Man and beast share a moment in Central Park. Photo by Jonathan from West 80th. “The interaction had a lot of folks stopping in their tracks – some looking quite puzzled.”
November 13, 2017 Weather: Rainy, with a high of 44 degrees.
Notices:
Gold Star father Khizr Khan comes to Barnes & Noble on Wednesday. That and more local events are on our calendar.
News:
The early Kindergarten enrollment stats for newly rezoned Upper West Side schools indicate that more non-white students are enrolling at PS 452, and PS 191 has more overall new students than last year. But PS 199 has more white students than last year, raising questions about whether the rezoning did in fact encourage more school integration. We’ll be taking a closer look at this issue to to understand what might be driving the changes.
A 47-year-old man was stabbed in the knee outside a deli on 73rd and Columbus on Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m. It’s not clear what led to the stabbing.
Local Council member Helen Rosenthal volunteered in Puerto Rico with a City Council delegation, delivering filters for drinking water.
Read a profile of Jeff Bialis, a farmer who grows 350 kinds of produce and sells it at the 97th Street greenmarket. “The farm now has a chicken coop with Aracana eggs and a beehive for honey. The apricot trees the couple planted have not borne fruit, but the raspberries on their bushes were fat and juicy this summer.”
The last MTA fare hike was in March, but another one might be around the corner even as service has been on a downward spiral. The state agency has been bickering with the city about financial contributions. The MTA denies that another fare hike is imminent.
So as soon as she is elected Helen tuns down to PR. What has she done for us? Not much.
awww you so sad 🙁
Trumpers so sad
What’s that now?
Ya know — squirlz is my cuzzin, but dey gets all da attenshun cause a dem stoopid tails!
Yoomanz sees a squirl and dey goes “awrrr…how cute” but when dey sees me or me brudders dey goes “eeek, a rat!”
I’m gonna work on makin’ MY tail furry so yoomanz will start feedin’ me too.
If everyone is created equal why do we have to spend more time investigating what may be driving the changes behind more white children in certain schools compared to others?
Everyone is created equal. Assuring that everyone is TREATED equally is a primary role of government. That’s why it matters if students are segregated based on skin color. Separate is not equal.
Wow…very interesting, “That’s why it matters if students are segregated based on skin color”. Didn’t MLK have a dream that we wouldn’t be segregated based on skin color?
Exactly, Dan – sounds like you get it now. Well done.
Kudos: Clearly, civilly, and succinctly said.
On the picture – I was looking last night at a picture book of NYC with old NY Times pictures, and there was a picture of a woman in full 1900s regalia doing exactly the same thing with a squirrel. Funny (though tiny) coincidence.
Why is “fewer white people” always the goal?
It isn’t. Balanced diversity is.
What the NY Times reporter does not know is that 1/3 to 1/2 of the current 452 Kindergarten class does not live in the new zone. Some of them are formerly zoned siblings, many others are travelling from far uptown and even other boroughs. 452 could not fill the available spots with siblings and zoned kids (even after going down to 3 K classes vs the 4 originally planned). In order to retain his staff the Principal had to take in new kids from all over the city, in all grades, many of whom have significant behavioral and/or emotional issues. I suppose this has made 452 into a more diverse school, but it was not the intention of the rezoning as I understood it.
Where did you get the info and statistics about enrollment of the students with severe emotional problems? Matters like that are normally confidential, so your statement is odd. Looks like you are stating that everyone not zoned is likely to have issues.
I’m a current 452 parent.
I am also a parent at 452. Yes kids come from out of the zone – these are not kids with issues. I am not in the zone I am in 191. A number of kids come from 191 zone because families feel that moving 191 to a new building was not enough. There needed to be more significant changes than location. And yes kids come from the 100s. Why? Because like those of us zoned for 191 they are also zoned for failing schools and want to give their kids the best education they can and that means traveling downtown for school.
Funny how you seem to know FERPA-protected information about a bunch of strange kids. Or did you just make an assumption about what the out-of-zone kids would be like?
I have no skin in the game here but if my kid had been in class for two months with kids with severe emotional and behavioral issues, I probably would have figured it out. My son has been in ICT classes and despite the best efforts of the teachers, he is well aware of which kids (including him) were the ICT kids and which weren’t, mainly because they had a para with them.
Actually, whether or not a child lives in a particular zone is not FERPA protected information, so it’s pretty easy to figure out who is in zone and out of zone…..
If they raise the fare a few more times there will be better service due to less folks riding the Trains and Buses
**fewer
I understand that things at 452 are more dire than the article implies. Apparently the school was severely under enrolled and as a result 20-25 out of zone kids were given a spot AFTER the school year started. Enrollment will continue to be a problem and the community at that school has really been impacted by the move. It think it will take several years to see how this all shapes out.
Why is the admission of our-of-zone kids a sign of direness?
because the rezoning was supposed to eliminate the necessity for any school to have to take out-of-zone students (other than the 452 children that were already out of zone at the old location)
The idea was to attract (wealthy) local parents who had shunned the former PS 191 in that location. A school that accepts large numbers of out of zone kids isn’t a community school, period. Meanwhile, the word about increasing incidences of violence and bad behavior at 452 is spreading, test scores will be much lower this year, and altogether, the CEC achieved nothing except to ruin what was becoming a decent District 3 elementary school. Well, maybe Anderson parents are happy now.
Maybe “dire” was too strong. In isolation there is nothing wrong with admitting out of zone students, but the entire premise for the rezoning was to create more diverse community schools within the southern portion of the district. The CEC was adamant that there would be enough demand for the new school in the newly rezoned 452. Those against the move predicted that the community surrounding the new ps 452 would not support the new school, and that keeping 452 in its current location would better serve the community for which the school is supposed to serve. So far it looks like those against the move were right and 452 will be have to be more of a district wide school than a community school in order to survive. As I said above, I think it will take several years to see how this shakes out.
I keep reading that ridership is at an all time (or since 1948) high of 6M per day. Do the math – even at $2.00 per trip *5 days a week (conservative) and 52 weeks/year, that’s $3B per year. What the hell are they doing with that money?. And they get State subsidies.
There is no need to do the math. All the data is right here:
https://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Budget%20February%20Financial%20Plan%202017-2020.pdf
If you look on page II-3, you will see that the MTA expected to have about $8.9 billion in operating revenue this year, mainly from fares and tolls. But they also have $9.5 billion in labor expenses (between payroll, pension benefits, health benefits, etc.), not to mention $3.6 billion in non-labor expenses. If you have any suggestions on how to reduce all that labor expense in a way that will be acceptable to the transit workers union, please let us know.
Not surprised – figured it would be union benefits and pensions – it always is with public bodies. And you are right – there is no way out short of MTA declaring bankruptcy. I’m ok with that too – even with a receiver they could continue to operate while realigning their obligations
I always find this fury at unions sort of funny (if it weren’t so dangerous), and particularly when expressed by very well-paid people. I always understood that public employees got a nice pension, which was the trade-off for making less money during their working lives. Seemed fair to me – and I chose another path because I figured I could do better. And I did. But I don’t begrudge people who made the other choice as I had the option too and chose otherwise.
It may have been the case at one time, but it does not appear to be true anymore that public sector employees make less than private sector ones. Here is a study from the Congressional Budget Office from 2012 that compared wages and benefits for federal employees to private sector employees, broken down into various groups by educational level. Only at the very highest educational level (“Professional degree or doctorate”) did private sector employees earn more. At all other levels — from “Master’s degree” on down — public sector employees earned more than private sector employees (often in wages alone, not just the total of wages plus benefits).
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/01-30-FedPay.pdf
One of these days you are going to read about some MTA employee who embezzled millions of dollars! That money is going somewhere and it certainly isn’t going for better service!
I wonder to what extent did the message from (some, but vocal) PS 199 parents, “we don’t want you here”, affect low-income students’ (particularly from the Amsterdam Housing, which was much maligned by said parents) decision to attend PS 199? My family was not the target of their ire, but I had no desire to send my child there and did not even put that school on our list.
I’m a parent at ps199. There was no “ire” and especially “we don’t want you here” attitude. If you read a few comments of some superentitled individuals, too bad you put everyone in the same category. The decision not even consider this school for your children is completely yours so please don’t blame anybody else.
From the outside, there did seem to be a constant stream of those comments – though of course it is impossible to tell in an anonymous forum who was making them. There was not a lot of warm welcome coming out in the comments here or at the meetings.
I attended several zoning meetings and anyone who was there who was not a 199 parent could definitely confirm there was ire.
During one meeting an attendee (a woman of color) was literally booed by a few 199 parents when she used the word inclusive and talk about bringing the community together
More color in nyc
Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! Feeding the squirrels is one thing. Taming them and having human to rodent contact is a whole ‘nutter ballgame.
If I read the NYT article on schools correctly, PS 191 has 50 kindergarteners and fewer than 10 are white? And PS 199 has 135 kindergarteners: 90 are white and fewer than ten are black?
I feel like in 2017, in a diverse neighborhood, I’m paying taxes that are supporting segregated public schools.
Actually you aren’t. The big problem is that there simply aren’t enough white students in the NYC public school system to have the type of integration people are pushing for. Its that simple. The few white students are put into schools with white majorities by their parents who understand this is the best and safest option for their children.