CITY VIEWS: OPINIONS and ANALYSIS
Closing Schools Won't Fix Them
Pedro Noguera |
The city’s Department of Education wants to close 19 more schools that aren’t performing well. But will that help disadvantaged students?
Bronx
Viewpoint: The Case For Closing Schools
City Limits |
In documents responding to parent opposition and legal challenges, the city Department of Education says that sometimes even extra support can’t save a failing facility.
Government
For Bloomberg, Race Questions Are New
Jarrett Murphy |
Concerns about the racial contours of city hiring have resurrected issues that bedeviled past mayors, but over which Mayor Bloomberg has largely avoided confrontation.
Health and Environment
Taking Attendance In Bloomberg Bid To Cut Truancy
Kelly Virella |
In the wake of Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement earlier this month that his office had launched a citywide campaign to combat chronic school absenteeism and truancy, some parents and education advocates are waiting to learn details of the city’s plan.The task force driving the initiative doesn’t contain parents, religious leaders or other grassroots community members, noted Victoria Bousquet, a parent leader with Coalition for Educational Justice.”At what point do you intend to involve the community?” she asked during an interview with City Limits. “Is it going to be once the horse is out of the barn? Are you going to have any town hall meetings? How are these decisions going to be made?”She and others said they fear the initiative might rely too heavily on interventions that are punitive, such as arresting students and launching child welfare investigations that could ultimately lead to the termination of parental rights.
Bronx
Afraid of Crime Now? Join The Kids
Curtis Stephen |
Times Square. In its colorful and danger-filled heyday of the 1970s and ’80s, porn shops, drug pushers, prostitutes and pistol-toting stickup men were the price of admission. But the venue has been a tourist-friendly commercial strip for some 15 years. In early April, for few minutes, that changed.On Easter night, a series of brawls and violent confrontations broke out in Times Square and nearby Herald Square among roaming bands of youths, reportedly resulting in the shooting of three women and one man, whose ages ranged from 18 to 21. A 20-year-old Bronx man was arrested in two of the shootings.
Bronx
No Entry: Why Is Teen Unemployment So High?
Jarrett Murphy |
The woman sweeping floors at the McDonald’s on 204th Street had gray hair tracing her temples, and her colleague at the register looked to be at least 50. Down at the Micky-Ds on Fordham Road, the woman making french fries could have been a grandmother, and she was not the oldest one behind the counter. At the restaurant on East 170th, the employee on break had a wrinkled face; those on duty were younger, but few could pass for 30. The man taking orders on East 167th Street looked to be pushing 50. On Jerome Avenue, the entire staff—at the registers and the grill—seemed to be beyond their 20s.If there’s a typical teenage job in America, its pushing Happy Meals and Big Macs under the golden arches.
Health and Environment
Spotting Trouble: The Debate Over Teen Suicide Risks
Curtis Stephen |
The 13-year-old was a middle school student. He lived in Washington Heights. He wrote in his journal that he wanted to die by putting a plastic bag over his head. School-based health counselors contacted his guardian and referred him to an emergency room. He’s in counseling now, and alive.
ARTS and CULTURE
Tough Love In The Big City
E.R. Shipp |
For young people born without that proverbial silver Spoon in their mouths, New York City has never been An easy place to grow up. It’s a tough love kind of city.For every person who has described a rather idyllic Childhood in old New York, there are many more who Remember a harsher one, going as far back as the days of Jacob Riis, the social activist and photographer who chronicled The lives of poor young people in Lower Manhattan in The late 19th century. What he saw and showed the world influenced attempts at making their tenement lives better. In How the Other Half Lives, he observed:“Bodies of drowned children turn up in the rivers right along in summer whom no one seems to know anything about. When last spring some workmen, while moving a pile of lumber on a North River pier, found under the last plank the body of a little lad crushed to death, no one had missed a boy, though his parents afterward turned up.”A contemporary of Riis’ in the late days of the 19th century did even more.
Justice
Churches On Front Lines Of Immigration Battle
Kalyn Belsha |
Ruskin Piedra is the founder and director of the Juan Neumann Center, an organization tied to the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help church, which provides low-cost legal services to immigrants, many of whom are Latino and hail from the surrounding Sunset Park area. Piedra is a busy man. He manages about 3,000 cases, including undocumented immigrants seeking to adjust their status or who are facing deportation or seeking asylum.Piedra is not an attorney, but he has taken many courses in immigration law and procedure that qualify him to appear in immigration court. In New York, many nonprofits and charitable organizations employ representatives like Piedra who often charge less than an attorney.”These poor people have no clue and most of them don’t speak English,” Piedra said. “They have no other recourse but to come here.
