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Closing the gap between health and education in a Morrisania public school

The school health coordinator, Barbara Alicea  speaks to a parent outside P.S. 140. (SWATI GUPTA / Bronx Ink)

Barbara Alicea, a new school health coordinator speaking to a parent via cell phone outside P.S. 140, the pilot site of a national health and learning initiative. (SWATI GUPTA / Bronx Ink)

Elpida Vlachos routinely takes her four children who attend Morrisania’s P.S. 140 on Eagle Avenue for regular doctor check ups. She said she felt confident that none had health problems. So it came as a surprise to the 38-year-old Bronx mother when her children came home one day from school with a note indicating they needed eyeglasses.

P.S. 140 in the South Bronx, an elementary school is the site of a new, national pilot program intended to make sure that students who need treatment for everything from poor vision to chronic asthma receive holistic health care coordinated at the school level. Called Healthy and Ready to Learn, the initiative was launched in September by Children’s Health Fund in three schools, two in the South Bronx and one in Harlem.

All the students in P.S. 140 who failed the vision screening are expected to be provided with two pairs of glasses – one to keep in school and one for home. These children will meet with an optometrist for free and choose the glasses they like, said Barbara Alicea, the school’s health coordinator, who acts as liaison between the health center and the school to bring together local health services for the children.

Also known as the “eye lady” in the school, children rush to hug Alicea as she explained her role. As health screenings continue in the school, Alicea will work with parents to help connect them to  basic needs like housing, insurance, public assistance, domestic violence and immigration issues.

Poor vision is just one of eight health-related barriers to good learning identified in this new initiative aimed at helping schools, parents and health center practitioners triage knowledge and treatment. According to a study conducted by The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools,  an estimated 22 per cent of children aged 6 to 11 have a vision problem.

The eight health issues to be targeted by the Healthy and Ready to Learn program include asthma, dental issues, hearing loss, hunger, behavioral problems, anemia and lead poisoning. Phoebe Browne, the director of the initiative, said that the organization chose these eight issues because they are fairly common, relatively easy to screen, preventable and manageable. The program will measure these health indicators over time next to school measures such as attendance and test scores to assess the program’s impact over time.

Once a child is identified with a particular health issue, the parents are informed and coordination will begin to provide the child with primary care. The program’s next hurdle is to figure out a way to screen for anemia and lead poisoning in school, two conditions that require blood tests to diagnose. “We do not provide primary care, but our school health coordinator will help the family to connect to primary care,” said Colby Kelly, communications director at the Children’s Health Fund.

P.S. 140’s assistant principal believes teachers are pleased to be part of this pilot. “We are monitoring the effects of the program,” said Assistant Principal Kevin Greene. “Eventually, over time, the teachers and parents will see the benefits.” The two other schools in the pilot are P.S. 49 in Mott Haven and P.S. 36 in West Harlem.

Finding local resources for the parents such as dentists, optometrists and primary care physicians is another work in progress. The next step after vision screening in P.S. 140 will be dental check ups and training for asthma control, Alicea said.

Children play outside the main building of P.S. 140 on Eagle Avenue. (SWATI GUPTA / Bronx Ink)

Children play outside the main building of P.S. 140 on Eagle Avenue. (SWATI GUPTA / Bronx Ink)

Poorly controlled asthma is one of the leading reasons children miss school through exhaustion or hospitalization.

Tonette McWilliams, a teacher at P.S. 140, said that she had a student who used to miss an entire week at a time due to chronic asthma since she had to be hospitalized. Severe attacks cannot be treated at home or in the school clinic. Under the new program, once a student has been identified with average or chronic asthma, the school health coordinator will work with the family to provide educational materials and training to train them in avoiding environmental triggers and exercising caution in physical activities. .

“We are looking for a scalable solution to these problems,” Kelly said. “Parents do not know about the triggers and it is a process of discovery, finding out the why.”

Asthma and behavioral problems represent the top two health barriers to learning, according to a 2013 survey of principals and assistant principals administered by the Children’s Health Fund and the city’s school supervisor’s union. In high poverty schools, 67 per cent of school officials identified asthma as a moderate or serious barrier to learning.

“P.S. 140 is located in the poorest congressional district in the country and there are social issues related to poverty and lack of insurance,” Green said. “We felt that having this program would provide us with assistance in some of the issues.”

Around 18 to 20 percent of P.S. 140’s 640 pre-kindergarten through fifth grade students live in homeless shelters; a few more live in foster care homes or transitional housing, said Greene.  As he spoke, a school administrator, Tuesday Brown, brought in a five-year-old boy who was extremely agitated. Greene reassured the child, and returned him to Brown after five minutes, saying he was a cancer survivor, who suffers from hyperactivity.

“Realistically, some students have underlying issues,” said Greene. “To get them ready for high school, college and future careers we have to work hard and build their self esteem and that is where Children’s Health Fund comes into play.”

Health and Ready to Learn is funded by international organizations like H&M Conscious Foundation, Jaguar Land Rover and individual donors. Both corporations have committed to providing the funds that are required for the screenings, trainings and equipment. P.S. 140 is currently working without corporate funding but Children’s Health Fund is in the process of identifying donors. Along with funding partners, it is collaborating with various organizations and experts who are providing valuable data and research.

Children chat with each other as they walk out of school on a Thursday afternoon. (SWATI GUPTA / Bronx Ink)

Children chat with each other as they walk out of school on a Thursday afternoon. (SWATI GUPTA / Bronx Ink)

The Children’s Health Fund was co-founded 27 years ago by singer/songwriter Paul Simon and Columbia University’s Dr. Irwin Redlener. The organization set up two dozen national network programs and 50 mobile units that bring medical care to children in poor neighborhood. One of the oldest national networks is located in the South Bronx in partnership Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The South Bronx Health Center located at 871 Prospect Ave, provides a medical home for underserved children and families.

Healthy and Reading to Learn was launched in response to the need to do more to reach out to more children who need care. Hospitals and mobile vans proved to be insufficient. Organizers believed that going directly into public schools was the next logical step.

School officials at P.S. 140 hope the program will help improve attendance rates, which were 89 percent last year. The goal is to reach 93.5 percent, said McWilliams. “When it comes to education, I’ll try anything,” said Ligia Perez, a second grade teacher at P.S. 140. “And if this program can help then I am on board.”

“If something is going to work,” said Greene, “it can be only through communication between the teachers, parents and the community.”

Posted in Bronx Neighborhoods, Education, Featured, Health, Southern Bronx0 Comments

Curry comes to Morrisania

Hungry Bird on East 164th Street, the newest restaurant to open in Morrisania, introduces Indian cuisine to the neighborhood for the first time. (SWATI GUPTA / The Bronx Ink)

A steady stream of customers wandered into Morrisania’s Hungry Bird one September evening, drawn inside the brand new restaurant accompanied by the unusual aroma of curried chicken. Indian cuisine was practically unknown on East 164th Street and Morris Avenue until local entrepreneur, Azizur Rahman, decided to open the quaint eatery three weeks earlier.

Wooden spoons hung on the painted walls behind him as the 47-year-old owner, originally from New Delhi, India greeted his customers.

Rahman’s life-long dream had been to introduce Morrisania to his native cooking. In addition to traditional Indian dishes, he plans to include Dominican and American menu items to ease the transition. “One step in, and people can get whatever they want,” said Rahman.

Local residents know Rahman as the manager of Dunkin’ Donuts four blocks away on 161st Street, where he has been working for the last 15 years. His plans to set up his own business finally took shape two years ago when his family in India was able to provide $100,000 in start-up capital. His younger sister Sabrina Khan and her husband Mahatab Hussein help out with the cash register and overseeing the kitchen.

The Hungry bird stands out among the very few restaurants that are scattered around a neighborhood mostly populated with grocery stores and 99 cent stores.

Small businesses have been opening up slowly in Morrisania in the past few years. According to the 2012 U.S. Census, the number of restaurants has nearly doubled in the South Bronx between 2010 and 2011.

Michael Nixon, a business development officer at the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation said that his office received around 10 to 15 requests for new business loans every month. Most of those businesses like Rahman’s, he said, are financed by a close network of friends and families,.

Rahman, who immigrated to New York 16 years ago, still works at Dunkin’ Donuts, putting in 18-hour days working two jobs, and commuting back and forth from Brooklyn where he lives with his wife and two teenage children. His normal workday begins at 6 a.m. at Dunkin’ Donuts, and ends at 11 p.m. after he closes Hungry Bird. It’s a schedule he believes will pay off eventually. Early customer counts have already exceeded his early projections. He planned for 40 food orders a day and is currently seeing 70.

One customer agreed to talk only after he wiped his plate clean of the chicken and rice. As he paid his check, Sylla Boubacar said he was going to keep coming. “It is just the beginning,” said Boubacar, a long-time Morrisania resident.

Rahman has depended mostly on discount offers, incentives for referrals and word of mouth to encourage local residents to come through the door. Besides his family members, Rahman hired two local residents to distribute menus to passersby and do deliveries. One man, 43-year old Jeff Hargrove, is studying to become a food inspector eventually.

Rahman believes that one of the reasons his opening weeks have gone so well is the generosity from the people in the neighborhood. “People have been forthcoming whenever I have asked for help,” he said.

When asked why he chose the name “Hungry Bird”, he paused and said, “A bird has no job besides finding food. So, when humans get hungry, their characteristic changes to mimic a bird.”

Posted in Bronx Neighborhoods, Food0 Comments

Bronx gang member convicted once, now tried again for the same murder

The second day in the retrial of a Bronx gang member charged with killing a 10-year-old girl and paralyzing another Bronx man began with pointed cross examination of the defendant’s St. James Boys associate, the prosecution’s key witness.

Enrique Sanchez, stony and monosyllabic, recalled very little about the shootings or their aftermath in his nearly three-hour testimony in Bronx Supreme Court yesterday. On trial is Edgar Morales, who is being charged with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy and possession of a deadly weapon for the 12-year-old incident.

Morales’s original trial gained fame when the Bronx District Attorney charged him in 2007 with a slew of offenses, including terrorism for “striking fear in the hearts of residents and business owners.” Morales, now 32, became the first lone gang member convicted under the new terrorism statute that was passed days after the 9/11 attacks. The charge that was accompanied by a stiffer jail sentence was overruled as overreaching by the State’s Court of Appeals two years ago. It then ordered a new trial.

The original crime took place on the evening of August 17, 2002, when the St. James Boys street gang erupted into an argument that turned fatal at a christening celebration at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran church in Parkchester. Ten-year-old Melanny Mendez died after a stray bullet struck her in the back of the head. Javier Tocchimani, a rival gang member, was paralyzed after being shot three times.

Both Morales and Sanchez were present at the scene of the crime. Sanchez told the court he was drunk at the time of the incident and that he only saw someone get hit by the bullet.

Morales’ defense team attempted to discredit Sanchez’s testimony by making references to conflicting accounts he has given over the last seven years in court, in interviews, and to detectives as far away as Arizona. Sanchez’s primary response to a majority of the questions asked during cross examination was, “I don’t remember.”

Eventually the defense asked, “Is your entire story about Edgar Morales doing the shooting a total fabrication?” Sanchez replied with the familiar, “I don’t remember.”

Sanchez was arrested in March 2004 for possession of a .38-caliber handgun. He was later indicted by the Bronx District Attorney for second degree murder charges in the shooting outside St. Paul’s Church and was facing between 15 years to life in prison. The DA’s office offered to lower the charges in exchange for Sanchez’s cooperation in Morales’ 2007 trial. He eventually served seven years in jail for manslaughter and was released in the beginning of 2011.

A few days prior to his release, Sanchez told the court, he was visited in prison by a pair of investigators and a pair of attorneys, all of them working on the Morales case. He claimed they wanted Sanchez “to help them out, for Edgar.” Sanchez testified that he was assured confidentiality in exchange for his cooperation.

“They were harassing me too much already,” said Sanchez. When asked by the defense if he remembered becoming emotional during the investigators’ visit, saying he did not want Morales to face time away from his child, Sanchez replied, “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember breaking down?” Attorney Matthew Fishbein asked. “Is that something you could forget?”

The prosecution, which was led by Assistant District Attorney Christine Scaccia, said its office had worked with Sanchez for nearly ten years and believed that he gave a reliable account of what went down on August 17, 2002. A member of the team added that the St. James Boys gang had been terrorizing the Mexican-American community in St. James Park in Fordham for years through intimidation, murder, drug activities, and other gang-related violence.

Mendez’s mother, Antonia Gutierrez, was present in court. She hoped for the sentencing to rule in favor of the prosecution and to see Morales “stay in jail.”

Posted in Crime0 Comments

Police seek information on driver in hit-and-run case

After a hit-and-run in the Bronx on Monday, the police have released a surveillance video and have asked for any information on the case, NY1 News reports.

A white sedan hit a 50-year-old woman around 1 pm on Bruckner avenue, according to the New York Police Department.

The woman is in critical condition and has been admitted to Lincoln Hospital.

Posted in Newswire0 Comments

Yankee Stadium installs metal detectors

The Yankee Stadium in the Bronx increased security at some of its gates on, News 12 reported on Tuesday.

According to a new initiative by the Major League Baseball (MLB), all stadiums are required to install metal detectors at their gates by 2015.

Baseball fans will now have to walk through full body metal detectors or be manually scanned by security before they head to watch the game.

Posted in Newswire0 Comments