Friday, July 16, 2010

Harlem principal got tenure after deadly beach trip where student Nicole Suriel drowned

BY ROB SGOBBO AND RACHEL MONAHAN
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Friday, July 16th 2010, 10:29 AM

Price for News

While a teacher was fired and an assistant principal demoted after the June 22 drowning of 12-year-old Nicole Suriel, officials could only seek to put Principal Jose Maldonado-Rivera on probation.

RELATED NEWS

The Harlem principal whose school went on a deadly beach field trip faces only a slap on the wrist since officials granted him tenure just days after the girl's death.

While a teacher was fired and an assistant principal demoted after the June 22 drowning of 12-year-old Nicole Suriel, officials could only seek to put Principal Jose Maldonado-Rivera on probation because his tenure became effective July 1.

The decision to grant him the job protections had been made in April, months before a series of tragic missteps led just three chaperones to take 24 students from Columbia Secondary School toLong Beach, which had no lifeguards on duty.

But no one revisited the tenure decision after the disastrous outing, even though

Send fractional congresspersons to the Capitol � Fun Math Blog

Send fractional congresspersons to the Capitol

by Sol

George Szpiro, author of “Numbers Rule: The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present” is a mathematician and journalist. Szpiro has an interesting op-ed piece in which he offers a brief history of the

Drowning Leaves Tensions at Columbia Secondary School - NYTimes.com

At School in Harlem, Resentment Over Girl’s Drowning on a Field Trip

By JENNIFER MEDINA

Published: July 15, 2010

REPRINTS

As the academic year at Columbia Secondary School in Harlem drew to a close, students, parents and teachers reeled from the death of a 12-year-old pupil on a class field trip to a beach last month.

Teacher Fired Over Field-Trip Drowning of Girl, 12 (July 15, 2010)

But feelings of grief have turned into anger after an inquiry by city investigators that faulted the middle school for the way it had organized and supervised the outing, which ended with the drowning of Nicole Suriel on a Long Island beach that had been closed and where no lifeguard was on duty.

Hours after a report by the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation was released on Wednesday, Erin Bailey, the first-year teacher who chaperoned the trip, was fired, and the

Teacher Fired Over Field-Trip Drowning of Girl, 12

By JENNIFER MEDINA

An investigation found the trip was poorly planned and said a chaperon should have noticed there were no lifeguards on the beach.

Document: Special Commissioner's Letter (pdf)

Darci Hemleb Thompson, 49, reconnected with a former teacher from Long Island, Alice D'Addario, through Facebook.

On Facebook, Telling Teachers How Much They Meant

By SUSAN FEINSTEIN

People who have been out of school for decades are expressing sentiments they dared not express in their youth.

ON EDUCATION

Julianne Carlson, a graduate of Yale, taught a prekindergarten class in Spanish last week at an elementary school in Houston.

A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America

By MICHAEL WINERIP

Teach for America has become an elite brand that will help build a résumé, and in a bad economy, guarantee a good paycheck.

Times Topics: Teach for America

THE APPRAISAL

Based on the advice of an educational consultant, Jonathan and Ann Binstock bought an Upper West Side apartment near Public School 87.

Parents’ Real Estate Strategy: Schools Come First

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Developers who sell apartments near good schools should chip in more to help build classrooms, parents say.

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Product Review: Art Rage 3

Product Review: Art Rage 3

by coolcatteacher@gmail.com (Victoria A Davis, Cool Cat Teacher)

I have tested Art Rage 3 since May on my Interactive White Board and also at home with my children.

My son's painting in artrage when he played with it the first time. I love how the paints and brushstrokes mixed together.

On the Interactive White Board
At school, I loaded this up and left it on the board to see what would happen and the students LOVED it. They painted pictures and used the intuitive interface very easily. I tested it with my second grader and up. When on the interactive whiteboard, the students preferred to use the board as a canvas, which brought all kinds of uses.

Report examines Palo Alto response to teen suicides, recommends next steps - San Jose Mercury News

Report examines Palo Alto response to teen suicides, recommends next steps

By Jesse Dungan

Daily News Staff Writer

Posted: 07/16/2010 03:00:00 AM PDT

A community task force created in response to a series of teenage suicides on the Caltrain tracks in Palo Alto issued a report this week recommending that the city and school district each assign a senior-level employee to steer youth mental health and suicide prevention efforts.

The Project Safety Net Task Force also urges the Palo Alto Unified School District to bolster the mental health aspect of its K-12 health education curriculum.

Rob de Geus, a Palo Alto city recreation services manager and co-chair of Project Safety Net, said the report is a "description of what we've experienced last year as a community and how we as a community responded to that." He said it also addresses "where do we go from here."

The task force hopes the report will be used in policy making and community decision making, de Geus said.

Five teenagers — three who were enrolled at Gunn High School, one who was going to be a freshman there and a recent graduate — lost their lives in the seven-month period between May 2009 and January 2010 at or near the same railroad crossing near the school.

Following the apparent suicides, community meetings were held, grief counseling groups reached out to families, and suicide prevention experts and school districts that had experienced similar tragedies offered their help to Palo Alto. Project Safety Net, which was formed last summer, includes mental health experts and city and school district

representatives, as well as others.

The task force's report documents how the city came together in response to the suicides and aims to provide a

Trace school fire is labeled arson

San Jose arson investigators came to their conclusion after reviewing evidence, talking with neighbors and combing the site. They ruled out possible accidental causes.

Fresh fruits and vegetables travel from small farms to corporate cafeterias

No spring admission to SJSU

Fisher: Common sense and a hospital project

Summer algebra 'boot camp' doubles to 1,000 students

Eduwonk � Blog Archive � Smarter Obey?

Smarter Obey?

by arotherham

The primary problem - from a strategic standpoint – with the proposed Obey cuts to the Obama Administration’s education priorities to pay for the edujobs bill was that by cutting Race to the Top House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) instantly pulled governors and state education chiefs into the fight against him. A lot of other groups jumped in but the bait and switch nature of the cuts to an ongoing competition made them untenable. Substantively there are plenty of arguments against the cut and even the edujobs bill itself absent some additional reform but at this point this really isn’t about substance.
Realizing this problem, however, the new proposal being floated yesterday and today to break the logjam in the Senate (where the Obey proposal was a non-starter) would only cut money from the federal charter schools

Free Technology for Teachers: Free Sound Effects Library

FREE RESOURCES AND LESSON PLANS FOR TEACHING WITH TECHNOLOGY

Free Sound Effects Library

by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)

Free SFX is a provider of free, royalty-free sound effect loops. The catalog of free sound effects can be browsed by genre or searched by keyword tag. Once you have registered for a free account you can begin downloading any of the free sound effect loops. One thing to take note of is Free SFXdoes mix in some “premium” results. Premium sound effects are not free to download.

Applications for Education
Free SFX could be a good resource for locating sounds that your students can use in podcasts,

ISTE 2010 Explorers and Excellence Slide Show

by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)

The ISTE 2010 opening kick-off featured the following slides as people came in and filled the auditorium. The slides featured famous people who accomplished big things and quotes attributed to them. ISTE has made that loop of slides available through YouTube. Fortunately, in the video they spared us the music that accompanied the slides in the auditorium.

Notes from the news, July 16 | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, July 16

by Erika Owens

Editorial: New chapter, same book The Inquirer
The Inquirer affirms Superintendent Ackerman's assertion that the District's "efforts to boost student achievement are paying off." The District has decided to reveal the criteria used to evaluate Ackerman for her $65,000 bonus, and that transparency should improve public perception.
Corbett calls for taxpayer-funded vouchers The Notebook blog
Republican nominee for governor Tom Corbett brings vouchers back into the political conversation.
Teachers, not robots, create safe schools The Notebook blog
Former principal Frank Murphy describes how teachers with autonomy and the right supports can create safe, successful schools.
Constructing Modern Knowledge Reflections Practical Theory blog
SLA principal Chris Lehmann has been spending time with some of his educational heroes like Deborah Meier.
Please email us if we missed anything today or if you have any suggestions of publications, email lists, or other places for us to check for news.
Click here to get Notes from the news in your inbox every day.
Notes from the news

Bill Gates: What The Man didn’t say in Seattle. � Fred Klonsky's blog

Bill Gates: What The Man didn’t say in Seattle.

by preaprez

Thanks to NYC Ed.
There’s a Youtube video, hand-held and shakey, of AFT delegates walking out of the convention hall in Seattle. Those walking out were protesting the invitation given to Bill Gates to speak at their convention.
It was a relatively small protest. Others in the hall protested by sitting on their hands when The Man was introduced.
Understand that the AFT delegate selection process pretty much insures that most of the delegates in the hall

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Spouting cliches

Spouting cliches

by Mike Klonsky

"Education is the civil rights issue of our generation." This has become Arne Duncan's mantra lately, as well as that other well-know fighter for civil rights, Newt Gingrich's. It almost seems like every department head or project manager has suddenly discovered civil rights and is now calling whatever project they are heading, from charter schools to on-line learning, "the civil rights issue of our generation." Forgive me, but I think Civil Rights is still the civil rights issue of our time.

******

In the mean time, growing poverty and the widening gap between the rich and poor remains a defining factor in educational achievement, playing a bigger role than

Reflections from Japan � InterACT

Reflections from Japan

by Kelly Kovacic

Toyko, Japan
I have never been a very good artist.
I was the kid in elementary school who, despite my best efforts, struggled to draw anything recognizable. I recall inconclusive complements like “How interesting” and “You use such nice colors,” and then encouragement to study the history of art rather than its application.
So I am definitely out of my comfort zone as I gaze at the delicate hand made paper, porcelain vessel of freshly poured ink, and thin goat’s-hair brush before me on a desk at a middle school in Toyko, Japan. Adding to my anxiety are the two energetic boys sitting on either side of me; self-appointed mentors eager to reverse the

Latest News and Comment from Education

Friday, July 16, 2010

Harlem principal got tenure after deadly beach trip where student Nicole Suriel drowned

RELATED NEWS

At School in Harlem, Resentment Over Girl’s Drowning on a Field Trip

By JENNIFER MEDINA

Published: July 15, 2010

Related

Teacher Fired Over Field-Trip Drowning of Girl, 12 (July 15, 2010)

By JENNIFER MEDINA

By SUSAN FEINSTEIN

ON EDUCATION

By MICHAEL WINERIP

THE APPRAISAL

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Report examines Palo Alto response to teen suicides, recommends next steps