Students, staff and parents packed the auditorium in Grover Cleveland High School for a hearing on the future of the school on Monday, April 2.
Grover Cleveland is being considered for the “turnaround” method, which would give the building a new name and eliminate 50 percent of its staff come September. Schools are slated for turnaround when they’ve been on the state’s Persistently Low Achieving (PLA) list, meaning graduation rates were below 60 percent, for the last three years.
Currently, Grover Cleveland’s graduation rate is at 58 percent, 5 percent below the city average.
But speakers in the public comment period of the hearing said the school is not being considered fairly by the city.
The school, which started the 2011/12 school year under the federal restart model, got a new principal midway through September and therefore did not get the chance to prove its ability for success yet, they argued.
In addition, Grover Cleveland is one of nine test sites in the city for iZone – a program that lets students perform their studies any time, any where.
Students also work with the community, holding music concerts at a local senior center and hosting holiday events, such as a haunted house, speakers said, adding that if the turnaround method is implemented, the school could lose its plant science program, its music instruction and other services.
Alumni also attended the hearing, including Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan, class of 1976, and the Queens representative on the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), Dmytro Fedkowskyj, who also graduated from Grover Cleveland, as did his mother.
Deputy Schools Chancellor Mark Sternberg stressed before the public comment period that the Education Department wants to help the school, not hurt it.
“It comes from a place of wanting to help our students,” he said of the turnaround proposal. “The structures and the staff that come with a new school can more quickly accelerate the pace of reform.”
In addition, he said, under the turnaround model, the school would receive upwards of $2 million in federal funding for reform programs.
But Nolan, who was wearing the school pin she saved from when she graduated Grover Cleveland, said she worked in Albany to help secure funding for the school under the restart model last year.
“I did not sponsor this so my high school could be closed,” she said.
In addition, Nolan added that the school operated under the restart model until the city struggled to reach an agreement over teacher evaluations, and then the turnaround model was proposed.
“I am deeply concerned about the effect this sudden change in course will have on the students at Grover Cleveland High School,” Nolan said. “Even just the announcement of the possible closing has probably done damage to the school’s future prospects.”
Master English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher Maria Rozos said the school’s graduation rates are low in part because many students don’t speak the language when they enter the school, and sometimes are illiterate in their native tongues.
She said it takes a second-language learner five to seven years to acquire academic-level English.
“However, the ESL students are held to the same standard as the mainstream native-English speakers and are expected to graduate in four years even though this goes against language theory and research,” Rozos said.
“As a school, we work tirelessly to prepare our ESL students for college and careers,” she added, citing multiple grants and programs the school received.
In addition, she said six out of seven of the last school valedictorians were did not speak English as their first language.
Selena Vasquez, a 10th grader at Grover Cleveland, said she and her peers want to go to college and get careers, which they are striving for under the instruction of their teachers.
“Many of the students that attend or have attended Grover Cleveland High School have formed great relationships with current staff and grown to trust them,” she said, giving examples of her favorite teachers.
“The staff in the school should not be penalized for something that is not their fault,” Vasquez added. “The teachers don’t have control over the students’ decisions and it’s the parents’ responsibility to make sure their child is going to school and passing.”
Further comments and questions about the proposal can be sent to D24proposals@schools.nyc.gov, and calls can be made to 212-374-7621. An analysis of the public comment and question-and-answer session at Monday’s hearing will be available online before the PEP votes on the proposal on April 26.

A swastika spray-painted on a building on Grand Avenue is just the latest incident in a rash of hate graffiti in the 104th Precinct.
A swastika appeared sometime before Wednesday morning on a metal door frame at 69-38 Grand Avenue.
When this newspaper brought the offensive symbol to the attention of Michael Terry, president of the Maspeth Chamber of Commerce, he said he’s noticed an unfortunate upswing in graffiti vandals in the area recently.
“It’s never a happy time to see anti-Semitic or racist symbols coming up,” he said, examining the graffiti drawn across the door.
Terry said he will bring the incident up at the next Chamber meeting, to be held on Tuesday, April 2nd at noon in Connolly’s Corner on Grand Avenue.
The swastika is drawn in blue paint marker over another tag, “MR,” which is written in dozens of places along Grand Avenue. In graffiti culture, it is an insult to draw over someone else’s tag.
Gary Giordano, district manager for Community Board 5, said the 104th Precinct has one of the highest graffiti arrest-rates in the city.
“But yet the vandals continue to do graffiti in this precinct where a lot of arrests are being made,” he said. “You would think that they would get the message.”
Giordano provided insight into why he thinks New York City’s graffiti epidemic persists – although he admitted that he does not know what is going through someone’s mind when they draw a swastika or other offensive symbol.
“I think that there’s some sort of unfortunate thrill with avoiding getting caught,” he said. “And I also think that some of it has to do with a lack of self-esteem and they can get a name for themselves by doing this and bragging about it.”
A representative from the 104th Precinct said officers responded to the location and saw the swastika along with an abundance of other graffiti.
The building owner was contacted and a report was generated, according to police.

For the past three summers, residents along the East River in Brooklyn have been deprived of the stunning Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks show and are now demanding that the show return to the Brooklyn waterfront.
Residents and local elected officials from Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens held a rally on Monday, April 2, urging Macy’s to bring the fireworks display back to the East River this year.
“New York’s Fourth of July fireworks should be a citywide celebration,” said State Senator Daniel Squadron. “Instead, the millions of New Yorkers who live in Brooklyn, Queens, and the East Side of Manhattan are kept out of the party, while we send visitors and business to New Jersey. That simply makes no sense.”
Squadron and other elected officials sent a letter to Macy’s Chief Executive Officer Terry Lundgren, requesting that the 36th Annual Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks include the East River.
In 2009, Macy’s moved the fireworks to the Hudson River to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s journey up the river.
Since then, there has not been a Fourth of July fireworks display on the East River.
“Despite initial claims from Macy’s that the 2009 move to the Hudson River to celebrate Henry Hudson’s voyage was only temporary and that they were interested in moving the display around the city, I am disappointed that again this year it’s likely more New Jerseyans and residents along the west side of Manhattan will get a front row seat, excluding Brooklynites and a large part of the city that is home to Macy’s flagship store,” said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.
“Macy’s is a New York institution and they should bring the fireworks back to the East River where more New Yorkers can enjoy the show,” said Ward Dennis, co-chair of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth.
He echoed statements from many groups and businesses along the waterfront, including the DUMBO Neighborhood Alliance, the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn, Community Boards 1 and 6, and the DUMBO Improvement District.
The leaders also say that bringing the fireworks show back to the East River will further emphasize the nation’s history, as the East River served as the doorway for immigrants arriving in New York City. They also noted that it would be a huge boost to local businesses.
But one Macy’s spokesperson Orlando Veras, said that the Macy’s Fireworks show will not be changed this year and will continue to take place on the Hudson River.
Stating that the fireworks have been fired from various waterways and locations in New York City for more than 30 years, he said that Macy’s Fireworks will, “continue to take place in and around all of New York City’s waterways and will not be a permanent fixture in any one location.”
“Exclusively limiting the show to any particular area would greatly hinder the creative freedom that has made it the nation’s best and largest Independence Day display,” he said.

One week before a hearing that will determine the future of Grover Cleveland High School, parents, staff and students gathered with community members in a church basement in Ridgewood to discuss what the problems really are in the school.
The issues, they said, have more to do with the socio-economic problems in the students’ families than the teachers, staff and programs at the school. In addition, due to Grover Cleveland’s “open door policy,” many students are learning English as a Second Language (ESL), but are illiterate in their native tongues.
Grover Cleveland faces the turnaround method, which would give the building a new name and eliminate 50 percent of its staff come September. Schools are slated for turnaround when they’ve been on the state’s Persistently Low Achieving (PLA) list, meaning graduation rates were below 60 percent, for the last three years.
Currently, Grover Cleveland’s graduation rate is at 58 percent, 5 percent below the city average.
The meeting, hosted by Citizens for a Better Ridgewood, was also attended by the Education Department’s Chief Executive of Turnaround Elaine Gorman and Queens member of the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) Dmytro Fedkowskyj.
Gorman said Grover Cleveland started out the year as a restart school, which is another form of change to the school’s administrative infrastructure, but the state cut off $58 million in school improvement grants when an agreement on teacher evaluations wasn’t reached, forcing restart schools to change over to the turnaround method.
“We know schools well enough to know that that does not mean that the school isn’t doing a good job with many students,” Gorman said. “It’s just not able to graduate as many students as we want.”
Gorman stuck around to answer technical questions about turnaround, and apologized for the turmoil the process is causing in the school.
However, when asked how the turnaround method would affect the students specifically, she replied that the question was too broad and suggested emailing it to her. She left shortly after.
Members of Citizens for a Better Ridgewood and representatives from local elected officials then asked staff members in the office what the problems are in the school.
Maria Rozos, ESL master teacher at Grover Cleveland, said she is proud of the work the teachers accomplish with the students. She said one of her ESL classes is currently reading “Farenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury.
“These are second-language learners who sometimes are illiterate in their own language, they cannot write in their own language, and they are writing and speaking English almost native-like,” Rozos said. “It’s a great accomplishment.”
She said she holds office hours to work on lesson plans with teachers, along with after-school and Saturday tutoring sessions for students and their parents. But, Rozos added, her program needs more resources.
Russell Nitchman, a science teacher who runs the plant-science program at Grover Cleveland, said it’s hard for the teachers to do their jobs effectively under so much pressure and while stressing over what might happen in September.
He told a story about a student who took off school for a week to get a job so he could afford to go on a senior trip. Other students, Nitchman said, leave school early and come in late so they can care for their younger siblings – adding that elementary schools need more before and after-school programs.
Some students often move between relatives, foster homes and shelters, he said.
“When you hear the stories from some of these kids, it’s amazing that as many that come do come,” Nitchman said.
Students also attended the meeting to tell their stories about how their lives changed since they started at Grover Cleveland.
One student, who identified herself as Maria, said she came to the school as a sophomore instead of a junior because she didn’t pass any of her Regents exams.
“Now this past month, I didn’t only pass all my Regents with good grades, I’m actually now ahead of my credits,” Maria said, adding that she’s also a Key Club member.
The PEP will host a hearing on Monday, April 2, at 6 p.m. in the Grover Cleveland auditorium, located at 21-27 Himrod Street in Ridgewood. The panel will vote on the decision on April 26th.

Twenty-three students from Newtown High School in Corona will travel to St. Louis from April 12-14 to compete in a national championship after winning a citywide basketball tournament using robots as players.
The Techtonics,the school’s robotics team, competed against 66 other schools, 16 of which were from other countries, in a regional championship on Saturday, March 17, at the Javits Center in Manhattan. For the first time in the school’s history, they won.
The team was given a kit of parts with instructions to build three robots that could perform specific tasks. The Techtonics named their robot Chen Lin Jr., after their captain, Chen Qing Tian, and New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin, who starred this season.
In the first 15 seconds of the basketball game, the robot had to shoot balls autonomously. Then students were able to operate the robot using computer controls, before having to shoot baskets themselves, and finally balancing their three robots on a balance beam to score an extra 40 points – winning the regional for the Techtonics.
The victory meant more for the school than the ability to build the best robot. It was a source of pride Newtown’s been lacking lately, as it is on the Education Department’s list of schools slated for closure next year due to what the city decided is sub-par performance.
Tian, a Bushwick resident and senior at the high school who plans to attend Brooklyn Polytech next year, said the team spent the first three weeks devising ideas on how to build the robot.
“I feel proud of my team members,” he said when asked how it feels to lead the regional winners. “It’s all about team work.”
The hardest part, he said, was programming the robot using “computer language.”
However, the team received help from two mentors from its sponsor Alliance Bernstein LP, a global asset management firm.
Matthew Quash, an Ozone Park resident and junior at Newtown High School, agreed that the hardest part of the competition was navigating the controls.
“The biggest challenge was all the hard work that we had to put into the robot,” he said. “And at the competition we didn’t have connection with the robot a couple of times, so we had to keep restoring connection.”
Quash was worked with the engineering half of the team during the six-week construction period. In the regional game he was a human player.
“My job was in the last 30 seconds to throw the balls into the other team’s hoops to try to score points,” he said.
Quash added that his interest in robotics was sparked in engineering class, taught by Peter Paolino, who told him how much he would learn and how good it would look on his resume.
Next, the team has to raise $25,000 to send themselves to St. Louis for the national championship.
To do so, they are holding bake and candy sales, and will host a robotics concert at their school on the evening of April 20.
To donate to the Techtonics, make a check out to Tech Robotics and mail it to Newtown High School, 48-01 90th Avenue, Corona, New York 11373.

Photos compliments of the Techtonics.

The odds are looking like they’re in the state’s favor when it comes to legalizing casino gambling.
Full-scale casino gaming could come to New York State in the future as both the Senate and Assembly recently passed the first round of legislation in favor of expanding state regulations and amending the state’s constitution to allow full casino gaming.
“It is a step closer to having our residents vote on a referendum that could bring full gaming to the state,” said State Senator Joe Addabbo, a member of the Senate’s Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee, in a statement. “It is a step closer for my constituents to have thousands of additional job opportunities at Resorts World.”
Although Addabbo praised the legislature’s vote, he urged that lawmakers proceed forward from this point on in a cautious manner, and that they take into consideration community participation.
“I am an advocate for community input on these issues and feel most people would want their voices heard before any plans are implemented,” he said.
The vote is a significant step toward full gaming, especially for the Resorts World New York casino in South Ozone Park, whose operators have expressed in the past that they are eager to expand their operations if full gaming is allowed in the state.
Advocates of full gaming say that the benefits include increased revenue and massive job creation, in addition to providing stiff competition to out-of-state casinos in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
“Enhancing gaming in New York by bringing table games to casinos will stimulate our economy, draw additional businesses into the state, and create opportunities for countless jobs, increased tourism and much-needed revenue,” said Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder in a letter that he sent out to newspapers earlier this week. (Read the full letter on page 7.)
The amendment seeks to legalize enhanced gaming at no more than seven casinos around the state. According to lawmakers, the locations and details of the proposed seven casinos will be decided in 2013.
Goldfeder noted that he will work to advocate for Resorts World to receive one of the seven casino licenses.
“Resorts World has served as an eager and effective community partner, delivering on their promise of local jobs and serving as an economic engine for the region,” he said, touting their commitment to the community through monthly meetings with the 106 Precinct, Community Board 10 and elected officials to address neighborhood concerns.
The constitutional amendment to allow full-scale gaming would need to be approved once more by both houses in the Legislature and then by voters in a referendum for it to become law. That entire process could take three years.