The Spectator
“The Pulse of the Student Body”
The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper
Volume 106 No. 10
February 12, 2016
SING! 2016 Faces Budget Cuts
NEWSBEAT
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t the New York City Regional Science Olympiad competition on Saturday, February 6, Stuyvesant teams won a total of 37 medals, taking second place as a team and advancing to the state competition in March.
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ocial Studies teacher Robert Sandler and several of his students attended an event at the Yale Club honoring American civil rights activist Frederick Douglass. Junior Stephen Nyarko and senior Tabitha Wilson, both members of the Gilder-Lehrman Student Advisory Council, spoke at the event.
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t the National Classical Etymology Examination, fourteen Stuyvesant Latin students won medals, including four gold medals in the Advanced Level competitions and two gold medals in the Intermediate Level competitions.
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ucy Liu (‘86), Jason Weinberg (’85), and Paul Reiser (‘73) are leading the fundraising to support this year’s production of SING!.
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ore than 500 students attended the Health Fair on Friday, January 15. Organized by Spark Coordinator Angel Colon, the Stuyvesant Wellness Council, and their faculty advisor, physical education teacher Dr. Anna Markova, the health fair provided activities, food, and information to promote healthy living.
By Chloe Hanson and Jarett Lee
Due to budget cuts imposed by the Student Union (SU), students will see an increase in the cost of ticket prices and dues for SING! 2016. Each SING! performance will be granted $1,500 along with what each performance gets from its dues, which will be $15 instead of $12 this year. Ticket prices will also be increased by at least $5, bringing prices to $20 for the Wednesday performance and $30 for the Friday and Saturday performances. One reason behind the budget cuts is the need to pay the salary of the Coordinator of Student Affairs (COSA), Matthew Polazzo. “The Student Union has to pay [the COSA’s] salary out of their own funding,” Junior SING! 2016 Coordinator Winston Venderbush said. Following the injury of former COSA and health teacher Lisa Weinwurm in the winter of 2014, the SU was left without an advisor. As a result, the money that would usually go into the Weinwurm’s salary was put into SING! 2015’s budget. Another reason for the budget cuts is the increase in the salary for SING! faculty advisors. “We spend more money than we used to because the faculty advisors used to be paid a flat rate, [...] but now because of DOE regulations, they’re paid an hourly rate, and so that rate’s actually a lot more than what they used to be paid and we have to pay for that out of the budget,” Venderbush said. This increase in faculty advisors’ salaries has also halted the motion for additional faculty advisors for this year’s SING!. Extra supervision would have benefited SING! by reducing the frequency of problems as well as the chance of problems arising. Additionally, the SU decided
to allocate a larger portion of its budget to clubs and pubs this year, resulting in less funding for SING! 2016. Coupled with the usual expenses of developing and producing SING!, superfluous spending will have to be restricted. To help increase revenue and deal with the budget cuts, SING! organizers are making changes in the timeliness of SING! decisions. SING! apparel, themes, and concessions will all be chosen earlier. “Knowing what the themes are early will enable us to order apparel more early which would enable us to save a tremendous amount of money on the ordering process and make more money from that,” Polazzo said. If matters are done efficiently in a timely fashion, less money will be wasted addressing costly, last-minute problems. Another method of increasing revenue was more strictly enforcing the collection of dues, which are the required payments a participant must pay to have a role in SING!. “We were a little bit more lax on dues collection last year and I think we’re going to be stricter about it this year,” Polazzo said. Funding for SING! 2016 may also receive a $30,000 donation from the Alumni Association in a challenge match run by Lucy Liu (’86), Jason Weinberg (’85), and Paul Reiser (’73) where the three will donate $15,000 if the rest of the Stuyvesant alumni community can raise the same amount by February 5, 2016. Despite these budget cuts and the difficulties they may bring, people are confident that SING! 2016 will be relatively unchanged, if not even better. “Aside from the budget cuts and the increased ticket prices, I can guarantee that the budget cuts won’t affect the show’s quality,” Venderbush said.
stuyspec.com
51+49+A Are You In Favor of Annualizing Classes?
No
Yes
50.6%
49.3%
By The Spectator News Department
Beginning this term, the administration strove to annualize all core classes, meaning that students would not change teachers at the start of the spring semester. Underclassmen reported that many of their classes were annualized, while upperclassmen generally experienced the reverse. The Spectator News Department distributed a poll to Stuyvesant students via The Spectator Facebook page to gauge their stance on course annualization. One hundred sixty-two students responded, and with nearly a 50-50 split, the question still stands: should the administration work to annualize all classes? Read a point-counterpoint piece on the subject on page 15.
Victoria Huang / The Spectator
Computer Science Coordinator Michael Zamansky Resigns
Former Computer Science Coordinator Michael Zamansky left Stuyvesant last month to begin working at Hunter College.
By Sharon Chao and Dhiraj Patel Former Coordinator of Computer Science Michael Zamansky resigned from his position on Wednesday, January 27. He has accepted a new role as Distinguished Lecturer and Coordinator of Com-
WHAT’S INSIDE? Features A&E
puter Science Education at Hunter College. Computer science teacher JonAlf Dyrland-Weaver has been appointed as the new Coordinator of Computer Science, and will teach Zamanky’s Software Development class along with computer science teacher Topher Brown Mykolyk. Zamansky officially announced
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his resignation to the administration on Wednesday, December 23, 2015. He began thinking about resigning two years ago, but wanted to wait until at least this school year in order to complete the 25 years of service necessary to receive a full pension. This year was his 26th year at Stuyvesant. When he officially started looking for jobs in late 2014, he negotiated with private companies and private schools before meeting with people at Hunter College in November 2015, ultimately deciding to work there. Zamansky decided to resign due to what he felt was a lack of authority within Stuyvesant. “I saw that the administration had no intentions of making computer science a department,” Zamansky said. “At Stuyvesant, I [had] no authority but [had] to deal with all the problems related to Computer Science.” Moreover, Zamansky thought that the Department of Education (DOE) was not recognizing Stuyvesant as a leader in computer science. “[In 2005] I started to connect with the DOE to get them to come down and look at our program […] and then hopefully help us get to
Student-Bought Meals Put to the Taste Test Features editor Alice Cheng asks Stuyvesant head cook Khadija Eddhabi to try some of Stuyvesant students’ favorite lunches.
more schools, more teachers, and ultimately more kids. I was able to secure a meeting or two at Tweed [the DOE headquarters] but nothing ever came of it,” Zamansky wrote in his online blog, C’est la Z. Zamansky’s new job has three main components. The first is building a computer science teacher education program, which will be the first in the city. Zamansky helps to develop courses specially designed for teachers. “There will be pedagogy courses, which are about how to teach computer science to students,” he said. “There will also be [informational courses to teach] parts of a full algorithms course and parts of a full computer science theory course, for example.” Part of the reason that he started his new job on Thursday, January 28, the first day of the second term at Hunter College, was so that there will be a chance that the new program can start this September. Zamansky will also help create a new honors computer science program at Hunter College and tie in his connections with the technology community to provide internships for students. “Most schools
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that have good computer science programs assume that their students will go to graduate school, but [our] program will be more practical and give students the chance to enter the workforce right after they graduate,” Zamansky said. The final aspect of Zamansky’s position involves working with the two high schools on the Hunter College campus, Hunter College High School and Manhattan Hunter Science High School. “I’ll help support the teachers there […] I’ll leverage my experience to help without stepping on anyone’s toes,” Zamansky said. This new place of work will give Zamansky the chance to move up on the work ladder, allowing him to practice computer science in addition to teaching it. Zamansky will be missed by his students at Stuyvesant. “He was an approachable person and extremely friendly. I’d ask him a question and get a detailed answer and then a few minutes later we’d be talking and joking about things,” said senior Ethan Chang, Zamansky’s former Advanced Placement continued on page 2
The Tale of Three Bowls of Mexican Food Three A&E writers compare the burrito bowls from various Mexican places around Stuyvesant.