End of semester examinations and summer vacation aren’t the only things on teachers’ and parents’ minds at P.S. 86 Kingsbridge Heights School in the Northwest Bronx. Prompted by cuts to the state budget leaving the city $5 billion short, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today plans to further trim the public school system budget.

While schools are not the only institutions affected by the cuts, they are among those that will be hit the hardest, as some 6,700 educators’ jobs will be lost when the measures come into force in September. This number includes 300 teacher’s aides.

On Thursday, teachers and parents enjoying ice cream outside school were just learning about the latest cuts, but the news hardly surprised them.

“The first thing they do is cut services for children and the elderly, it’s very archaic the way they always attack the weakest members of society,” said T. Pannell, who teaches kindergarten through third grade and whose daughter is also in kindergarten at the school. Pannell added she is not worried about her own job and praised the principal of Kingsbridge Heights for his management of the school’s budget, but she said she is more concerned about the broader implications of the trend.

Kingsbridge Heights School is one of the largest public schools in the nation. (Speri/BronxInk)

“It’s not a matter of making cuts but of being more efficient,” she said. “They are all in a ‘this has to go’ mentality, rather than ‘this has to be tightened,’ whether it’s with schools or with public housing.”

Pannell added that concern will grow even further when teachers and parents realize the scale of the cuts.

“Are we going to feel this? For sure,” she said. “But to see how much we are going to feel it we’ll have to wait until September.”

While some cuts seem inevitable, many agree there should be other ways to get around the problem.

“Personally I’d never get into the ‘the sky is falling and we’ll have to have layoffs’ mode,” Dee Alpert, publisher of The Special Education Muckraker, wrote in an e-mail. The website is devoted to special- education issues. Alpert suggested instead that little is being done to ensure greater efficiency. “I’d scream like mad about the well-documented fraud, waste and corruption and demand to know exactly what’s being done to end it.”

Being on the receiving end of the bureaucratic knife is not new to New York City’s public schools, and while many acknowledge that times are hard for everyone, they express concern and frustration that children always seem to be the first to pay the price.

“We don’t need any more school cuts, we have too many kids cramped in these classrooms,” said L. Delacruz, a sixth-grade teacher at Bronx Middle School 206, whose son is a third-grader at Kingsbridge Heights. Delacruz said that teachers and staffers alike are already overwhelmed as it is with one teacher often having as many as 30 students in each classroom. “That’s a lot of kids,” she added. “You can’t get them to learn anything.”

Class size has been an increasingly pressing issue in the city’s overcrowded schools.

“Class sizes are growing at an accelerating pace. Now we face the prospect of losing 6,000 teachers, as the student population grows,” said Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, a non-profit dedicated to reducing the number of students per classroom. “Together that is going to mean increases in class sizes to their largest in 20 years.”

Haimson added that the city’s money is wasted on bureaucracy and contradictory measures.

“The Department of Education is spending $5 million on recruiting and training new teachers,” she said. “And at the same time they want to lay off 6,000 teachers.”

Marcus Winters, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, agreed.

“These cuts are particularly problematic in the city, which has spent the last three, four years really hiring new high quality teachers,” he said.

Others turn to those city agencies that were saved from the cuts to try to understand why schools are suffering so badly.

While Bloomberg had originally planned to cut 892 officer positions from the already downsized police department, he decided to leave the police untouched.

“Now the police is not getting cut because of all these terrorist threats,” said Delacruz, who admitted she wouldn’t know where to suggest cuts that would minimize damage to New Yorkers. “We shouldn’t see any cuts at all,” she said.

But the decision to cut teachers over police officers may have less to do with terrorism and more to do with financial interest, some suggest.

“This is a fiscal decision, police starting salaries are just much lower than ours,” said Mary Paranac, a fifth-grade teacher who has been working at Kingsbridge Heights for three years.

Mary Paranac with some of her students at Kingsbridge Heights School in the Bronx. (Speri/BronxInk)

Paranac added that she is especially worried about the criteria for these cuts, a concern raised by many. Some have suggested using test scores to determine layoffs, while others recommend the decision is based on seniority, though both methods leave teachers fearing for their jobs.

“I’m concerned about how this is going to happen,” Paranac said, adding that she thinks the cuts are likely to affect new teachers in the Teach for America program or other young teachers who have been on the job for only one or two years. Like other teachers, Paranac praised the Kinsgbridge Heights principal for his devotion to his staff, but said many Bronx schools are not as fortunate. “I have many friends who are scared about the safety of their jobs,” she said.

Laying off teachers based on seniority may affect the quality of the teaching, some fear.

“I think the research suggests that there is no systematic relationship between experience and effectiveness in the classroom,” said Marcus Winters of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, who opposed cuts by seniority and also suggested that the correlation between class size and quality of learning is not as strong as many believe. “The problem is that we are going to have a reduction in teachers’ quality,” he said.

While some laid-off teachers may be able to find employment elsewhere, many end up leaving education altogether.

“My sister-in-law was a teacher in the East Bronx but she was laid off with the last cuts,” said Esly Griffin, a young mother of two, at Kingsbridge Heights on her way to pick up her 8-year old son. “Now she works in a hotel. But that’s not her job. She went to college to be a teacher.”

Additional reporting by Sunil Joshi and Shreeya Sinha.

Department of Education and local representatives listen as students and community members urge them to leave University Heights High at its current location. (Photo: Sonia Dasgupta/The Bronx Ink)

The refrain was echoed by several students who took to the microphone to try to convince the small panel before them that the high school should not be forced to move from the Bronx Community College campus, part of the City University of New York (CUNY) network.

The school, which has been on the campus since 1986, is scheduled to be relocated to the South Bronx High School campus, where it would share space with Mott Haven Village Preparatory High School. But students, administrators and parents at University Heights have organized to fight the move – about three and a half miles away and to another school district – citing concerns about the school’s culture, safety and students’ commutes.

The college says that it needs the high school’s classroom space to serve the college’s growing student body. Enrollment has increased 46 percent from fall 2001 to fall 2009. In December of 2008, CUNY asked the Department of Education to look for a new location for University Heights, in anticipation of the trend continuing. And the college’s enrollment continues to climb: the figure increased by 1,500 students from last spring to this semester.

Judy Wexler, assistant principal at University Heights, said she was happy for the college that its enrollment has grown. But she said she was frustrated that there had been no talk of a compromise – such as using the high school classrooms for late afternoon and night classes only. “It’s not feeling like it’s an open dialogue,” she said.

At the meeting Tuesday night, she implored the Board of Education to find a way to keep the school in its current location until the college’s construction of a new building is complete, two years from now.

University Heights, which serves 450 students and has received A’s on its last two report cards, was founded with the idea that a presence on a college campus would help make college seem like a realistic and attainable option for its students. Some students are even able to take college courses while still in high school.

Multiple students spoke Tuesday night about the positive message that being on a college campus had sent to them, contrasting that with the new location: less than half a mile up the road from a juvenile detention center. That sends a message “that the next step is jail,” Maria Ruiz, a senior, said after the meeting.

Other students worried more about the safety of the proposed location, some recounting stories of gunshots and gang violence in the South Bronx that they didn’t have to worry about on a college campus. “When we go up those steps, we don’t have to worry about our cell phones or iPods” getting stolen, said junior Aurelis Troncoso.

But Troncoso’s biggest concern about her school’s future is whether she’ll be able to continue to attend. Right now she lives close enough to the school that she can walk if need be. If the school moves to a new location, she’d need to take a bus and two trains to get there. And with the transit authority getting rid of student MetroCards, she doesn’t know if she’d be able to afford the trip; her mother is an unemployed single parent.

Wexler is hopeful though, that even if the school is forced to move, the vast majority of student will continue to attend.

Although the speakers Tuesday night were mostly students, representatives from elected officials and from the teachers’ union also made appeals for the relocation plans to end. The students have set up meeting with council members and written hundreds of letters. And many of them remained optimistic that their voices would be heard in the end.

“I’m always hopeful of everything. I don’t think it’s over until it’s over,” junior Tyriq Greene said. “I don’t have money. All we have are words and actions.”

Schools in the underfed Bronx draw attention to the need for improvement in the National School Lunch Program. (Baez/Bronx Ink)

By Astrid Baez and Sunil Joshi

It was a single empty box on a form that Ivellisse Nebron had dutifully filled out for the past two years in applications for her 9-year-old daughter Lisbeth’s school lunch. Despite having taken the form to work to enlist the help of the more English-proficient hairdressers in filling out each individual box, Nebron forgot to include her Social Security number. The omission was enough to warrant a call to Nebron at work, warning that her daughter would go without lunch.

The counselor at 218 Rafael Hernandez Dual Language Magnet School in the Bronx informed Nebron that, as a result, Lisbeth would not be allowed to eat lunch that day. The tie-up illustrates a common complaint about the program that provides free lunches to children in the largest school district in the nation.

Under application guidelines, Nebron was required to submit her Social Security number because she provided income information. Her daughter was to be counted among the 82.1 percent of children living on or below the poverty line who eat lunch for free, according to the school’s most recent “Demographic and Accountability Snapshot” on the New York City Department of Education Web site. “My daughter’s been a student at that school since she was in kindergarten and for them to withhold a meal that would otherwise be free is senseless,” Nebron said.

The misstep in filling out the application was the last straw for Nebron who has joined several other parents and educators in a push to change the system. “There’s a lot of red tape involved and the application tends to cause confusion among some parents, not to mention the added stress of the stigma associated with free meals,” said Roxanne Henry, Community Outreach Manager at Food Bank for New York City. Of the 1.1 million students enrolled in the New York City public school system, more than 70 percent are eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunch, Henry said. “A significant number of these students don’t want to participate, because free food is associated with being poor.”

A report published by The New York Times on March 1, 2008, found that participation in the lunch program was as low as 40 percent in New York’s high schools.

“It’s not so much the case with the younger kids, but when you get to the high school level you’d be surprised by how many teens are not eating, because they don’t want other students to know that their parents can’t afford to pay,” said Agnes Molnar, co-director of Community Food Advocates in New York City.
Congress will soon debate renewal of the Child Nutrition Act, which determines school-food policy and resources. The legislation was originally passed in 1966 and must be renewed every five years. The law was up for renewal on Sept. 30, 2009, but it received a temporary extension through the Agriculture Appropriations Bill.

In advance of the coming debate, several food-advocacy groups are building support for an amendment to the legislation that would direct enough federal money to make free school lunches available to all students.

Food Bank of NYC, a member of the New York City Alliance for Child Nutrition Reauthorization, is championing the universal school meals provision claiming that “both the application process and the stigma associated with being identified as poor act as barriers to participation” in the school lunch program.

“This is not just an individual family issue anymore, it’s a community concern,” Henry said.

The coalition of food-advocacy groups is conducting a letter-writing campaign targeting city and state legislators, including Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gilibrand, to channel support for the universal school meals provision. Citing the current process as labor-intensive, inefficient and prone to inaccuracy, the organization is urging Congress to replace the application-based system with a data-driven one. As of January 2010, the Food Bank reported having received more than 1,500 petitions signed by parents from the Bronx alone.

Following federal guidelines, students are separated into three groups based on their family size and income relative to the poverty level, $18,310 for a family of three, and two earnings thresholds. Students are eligible for free lunches if their family income does not exceed the first threshold, set at 30 percent above the poverty line, or $28,803 for a family of three. Students pay full price for lunch if their family income exceeds the second threshold, 85 percent more than the poverty line, or $33,874 for a family of three. Students whose family income falls between the 30 percent benchmark and the 85 percent benchmark are eligible for discounted lunches.

Extending universal school lunches nationwide would cost roughly $12 billion, says Janet Poppendieck, a sociologist at Hunter College who wrote the book “Free for All: Fixing School Lunches in America,” though she cautions that this is a “back-of-the-envelope calculation.” The federal government currently spends $11 billion on lunch reimbursement, but Poppendieck said that the money could be procured through an increase in the graduated income tax. She also said that partial financing could come from the millions of dollars saved by eliminating tiered school-lunch programs. She pointed out a study of 29 schools by Community Food Advocates, which concluded that in 2006, New York City spent more than 1,000 person-hours per school to process and execute the three-tiered school-lunch program. That translated to a cost of $16,330 per school, or more than $24 million for the entire district.

“It’s so expensive, this process of determining each meal and where it fits in the categories,” she said. “It’s a massive undertaking.”

The plan to extend lunch benefits to all students also received support from the Department of Education. Eric Goldstein, who heads the food program for the Department of Education, said in a written statement that “the benefits of the Childhood Nutrition Reauthorization would be a win for NYC public school students because it would help defray the costs for improved menu items that call for healthier ingredients, and it would help us to expand our universal lunch program. We have worked very hard over the past six years developing more nutritious options for both breakfast and lunch.”

Dr. Susan Rubin, a dentist and certified nutritionist, agrees that the cost of administering the current application system is high and wasteful, and could be redirected to implementing new food standards.

“We need to come up with a new paradigm and one that connects this issue directly to health care,” said Rubin, founder of the Better School Food movement turned non-profit, a proponent of universal school meals and putting better food in lunch rooms. Rubin believes that there should be a greater emphasis on providing healthier food, removing the “à la carte” option from lunch rooms that divide kids into “haves” and “have nots.”

In an open letter to parents, Rubin makes the connection between tight budgets, the need for cafeterias to make a profit for survival serving poor quality food that is “quick, cheap and profitable” and the resulting deterioration of children’s health. “Our kids are getting food that is downright dangerous,” Rubin said, “we can pay now or pay later.”

“Education is a right. Fight, fight, fight,” chanted the crowd as they listened to speeches from students and representatives from organizations fighting to defend the right to free education. Today’s protests also included walkouts at Hunter College, NYU, and the New School, while other rallies took place at City Hall, Queens College, CCNY, the CUNY graduate center, and Lehman College.

Protesters rallied against budget cuts in education. (Ian Thomson / The Bronx Ink)

Activists’ Web sites said they are demonstrating against CUNY tuition hikes, the elimination of free student Metrocards, mayoral control of the board of education, and the privatization of public schools. A loose coalition of political groups sponsored the protests including the CUNY Professional Staff Congress Union and groups at NYU and the New School that were responsible for the occupation of school buildings last year.

A blog created to promote the protests listed the diverse interests of the participants apart from supporting public education: “Money for… Hospitals, Housing and Jobs, No Budget Cuts, No Layoffs, No CUNY Tuition, No More Money for War, No Money for the Military Occupation of Haiti, No More Money for Corporate America!”

Paterson’s education policies have been sharply criticized in recent months. At the beginning of this school year, CUNY tuition went up $295 per semester. In October of last year, the state legislature rejected Paterson’s proposal to cut $686 million in state school aid. At the end of 2009, the governor withheld $190 million in state payments from the public school system, about $84 million of which was due to New York City schools. Paterson has said these drastic measures were necessary to keep the state from insolvency.

Matt Anderson, a spokesman from the governor’s budget office, said that the proposed cuts were ” a difficult choice in terms of closing the budget deficit,” which he said was now approaching $9 billion. He said that reductions were being made across every area and not being targeted solely at education.

“What we’re proposing is to provide flexibility to SUNY and CUNY to provide more rational tuition increases based on inflation,” Anderson said. He said the proposed system would prevent students from facing tuition hikes during fiscal crises when the state needs to close the budget shortfall.

Additional reporting by Ian Thomson

Video produced by Lynsey Chutel and Tracy Thompson

New York State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. (right) lets Francisco Garabitos (left) address the press after interrupting a protest. Garrabitos who spent time in the rubber room said, "I don't like people talking about teachers without listening to the teachers." (Mamta Badkar/The Bronx Ink)

A yellow school bus pulled up outside 501 Courtlandt Ave. at noon today. Instead of students though, it carried New York State Senator Rubén Diaz Sr., Assemblyman Marcos Crespo, members of the New York Hispanic Clergy Organization and concerned parents. The group got off the door of a Bronx rubber room.

Created as part of a contractual measure to prevent the arbitrary dismissal of teachers in city schools, these centers serve as temporary reassignment for teachers awaiting disciplinary action. About 100 teachers are believed to show up here five days a week, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. They are assigned to rooms in which they do not teach. They get holidays off, including the snow day yesterday, and an hour for lunch, but only a handful stepped outside in the presence of the reporters.

Today, about 25 protesters rallied to cries of “let’s close the rubber rooms,” to draw attention to the strain the reassignment centers place on city funds.

“At a time when we’re looking at severe budget cuts, why is the city continuing a process that is throwing money down the drain when the money is so desperately needed in our classrooms?” Crespo said.

The New York Post recently revealed that teachers in the rubber room had been waiting up to seven years without stepping foot into a functional classroom, though still earning publicly financed salaries. State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. objected to the system, which he said wastes city money and leaves teachers hanging in the interim. One teacher who did not wish to be identified said he was sent to a reassignment center for being caught driving under the influence of alcohol.

“If they are guilty they should be expelled, if they are innocent they should be put back in the classroom, but they cannot continue paying 660 teachers for sitting down and doing nothing,” Diaz said. “I’m asking our leader to allow me to submit and pass in the Senate legislation to end this parasite.”

As many as 660 teachers are believed to be in limbo across 12 rubber rooms in the city while they await the arbitration of their cases. For some, like Francisco Garabitos, the wait is too long. He quit in July 2009, a few months after he was arrested on accusations that he had falsely claimed to have planted a bomb at New Millenium Business Academy Middle School. Garrabitos said he spent $10,000 suing the Department of Education.

“The assumption is that if you’re in there, you’re guilty,” Garabitos said. “The teachers deserve due process, too.”

Mubina Maricar instructs her students at the Islamic Leadership School. The school has 18 students, from pre-K to ninth grade. Photo By Mustafa Mehdi Vural

On a typical December morning in the Bronx’s only Islamic private school,  Mubina Maricar, a 62-year-old science teacher,  strained to be heard above the students’ voices reciting in unison from the adjacent classroom.

Her eight students in grades six through nine were learning about speed, velocity and acceleration. Five boys in the front rows and three veiled girls in the back seats were busily taking notes and answering the teachers’ questions, unfazed by the Qur’an verses emanating through the thin walls.

“Qul’A'udhu bi-rabbin-nas” (I seek refuge in the Lord of mankind).

“Melikin-Nas, Ilahin-Nas” (The king of mankind, the true God of mankind).

Suddenly, the recitation halted. Al-Aqib Coulibaly, the only 2^nd grader in the Parkchester school, raised the light blue curtain covering the door between the classes, and walked into Maricar’s room.

Al-Aqib Coulibaly, the only 2nd grader, attends the Islamic Leadership School with his four brothers. Students wore their winter coats because the portable heaters were not enough to heat the classrooms. Photo By Mustafa Mehdi Vural

The 7-year-old looked at the numbers and formulas on the small green board for a moment, then, walked between the boys and girls to grab an extra Qur’an from the shelf.

Al-Aqib then sauntered back to his classroom where three other students, including his older brother Ismail, were waiting.

Al-Aqib was not having his best day. He had forgotten to memorize his Qur’an verses. He couldn’t find his Arabic homework. He neglected to say, “As-salamu aleykum” (peace be upon you), when he entered the room.  Rules were not his favorite thing.

Al-Aqib tightened his black scarf around his head and arranged his black winter coat, as he took his seat in his classroom. Students in both classrooms were wearing their winter coats on Dec. 10 because the small portable heaters were insufficient to heat the classrooms.

Al-Aqib and his brothers are students of the Islamic Leadership School, an private school at 2008 Westchester Ave., founded on September 11, 2001 with 13 students. The school has grown to 18 students over the last eight years, to include children from pre-kindergarten to 9^th grade.

The school is a part of an umbrella organization Islamic Cultural Center of North America (ICCNA), a Bronx-based organization that operates both the school and the mosque Masjid Al-Iman.

“My wife and I have one prenuptial agreement,” said Moussa Drammeh, 47, the school’s founder and operations manager.

“It was, if Allah blesses us to have children, they will never go to public school,” said Drammeh, who was born in Gambia, raised in Senegal, and immigrated to the United States in 1986. He is the executive director of ICCNA and the imam of Masjid Al-Iman.

The Drammehs wanted to shield their children from what they believe is the immoral and corrupt behavior of public school children. “In the public schools in the Bronx, children can walk around with their pants hanging down. Thirteen-year-old girls are having sex; they exchange dirty emails,” said Drammeh, who has lived in the Bronx since 1986.

Shireena Drammeh, the school's principal, goes over the course material with Qur'an teacher M. D. Amin ul-Islam. Photo By Mustafa Mehdi Vural

He and his wife began looking for an Islamic school in the Bronx when their first daughter Ameena turned three years old.

They found none in the Bronx, said Shireena Drammeh, 38, who was born in Guyana into a Muslim family of Indian descent immigrated to the United States in 1986.

They checked out Islamic schools in Yonkers, Queens, New Jersey and Brooklyn.

“We went to Long Island, and found a school there. But unfortunately, the taxes there were horrendous,” said Shireena. “Then, we came back and we decided to start our own school.”

Few families resort to creating their own school like the Drammehs, but a growing number of parents are turning to existing private Islamic schools so that their children learn Islamic principles while acquiring basic state-required education.

“Parents are just awakening to the identity issue, and Islamic schools really are very important to establish Muslim identity for kids,” said Karen Keyworth, 52, co-founder of the Islamic Schools League of America, the only non-profit national organization that keeps track of and network full-time Islamic private schools across the U.S.

There were just 50 schools in 1987, said Keyworth referring to the first small-scale research ever done about this subject. Until the founding of the League, there had been no organization keeping track of Islamic schools in the country and doing research about them. According to the League’s research, the school numbers have not changed since the late 1990s. There are 240 full-time Islamic schools in the country with 32,000 students approximately according to the 2006 data.

New York and New Jersey combined have 17 percent of the Islamic school population in the United States, said Keyworth, who is married with four children and lives in Michigan where she manages the League. Keyworth converted to Islam 32 years ago.

The Islamic Leadership School was scheduled to open on what turned out to be a tragic day–September 11, 2001. Drammeh called an emergency meeting the moment he learned that the World Trade Center towers had been attacked by Al-Qaeda extremists.

“Some parents worried about retaliation, saying we should postpone opening,” said Drammeh. But, he refused. “Let the world know the difference between the criminals and peace-loving Muslims,” said Drammeh.  And the school has been open ever since.

Tuition for The Islamic Leadership School, located at 2008 Westchester Avenue in the Bronx, is $3,500 a year. Photo By Mustafa Mehdi Vural

The school takes up small part of the first floor of two-story 25,000 square-foot building on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx. The building used to be car repair shop, with a warehouse on the first floor and a parking lot on the second floor.

Inside the entrance is a large hall, with two administrative offices on the left that include two computers for students and a big mat spread over the floor where boys learn martial arts. At the end of the hall, two doors open out to a larger room for the mosque, Masjid Al-Imam, a vast space covered with plastic carpets for Muslims in the school and the community to pray.

Drammeh has plans to renovate the building and expand the school through high school and college.

For now, expansion plans are on hold as the school struggles to pay its rent, and finish renovations, which is in its third year.

Parents pay up to $3,500 a year for the school. “The tuition fees can just pay two teachers full salaries,” said Drammeh. The school relies completely on tuition and fundraising dollars, neither of which is substantial.

For the last four months, the school has not been able to pay its monthly $10,000 rent to the landlord, who is a Muslim immigrant from the Balkans.

“If he kills us, he goes to jail,” said Drammeh smiling. “If he exercises patience, Allah rewards him,” he added. “He chose the reward.”

“All the private schools by and large are in financial trouble,” said Keyworth. Islamic schools are not exceptions. Tuition and donations from the local community provide the school’s sole source of income, which barely cover operating costs.

“Our weakest ring is fundraising,” said Drammeh. The donations are almost non-existent.

But Drammeh would rather not talk business. The school for him is not a place of business. Pointing out his heart, he said he began the school with his heart, not with his brain.

The struggling school often admits students whose parents cannot afford to pay the $3500 tuition. Sometimes Drammeh strikes a bargain with the parents.

Al-Aqib’s mother, Berill Barna, 34, works as a cleaning woman and kindergarten aide at the school in exchange for the tuition for her five sons.

“There are 475 kids in our registry that we are in contact with, but could not offer education because of lack of space,” said Drammeh.

The majority of the school’s students come from Africa or Middle Eastern countries, which reflect the demographic changes in the Bronx Muslim population, which has been growing steadily with immigrants from Mali, Ghana, Gambia, and other West African and Middle Eastern countries.

“We are a big family here and it is a protected environment for our kids,” said Barna, who is a Polish immigrant and converted to Islam 11 years ago. Barna is married to a Muslim man from the Ivory Coast.

“We are family,” said Amani Ahmed, a 14-year-old of Yemeni origins, and the school’s only 9^th grader, tucking her hair under a black headscarf. “We see everyone almost every day and everywhere.”

This could not be truer for Drammeh’s children, Ameena, a 12-year-old 8^th grader; Mohammed, a 10-year-old 6^th grader, and Mariam – Drammeh’s 9-year-old epileptic dauther in the 1st grade. They have become used to seeing their father Moussa and mother Shireena Drammeh almost every hour of every day, not just at home but at school since the first day she started the kindergarten.

Uniforms are a casual requirement: navy blue pants and white shirts for boys, and navy blue skirts and white, blue or black headscarves for girls.

Ameena Drammeh wants to be a doctor. Her parents checked out other Islamic schools in Yonkers, Queens, New Jersey and Brooklyn before founding The Islamic Leadership School. Photo By Mustafa Mehdi Vural

“Actually boys wear uniform,” corrected Ameena and Amani. “The girl’s uniform is just to cover yourself,” added Amani. “No matter what you wear, the important thing is to cover yourself.”

The school starts at 8 a.m. and last until 4 p.m. except Fridays when it ends after “Salaat-ul-Jummah,” Friday prayer. On other weekdays, the students have to pray “dhuhr,” the noon prayer, and “asr,” afternoon prayer with their teachers in the masjid.

They are not allowed to leave the building during breaks, including lunch breaks, except on Fridays when they are allowed to go out with their teachers and even to eat some junk food.

Along with Arabic, Qur’an and Islamic Studies, a school day at the Islamic Leadership School is filled with standard academic subjects like English, Sciences, History, Math, and Geography. The school has seven teachers, all Muslim and women, except for the 28-year-old Qur’an teacher, M. D. Amin ul-Islam from Bangladesh.

Last year, 15 students took the Regents exams and “four of them did 100 percent out of 100 percent of the test, excellent,” said Drammeh while the rest passed the test with Level 4, the second highest score, added his wife Shireena Drammeh.

“When I walked in here, I saw that they needed help,” said Maricar, who had taught in Britain, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.  before she came to the Islamic Leadership School at the beginning of this academic year. She is not highly paid, “not like other schools or like public schools,” said Maricar. “But, I do not want to teach in public schools.”

Maricar teaches math, science and biology, which includes evolution.

“I tell the students that this is what scientists are telling us,” said Maricar, about the theory of evolution.”We do not want to be narrow minded,” added Maricar, who was born in Kenya and raised in Great Britain, graduated from the University of Sheffield in England. “But, this is not what Qur’an is saying.”

There is no music course at the Islamic Leadership School. “I do not oppose music in principle,” said Drammeh, “as long as there is no dancing, no slang and curse in lyrics and no profanity.” The music of  prominent convert Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, is an example of the kind he approves of.

Nor does the school provide physical activities for its students.

“We teach martial arts to the boys,” said Drammeh. But, there was nothing for girls.

The school has been part of an interfaith program with the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan, a Jewish school. School founder Moussa Drammeh explains another project called "two holy states in the Holy Land" for the peace in the Middle East. Photo By Mustafa Mehdi Vural

There will be a play named “Healthy Islamic Relationships,” that the students will be performing later in the academic year. And, there is a character for a female student to play.

The play authored by Moussa Drammeh is about Islamic gender roles and relationships between the sexes. The character called the “Groom” explains to the “Bride” how a healthy relationship works in Islam. Under his protection, the groom expects his wife to take care of the house and to aspire to be a professional, such as a doctor, lawyer, artist or banker.  The bride aggressively bombards the groom with questions, but in the end, happily agrees with him.

For the last five years, the Islamic Leadership School has been part of an interfaith program with the Jewish school, Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan.

“I actually got to learn more about Judaism and their beliefs and studies and we also got to meet lots of friends,” said Amani. “I taught the Jewish children about Islam. I think they know more about Islam than they did before.”

By noon on December 10th, students prepared for lunch by first performing “wuduu,” the Islamic cleansing ritual for “dhuhr,” the noon prayer.

Adel Mohammed recites the call for prayer. He returned to the school three years after he lived in Yemen. Photo By Mustafa Mehdi Vural

The seventh grader, Adel Mohammed, 13, knew that day it was his turn to recite “adhan,” the Muslim call to prayer, for “dhuhr.”

He put the palms of his hands over his ears, and started to recite.  Students and teachers flocked to the dark blue plastic carpet of the masjid; men and boys lined up in the front carpet while women and girls lined up at the back.

Al-Aqib straggled in late to the prayer.

]]> http://bronxink.org/2009/12/14/2206-inside-the-only-islamic-school-in-the-bronx/feed/ 3 http://bronxink.org/2009/12/14/2658-at-the-risk-of-being-positive/ http://bronxink.org/2009/12/14/2658-at-the-risk-of-being-positive/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:58:46 +0000 Mamta Badkar http://bronxink.org/?p=2658 By Mamta Badkar

Awilda Colon sets up OraQuick tests for HIV/AIDS inside the Bronx AIDS Services van at Highbridge Community Church on November 22. Residents of Highbridge, like Joy Felder availed of the free testing services. Photo by Mamta Badkar

Joy Felder waited patiently inside the plain white van parked next to the Highbridge Community Church in the South Bronx. Health workers hired by Bronx AIDS Services were offering free HIV/AIDS tests inside for anyone who showed up.

Sitting on the couch in an army green jacket, her hair pulled back in a severe bun, the mother of two said she wanted the test to ease her mind. A few months ago, she let down her guard and had unprotected sex. “It’s easy to lose focus when you’re in the moment and tensions are high,” Felder said, waiting patiently for her turn.

Felder heard about the free testing service from a friend, but believes programs like this are critical in the Bronx. Bronx AIDS Services, a non-profit health organization, relies on federal and private funding to provide free testing in areas with the highest HIV/AIDS rates and poverty levels.

Highbridge has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS cases in in the Bronx, twice the city’s average.  The Bronx Knows, a borough-wide HIV/AIDS testing initiative which partners with over 70 agencies including Bronx AIDS Services, identified 1,506 new cases of HIV/AIDS in the Bronx as of June 2009.  Of the 433 Bronx residents diagnosed with HIV in 2008, 118 have been living with full blown AIDS, according to the New York City Department of Mental Health and Hygiene.

Why so high? “There’s a fair amount of bisexuality and incredible poverty,” said Dr. Donna Futterman, Director of the Adolescent AIDS Program, Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx. “HIV tracks poverty so it combines to be a heavy hit neighborhood,” she said of Highbridge and Morissania.

Futterman said transmission rates have continued to rise in these neighborhoods, even as they decrease elsewhere. “For every 100 people, three are HIV positive in that community,” she said, but reasoned that increased testing would naturally reveal increased diagnoses.

“We’ve let this epidemic languish,” said Futterman. “There’s great work being done but there’s a lot of competing priorities. And if you look at Highbridge and Morissania, you’ll get a picture of them.”

Funding is a perennial issue. An inventory of HIV cases published by the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors and the Kaiser Family Foundation in July, found that funding for HIV prevention has been flat since 2004,  with the exception of a $35 million increase in 2007 for the Centers for Disease Control to expand testing. But this new funding has yet to influence the rate of HIV/AIDS in neighborhoods like Highbridge, which remains alarmingly high, even with the efforts by Bronx AIDS Services to increase awareness since 1986.

A tester with Bronx AIDS services has not seen any funding increase for her work in Highbridge and Morrisania over the last decade.  “Instead of us having five groups a week, we’ll have to cut them down to two or one group a week,” said Awilda Colon, who began this work after her sister died of HIV/AIDS in 1993. “They keep cutting. Since the funding is less, the services are less. It actually affects the services that we provide which is sad.”

Now, three Bronx AIDS Services vans cover the Bronx five days a week and sometimes, on weekends. To cast a wide net and maximize its outreach, Bronx AIDS Services also develops ties with community organizations and health fairs. Testing has increased 35 percent since The Bronx Knows first launched its free testing effort in 2008.

A Turkey and a Test?

Meanwhile, Bronx AIDS Services is doing its best to let Highbridge residents know that AIDS testing is available to them. At the Highbridge Community Church on November 22, Marvin Freeman, peer adviser with Bronx AIDS Services, approached people standing on line along Ogden Avenue for a Thanksgiving food distribution organized by another local social service organization, the Muslim Women’s Institute for Research and Development.

“There’s a wonderful van in the back full of resources just for you. There’s also free HIV/AIDS testing available back there,” said Freeman as he distributed condoms and literature on HIV/AIDS. “It’s confidential so no fingerprint and in about 10 minutes you’ll know exactly where you are with this.”

Freeman, looking fit in a black coat and fedora, recognized himself in some of the people in line.  As an HIV-positive gay man and former drug addict, he found himself saying to those he was reaching out to, “I didn’t always look this way, I was in the same exact situation you were.” This ability to bridge the gap between himself and others, made his work easier.

“I was out here in a bad situation drugs, alcohol and no hope,” said Freeman, who first used Bronx AIDS Services himself five years ago as a resource for free handouts. “I’m HIV positive and I have Hepatitis C, and I found out about this program. They had men’s groups at that time that I joined and I used to go just for the Metrocard and the food. I wasn’t looking for relief.”

When he spots people living in isolated, single-room residences, in a situation that is all too familiar, he goes the extra mile to help them. To Freeman, it’s not the disease that is a death sentence, it is the denial.

Denise Richards of The Muslim Women's Institute for Research and Development who helped with the food distribution on November 22, understands the importance of initiatives like The Bronx Knows. In neighborhoods like Highbridge which have twice the HIV/AIDS rate of New York city, hyperlocal efforts make all the difference. Photo by Mamta Badkar

Outreach workers like Freeman are effective because they understand the desperation and through shared experiences, inspire hope. “They don’t view us as outsiders coming in to help them,” said Denise Richards, an executive with the Muslim Women’s Institute. “They kind of see us as equal.  ‘I know Denise she lives three blocks away, she works right here. When she’s speaking to me, she’s speaking to me as my equal.’”

The three free AIDS testing vans operated by Bronx AIDS Services work in teams of five. Two peer educators, a supervisor, a tester and the driver set out about nine on weekdays, in vans to conduct tests and increase awareness. On November 22, they handed out $5 McDonald’s coupons as an incentive to those getting tested.

Each mobile van is required by Bronx AIDS Services to test 56 people a month. One worker said she had sometimes tested a 120 a month. “There have been times when I’ve tested 120 but funding doesn’t allow for more so now I get up to 60 done,” said Colon.

She first administers the Oraquick Advance, an oral swab. If that turns out positive, Colon administers OraSure samples, which are sent to labs. In her 12 years as a tester, Colon said she has only ever had two false positives, both of which occurred because the women were pregnant.

Colon also preps clients, assesses their mental health, informs them about support groups and arranges for medical services through Bronx AIDS Services.

“A lot of times, domestic violence plays a part in not using protection, so it’s just a host of problems that we encounter,” said Colon. “People still think it’s a disease for junkies or gay people and that it can’t happen to them.” But the face of the disease is often is a stay-at-home wife or a senior citizen.

“In my heart I wish people would understand that this is just a sickness like any other sickness, like cancer or diabetes,” said Colon.

Breaking the Religion’s Barriers

Often, religious beliefs conflict with HIV prevention. In an effort to reconcile ideological differences, programs like The Bronx Knows have collaborated with community partners that include religious organizations, Bronx hospitals, major community health clinics and universities.  Muslim Women’s Institute for Research and Development joined with The Bronx Knows in 2008.

In 1997 Nurah Amat’ullah first launched The Muslim Women’s Institute as a kitchen table organization in response to what she believed were her community’s unmet needs. Hunger relief was its first effort. From there the institute branched out to serving other needs, including health scares like HIV/AIDS.

The Institute took on a formal structure in 2005 with an office in the Highbridge section of the Bronx.

“In an area like Highbridge where we have the highest incidences of new infection for people 18 to 24 years of age we would not be a good neighbor not just as an organization, but even as Muslims, if we did not do something to respond to the crisis that faces this community that we are in,” said Amat’ullah. She believes that Muslims constitute about 10 percent of the Bronx population, but that number is difficult to nail down, because records are not kept by religious affiliation.

“We’re still very much a community that is motivated, instructed and guided by what is said at the front of the room in our houses of worship, what is said at the front of the room at the masjid (mosque),” said Amat’ullah. “Our goal is to get more of the Imams to talk to people about the challenges of HIV/AIDS, the responsibility as people, as good human beings to check and know our status.”

The author of a book based on HIV and AIDS in the Muslim community, Farid Esack argued that Muslims have the responsibility to teach other Muslims about the risks of HIV and AIDS from a religious standpoint.  In “HIV, AIDS and Islam,” published in 2004, Esack said Muslims are of the opinion that HIV/AIDS is caused by haram (behavior that is prohibited), like promiscuity and pre-marital sex, and do not acknowledge other means of transmission such as drug abuse, alcoholism, domestic violence, rape and poverty.

“Definitely within the Muslim religion, you know condoms are not condoned. You have your wife and your husband and you’re supposed to have children. So Muslim men and women definitely feel like that’s a no-no,” said Richards. “It’s a very personal choice that they make within their household, between them and their God.”

Muslims in favor of using protection against sexually transmitted diseases seek to dispel the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDs by referring to verses of the Qu’ran and the Prophet’s Hadiths (sayings of Prophet Muhammad) that discuss Islamic values of compassion.

“I tend to come down on the human-compassion side,” said Amat’ullah. “I don’t act in judgment of people’s lifestyle or practices, but try to find ways to give them some ease, some comfort, some protection, against a disease which at this point is still incurable,” said Amat’ullah.

Peer adviser Marvin Freeman plays the piano inside Highbridge Community Church when he takes a break from outreach. Freeman a gay, HIV positive man believes that music and religion have the power to heal. Photo by Mamta Badkar

Often confronted by those who look at HIV/AIDS as a punishment for moral transgressions, Amat’ullah views the disease and the stigma associated with it as an equal opportunity crisis. “Not just for Muslims but for other faith communities, people often believe that if you contract this disease, then you’re being punished by God for something you did.”

But this is fast changing. Dr. Futterman in her work has found African church leaders and imams taking up the fight.

For Freeman, his HIV diagnosis nine years ago was the beginning of his life. “It was like a divine interruption, if you would, and now I’m healthier,” he said. It allowed him to “plug into his life” and reach out to the community at The First Corinthians Baptist Church in Harlem.

“Relationships in Christianity allow you to be effective, to reach the poor, the destitute, the lonely, you know that’s what it’s all about,” said Freeman. “I’m not like the 20^th century leper and I let that be known to the religious community.”

Bronx International High School students learn that some of their favorite foods in their new home, New York City, may not be so good for them. Photo by Amanda Staab

Most people who immigrate to the United States come seeking a better life, but a group of young newcomers in the Bronx are finding that some things were better back home in Central America.

“All the food that my mother used to cook over there, everything was fresh,” said Maria Mota, who explained that it is quite common for homes in the Dominican Republic to have their own fruit and vegetable gardens. “Here, we have to go to the supermarket.” And there, she said, the produce can be many days and thousands of miles from the soil where it was grown.

That’s one of the issues Mota and five fellow seniors at Bronx International High School in Morrisania are currently exploring in a city-run internship program that aims at helping teens learn more about getting healthy food in their new country.

Learn It, Grow It, Eat It, is run by the Council on the Environment of New York City. It replaces regularly scheduled classes every Friday, when students meet from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with the project director, David Saphire.

“The food that is brought to New York comes from far away,” said senior Juan Carlos Vasquez, who immigrated four years ago, “so it loses vitamins.” In the Bronx, more specifically, it is sometimes even more difficult to find vitamin-rich foods, as most of the grocery stores are bodegas with  limited selections.

Shoppers, however, can get fresher, locally grown food at the Greenmarket near Lincoln Hospital, where the students recently filmed a short public service announcement explaining how to use food stamps at farmers’ markets. Mota, who’s been in this country seven years — the longest of anyone in the group –  narrated the video in both English and Spanish, while two other girls in the program, Nioluis Vargas and Patricia De La Rosa, acted out a purchase with an EBT card. When the video is ready, it could either appear on a local cable TV station or on the council’s web site.

The kids said it’s important to let people in the Bronx know that they can, in fact, get better produce, even if they are on food stamps.“Even though they want to, they don’t know they can buy fresh fruits from the Greenmarket,” said De La Rosa. The students prefer the Greenmarket, they said, because it carries many of the foods they recognize.

They also recently finished getting plots in three separate community gardens ready for the winter. They’ve spent weeks weeding out what remains of the last harvest and planting garlic, activities that they said remind them of their chores back home. “I used to do it in my home country,” said Vasquez, who also volunteered to do a little landscaping when a few branches on a tree in one of the gardens needed trimming.

Now that the weather has changed, the students have retreated to a classroom at the council’s headquarters on Chambers Street in lower Manhattan. Sitting at a long table flanked by overflowing bookshelves, they took a closer look at their eating and drinking habits, decoding the nutrition labels of some of their favorite foods.

“They’re trying to make it seem like this is a very healthy drink, but if you look at the very small print here, it says 30 percent juice,” said Saphire, holding up an empty bottle with pictures of fruit on its label. The other 70 percent, the students quickly guessed correctly, is sugar and water.

Saphire got out a box of sugar, a teaspoon, and a plastic drinking cup to demonstrate exactly how much sugar that would be. The students said that discovery has been the most surprising so far.

“I was consuming a lot of sugar,” said Vasquez, who had returned from his lunch run with only a stack of cheese to eat. “I’m trying to change my diet to something different because I have seen the stuff I am eating is not healthy for me.” His teacher joked that he could start by eating dairy products in moderation.

In addition to showing the students exactly how much sugar they could be drinking on a daily basis and emphasizing a balance in diet, Saphire also interjected tidbits of business theory. He explained that soda manufacturers often use high-fructose corn syrup, thought by some to lead to diabetes, instead of sugar because it’s cheaper. It also has a longer shelf life.

When the topic moved on to fast food, the kids were not surprised to learn that fresh fruit and vegetables are probably healthier than what they admitted was their favorite American cuisine, McDonald’s.

“It’s like something magic that makes it taste good,” said Vargas, who came to New York from Honduras four years ago. That “magic,” Saphire explained, is really all the salt, fat, and sugar. He has developed a McDonald’s IQ test that most of his students, and many adults, fail.

“Sometimes, things are very deceiving there,” said Saphire. “You think your common sense tells you which has the most fat, and then you’re wrong.” One surprise:  the deluxe warm cinnamon roll has more trans fat than a double quarter pounder with cheese.

De La Rosa was very surprised by the sodium in ketchup, 110 mg per packet –  a third of the salt in a large order of fries.

“I can’t live without ketchup,” she said. Last year, she used to go to McDonald’s with her friends every Friday after school, but this year, she’s already cut back to “sometimes.”

The point of the exercise, said Saphire, is not to scare the kids away from McDonald’s. “I’m not here to say, ‘Don’t go to McDonald’s,’ ” he said, “but I want them, when they are going to go, to get a sense of what they are eating.”

Saphire is an environmental scientist, not a nutritionist, but since he helped start the educational program six years ago, he’s become more knowledgeable and wants his students to know the difference between natural and processed foods. “It’s more like what does a reasonably intelligent person need to know to make an informed decision,” he said.

In addition to their lessons in nutrition, the students also sometimes get a bit of an English tutorial, covering forgotten and new words alike. In a recent week, words of the day were sausage, dilution, and bootleg. “It’s part of what I try to do also, build up certain vocabulary, whatever comes up,” said Saphire. In turn, the kids, he said, have inspired him to take a Spanish class.

When they have finally mastered the basics in food, the students plan to also offer a class for fellow students back at the high school and, maybe, other city schools.

“They don’t know what they are doing to themselves,” said Mota, “like the way that they eat, the type of food that they eat, so they are getting sick and stuff like that. So, we’re trying to tell them how to read the labels, so they know how many calories and how many teaspoons of sugar they are putting in their bodies.”

The students are also happy to expand their sphere of influence. “It’s not just helping in one place,” said Vasquez. “We are going to help many people.”

The program is also not only about food. After finding a broomstick and a tennis ball in one of the gardens, Saphire taught the kids an old American pastime, stickball. “We don’t have the tennis ball anymore,” said Vasquez, who immediately let out a laugh and confessed he was the one who lost it.

The internship coordinator at the Bronx International High School, Deo Persaud, said that it’s good for the kids to get out of the traditional classroom. “We are giving them the opportunity to develop job skills and also get a feel for the work environment before they graduate high school,” he said. The Bronx International High School, part of the Morris High School campus, serves approximately 360 students, many of whom will enter the workforce right after graduation, said Persaud.

All the students in the Learn It, Grow It, Eat It internship program said they plan to go to college, but not to study something food-related, they said — instead, they’ll look for  something “money-related.”

High achieving JHS 123 eighth graders credit incentives for the student's motivation to excel. Photo by Maia Efrem

Stuffed toys, colorful pencils and stickers tempted the sixth grader in a pony tail at the ZONE store located in the cafeteria at the James M. Kieran Junior High School 123. Her turn was next. She deliberated for awhile, then picked the pink pencil with yellow smiley faces and hearts.

Pulling out a Monopoly-sized bill, the girl handed over $5 and walked out, quickly showing off the pencil to the students still on the line.

Principal Virginia Connelly, now in her 12th year at JHS 123, instituted the ZONE incentive program in the fall of 2006 to reward children for good behavior, attendance and high test scores. Teachers hand out fake $10, $20, $50 bills to deserving students use to buy pens, stickers, stuffed animals, Yankee hats, and other novelty items.

“We did $1,200 worth of business today,” said Kellyanne Royce, the school’s guidance counselor in charge of the store. ZONE stands for “Zest for learning, One for all and all for one, No excuses, Exercise daily.”

Junior High School 123 on Morrison Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard has had a long history of low academic scores. Its students are predominately minority and poor — with 35 percent of the population black, 64 percent Latino, 1 percent other. Two years ago, 90 percent of students came from families receiving public assistance. Today that number is 98 percent.

This year, for the first time, the scores went up high enough to remove the school from the state’s Schools Under Registration Review (SURR) list for under-performing schools.

In the spring of 2009, JHS 123 received an “A” on the Chancellor’s Progress Report. About 56 percent of the students read on grade level, up from 22.2 percent the year before.  Math scores were 66.7 percent, an increase from 41.8 percent. In addition, 267  out of its 567 students finished the semester on the honor roll–up from 148 the year before.

The principal, Virginia  Connelly, called this a  ”staggering success.” She credits the progress to a series of initiatives, including lower class sizes for math and English, a new program the builds in parent participation and federally  mandated tutoring, paid for by city and state dollars that will dry up now that the school has shown so much success.

But by far, the most controversial program has been the new and varied ways kids can now earn extra privileges. For example, teachers decided to allow the best-behaved homeroon to eat in the plush ZONE Lounge for a week. Formerly a teacher’s cafeteria, the large room has comfortable sofas and armchairs, a television, and video games for the students.

Assistant Principal David Rodriguez said the lounge idea is one of the most popular. “The kids go nuts for it,” he said, laughing. “Every homeroom competes with another to see who will be the best behaved and get use of the lounge.”

Students can also earn cash for taking the practice tests leading up to the state tests. The students receive $10 for taking the exam and an added $50 for scoring 100 percent. “It’s difficult to get them to come to school to take the test,” said Connelly. By the end of the year some of the students had earned upwards of $450.

Some said they used their test money to buy medication and other household necessities. But most spent it on themselves.  One particular student had to hide the money from his drug addicted mother. Connelly worked with Washington Mutual Bank to help students open a secret savings account where he could keep the money safe.

Another student, with dreams of attending Brooklyn Tech High School, saved every penny of his earnings for a new laptop and supplies for school. He put aside money for transportation as well allowing himself a weekly splurge on an express bus from Bronx to Brooklyn.

Wearing a black cardigan, star-shaped earrings, and heavy black eyeliner, eighth grader Karen Cruz, a member of the student council, said she has seen the gradual change in her three years at the school. “It’s like we all started to care and wanted to do better. It’s an amazing feeling when you do well, and you know that you did it,” she said

Attendance was also in the mix of behavior that could earn students rewards. Each eighth grade homeroom was thrown a pizza party for raising attendance rates — now at 93 percent for the eighth grade. This is an incentive 13 year-old Tiffany de Losangeles thinks works. “Why shouldn’t we get prizes and rewards? We work so hard it’s the least that we could get,” said de Losangeles. “Clearly it works, our school is doing so well.”

Her brother, Tommy de Losangeles, 15, was left back twice before, but is now treasurer of the student council. He won an Xbox 360 last year, one of the many raffle prizes the school gives out. “We get excited. For the prizes, pizza parties, and school,” he said.

“Find me an adult who does work without a thought of compensation. Why do people think kids don’t think like that as well?” said Connelly.”If I say to them being a good citizen, studying well, being on the road to college is going to be rewarded,”she said. “It’s difficult for them to see that here.”

JHS 123 also received Supplemental Education Services to hire outside tutoring companies. Schools qualify for free tutoring if their school failes math and readings tests two years in a row.

Four to five tutoring programs set up in classrooms after school and hired teachers from within the school, paying them $50 an hour. The companies — Failure Free Reading, Kaplan, Princeton Review, Education

“The going rate two years ago was $1,800 a child for 10 kids,” she said. “The most the company spent on tutors and supplies is $7,000. But they made a profit of $8,000 in six months in just one school. It’s a sweet deal.”

Schools that increase their grades are removed from the eligible list for the next school year, a measure that bothers Connelly. “The schools are hit hard by the sudden lack of funds,” she said, suggesting an extra transitioning year of funding “so it doesn’t feel like we are being punished for doing well.”

Besides increasing award-based motivation, the school reduced class size from 25 in reading and 28 in math down to 15 students per teacher. The faculty introduced a workshop model where teachers use visual aid to help the students understand complicated concepts. And the school introduced the Mastery Grading method that increased the passing rate to 75 percent, a move that alarmed teachers at first, but has raised the

As a means of promoting reading JHS 123 introduced a new emphasis on authentic reading, or reading real books, not excerpts and short stories written for student textbooks. “Our students have become avid readers, something we hope they will take away with them when they leave,” said Connelly.

Two years ago, science teacher Tabitha Hargrove and American history teacher John McSorley helped introduce TeacherEase, a web-based interactive grade book. The program allows teachers to enter grades and comments about the students, as well as the homework assignments. Parents have their own login information and can check on the status and development of their child at any time.

TeacherEase has increased parental participation and awareness, an factor teachers believe is behind much of their students’ success. “Nothing is a surprise at parent teacher conferences and report card days anymore,” said Hargrove.

“The system logs which parent visited the site, and I’ll tell you, these parents are on it every day, it’s fantastic. As a teacher you don’t feel like you are doing this alone anymore,” said McSorley. “The parents are doing their part at home.”

In most public schools every year the students change teachers. In JHS 123 the students stay with their respective teachers from sixth to eighth grade. “When I first started teaching here two years ago I thought it was odd, but now I think it is the best way,” said Hargrove, standing in her science classroom. “This allows the teacher to get to know the student and approach them in a way that will produce the most results.”

The successful programs have been the catalyst to the school’ success, but some questions linger about the school’s rewards method and what it means in the long run.

Programs based on reward motivation have sprung up in Baltimore, Atlanta, and recently in New York City. In 2008, Maryland provided $935,000 to programs aimed at increasing state test scores. The program, Learn and Earn, was successful and increased student marks on state standardized tests. But some experts argue these quick fixes do more harm than good.

Writer and former teacher Alfie Kohn, claims students lose their interest in learning for its own sake when they are rewarded for behavior. “Rewards motivate students to get rewards for the sake of rewards,” said Kohn. In one study, children who were expecting to receive a prize for completing a task successfully did not perform as well as those who expected nothing.

This poses the question of what will happen to JHS 123 students once they are no longer offered a reason to do well. Kohn predicts they will lose interest in their work and return to the habits they had before they were motivated by prizes.

The administration argues that incentives work when they are coupled with other curricular innovations.  JHS125 decided to turn the school’s successful American History concentration into an all-school program in association with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American Studies. It now has one of the strongest American History and Government curricula in the city.

For the first time this year, 80 eighth grade students have signed up to take the 11th grade Ameican History and Government Regents test. “We’re very excited, this is when we show how advanced we are in what we teach,” said Connelly.

Government teacher McSorley has altered how he teaches his class, allowing the students to choose their one homework assignment each week. Eighth grader Jovan Cook, 13, enjoys the freedom the system affords. “If I feel like it, I can write an essay or just define words, it’s all up to us,” he said.

At four in the afternoon, long after other seventh graders had left for the day, Ryan Persaud and Gabriel Milligan, both 12, sit with math teacher Christopher Gooding building a robot. Members of the Robot club are preparing to represent their school in the citywide competition in January.

Gooding has been teaching at JHS 123 for 11 years and has seen the changes over the last two as a sign of a promising future. “These kids are remarkable, and they definitely have a lot on their plate,” he said. “Many of the students live in shelters, and we try to be as understanding as we can.”

“I enjoy doing this,” said Persaud, not looking up from the plastic pieces he was putting together. “I memorized the manual so I never need to look in for help.”

Behind him Milligan, or “Gilligan” as he is called, demonstrated the route the robot would have to make in less than three minutes. Looking up at Gooding, Milligan points out that every school he has ever attended “has been chosen for an award or something special.”

“This is a special school, right Mr. Gooding?”

“Yes it is Gilligan,” said Gooding.

For Sarah Delany, this semester at Hostos Community College was looking good. She had been elected as the student senate representative, accepted into the highly competitive nursing program, and would continue to be part of the university sponsored Student Leadership Academy.

The Student Leadership Academy holds workshops weekly that might be canceled due to budget cuts.

But professors delivered a shock to the  nursing students on the first day of classes. Students would have to pay for their own course materials this year, which included interactive textbooks, access to an online instructor, online practice exams, a DVD lecture review system and eight review books.

The package  distributed by Assessment Technologies Institute, LLC would cost them $430. A grant covered the cost for last year’s students.  There was no grant for this year.

Delany didn’t have the  money.

Most students at Hostos live in households that make less than $30,000 per year. Adding material costs to a $350 tuition hike for the semester, many wondered how they could afford to stay in school.

City University of New York cut $44 million in state and city aid for the 2008-2009 school year, and proposed to cut $10 million to community colleges for the upcoming year. To offset the budget cuts, tuition has increased this year (and is expected to increase another 15 percent next year). Programs are being cut and students are left without the financial means to support a higher education. With all these budget pressures, even Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s pledge to infuse $50 million in the CUNY system would not be enough to help students like Delany.

Programs for CUNY’s brightest, like the Student Leadership Academy and Registered Nursing program, are feeling the cuts. But, Councilman Charles Barron, who serves as chair of the Higher Education Committee, claims the money is there.

“How can they say there’s no money when CUNY has a $2.6 billion budget?” he said. “They are just not spending it on community colleges.”

Barron urges students to demand the money they deserve.

“No generation has ever progressed without a student movement,” he said. “It has never happened.  The money is there. You have to show that you are a priority.”

Armed with skills she learned at the Student Leadership Academy in the past year, Delany did just that. She became an advocate for nursing students at Hostos. She wrote a petition to the Student Senate asking for funds, and gained support for other initiatives from students and faculty.

Although the administration has yet to come to an agreement on the proposed increase, Delany said her experience with the Student Leadership Academy gave her the confidence to advocate for the nursing students.  Through workshops and conferences, Delany learned how to make effective arguments.

The director of the Student Leadership Academy, Jason Libfeld, said hurdles like the one Delany is facing as a nursing student are commonplace at Hostos.

A graduate of Columbia University’s Master of Fine Arts program, Libfield left his career as a teacher two years ago to establish this program that would help develop the highest achieving students into leaders through workshops, conferences and community service.

To be an ambassador with the Student Leadership Association students had to demonstrate academic excellence with a grade point average above 3.4, commit to at least 40 hours a semester of community service and be willing to participate in conferences upstate and New Jersey.

Most important, he hoped to create a sense of community otherwise missing at Hostos.

“The first thing I asked for is mailboxes,” he said. “I wanted to make sure they came back to the office. If they had email I would never see them.”

Despite being tucked away in what they call the broom closet, Libfeld and his students have created one of the most successful student associations in the CUNY system.

Major achievements include providing a student representative at the World Trade Center Memorial with President Barack Obama, and with Mayor Bloomberg during a memorable trip upstate at the Mock Student Senate meeting.

The Model Senate provides a forum for students to discuss real issues currently being raised in the State Senate. The annual conference is held in Albany, and requires hours of preparation. Students who do well can carve a path towards a political career.

Sandra May Flowers, whose motto is “opportunities quickly diminish,” secured an intership with Councilman Barron after her first year participating in the  mock senate.

The professional workshops cost an average of $2,000 per  month and may be the first program Libfeld is forced to eliminate.

Samantha Jackson’s experience shows how important the workshops can be. She worked hard to earn the grades she needed in high school to be accepted into a four-year college. But her mother could  not afford the tuition, which forced her to attend Hostos.

“At first, it hurt to go to Hostos with the grades I worked so hard for,” said Jackson, a Jamaican immigrant..

But she reached out to the Academy and learned about the Jose E. Serrano Scholarship for Diplomatic Studies, a program that moves students from Hostos into Columbia University for a Bachelor of Arts followed by a two-year graduate program at Columbia Unviersity’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Jackson was accepted to the program, which requires students to maintain a 3.0 GPA.

Jackson, now finishing her degree at Columbia, attributes her success to the Hostos programs that are facing budget cuts in the coming year. She says the Student leadership Academy’s emphasis on community service was what she was looking for, training in the field and insight from professionals.

During her time in Hostos, Jackson was one of many students who supported a small increase to the cost of tuition in an effort to attract a desirable faculty with promise of higher pay.

“The school could not keep educators because they could not pay them enough in today’s bad economy,” said Jackson. “A small tuition hike could have resolved a lot of issues. We could have raised the money that the city and state were not providing the school.”

However, according to Barron, students are fooling themselves if they think a tuition hike would mean more resources for students.

“They bought the Kool-Aid from the administration,” he said. “They believe that if they increase tuition the school will then invest that money back into the programs.”

Barron points to the $60 billion city budget and $131 billion state budget, claiming that it is up to the city to allocate appropriate funds for community colleges.

“We can build Yankee Stadium?” he said. “We can build the Mets a new stadium, but we can’t provide money for CUNY students?”

Despite the proposed budget cuts, and the continued financial stresses the students of the Student Leadership Academy are facing, they remain optimistic about the program’s future.

Libfeld says one of his proudest moments with the Student Leadership Academy was planting 900 trees in one day at St. Mary’s park in the Bronx. He also remembers the day he took the students to Isabella Nursing Home. One of the students was so excited to be there, she talked until one of the senior citizens fell asleep.

He and the students are resigned to continue on even if they lose workshop and field trip money.

At least outreach would be saved. It costs nothing.

Something Libfeld and his students don’t mind.

“If we have to go back to bare bones, then we’ll do that,” he said. “No matter what we will always have community service.”

de Castro enjoys the dancing at his East of Laconia Community Association annual scholarship luncheon. Photo by Leslie Minora

Alonzo de Castro shimmied to his table in the spacious ballroom in the Eastwood Manor in Williamsbridge on Oct. 31, swinging his arms to the DJ’s music.

“He’s a great dancer. We were dancing together forever,” said Lucia, his wife of 59 years, who has been working alongside her husband to create college scholarships for Bronx teens for more than three decades.

The 82-year-old community leader was determined to greet all 250 of his guests at the annual banquet to honor 20 local teens. He knew almost everyone by  name.

This event for youth had never been so urgent in all its 32 years.

The shadow of a recent shooting lingered over the festivities. Three weeks earlier, 92-year-old Sadie Mitchell, a beloved community member, died when a stray bullet broke through her living room window. Police arrested a Williamsbridge teenager in connection with her killing.

“We could have saved two lives, Sadie Mitchell and the young man with the gun,” said de Castro in his opening speech. He made a strong case for the community’s responsibility to give young people direction, and was particularly frustrated that the area still lacked a recreation center, a project he and other community leaders have been promoting for years.

In addition to addressing the community’s needs, de Castro made it clear that this afternoon was to honor teens who have done well regardless. Local residents, business owners, and community groups donated the $600 scholarships, which serve to help teens with college expenses like books and fees. “They’re helping me further my education,” said Helma Tyler, 18, a student at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Tyler plans on attending law school after college, and interns for Bronx Councilman Larry Seabrook.

A retired post office employee originally from the British Virgin Islands, de Castro is the leader of Northeast Bronx Community Coalition in addition to the East of Laconia Community Association. He founded the Coalition with Shirley Fearon, president of the Williamsbridge NAACP, to expedite the fight for a recreational center and address other community needs regarding day care centers and the White Plains Road shopping area. “I have my two projects. That’s what keeps me going,” de Castro said.

“This community is very active, but Al is the most active,” said Bronx District Attorney, Robert Johnson.

Over 100 people attended a Coalition meeting to address the need for a recreational center last August.  Councilman Larry Seabrook said that he would contact the Bronx Borough President and others to kick off the project, de Castro said. “All it takes is people.”

Scholarship recipients pose for a photo at de Castro's luncheon. Photo by Leslie Minora

Activism has been a life-long job, but de Castro has dedicated even more time to his community since his retirement in 1985. “I like to lead, and when I see a need, I have to speak out. I can’t be quiet,” de Castro said.

During his 39 years with the United States Post Office, he worked his way up from a substitute clerk position to becoming the manager of 13 of the largest post offices in Manhattan. de Castro married at 23-years-old, and worked hard so that his wife could stay home with their three daughters, Angela, Lydia, and Deborah.

“Whatever mission he’s on, it’s always based on family, self-pride, and community,” said Angela de Castro, a teacher who lives in the Bronx.

The community leader’s roots in activism extend to his childhood in the Virgin Islands, where his family members were very involved. “We have always worked for the underdog,” said de Castro, who was one of 13 children. “We were always activists.” His mother and older sister worked for an organization similar to the Red Cross in the Virgin Islands, and his older brother introduced the Boy Scouts organization to the Islands.

When he was 19, de Castro moved to the United States for economic reasons after becoming a naturalized citizen from his U.S. army service in Puerto Rico during World War II.

Tenacity is his key to success, said Lethia Williams, the Scholarship Chairperson of the Association. “He is relentless in standing up to the politicians who have the finances to get the jobs done.”

A 43-year Northeast Bronx resident, de Castro has been a continuous presence in the lives of many community members. “I’ve known him since I was knee high to a grasshopper,” George Stewart, 42, said at the scholarship luncheon. “He’s a great guy. He’s very focused.”

After de Castro gave a closing speech at the luncheon, he cued the DJ to play another song. De Castro had been dancing earlier in a crowd of people, and now others walked onto the dance floor for the last few songs of the day.

Afterwards, when de Castro exited Eastwood Manor, he paused while someone took his picture in front of a poster displaying photos of the scholarship recipients. De Castro proudly announced “the graduates” as he smiled for the photo.

“Al has a true desire to help people,” said Father Richard Gorman, Chairman of Northeast Bronx Community District 12. “ I hope he’s involved forever.”

The music carries a message in Morrisania. Photo by Amanda Staab

Desperate to find an alternative to hanging out on the streets like other teens, one young Bronx woman joined her school’s football team.

“I wanted to do something and that was pretty much the only opportunity I had,” said Olivia Tapia, 15. “It was very hard. Not many of the teammates wanted me to be there because I was the only girl.”

She finally put her helmet away a year ago, when she discovered a small but growing group Music with a Message at Renaissance E.M.S. (Education, Music, and Sports), a non-profit organization in Morrisania that offers kids educational programs for after school and on weekends.

“It is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the need,” said Bervin Harris, a professional music producer who founded Renaissance E.M.S. near the corner of 163rd Street and Third Avenue in 2001. “There are hundreds of thousands of kids here in the Bronx community who will never get the opportunity to pick up a guitar or any other instrument.”

Harris is not from the Bronx. He grew up on Long Island, where, he said, schools still have arts programs and students have a lot more access to music education. He said the band classes and sports he took part in as a teen kept him coming back to high school every day, so he wanted to motivate kids in the South Bronx in the same way. He opened Renaissance E.M.S. in Morrisania, he said, because it is a dying community without many positive activities for teens.

“So, instead of talking about the problem, I always ask myself what can I do to help the solution,” said Harris. “I took that mentality through college, and I have been doing social development off and on and balancing a music career at the same time,” he said.

Harris now mentors 200 kids each Saturday and reaches 1,200 others through his Music on Wheels program, which brings arts programs to schools that have none, all the while managing a full-time job producing Hip Hop, R&B, Jazz, and Gospel with various artists. He also released a record of his own inspirational music in 2003 and created a song called “Care for Me” for the National Coalition of the Homeless.

His newest project, Music with a Message, was created this past summer and includes a dozen of his most promising protégés, who write and produce many of the numbers they perform.

“What we started doing is writing songs to help these kids deal with their issues,” said Harris, who encourages his students to dig deep. “I told them, ‘Don’t just write me any common lyrics. Study it. Do your own research. Ask some questions, and then write the song to speak to the inner person, not just the shadow on the outside.”

One song written by a student is called “Care for Me” and depicts a girl trying to tell her parents what her life is like and how she needs them to be there for her.

“My friends do drugs right on the block,” the song goes. “Some have guns and fight a lot…. The pressure to fit in is on my back, from gangs and drugs and being fat. Please don’t delay when I leave home today. Hug, say you love me, as I go on my way.”

While writing songs to cope with their own lives and researching topics many teens could relate to, said Harris, the kids in Music with a Message are also learning to be social developers themselves and role models to other teens.

“The role model is an example of someone doing,” Harris said he tells the kids. “So, when you talk about a song and you talk about spreading love, it has to start with you.”

The kids take this message seriously. Seventeen-year-old Yesenia Berroa said joining the group six years ago helped her stay out of fights going on at her middle school.

“I don’t know how I would be without this music program,” she said. “I would be a completely different person.”

Berroa is now college-bound, she said, and after learning to play the guitar and piano in just a few years, she plans to teach music when she graduates.

“It’s very important for kids to get the opportunity to learn music because it’s a foundation for life,” she said.

In addition to providing students with an outlet and supportive environment, Harris and his crew also push academics by having the kids bring in their grades each week for a little friendly competition. Every kid is part of a team, and the better each student does, the closer each team gets to earning a trip to Great Adventure at the end of the school year.

While they may already be dreaming of waterslides, the kids in Music with a Message wrapped up their first season with a concert at the Teen Health Summit at Benjamin Franklin School last month. On a blacktop surrounded by a tall fence and lots of project housing, the students unfolded their stage from the side of a truck and danced and sung for the crowd with big smiles on their faces.

“When you see something like this and there are no gunshots ringing, this is positivity,” said Harris. “We don’t hear about this in the news. You got to go see it.”

Fast food lures students after school. Photo by Amanda Staab

For some students in the South Bronx, the 3 p.m. bell doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to go home. Instead, it signals lunchtime for many teens at Morris High School in Morrisania.

Dozens of students, who often skip both breakfast and lunch, make their way toward 165th Street to the nearest Chinese restaurant conveniently serving up French fries, their favorite, or cross Boston Road to a deli advertising fried chicken and pizza.

“This is not healthy, having this all the time after school, but it tastes better than what we are getting at school,” said senior Sereane Swanson, holding books in her arms while she waited for two friends to finish their fries, drenched with ketchup and barbecue sauce and reeking of grease.

Most of the teens appear to be healthy, but obesity is a growing problem in the Bronx. One third of high school students and two thirds of adults are either overweight or obese, according to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Though they may not want to believe it, the students, especially those with a junk food habit, are not immune to high cholesterol and hypertension.

“It’s not long before they’ll start having their heart attacks and their strokes,” said Alicia Flynn, a nutritionist at the nearby Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center. She often helps teen clients find healthier ways to snack and eat meals.

The Bloomberg administration has also tried to do its part and support initiatives to encourage New Yorkers to eat better. In addition to targeting trans fats in public restaurants, the city has made changes to food in schools. In the past two years, student lunches have experienced a makeover that included less fat and sodium and more whole grains.

But many teens say they just don’t eat the food even though half the high school students in the South Bronx are eligible for a free or reduced lunch.

“It’s nasty,” said senior Malaysia Scott, who’ll only eat the French fries.

Another student, sophomore Raul Lopez, said he usually only eats the pizza or chicken fingers. But, he admitted, he prefers fatty foods.

Still, other students said they can get fruits and vegetables in their cafeteria, even if they are required to fill up a full tray of food they don’t necessarily want in order to get them.

“Even though it’s a waste of food, you have to get a tray,” said sophomore Diamond Carothers. Students take what they intended to get and throw away the rest.

This strikes a chord with Flynn. She’s not sure how much food is wasted in Bronx schools, but, she said, “if someone can calculate it, then we have something to yell and scream about.”

In addition to teaching kids the value of what they throw away, Flynn said schools might consider inviting private vendors into their cafeterias to offer students healthy meals, maybe even ethnic foods that they just might like, in exchange for vouchers.

“Food is food,” said senior Juan Vasquez. “You can’t waste it. If you’re hungry, you got to eat. It’s unhealthy to not eat when you’re hungry.”

That  attitude is precisely the root of the obesity problem among young people in the Bronx, said Flynn. “When you skip meals, you throw your metabolism off, you slow it down,” she said. This makes it easier to gain weight and harder to lose it, which can put a teenager on the road to obesity.

In an effort to promote more healthy eating, the Bloomberg administration recently put more restrictions on school bake sales, which traditionally helped student raise money for extracurricular activities and trips. The move angers some students. “I would like to keep them,” said junior Aaron Heatley. “It brings more money to the school for funding.” The restrictions, which are being implemented this year,  allow schools to have one bake sale a month as long as it takes place after lunch and raises money for the Parent-Teacher Associations and other parent groups. Between sales, said Heatley, the kids will just have to sell candy instead.

Even Flynn doesn’t think the restriction is helpful. The bake sales teach kids to work together for a common cause, she said, and having dessert once in a while isn’t such a bad thing. “As a nutritionist, I say go ahead and have your cake, just know how much you can have,” said Flynn.

The city also plans to make healthful improvements to the snack selection in vending machines at schools. Students said they don’t know many classmates who can afford to use the vending machines too often, but it might be a good start to getting kids on track to better health.

At the Youthmarket, buyers get healthy bargains and sellers learn about the business of farming. Photo by Amanda Staab

On McKinley Square, a small, paved island in the middle of the busy intersection between Boston Road and East 169th Street, local students run an outdoor farmers’ market, bringing fresh fruits and vegetables to the South Bronx.

“For the community, it’s providing access to healthy food at a reasonable price, and for the kids, it’s helping them develop all kinds of skills,” said David Saphire, the project director for Learn it, Grow it, Eat it, a summer program that teaches students about eating healthy and growing their own food. For six weeks, the kids get their hands dirty in three community gardens in Morrisania, and a portion of that harvest is sold at the outdoor market.

The market in Morrisania, open every Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.  from July through October, is one of four Youthmarkets, which are considered satellites of the larger, more established Greenmarkets. They are organized by the New York City Council on the Environment in the Bronx, with others in Marble Hill, Tremont, and Riverdale.

“There are some neighborhoods that farmers are reluctant to dedicate a whole day to working in because they feel they wouldn’t have the sales, but yet, there is still a demand for fresh produce,” said Saphire.

The goal behind the markets is to provide healthy food to poor communities, and in its second year, the market has seen business change, as cash sales dropped and food stamp sales soared to more than half the total transactions.

Youthmarkets stand out from other farmers’ markets in New York City that don’t have the same pressure to cater to lower income crowds.

“It’s marvelous that the farmers’ market has come to the South Bronx for less fortunate people with healthy, good products that we definitely need in this community,” said Arlene Overstreet, a Morrisania resident for 31 years who recently bought all the produce for her family dinner for just $6.

The produce comes mostly from farms in upstate New York. It supplements the limited selection ordinarily available to residents in the Bronx.

“There’s a shortage of venues for buying healthy food, for buying fresh produce, and it’s even more difficult to find locally grown fresh produce,” said Saphire. He would not call Morrisania a “food desert,” a new term used to describe regions with close to no healthy food access, he said, because there are grocers in the neighborhood. “It’s just that the predominant stores are bodegas that don’t sell very much fresh fruit and vegetables.”

As an environmental scientist, Saphire researched reusable packaging for everyday products for 10 years before he joined the New York City Council on the Environment. Six years ago, he was asked to head up a high school educational program that eventually developed into Learn it, Grow it, Eat it.

A Brooklyn native who spent many summers outdoors in upstate New York, Saphire decided the best way to get urban kids to connect with the environment was through food.

“Kids related most to the environmental issues that had to do with their health, and then I thought, food would be such a good, unifying theme for that,” said Saphire. His students, he said, had a fairly good sense of what was healthy and what was not, but they hadn’t really taken the time to evaluate their own habits.

In addition to teaching them exactly how much sugar is in some of their favorite beverages and other helpful healthy tips, Saphire took his students out into the field, including  three underutilized community gardens.

Farming doesn’t thrill every student, said Saphire, but some of them really take to it. “It’s cool for them,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Wow.’ They just get into it.” The most enthusiastic students are invited to participate in the Youthmarket.

Stephanie De Jesus, a 19-year-old student reorganizing the tomatoes laid out on the stand, said Learn it, Grow it, Eat it changed her eating habits, as she experimented with cooking meals without the high sodium seasoning popularly used in Hispanic cooking.

“It taught me how to substitute those ingredients for healthier ones,” she said. Her time in the gardens not only inspired her cooking but also gave her a deeper appreciation for the outdoors, which has influenced her  hobby of painting.

Local shoppers often ask the kids about the food and its effect on health. “I like it,” said Qiana Nicolau, who just completed trade school for cosmetology. “It’s actually showing people new things they didn’t know.” When customers come back to the market, they often tell her how much better the fresh produce tasted compared with what’s available at local grocers.

The market also serves as a classroom for nutritionist Alicia Flynn, who works two blocks away at the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, and her clients. Many times, Flynn has taken patients with hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, and diabetes to the market where Saphire and his crew show them what healthy foods the land produces for them to eat.

Pointing to the bounty on the table, she said, “People can see that these are actually grown from the ground. It doesn’t come from a package.”

Her biggest obstacle, she said, is usually getting her clients over the hurdle of their own cultural foods, containing mostly just starch and protein and very little fresh produce.

“First, we have to convince the people that they want it,” said Flynn. “We got to give them ways to taste foods. You got to eat it, then believe it.”

When the market retires for the winter, she knows her clients will return to their diet of mostly rice, beans, potatoes, and meat because fresh produce just isn’t that readily available.

“Grocery stores have it,” she said, “but it’s expensive.”

Despite the struggle to find affordable, healthy food, Overstreet said she has already seen a change in the way her neighbors view fresh fruits and vegetables.

“They are buying more and they’re appreciating it,” she said.

The Williamsbridge NAACP day care lost one classroom of students when the city cut kindergarten classes out of city-funded day cares. Photo by Leslie Minora

When school opened this fall, Chrystal Deans was forced to move her 5-year-old daughter from the Williamsbridge NAACP Early Childhood Education Center where she would have attended kindergarten, to P.S. 21, six blocks away, where class sizes are larger and the day is three hours shorter.

The move, mandated by a new Bloomberg policy to lower city costs, pushed kindergarten children like Deans’s daughter Kyla out of city day care centers and into public schools. It has meant that Kyla can no longer attend the day care until 6 p.m., a service that Kyla enjoyed and Deans needs when she stays late at her college or has an afternoon appointment.

“I don’t trust just anyone with my kid,” said Deans, who now has to scramble to arrange childcare. She added that Kyla used to come home from day care sharing learning experiences like which letter of the alphabet began her name, but that she no longer says these things. Deans is afraid that Kyla has slipped through the cracks in kindergarten because she is a quiet child in a large class.

At P.S. 21, the early childhood classes have on average 29 children, five more than is contractually allowed. “They don’t have enough time for the kids because there are just too many kids in the classroom,” said Deans.

The principal of P.S. 21 said kindergarten registration is the highest she has seen. “For the first time we just kept accepting more children than we usually do,” said Principal Joyce Coleman.  Coleman said the Department of Education has urged her to accept as many children as possible, and she wants to accommodate as many families as she can.

As part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s many shifts in education management, the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, which oversees city day care centers, closed all kindergarten classrooms in its city-funded day care centers as of Sept. 2009, shifting as many as 3,200 students to public school kindergartens.

Now, many kindergartens have class sizes that are several students higher than the norm and double-digit waiting list numbers, meaning many children are still not enrolled in kindergarten, which is not mandatory in New York City. “Most of the parents don’t have a lot of options,” said Coleman. “They’re working parents.” The situation hits particularly hard in the Bronx, where 41 percent of children are living below the poverty line, compared to 27 percent in Manhattan.

Even with the larger class sizes, Principal Coleman estimates that 15 to 20 children are still on the kindergarten waiting list at P.S. 21. If children are turned away from their local public school, they will eventually be placed elsewhere. Coleman expects bussing from P.S. 21 to other kindergartens to begin soon.

Phyllis Forde, a Northeast Bronx resident brings her 5-year-old grandson to the South Bronx for kindergarten so that her daughter can go to work in the North Bronx. She considers her situation lucky because she was able to get him into a kindergarten near her workplace, the Gwendolyn B. Bland Day Care on 163^rd St., where she is the director.

Forde goes slightly out of her way to get her grandson to kindergarten, but she faces much larger problems when she arrives at the day care. “I am grossly under-enrolled,” she said. Her facility had 97 children on Sept. 1, about a week before the Administration for Children’s Services moved kindergartners out of day cares, and her enrollment was 67 as of the last week of October.

“I think Mr. Bloomberg is not concerned with working poor parents,” she said. “I don’t think childcare is a priority in the city of New York.”

This dramatic drop in enrollment is a huge issue for Forde and many other day care directors because of another city program, Project Full Enrollment. The Administration of Children’s Services reported that the program, which went into effect September of last year, will allocate funding to city day cares according to the number of children enrolled, instead of the program’s budgeted capacity.

“This is just overwhelming now,” Forde said. “I hold the cards of my teachers in my hands.” Forde and all other city-funded day care directors are responsible for enrollment and registration in addition to the daily management of their facilities. The Administration of Children’s Services had employees dedicated to enrollment and registration in the past, but the responsibilities on the day care directors have gradually and steadily increased without compensation as the Administration laid off its enrollment employees in recent years.

The Williamsbridge NAACP Early Childhood Education Center faces similar enrollment issues. This facility had 84 students as of the last week of October, and full enrollment is 100, according to Executive Director, Cheryl Dewitt. “The crunch is on,” she said. A federal bail-out has saved many day care jobs, including those of one teacher and one administrative worker at the NAACP day care that were on the Administration’s chopping block at the end of 2008. The bailout extends through March 31, 2010, at which point there is further uncertainty.

Forde, Dewitt, and two directors from the National Council of Negro Women Child Development Center all made it clear that the extra space due to the kindergarten policy change is not due to lack of demand for day care. The requirements for city-funded day care have become stricter as of this past summer, Forde said. Parents who have lost their jobs and parents who are looking for jobs do not qualify, she said. Parents who are sick and need dialysis or chemotherapy treatments are also ineligible for day care.

This intricate back-and-forth of day care enrollment numbers and overcrowding of public school kindergartens comes in the wake of encouraging promises made by city administrations. The Department of Education’s Five Year Class Size Reduction Plan, approved by the New York State Education Department in Nov. 2007 plainly states, “the current capital plan has explicitly included K-3 class size reduction as a target…In addition, the Department continues to be committed to reducing class size in the early grades (i.e., grades K-3) via the Early Grade Class Size Reduction program.” Three years remain in the five-year plan, but the system is currently working against itself if the kindergarten situation is any indication.

An Administration for Children’s Services representative could not be reached, but the press office offered a statement that said, “The $62 million deficit in our child care budget means that we have had to make budgetary and programmatic changes in

order to continue serving as many families with young children as possible, many of whom have no other options while their parents work. We can no longer afford to offer the option used by some parents until now to enroll their 5-year olds in Children’s Services contracted child care centers.”

With two terms completed and other possible term on the horizon, Bloomberg has not made many friends in the day care business, and has not yet delivered on the plan to shrink kindergarten class sizes. Yet, Dewitt of the NAACP day care said, “The bottom line is we never like to give up.”

On East 169th Street, the Morrisania branch of the New York Public Library’s red brick façade shines in comparison to the surrounding sandy brown brick apartment buildings. Inside the 100-year-old building, book-lined walls surround clusters of tables frequently filled with children  and adults reading.

A teamwork-oriented staff at the library has bolstered circulation significantly this year by reaching beyond the bookshelves and engaging the community.

“We are a beacon in this community,” said branch librarian Colbert Nembhard, about the library, which has loaned 86,547 books since 2008, a circulation increase of about 20,000 for the year.

Because of the staff teamwork, Nembhard says he is not overly worried about losing one of his five, full-time professional staff at such a busy time because of budget cuts to the entire New York Public Library system.

“Everyone takes turns going out in the community, said Nembhard, who has been working in the city’s libraries for 30 years. The staff  juggles visits to shelters, schools, senior centers, and hospitals with regular in-house programming at the branch.

“On a weekly basis we do at least five programs,” Nembhard said. “Outreach gets more people to come. We are very busy.”

Ramon DaSilva has worked as an information assistant at the branch for four years. He helps people use computers and the library’s on-line card catalogue. While in Morrisania, DaSilva has led many outreach programs along with the team. He will be transferred to the High Bridge branch when it re-opens this winter after a two-year renovation.

The outreach programs — which include library card registration for sick children in hospitals and Nintendo Wii tournaments in senior centers, adult computer classes, story times and class visits in the library — may need to be cut slightly when DaSilva leaves.

“We might not be able to do as much,” Nembhard said, “but we will try our best to do what we can.” He is more concerned with what would happen if additional staff members were unable to work. “If we’re only left with four people and one calls in sick, that could be a problem,” said Nembhard.

The public libraries are experiencing $57 million in cuts across the board this year. However, Nembhard said, staffing is a priority for the library system, which is why DaSilva will be transferred. “By taking from one branch to the next, they aren’t getting laid off,” he said.

When not out on outreach, DaSilva mans the information booth on the ground floor of the library and assists patrons in signing up for computers and finding materials. The branch has 20 public computers. According to DaSilva , the computers are almost always in use and people sign up and wait in line for their turn. “They are almost never open,” he said.

Recently, Leon Wentt, 27, spent the afternoon at library because he needed to use a computer. Wentt said that he took advantage of the hour wait for a computer by reading. He appreciates the “good community environment” fostered by the library and said the greatest appeal is its “affordable convenience,” as he pointed to printers, scanners and the copy machine.

DaSilva believes that outreach programming is instrumental in bringing so many people into the library. Each year, library statistics are tabulated by fiscal year, July 1 to June 30. The programming and classes doubled from 401 in 2008 to 853 this year and 138,718 individuals walked through the library door.

Nembhard is working on innovative ideas to get around the staff restructuring. Although he is not exactly sure what those will be, he knows they will get around it.

“We are committed to the community and are striving for service excellence,” he said. “We may not be there yet, but that is what we’re striving for.”

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