Education advocates continue to criticize the Education Department for what they say is a failure to remove light fixtures containing polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) from public schools.
Congress banned PCB production in 1978 due to toxicity and long-term health effects.
In 2011, the City Council passed Local Law 68, requiring the Department of Education (DOE) to provide parents with a schedule for PCB light removal, including why it is necessary.
In a letter recently sent to New York City parents, DOE said it will remove the lights in schools across the city within the next 10 years.
“In 1978, the federal government banned the manufacture of PCBs in building materials,” the DOE letter states, “but, until recently, provided little guidance on how to identify and handle the materials in existing buildings.”
Parents and advocates rallied in front of P.S. 195 in Rosedale on Wednesday, May 16, calling on DOE to make schools in the area a priority for PCB abatement.
Christina Giorgio, a staff attorney with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, which is spearheading the removal campaign, said PCB substance can cause harmful effects such as cancer, and learning and behavioral disabilities.
She said the letter DOE mailed to parents failed to adequately explain the need for the PCB removal and a specific timeline for when it would happen, as was called for by the City Council.
“If the city really did prioritize the welfare of these children plus fiscal responsibility, they would replace these lights immediately and not wait nine years and certainly not send out a letter to parents giving them no information about when the lights are going to be removed,” Giorgio said at the rally.
She referenced a list of the top 10 toxins most likely to contribute to autism and other neurological disorders released by the Mt. Sinai Children’s Environmental Health Center, which put PCBs in third place.
However, according to the Health Department, there is no immediate risk resulting from long-term exposure to PCBs. In addition, PCBs exist in other sources outside schools, such as soil, air, water and food due to handling and disposal in the past.
Marge Feinberg, a DOE representative, said the city is spending $800 million on a PCB removal process that is unprecedented in the United States.
The program so far targeted five pilot schools in the city, among them are P.S. 309 in Bushwick and P.S. 183 in Far Rockaway. According to the test results of the pilot program, elevated PCB levels were found in air tests in four of the five schools.
“While some people think we should spend more and do this faster, we continue to believe this is an aggressive, environmentally responsible plan that will cause minimum disruption to student learning and generate significant energy savings for the city and taxpayers in the long run,” Feinberg said.
“Our work will take place outside of school hours, to minimize the disruption to students and staff,” she added, echoing DOE’s letter to parents.
But speakers are the rally were dissatisfied, saying the removal could be done on weekends or over vacations.
“The DOE is not doing enough to change the situation that they know is toxic,” said Jean Sassine, of the Queens Chapter of New York Communities for Change, who has two kids enrolled at P.S. 195. “We’re concerned parents, concerned about the health of our children and the health of our neighbors’ children.”
Sassine added that there is a more cost-effective way to remove the lights.
“We can broker out to different firms and get all of them done in less than two years,” he said.

Pol calls on city to crack down on shoddy developers

Despite calls from the City Council and municipal unions to fill Police Department desk jobs with civilians, a process known as “civilianization,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said in a budget hearing at City Hall Thursday morning that full-time civilian positions would be cut from 14,431 to 14,107 this year.
According to Kelly’s testimony, which he read to the Council Public Safety Committee, the City’s continued hiring freeze combined with state budget cuts are forcing the Police Department (NYPD) to cut back on civilianization.
But Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. of Astoria, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said at the hearing that union workers are cheaper to employ than police officers.
Currently, there are 518 NYPD officers performing non-enforcement jobs who are classified as “full-duty,” meaning they are capable of assuming enforcement duties immediately, according to the City Council.
Kelly said at the hearing that cutting back on civilianization would equate to less police officers patrolling the streets, as more would be needed to perform administrative duties.
“It certainly has the potential for impacting adversely upon Department results,” Kelly said.
“So if we’re hiring to replace an attrition rate but we’re losing civilians,” Vallone asked, referring to 1,600 new officers who graduated the Police Academy in January, “then police officers will have to come off the streets to replace those civilians, next year we can expect to see less police on the streets?
“Yes,” Kelly said.
Vallone then asked if those results would affect the NYPD’s overtime budget, which is set for $604 million this year, up from $420 in 2011, to which Kelly replied, “partly, yes.”
After the hearing, Vallone said he’s been advocating for civilianization for the last 10 years, and although Kelly says he supports the method, it’s still being cut.
As for Kelly’s explanation for the cuts, Vallone said, “he works for the administration that is responsible for the hiring freeze, they make exceptions all the time, they should absolutely make a public safety exception.”
In a phone interview later on Thursday, Eddie Rodriguez, president of the city’s largest municipal union DC37 Local 1549, said union workers are cheaper because they earn roughly $30,000 a year, compared to the $80,000 cops make after their first five years of service.
“Then there will be more crime, more murder, more rape. That’s nice,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t see why they don’t hire more civilians and put cops on the street.”
When asked about the hiring freeze and budget cuts, he said Kelly is making up excuses for cutting civilians off the NYPD payroll, and suggested the city use the more than $500 million recovered from the CityTime scandal to hire new staff.
“I think it’s a disgrace,” Rodriguez said. “There should be no budget cut at all for civilians.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week launched a $9 million ad campaign aimed at reducing chronic absenteeism in public schools.
The campaign, created by AT&T and the Ad Council, includes a new Web site, SchoolEveryDayNYC.org, which includes a Truancy and Absenteeism Help Center and an ARIS Parent Link, which allows parents to track their kids’ attendance records.
According to Bloomberg, there are 200,000 chronically absent students in New York City public schools, meaning they miss at least two days of school a month, equating to a likeliness of dropping out before high school graduation.
“Such serious absenteeism clearly jeopardizes their ability to keep up in school, it’s also often a tip-off of students who face other troubles, unrelated health or emotional issues, neglect or abuse at home or serious problems that ned to be addressed right away,” Bloomberg said to reporters, city officials and students in the P.S. 91 Richard Arkwright School in Glendale on Thursday, May 10.
P.S. 91 is one of 50 pilot schools under Bloomberg’s “Every Student, Every Day” campaign launched in 2010. The program so far has supplied 4,000 at-risk students with mentors to help encourage them to go to school.
Absenteeism in the pilot elementary schools dropped 27 percent through the end of March, 21 percent in middle schools and 7 percent in high schools. The program will extend to 100 schools next year, according to Bloomberg.
The new ad campaign includes posters to be displayed on buses, kiosks and five million Metrocards starting next year, making it the largest anti-absence initiative in the country.
The poster displays the slogan, “It’s 9 a.m., do you know where your kids are?” along with a link to the online resource.
Also under the campaign, the 311 hotline will direct parents to the new online resource, and staff in public libraries will be trained to assist parents with tools to handle absenteeism.
According to national research, 75 percent of students who are chronically absent in sixth grade do not graduate high school.
“If that isn’t an early predictor of disaster for our children and this country, I don’t know what is,” Bloomberg said.
Focus groups held by the mayor’s Interagency Task Force on Truancy, Chronic Absenteeism and School Engagement, found that most parents don’t know that their kids are chronically absent, don’t know the reason or how to handle the issue.
“If you’re not at school, you can’t learn, and if you’re not coming to school, maybe there are other problems that you have or that the family has that would keep you from learning,” Bloomberg said. “Many parents and guardians either don’t recognize the consequences of chronic absenteeism or don’t know what to do about it.”
Quinn Corcino Sr., father of P.S. 91 fifth grader Quinn Corcino Jr., said his son went from missing 29 days of school last year due to a health issue his sister suffers from to three this year, and is now at the top of his honors class.
He said the “Every Student, Every Day” program raised awareness among parents, and gave his son mentors at school, who reward him with awards and encouragement.
“Having the mentors in place really made coming to school something for my son that was very gratifying,” the elder Corcino said. “They met him every morning and greeted him,”
He said the mentors speak with his son throughout the day and sometimes they sit together for lunch.
“He always speaks of his mentors highly,” he added.

The day after President Barack Obama announced his support for gay marriage on national television, members of the New York City Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) community took to the streets to thank him for his support.
The president publicly endorsed gay marriage to ABC’s Robin Roberts on “Good Morning America” in the White House’s Cabinet Room on Wednesday, May 2.
Councilman Daniel Dromm held a rally with fellow community members in front of the Jackson Heights Post Office on 37th Avenue and 78th Street in Queens, where attendees could sign a giant-sized post card bearing the message “thank you” that was addressed to Obama.
“We are here to celebrate and to say ‘thank you, Mr. President’ because today we are happy to be gay and to be American,” Dromm said. “What you heard from the president has proved that America is a place that believes in true equality for all of its citizens.”
Dromm said that when he came out at 17 in 1973, homosexuality was still considered a mental disorder.
He noted that Julio Rivera, a gay Queens man, was murdered on the same corner near the Post Office in 1990 by three white supremacists who were out hunting a vulnerable person to kill.
At a nearby corner, restaurant-owner Edgar Garzon was killed in 2001 by two men while walking home from a Jackson Heights gay bar.
“This movement has not been without its tragedies, these things have happened in our path, in our battle to move forward in our fight for equality,” Dromm said.
“Much work remains to be done,” he added, but “never in my wildest dreams did I ever believe that we would have a president of the United States coming out to support full equal rights, marriage rights, for all Americans.”
Obama made the announcement a few weeks before the 20th anniversary of the Queens LGBT Pride Parade, on 37th Avenue, and Festival, on 37th Road and 75th Avenue, to be held on Sunday, June 3.
Astoria resident Brendan Fay, of the Civil Marriage Trail Project, also spoke at the rally, saying that Obama’s announcement was particularly uplifting for LGBT young people, who are often bullied in school and other places.
Fay, a filmmaker, immigrated to the United States in 1984 and married his partner on July 27, 2003, in Toronto.
“We were all so uplifted by the words, by the ringing endorsement of marriage equality by President Obama, which by the way not only echoed across this land and in every home and in every street, but across the world,” Fay said.
“I hope as we celebrate the message from the president,” he added, “the message that marriage equality is for everybody, I hope that it translated too into policy and that we will see an end to laws that discriminate against LGBT immigrants.”
The excitement over Obama’s words spread through Brooklyn, too.
Matthew McMorrow, co-president of LAMBDA Brooklyn Independent Democrats, known as the voice of the borough’s LGBT community, said it was brave of the president to pick a side in a controversial issue while running for re-election.
However, many states still ban gay marriage, including North Carolina which recently also made civil unions illegal.
“But when the president of the United States, one of the most powerful people in the world, stands up and says that he supports marriage equality, it sends a very strong message to the lesbian and gay kids across the country who dream about falling in love one day and getting married to the person they love,” McMorrow said. “The most powerful man in the world is in their corner and supports that dream.”