Weekly news round-up: picking leaves, golden parachutes, and wiffle ball

Posted by Lindsey at 1:39 PM

Good news! Do-gooders are building 11 new playgrounds at Bronx elementary schools this summer, but parents of leaf-picking toddlers just might face summonses, like one unlucky mother in Chelsea. Five public school students, who grew up playing on city fields, were picked in the Major League Baseball draft and face a tough choice -- go pro or go to college -- while students at the Bronx Early College Academy, who'd hoped to earn college credits in high school, now learn that there may not be space for their high school at all come fall.

The DOE and NYPD both report that crime is down in city schools, but a college-bound recent graduate was tragically shot and killed on the street in Rockaway yesterday. Brooklyn teens who gave their teachers a laxative-laced cake had their charges reduced while truly disturbing charges were filed against a teacher accused of abusing a disabled student.

Just when public hearings were scheduled on mayoral control of the schools, there is a bid for two new unions – one for public school parents and one for the students. Hard questions should be raised about bad record-keeping at the DOE and the ask-questions-later mentality of ACS workers. Outraged New Jerseyans questioned a superintendents’ golden retirement parachute, and some worry that questions about potential score inflation of New York standardized tests may never be answered.

Quiet week at Tweed and City Hall? Time for Times stories about higher education, like this one, this one, this one, this one, this one and this one. The Sun’s Elizabeth Green wrote about a well-regarded anonymous education blogger and the DOE’s “truth squad,” which monitors education blogs for net-speed inaccuracies.

Skewing to the summering-away crowd, the Times counsels parents not to worry if teens complain about the isolation of the family summer house -- once the kids go to college, they'll begin to enjoy the second home again. (Whew!) And in town, it seems that more parents are building mini-teen centers in their homes to keep their kids off the streets (and mini would be the operative word for most NYC apartments). But kids who created their own suburban summer fun are wrangling with lawyers instead of shagging wiffle balls. One, two, three strikes and we’re out! Have a great weekend.

Top o' Monday morning

Posted by helen at 9:23 AM

School may be out, but there's plenty buzzing in the city press -- about education, budget cuts, and attendance vigilance gone awry. Plus, the Mayor's slated to make an education statement at 1 pm today; more news will follow as the day unfolds.

In today's Times, Jennifer Medina celebrates a terrific grad rate (and estimates the human cost) at the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice, one of the city's new, small high schools, where the principal, having marked the school's first graduation, is leaving for another job. In the Sun, Elizabeth Green returns to MS 201, to air concerns about a new principal's effect on test-score rises. The budget compromise comes under closer scrutiny at Gotham Gazette -- yes, millions for education were restored, but deep cuts in NYCHA programs, Beacon community centers, and infant-mortality prevention efforts cast a long and gloomy shadow.

And yesterday, the News profiled a student aggressively pursued for truancy: Enrolled at a Brooklyn parochial school, she never showed up at her public high school, raising the ACS flag high. As always, the details devil the case: Inaccurate contact information, the DOE says, made finding the girl nearly impossible. That they're looking hard for absent students is in itself a sign of progress, however misguided this effort.