have formed the West Bronx News Network, which provides more news and information to all West Bronx residents via the Web. It features the Mount Hope Monitor, an on-line newspaper, thebeehive.org/mounthopemonitor, which brings coverage to Mount Hope and the other neighborhoods of Community District 5 for the first time.
We have also introduced the West Bronx Blog (westbronxnews.blogspot.com) which brings readers regular updates and links to stories of interest. We’re hoping readers will participate in the blog by posting comments and suggesting ways we can improve the blog and both news sites.
So log on and tell us what you think!
Monte Patients Get Lift Before Christmas
December 28, 2006
By Alex Kratz
On the ninth floor of the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in Norwood, Shadhey Camacho, 3, accepted her first gift of the season — a baseball autographed by former Mets superstar, Darryl Strawberry, six days before Christmas.
Sitting in a chair wearing fluffy pink slippers, a sparkling plastic tiara perched on her scarred bald head, Shadhey (pronounced shaDAY) smiled when Strawberry, a cancer survivor himself, handed her the ball of stitched rawhide. She gripped it like a pro.
Shadhey suffers from a vicious and cancerous brain tumor. Doctors have tried everything to cure her since she was first diagnosed 11 months ago. They operated (which accounts for the crescent scar on the top of her head), she received radiation therapy and they just finished a seventh cycle of chemotherapy.
Her mother, Deborah, said they were waiting for the results of some blood tests on Friday, but hoped Shadhey could return home for Christmas Day. Then comes the moment of truth.
Shadhey will undergo 17 more days of chemotherapy and then will be tested again for cancer.
“Then we hope, we pray, that we’re done,” Deborah said, sounding upbeat and optimistic.
Shadhey’s doctor says about half of brain tumor patients are cured.
Last Tuesday, Strawberry, the talented but troubled former Mets and Yankees outfielder, visited Montefiore, greeting and signing balls for most of the patients on the ninth floor, most of whom were too young to remember his playing days.
Shadhey and the others, however, seemed happy nonetheless to receive the attention as a gaggle of cameramen crowded into cramped hospital rooms to capture the heartwarming moments.
Strawberry operates a foundation for autistic children and has turned his life around after several bouts with the law and addiction. He visited Montefiore after doing a promotional event to announce the production of a new movie based on a children’s book written by his friend and former agent, Ray Negron, who is now a Yankees consultant.
Negron’s book, “The Boy of Steel,” is about a child suffering from brain cancer who fulfills a lifelong dream by becoming a Yankees batboy for a day.
While receiving an autographed baseball from a famous ballplayer may not have been Shadhey’s dream, it made her smile, if just for a day.
CAP: Strawberry gives Shadhey Camacho, 3, a signed baseball and offers words of encouragement at Montefiore’s Children’s Hospital.
Students Take Seat Fight to Chancellor
December 28, 2006
By Alex Kratz
Student activists from the northwest Bronx took their fight for more school seats down south – to IS 184 in the south Bronx – where they let Schools Chancellor Joel Klein know exactly how displeased they were with the city’s new Five-Year Capital Plan.
“Build more schools! Build more schools!” they chanted loudly during the public speaking portion of the meeting, often drowning out Klein’s efforts to defend the city’s plan.
The trip to IS 184, where the city’s Education Policy Panel was meeting, was organized by the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition’s (NWBCCC) youth division, Sistas and Brothas United. The youth went to respond to the axing of 1,500 seats in the capital plan from District 10 (the northwest Bronx) in Region One and the release of a report saying the city’s high school seat projections are partly based on a 36 percent graduation rate.
The city doesn’t deny that it uses the low graduation rate, but says it considers other factors as well when tallying projections. Many Bronx schools, especially high schools, are plagued by overcrowding, which parents and students say contributes heavily to the low graduation rates.
The Klein administration claims the capital plan will alleviate that overcrowding. Students, parents, community groups and other civic leaders say they aren’t convinced.
Before the meeting, Robert Jackson, a Manhattan Council member, who heads the Council’s Education Committee and is a vocal proponent of New York City public schools, spoke to student activists, telling them it’s a shame schools remain underfunded by the state and the city.
In the IS 184 auditorium, the students, wearing yellow NWBCCC T-shirts, grew restless waiting for their opportunity to speak, which didn’t come until the end of meeting. Meanwhile, the panel discussed summer school statistics (getting better) and new school meals (more nutritious and less trans fatty).
Klein took breaks from playing with his Blackberry (which he checked no less than six times during the one hour meeting) to interject commentary.
When the public speaking portion finally began, two teachers voiced their disgust with the administration’s plan to turn Tilden High School in Brooklyn into a campus of several small schools. Next came a slew of northwest Bronx students and parents, demanding more seats to relieve overcrowding in high schools like John F. Kennedy and DeWitt Clinton.
After each speaker, the crowd went wild, chanting and jumping around like it was a basketball pep rally.
Klein took the verbal thrashing with good humor, smiling through it, even expressing admiration for the students’ enthusiasm. “I want to say ‘thanks’ to the students who came out tonight,” he said. “It’s critical for us to hear from you.”
While Klein did say he would have staff look into the seat projection numbers, he also implied that this is probably as good as it’s going to get. “But let’s be honest,” he said. “This is the largest capital plan in the city’s history.”
Klein clearly wanted to go on, but he was overwhelmed by students, who chanted. “Where are our seats? Where are our seats?”
CAP: Students from the Leadership Institute let Klein, second panelist from left, know they feel neglected by the DOE.
DEP Chief on Hot Seat Over Plant Jobs
December 28, 2006
By Alex Kratz
Responding to increasing pressure to create more jobs in the northwest Bronx during the construction of the Croton Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park, the head of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said the agency would fulfill promises it made to the community and find ways to place more local residents in construction unions.
Though it was her predecessor, Chris Ward, who made those job promises when selling the project to the community, Emily Lloyd, the current DEP commissioner, said it was an “institutional promise” and that she intended to follow through on it.
The bulk of the construction on the controversial filtration plant is set to begin next summer, creating more than 600 jobs, most of them going to union workers.
The Croton Facility Monitoring Committee (CFMC), a group of local residents and leaders, and community activists have been increasingly vocal over the past year about putting local job seekers into unions so they can fill a good portion of those 600 slots. Specifically, they want the DEP to put residents into pre-apprenticeship programs to make them more appealing candidates for union apprenticeships.
At a recent meeting of the CFMC on Dec. 21, Lloyd was met by a handful of protesters from the surrounding community, as well as local activists from the Northwest Community and Clergy Coalition, the COVE and Good Jobs New York. They held signs, saying they wanted the DEP to ramp up its pre-apprenticeship programs. Later, several local residents in attendance gave passionate testimony about the lack of job opportunities in the northwest Bronx and how they expected more help from the filtration plant project.
Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz insisted the plant will not produce a significant amount of well paying jobs. Instead, the local lawmaker, who represents the area including the plant site, underscored how the filtration cost overruns would cost taxpayers and renters in the long-run due to rent hikes stemming from increased water rates.
“Our children’s children will be paying for this project,” Dinowitz said.
The filtration plant is running $1 billion over the original estimate made in the 2003 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project. The DEP blames the overruns on unanticipated cost of construction inflation and facility design changes. The Monitoring Committee didn’t sound convinced.
“We are losing our faith in this administration,” said Father Richard Gorman, a Committee member and the chair of Community Board 12.
Charges Escalate for Sen. Gonzalez
December 28, 2006
By Alex Kratz
At his arraignment in a lower Manhattan federal courthouse on Friday, Dec. 15, State Senator Efrain Gonzalez, who has represented the northwest Bronx in Albany for the past 16 years, looked calm and collected, like he had been there before.
It’s probably because the embattled Democratic lawmaker actually had just been there, four months prior, to face mail fraud charges claiming he had swindled $37,412 from a non-profit called the West Bronx Neighborhood Association (WBNA).
Following that appearance, Gonzalez’s longtime attorney, Murray Richman, said he expected there to be superceding, or further, charges piled on top of the original mail fraud charge.
On Dec. 13, Richman’s words proved prescient as the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York heaped on an additional nine counts of embezzlement, fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.
The 40-page indictment released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office says Gonzalez funneled $423,000 worth of state funds through two New York City non-profits in order to ultimately steal the money and use it for his own personal expenses, including rent and rehabilitation for homes in upstate New York and the Dominican Republic; designs for his fledgling cigar company; Yankees tickets; jewelry and clothing; and college tuition for his daughter.
If convicted on all the charges, Gonzalez could be sentenced to a total of 130 years in prison.
In a phone interview, Richman called the charges, “unequivocal bulls–t,” saying he couldn’t understand why they waited four months to file the additional charges.
Despite the previous indictment, Gonzalez easily trounced Conservative Party Candidate Ernest Kebreau in the November general election, garnering 87 percent of the vote.
At this most recent arraignment, Gonzalez was not alone. He was joined by co-defendants Lucia “Lucy” Sanchez, Neil Berger and Miguel Castanos, all of whom were represented by different lawyers.
All of the defendants pleaded not guilty and agreed to return for a pre-trial conference hearing on March 23, 2007. Judge William Pauley will then hear any pre-trial motions and set a trial date. Richman and lawyers for the other defendants told Pauley they would need ample time to wade through 12 boxes of evidence, mostly credit card statements and check receipts.
The lengthy paper trail comes from dozens of transactions made by the four co-defendants between October 1999 and January 2005.
The indictment says during that time period, Gonzalez designated $423,000 in state member items, or discretionary funds, to Pathways for Youth, a Bronx non-profit youth organization headed by Berger. In turn, Berger, 55, would send the money to either the West Bronx Neighborhood Association (WBNA), or the United Latin American Foundation (ULAF), which Castanos, 46, ran (his apartment was listed as ULAF’s address, according to the indictment). Castanos and Sanchez then signed checks to pay Gonzalez’s numerous credit card bills.
For example, in June of 2001, Berger co-signed a check from Pathways to WBNA for $40,000, the indictment said. Six days later, an unnamed co-conspirator from WBNA signed two separate checks, each for more than $10,000, to pay two of Gonzalez’s personal credit card bills.
The Norwood News first reported that Gonzalez was under federal investigation in the fall of 2004. This past summer, the Norwood News interviewed Gonzalez in WBNA’s office. It is connected to his Senate office and is adorned with paintings of Gonzalez and framed logos of his Dominican cigar company. Gonzalez refused to divulge how he spent some $290,000 a year in member items.
Sanchez, 50, works in Gonzalez’s office as a secretary, but was often listed as the sole employee of WBNA. The two had a relationship and lived together, according to a report in The Riverdale Press.
When asked to explain what the WBNA did to help Bronxites, Richman said, “What’s the West Bronx Neighborhood Association? I don’t know anything about them. It’s not up to us to explain anything. The burden of proof is on the prosecution.”
The newest indictment says that while Pathways for Youth performed a considerable amount of charitable activities, the WBNA and ULAF “primarily served as a conduit for paying personal expenses for Gonzalez and his criminal associates.”
In 2005, Pathways and an affiliate, the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club in Co-op City, were cut off from city contracts – which ran into the millions of dollars – after allegations of impropriety stemming from a city investigation. In October, two Gloria Wise officials, including Charles Rosen, the group’s former executive director, pleaded guilty to third degree larceny charges. Both cases were investigated by the city’s Department of Investigation.
Activists Say School Officials are ‘Planning for Failure’
December 14, 2006
By Alex Kratz
New York City is planning on almost two-thirds of Bronx students failing to graduate high school, says a new report that has outraged elected officials, non-profit advocacy groups and a raucous crowd of more than 400 concerned parents and student activists at a rally in North Fordham two Saturdays ago.
The disconcerting number stems from the city’s school seat projections in the Department of Education’s (DOE) Five-Year Capital Plan, which predicts that only 36 percent of Bronx students entering ninth grade will graduate high school in four years. The projections determine how many, and where, new school seats and buildings will be created by the School Construction Authority (SCA).
DOE spokesperson Marge Feinberg doesn’t deny the number, but says it’s not that simple. Many students take longer than four years to graduate and projections also take birth rate, immigration and other demographic changes into account. Besides, percentage-wise, the Bronx will receive more new seats from the capital plan than any other borough in the city, Feinberg says.
Feinberg maintains that the current plan, once completed, will eliminate overcrowding in Bronx schools.
Many blame high dropout and low attendance rates in the Bronx on overcrowding. Parents, students, politicians and school advocates from across the city are skeptical that a plan to cut seats based on pessimistic survival projections will resolve an issue that has plagued the borough for more than 30 years.
Report challenges city
The public outcry in the Bronx began on Nov. 6 when the DOE announced 1,500 middle and elementary school seats would be slashed from the original plan, created in 2004, to build 4,000 new seats in District 10 (the entire northwest Bronx). It was one of the biggest cuts of seats in the city. The DOE said the cuts were due to demographic changes.
Three days earlier, representatives from the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC) sat down with Deputy Chancellor for Finance Kathleen Grimm and SCA President Sharon Greenberger. NWBCCC President Ronn Jordan asked them to find a new permanent home for the Leadership Institute, a small second-year high school that NWBCCC helped create, and to site 1,000 new high school seats at the Kingsbridge Armory (the SCA is already set to build 1,000 elementary and middle school seats there). They rejected the requests, saying the current capital plan would add enough seats to cure overcrowding. According to Jordan, they said, “If you don’t believe us, prove us wrong.”
The NWBCCC did just that, asking the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, a non-profit research group based in Manhattan, to provide them with a statistical analysis of the DOE’s plan. In turn, the Institute produced a report called “Planning for Failure?” which argued that the DOE is “caught between cross purposes, to the detriment of Bronx students.”
There is an inherent conflict in trying to fund an accurate amount of new seats (using a survival rate of 36 percent), while improving the graduation rate to 80 percent by 2010, the report says. The report also says that it is the difference between “high school graduation, college and successful careers, or the school-to-prison pipeline or dead-end jobs in the low-wage service economy for more than 10,000 youth [the number of Bronx students the report predicts will not have seats if they stay on course to graduate].”
Longtime schools advocate Noreen Connell, head of the Educational Priorities Panel, said the school seat projection methodology is used throughout the country, but that doesn’t make it right or accurate. Not only does it plan for students to fail, she said, but it also doesn’t accurately count the capacity of schools or the effect new small schools have had on diminishing a school’s capacity.
If Connell had her way, she says she would add 20,000 high school seats to the capital plan. “There’s no excuse for cuts on the high school level.”
Game of ‘Survivor’
Leonie Haimson, who heads the non-profit Class Size Matters, says the axing of seats in District 10 is not only “unconscionable,” but that the Bloomberg administration isn’t putting its money where its mouth is.
“For all his emphasis on education, Mayor Bloomberg will leave the city with larger class sizes than when he arrived,” Haimson said. “This capital plan proves again that education comes last.”
At the rally two Saturdays ago, coordinated by the NWBCCC (as part of its annual meeting), community leaders expressed outrage over the cuts and the 36 percent figure.
Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum showed up to voice her displeasure. “I’m thrilled to sign onto this project,” Gotbaum said. “Clinton [High School, 142 percent capacity] is a wonderful school, but what has happened there is a disgrace.”
Local activist Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter told the crowd that her daughter, who attends John F. Kennedy High School (127 percent capacity), can’t find a place to sit and eat her lunch because the cafeteria is too crowded. “The administration is telling us that your children are not worth our time,” she said.
Jose Cabrera, a senior at one of the small schools on the Walton High School campus (167 percent capacity), equated high school in the Bronx to a game of “Survivor.” “Imagine if you had three kids, but the DOE told you only one of them would succeed,” Cabrera said.
In a speech, Joel Rivera, the City Council majority leader, referred to a new prison being proposed for Hunts Point, and asked City Hall: “Why do you want to build a jail and not new schools?”
Jordan said it’s not an accident that “two-thirds of [New York State’s] prisoners don’t have a high school diploma.”
Cabrera says the crowding breeds frustration. He said students grow frustrated; from the lack of attention, from the long lines to get through metal detectors, from exasperated and overworked teachers and administrators. “Students feel like everything is stacked against them and it’s too hard to pass,” he said. “It’s all psychological.”
Ed. note: The NWBCCC is calling on all those displeased with the capital plan to voice their concerns at a DOE Panel for Education Policy Meeting at 6 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 18 at I.S. 184, 778 Forrest Ave.
For more information, call (718) 584-0515.
PS 54 to Get New Gifted Program
December 14, 2006
By Laura Sayer
Starting in September 2007, 28 first-graders will take their seats in a brand new gifted and talented program at PS 54 in North Fordham, as part of the city’s plan to open four new “self-contained” gifted programs in Region One, which covers the western half of the Bronx.
PS 54 was the last school added to a list that originally only called for new gifted programs at PS 53, PS 109, and PS 24, according to Marvin Shelton, the president of District 10’s Community Education Council. While PS 24 is in District 10, PS 53 and PS 109 are both in District 9.
“The Chancellor [Joel Klein] originally announced only one site, PS 24, for this district,” Shelton said. “But [Regional Superintendent Yvonne] Torres pushed to get PS 54 as well, to equally represent Districts 9 and 10 for Region One.”
The New York City Department of Education (DOE) explained its selection of PS 54, saying: “[PS 54] was selected because of its strategic location in the lower part of District 10,” and also that PS 54 had the “space for an incoming first grade class.”
PS 54 was “an underutilized space and transportation was easy, it being right on Webster Avenue,” Shelton said.
The new “self-contained” programs put gifted students together for the entire school day, unlike existing gifted programs, such as the Schoolwide Enrichment Model and school-based honors programs, which have more flexible admissions and group students for shorter time periods. While Region One schools have had both of the existing programs for some time (although not for first grade students), these four new, self-contained programs mark a first for Region One.
After the program received its final applications on Dec. 1, Shelton said the unofficial count for Region One is 380 applications. Of these applicants, only students who live in District 10 are eligible for the programs at PS 54 and PS 24, as well as three Manhattan schools that accept talented and gifted students from all five boroughs: New Explorations Into Science, Technology and Math, on Columbia Street; PS 12, on East 109th Street; and the Anderson School, on West 84th Street.
Parents will receive notification of testing dates soon and testing will take place in December and January, said Lindsey Harr, a DOE spokesperson.
Bronx and students in the four other boroughs will be the first to undergo a comprehensive standardized assessment administered citywide. Before, the tests differed from district to district.
The assessment includes two parts: the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT) and the Gifted Rating Scale (GRS). “The OLSAT, which consists of verbal and non-verbal items, is a ‘moment in time’ measurement of a child’s cognitive ability. The GRS, administered by a teacher who knows the child well, rates specific gifted behaviors that the teacher has observed over time,” Harr wrote in an e-mail.
Both the DOE and Shelton agree that the purpose of the standardization is to give everyone an equal opportunity, which is also why students can test in eight different languages.
Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz supports the programs, but said that two first-grade classrooms aren’t proportionate to the needs of thousands of Bronx students in District 10.
Dinowitz, who says he is “a longtime advocate of gifted and talented programming,” said that up until now, this has been the “only [region] in the city without a single seat for gifted and talented students.”
The new program was a topic of discussion at the latest educational council meeting, Shelton said. The biggest concern voiced by Dinowitz and others at the meeting, Shelton said, was that PS 54 is a school in need of improvement.
“While 54 is a new facility, it’s also a failing school, meaning its performance is not where it should be,” Dinowitz said in an interview. “And I think, unfortunately, that many parents will find it less than appealing to send their kids there.”
PS 54 administrators did not return several calls requesting comment.
A Troubling Equation
December 14, 2006
By Editorial
It’s the kind of thing that should make any schoolteacher proud.
Instead of just accepting what they were told and nodding their heads listlessly, students, parents and community residents decided to do a little research when they were told that our community didn’t need the 1,500 high school seats it was lopping off the five-year capital plan.
Working with the Annenberg Institute, an education policy organization, members of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition discovered that the city was factoring into its calculations that 36 percent of kids entering ninth grade won’t graduate in four years or will drop out.
At the same time, the Bloomberg administration says it wants to decrease the dropout rate.
How can it have both?
Figuring out how many kids will be going to school a few years from now also involves a number of factors including complicated demographic predictions. But the Education Department concedes that it is using the 36 percent figure as one of its variables.
That’s just not right, especially in one of the most overcrowded districts in the city, where high school students scramble for lunchroom seats and wait in line for hours to get through metal detectors.
Like any good student, the community is not finished with its inquiry. Residents will continue asking tough questions at a town hall meeting in the Bronx on Dec. 18 (see end of story on p. 5 for details).
We encourage anyone who can to join them.
No Action on Fatal Crossing
Two issues ago, we featured a story on our front page titled “Fatal Crossing” about a string of pedestrian deaths (three in 10 months) at the corner of Bainbridge Avenue and Gun Hill Road.
In response to that article, a woman wrote a letter to the editor about how her 16-year-old daughter was struck on that very corner in 1992 and rendered comatose. No doubt there were incidents in the ensuing 14 years.
Ask anyone who frequently walks that intersection and they will tell you it’s chaotic and unsafe. Vehicles, including many city buses and large trucks speed through hoping to save an extra second or two of travel time. Pedestrians, going about their normal routines, understandably aren’t looking out for the next death cab.
Community Board 7 District Manager Rita Kessler responded swiftly after the most recent death in early November. She wrote a pleading letter to the Department of Transportation calling for something, anything, to be done about the problem.
Both the DOT and Police Department said they would look into it. But by all accounts, the problem remains the same. There aren’t any visible changes in the stoplights or signage.
We’re not traffic engineers, so we don’t know what will work. But the city employs traffic engineers, and we can’t think of a more worthy assignment for them.
This intersection is no Queens Boulevard where 26 people died in a four-year span.
But do we have to wail until the situation gets worse for the city to address the problem?
Senior Housing to Rise at Mount St. Ursula
December 14, 2006
By Alex Kratz
A fledgling senior housing project on the campus of the Academy of Mount St. Ursula in Bedford Park recently received a $10 million boost from the federal government, which will fund a third of the proposed 240-unit development, the Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation said.
The Housing Corporation has been working with Mount St. Ursula for the past few years to create senior housing on the sprawling and under-utilized Ursuline campus, which includes a Catholic all-girls high school and a convent.
In November, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allocated $10.3 million in federal funds from its Section 202 program to the Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation (FBHC) to construct 83 units of low-income senior housing at Mount St. Ursula.
“This project really fits in with the mission at Mount St. Ursula,” said John Reilly, executive director of FBHC.
In a statement, officials at Mount St. Ursula said the school and FBHC are “committed to the neighborhood residents of Bedford Park, sharing a vision in planning this project.”
The project will not infringe on the school mission, officials said. “The Academy of Mount St. Ursula will continue to provide its young women the important foundation of spiritual values and excellent academic background, preparing them to be tomorrow’s leaders,” the statement said.
The statement also said that because construction will not be completed for three to five years, the nuns living at St. Mary’s Hall will be relocated to other housing in early January 2007. The Ursulines will either move to a residence in New Rochelle or a community in Hastings-on-Hudson. They will have the opportunity to move back once the building is completed.
New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and Housing Development Corporation (HDC) will provide most of the additional funding, while FBHC will be looking to private sources for the rest, Reilly said.
The development will incorporate and renovate the existing structure of St. Mary’s Hall, which is located on the southern, 198th Street side of the Ursuline campus. The plan is to renovate the hall and surround it with three buildings. The buildings will be set off from the street, surrounded by landscaping and built with green, or environmentally-friendly, designs, Reilly said.
Though the development has not reached the design stage and there is no construction timetable in place yet, Reilly said the project will feature a wellness program as well as educational and recreational opportunities with an on-site service coordinator.
While HUD’s Section 202 program will fund the 83 units of low-income housing, the rest of the units will be for mixed-income residents, to provide a “wider band” of economic choices for seniors, Reilly said.
Reilly, a longtime northwest Bronx housing advocate, said Mount St. Ursula will not only receive lease money from the development, but the project will also “strengthen its presence in the community.”
The proposed complex will be called Serviam Gardens. Serviam is the Latin word for “I will serve,” which is one of the primary mottos of the Ursuline nuns.
Commissioner Expected at Filter Plant Meeting
December 14, 2006
By Alex Kratz
The Croton Filtration Monitoring Committee will cap off a year of increasingly spirited monthly meetings with a Dec. 21 finale that will feature DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd.
Charles Sturcken, the DEP’s director of public affairs, is calling the meeting a “year-end wrap-up” and says the “whole crew will be there.”
Community anger over the DEP’s failure to secure more jobs for local residents will undoubtedly be a lively topic once again, especially with the bulk of construction set to begin early in 2007.
The DEP, union leaders and several Bronx politicians pushed to site the filtration plant at Van Cortlandt Park on the dual premises that the project would produce jobs to Bronxites and that it would be cheaper.
So far, 25 percent of the project workforce has been made up of Bronx residents (to the the chagrin of activists) and the filtration plant is now on pace to be a billion dollars over budget.
Over the course of the past year, community activists and the monitoring committee, chaired by Greg Faulkner of Community Board 7, have consistently ratcheted up the pressure on the DEP to deliver on its promises.
The DEP appears to be responding. In addition to serving up its commissioner, the agency is also unveiling a new jobs program collaboration.
The DEP is teaming up with Councilwoman Maria Baez and Bronx Community College to offer a training program called Project H.I.R.E., which will prepare job seekers for a future in the building trades. Project H.I.R.E. has existed for 21 years, but starting in 2007 it will offer a 20-week course specifically for those who have registered with the DEP’s Community Outreach Office on Jerome Avenue.
More than 600 local residents have signed up for jobs at the outreach office.
“We are encouraged with what we’ve accomplished so far,” said Lloyd in a statement, “but we need to do more.”
Faulkner said the job program “is a great first step,” but added that much more needed to be done.
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