The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology and South Bronx Preparatory: A College Board School, two co-located high schools in the South Bronx, will be closed for a day after a student tested positive for the coronavirus.

Closing most public schools and using the rest to serve at-risk students and families who rely on them to meet basic health needs would be a good way for the Education Department to handle the coronavirus crisis, the chair of the city council’s Education Committee said Thursday. City Council Member Mark Treyger suggested that adopting a “summer school” approach "could work in terms of a limited system shutdown while servicing the most vulnerable.”

New Dorp High School and the Richard H. Hungerford School were being shut down out of “an abundance of caution,” the DOE said on Twitter early Friday.

Success Academy Charter Schools, which teaches 18,000 students across 45 schools in the city, will move to online learning starting Mar. 19, though officials didn’t specify how long the shutdown will last.

UFT head Michael Mulgrew pointed out that many city private and charter schools have already shut their doors plus multiple other states.

The private institute offers arts classes to 4,000 students mostly in Harlem, through classes at its building and at partner schools.

Education officials, in a Friday morning webinar, instructed all city principals to prepare for an extended shutdown by assembling materials to send home with students, reviewing how to use online teaching platforms and deciding how to communicate with families, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by The News.

Mulgrew accused city officials of not complying with state protocol on school closures - which mandates 24-hour shutdowns if a student or staff member tests positive - and creating unsafe labor conditions.

A look at some of the challenges the city school system will be tackling in the days ahead.

The sites, which Mayor de Blasio first announced Sunday, will be staffed by a combination of city teachers and community-based organizations, according to a plan the city Education Department submitted to state officials Monday night.

At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, the city’s most selective public high school, only 10 black students and 20 Latino students got admissions offers, out of nearly 800 students accepted, data shows.

The proposal comes as city officials announced that only 11% of students admitted to specialized schools this year were black or Latino, compared to 70% of all city students, a figure virtually unchanged from years past.

The annual math and English exams administered annually to New York 3rd-8th graders, as well as exams for English Language Learners, will no longer be given this school year, said Board of Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa and interim state Education Commissioner Shannon Tahoe.

But the centers, slated to open Monday, are currently limited to children of healthcare and transit workers and first-responders - and advocates worry homeless students will be left behind.

Students cracked open laptops or homework packets Monday morning, while parents wrangled restless kids and teachers reconnected with pupils longing for some structure after a week of aimlessness spent mostly indoors.

When Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, Donald Nesbitt, then a cook at a Brooklyn public school, packed a bag and slept at school so he could continue making food for the many students who relied on him for their regular meals.

A Brooklyn principal has died of complications from the coronavirus, the principals union announced Monday.

Rona Phillips, the principal of KAPPA V High School in Brownsville, is in intensive care with pneumonia, officials said. “Our thoughts are with Principal Phillips and her family for a speedy recovery, and we’ll support the school community in every way we can,” said Education Department spokeswoman Miranda Barbot.

The Grossman School on Medicine is making the unprecedented move “in response to Governor Cuomo’s directive to get more physicians into the health system more quickly," it said in a statement.

A Brooklyn middle school took a novel approach to remote learning: A computer drop-off service to students.

The staffer hasn’t been working out of the agency’s Tweed Courthouse headquarters for nine days and is currently quarantined out of state. The employee alerted close colleagues as a precaution, according to sources.

The small businesses, many of which already run on razor-thin margins, are struggling to make end meet amid the crisis.

The United Federation of Teachers tested security camera technology from a company affiliated with Clearview AI

Workers were organizing with Teamsters Local 814 in the hopes of starting a union to address simmering concerns over pay and inconsistent hours.

NYU students ask for refund. Dean sends video of herself dancing

The Board of Trustees voted Monday night to approve the three new college chiefs for Queens College, Hostos Community College and The CUNY Graduate Center, officials announced.

Teachers and school leaders across the country are struggling to maintain a semblance of structure and normalcy during remote learning while adapting to the approach’s many limitations. Grades are at the center of that debate.

City teachers and students will lose most of the annual public school pause this year after state officials announced remote learning would press on during the first half of April, officials confirmed Tuesday.

The author of “The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City,” was 74.

City schools were originally supposed to be off April 9-17.

Many teachers have been relying on the videoconferencing platform to chat with students during remote learning.

Many of the city's foster youth were thrust into uncertainty last week when CUNY ordered them out of their dorms due to coronavirus. Unlike their peers, these students have no childhood bedrooms to return to, and often no families who can help them through the shutdown of the economy or the closing of their colleges.

The high-stakes exams are graduation requirements for New York high school students.

The goal for remote learning during the break “is to maintain the exciting and enriching aspects that Spring Recess provides,” Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza told teachers in a Monday night email.

Students normally must pass five of the end-of-course exams to graduate from state high schools, but officials scrapped the exams Monday amid statewide school closures triggered by the coronavirus outbreak.

CUNY officials hope the new relief effort — started with two $1 million donations from the Dimon and Petrie Foundations — will eventually grow to $10 million.

As a single parent of five young children with two iPads and no computers at home, she’s had to ration both her own attention, and her kids’ time with the devices.

Sigrid Nunez, 69, authored the National Book Award-winning novel “The Friend," which depicts a woman’s grief over the death of a close friend as she cares for his dog. She’s among 175 recipients of this year’s grants, which aim to give awardees the financial freedom to pursue their creative work.

The COVID-19 deaths included 22 paraprofessionals, 21 teachers, two administrators, two central office staffers, a facilities employee, a guidance counselor and a school food worker.

Twenty-two of the city’s 25,000 paraprofessionals have died from the coronavirus, a rate four times higher than the rest of the 150,000-employee Department of Education, according to the agency’s data.

The next opportunity to take the test is Aug. 29, and the College Board will offer an additional chance to take the test in September if students are able to return to school.

CUNY students, whose median family income is $40,000 a year, say it’s the worst possible time to face additional expenses.

The bulk of students taking the test do so before starting Kindergarten—an aspect of the process critics say privileges parents with the money and savvy to prepare their young kids for the high-stakes exams.

Maira Ramirez feels a pang of guilt when her phone buzzes with class assignments while she’s working double shifts at a kosher market to support her financially-strapped family during the pandemic. “I would be at work and see the notifications pop up on Google Classrooms," said Ramirez, a 20-year-old student at West Brooklyn Community High School — a transfer school for students who have struggled in traditional high schools. “I’d be like ‘Damn, I can’t even do them.'”

Union officials say school bus workers will be hit hard by the cuts.

Dozens of students and patients are thriving through distance learning and telehealth consultation via the Blythedale Children’s Hospital.

The lawmakers say the city should turn its attention to pricey contracts, testing payments and administrative costs before axing $181 million from school budgets that cover the salaries of teachers, social workers, and other staff.

Schools chancellor Richard Carranza put the kibosh on the app in early April, several weeks into the city’s seismic shift to remote learning, citing concerns about Zoom’s privacy and security features.

While linkbait posts aren’t as popular as they once were, top 10 lists have been popular ever since Moses came down from the mount with his top 10 list of “thou shalt nots.” Magazines like Rolling Stone will always have top 500 playlists and AFI will always publish top 100 movies lists.
 
 
However, as a responsible publisher, marketer, and SEO with an eye for evergreen content, there are more responsible and better long-term URL options you can ...

The post Why You Should Avoid Numbers in Your URL appeared first on RSS Feed Converter.

If you are a small business owner, you should really consider blogging. Why blog? Well before you groan, throw your hands over your face, and tell me you really don’t like to write, don’t have time to write, or any other excuse, just listen to why.
Here are nine really good reasons why you should blog.
 
 
FIRST, blogs increase the chance that you’ll show up in search results. When you write a blog post, you put more words ...

The post Why Blog? Not Just Because Your SEO Tells You To appeared first on RSS Feed Converter.