The local paper for the Upper er East Side FALL EDUCATION SPECIAL SECTION < P.17
WEEK OF AUGUST
20-26 2015
WHY NOT TEACH EVERY SCHOOL KID TO READ WELL? ESSAY The clash between the New York we want and the one we have BY BILL GUNLOCKE
Before you move here from Ohio, you have this image of New York City as a bookish place. The photograph of the famous writers gathered at the Gotham Book Mart. The New Yorker. Random House. Esquire. The Strand. Susan Sontag. The Reading Room at the big library. Simon & Schuster. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Columbia. NYU. James Baldwin. The New School. Woody Allen. The New York Times Book Review. Vintage paperbacks. John Cheever. The New York Review of Books. J.D. Salinger. The Paris Review. The Algonquin. The Partisan Review. Delmore Schwartz. You even see it call itself Book Country in ads for some kind of book fest. It would be your kind of place, you believe. Then, about the time you’re moving here almost 15 years ago, you see a photo on the front page of the Times as you’re skimming the headlines before you sit down to read the whole paper, and you think, oh, that must be a picture from some place like Harlan County, Kentucky about some hardscrabble issue, one of those features the Times does now and then about some place remote from New York and its refinement. But when you’re in your seat on the couch and you look closer you’re shocked to see that it’s not
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READY FOR SCHOOL? INVESTIGATION Universal pre-kindergarten sites across Manhattan have outstanding and serious health violations, according to Health Department data. City Hall maintains that every site is safe for the start of school BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS AND LOGAN HENDRIX
Next month, 70,000 New
York City school kids will show up for their first day of pre-kindergarten, taking advantage of the signature policy initiative of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first term in office. So far, 1,150 early education centers have been set up to house all of those kids. And last week, de Blasio’s office gave the green light to all of them, saying that any health violations or Department of Building concerns have been resolved. But data collected from the
SPECIAL REPORT ON FALL EDUCATION What’s the best elementary school in the neighborhood? Private school? High school? Our special education section begins on p.17 Department of Health’s own website suggests that not every site is ready to receive children.
In neighborhoods throughout Manhattan, inspection reports reviewed by this newspaper reveal there are still many unresolved and serious health code violations at a half-dozen universal pre-K centers. A spokesman for the mayor’s office said despite what is reflected in the Health Department’s database, the administration stands by its claim that there are zero unresolved health violations in the most serious category at any UPK site. “They can stay listed on our online site until such time as we’ve complete the procedural paperwork and resolution of that
violation,” said de Blasio spokesperson Wiley Norvell. “But regardless of whether they’re listed on the site currently, we’ve confirmed that all the violations have been mitigated on the spot.” But for parents about to send their 4-year-olds to their first day of school, the fact that several of the
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday August 21 – 7:28 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com.
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