VOLUME 6, NUMBER 17 JUNE 19, 2014
THE WEST SIDE’S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER SERVING CHELSEA, HUDSON YARDS & HELL'S KITCHEN
The Rocky Road to Pre-K BY JOSH ROGERS Pre-K is like many things in life — you’re either in or out — so you might think there’s just two stories to tell, but really there are many more than that. Talk to Principal Alice Hom at Chinatown’s P.S 124 and she’ll tell you that she still has a full-day pre-K classroom to fill, and there’s only a few days before the first enrollment deadline, June 20. But she’s confident the last 18 spots will be taken by a mix of families. Some have not yet registered for their spot, others are on the waiting list, still more are outer borough people who work nearby and who have been coming in the last few days. It’s not surprising that Hom will not only be able to offer seats outside of her school’s small zone area, but also entirely out of sprawling District 2, which includes almost all of the broad Downtown area as well as parts of Midtown and the Upper East Side. Chinatown will be an oasis of pre-K this September as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s large expansion of full-day seats. But even with the expansion, nearly two out of every five of families who applied, including mine, were not offered any public school seats anywhere (we’re waitlisted at six). The number of waiting four-year-olds, 37 percent, has to be much higher in Downtown Manhattan — which so far has seen minimal expansion outside of Chinatown, even in places where there’s room. Chinatown actually has more full-day seats than it does eligible children — 145 spots for every 100 children — according to an analysis done by WNYC’s SchoolBook. But the two other Lower Manhattan sections grouped in the survey, each have only six spots for every 100 four-year-olds.
P.S. 234 PRE-K? That’s why Catherine McVay Hughes, Community Board 1’s chairperson, asked last week if a pre-K classroom could
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Landmark Book Gives Voice and Visibility to the Transgender Community BY RYAN HOWE When she was 12 years old, Laura Erickson-Schroth picked up her mom’s copy of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” She flipped through the pages, entranced by what she was reading. The book — which took a radical stance (for 1973) on women’s bodies, sexuality, and rights, was filled with stories from women of all walks of life and backgrounds. It spoke to the self-proclaimed tomboy. “I was always kind of dressing like a boy and playing sports, so gender was something that was always present in my life,” Erickson-Schroth said. “I was always being told what to do for gendered reasons, and reading this book with so many women breaking the stereotypes, it just stuck with me.” “Our Bodies, Ourselves” continued to influence Erickson-Schroth through her teenage years and into adulthood. Five years ago, the idea that women should be telling their own stories led her to start a project that would give transgender and gender non-conforming
people an outlet to share their own stories, and educate readers on trans issues. The result, “Trans Bodies, Trans Selves,” was released by Oxford University Press on May 20. Taking her cue from “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” Erickson-Schroth wanted to produce something with voices from every part of the trans community and share trans health information with the public. “In ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ I was captivated not only by the quotes from hundreds of women, but the way they challenged the medical world’s monopoly on knowledge about women’s bodies,” Erickson-Schroth said. “That’s what we did with our book.” Reading as part educational, part memoir, part picture book, “Trans Bodies, Tran Selves” prides itself on being a book that is not meant to be flipped through from cover to cover. It is to be referenced, and picked
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