Including kids from Nanuet’s Barr Middle school in our story today on “Pinwheels for Peace” meant posing a bit of an interruption to a fifth-grade art class led by teachers Denise Cuccia and Jacki Newbey. Many thanks to both teachers and their friendly students, many of whom are pictured below. (My apologies to anyone who got cut out of the shot!)

In case you’re not on the Carmel email list, here’s the latest info….

SUPERINTENDENT SEARCH INPUT SESSION:  As they begin the search for a new Superintendent of Schools, the Board of Education is seeking input from all facets of the school community on what qualities are important.  To assist them in this and in the search, the Board has contracted with Jim Langlois and Tom
Higgins of Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES.Dr. Langlois and Dr. Higgins will be conducting a series of input sessions throughout the district on Wednesday, October 3 and Thursday, October 4, 2007. Parents and community members are invited to attend a session on Wednesday, October 3 either from 1:00-2:00 p.m. at Casey Hall in Carmel High School OR from 7:00-8:00 p.m. at the George Fischer Middle School auditorium. If you are unable to attend a session but would like to share your thoughts, please send a letter or email either Mr. Ron Wilson (rwilson@ccsd.k12.ny.us) or myself (sdieck@ccsd.k12.ny.us) at the District Office (address is below).

MySpace.com always gets such a bad rap, but I think kids are really gaining very valuable skills by building up their sites.

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Hope these tips provided by the Celerity Educational Group are helpful….

Personally, I never could do the “study group” thing. I’d try, but I would always get distracted and goof off instead of actually doing any work. Of course, saying I was at a study group was always a great excuse to hang out with friends on a week day, but that’s another story… 

You’d think a warning on the back of a package of scissors would caution people against cutting themselves or running, but Fiskars have done one better. They warn people that their product can cause cancer, birth defects and/or reproductive harm.

One alert parent at Cherry Lane Elementary School noticed the warning and brought it to the attention of the administration. The school provided Fiskars scissors to first, third and fifth-graders in a PTA-provided supply package. The scissors were collected by the teachers and replaced with non-toxic scissors.

One administrator admitted the schoolwide recall might have been a tad overkill, but that, what with all the toy recalls, it was better to be safe than sorry.

For Fiskars’ reason for the warning, click here.

added 9/20. A copy of the story that ran in the Journal News can be found here.

The president of Fiskars e-mailed us with this statement:

I am Chad Vincent and the President of Fiskars. Please let me assure you that our scissors are 100% safe, and do not and did not require the warning on the back to the packaging.

So, why did we add it in the first place?
We are a very conservative company, and when Prop 65 came out with a list of chemicals 18 pages long, we placed the warning, needed or not, on all items until we could confirm the specific contents required by California law – Proposition 65 . Fiskars has thousands of products, and we wanted to be extremely cautious and thorough. Our analysis has indicated that the products are completely safe and always have been.

This Friday (Sept. 21), the Good Day New York morning show will broadcast live from Dobbs Ferry High School.

The show, which runs from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m., will broadcast from the the football practice field and will showcase the school’s athletic teams, cheerleading squad, pep band and other groups. The event also coincides with “Coach Mac Field Day,” part of the school’s Spirit Week and a day to honor the memory of late football and softball coach Jim Mackenzie, who died of a heart attack in May 2006.

The public is invited to attend the broadcast. Be aware the hosts will be interviewing people in the audience and you could end up on camera. Students and fans should begin arriving at 6:30 a.m. School will officially open at 9:15 a.m.

For information, call the superintendent’s office at 914-693-1500 ext. 3024.

UPDATE: Read on for the letter Superintendent Debra Kaplan sent to parents. Read more of this entry »

Congratulations to Walter Panas High School junior Ed Croft, who has been accepted into the New York All-State String Orchestra! Croft is a member of the Walter Panas Symphony Orchestra, Concert Band and Jazz Band.

The 2007 Conference All-State Performing Organization is to be held from Noverember 29 to December 2 in Rochester, N.Y.

Want to keep tabs on what your kid is buying for lunch at school? More and more parents can, thanks to online lunch payment systems, which I wrote about in this article. Here’s some food (excuse the pun) for thought that I didn’t have room to include in the published story:

I absolutely love this article about how text abbreviations are creeping into students’ work! You must check it out — especially since it provides a list of definitions to help you figure out what your kids are actually talking about!

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Community service is now a graduation requirement at a few schools throughout the region. At Briarcliff High School, a 1996 graduate addressed the student body last week and told the students they should embrace the requirement as an experience in which they can get at least as much as they give.

The alumna, Daniela Papi, has turned service into a full-time career by starting PEPY Tours, a non-profit touring company that takes volunteer groups through Cambodia. Her company even started a school for underprivileged children in the region.

“I worked behind a desk for 12 hours a day before I started PEPY,� Ms. Papi said. “I hated what I was doing. Now I work at least as many hours, but the difference is I love what I am doing and I’m passionate about it.�

Community service shouldn’t be something you do to fulfill a requirement, and never to do again, she added.

“You can be a good citizen every day,” she said. “Giving time, energy, and passions to something that’s part of something long-term is fun, you learn a lot, it’s good for your college applications, and it can make you passionate about something you do.â€?

“Community service, in my opinion, isn’t just about giving money,” she said. “It’s about human interaction, meeting, interacting and listening to people.”

Click here to learn more about PEPY Tours.

Pace Law School has appointed Alexandra Dapolito Dunn the new Assistant Dean of Environmental Law Programs, effective August 21, 2007. In this capacity, Dunn oversees the activities of the Law School’s Center for Environmental Legal Studies and its many national and international programs – which are ranked third in the nation.

Dunn joins Pace after serving for six years as the general counsel of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) in Washington, D.C.  NACWA is a major non-profit environmental organization dedicated to achieving America’s water policy goals.

“There is no better time to enter the field of environmental legal education,� said Dunn.  “New environmental challenges present themselves daily, such as global climate change, water and air pollution, and urban land reclamation.  The opportunity to work with students who are passionate about environmental protection, both domestically and world wide, and to train them to be leaders, professionals, and to help cultivate a world environmental ethic is a priority for Pace Law School, our environmental faculty, and staff.�

New school principals are more diverse and have more leadership training than veteran principals, according to a new report from Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.

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Click here to read more about the region’s newest superintendents.  

Remember Kevin’s girlfriend from “The Wonder Years” — a.k.a. Winnie Cooper? Turns out that Danica McKellar, the actress who played the young Winnie, is something of a mathematics wunderkind. As an undergraduate at UCLA, McKellar co-authored a published math proof entitled “Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z^2.”

Interested in a simpler title? Try “Math Doesn’t Suck”—it’s a new book authored by McKellar that’s being billed as a girls’ guide to surviving middle school math.

I guess the ball’s now in your court, Fred Savage. I’ll be waiting for Kevin Arnold’s “English Doesn’t Bite.”

(photo courtesy of danicamckellar.com)

Find out what your kids are really eating for lunch and see what happens when two Angry Moms try to change the school lunch system. Better School Food presents a screening of the film “Two Angry Moms” at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Sept. 20 at the Katonah Library, 26 Bedford Road. Interested? Read on for more information.

Looking for some work as a substitute teacher? If so, you may want to check out the Putnam/Northern Westchester Board of Cooperative Educational Services’ first annual Substitute Teacher Recruitment Fair from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Sept. 24. Read on for more information.