Running for school board or know someone who is? Alert them to the following note from our Editorial Board:

Candidates in contested school board races in the May 20 election are invited to discuss the issues and their campaigns in endorsement interviews with The Journal News Editorial Board. As in the past, these discussions will form the basis of news articles and serve as fodder for the Editorial Board’s recommendations…. If there are contests in local cities, the interview times will be posted after candidates’ April 30 deadline for filing petitions with local school districts.

Because of the vast number of races in Westchester, Putnam and Rockland counties – and the impossibility of crafting a schedule that meets everyone’s family, work and campaign needs – we appreciate the efforts by candidates to make their scheduled interview hour.

Unfortunately, we generally are unable to reschedule interview times. Please RSVP to Laurie Nikolski, associate editor, at 914-694-5024.

There is also a candidate questionnaire.

For full info, click here.

I spent a few hours at West Point academy today, watching the seventh annual Cyber Defense Exercise in action.

A team of roughly 30 cadets, led by senior Adrian Tilston, tried to defend a computer network against professional NSA hackers. I was pretty impressed.

The thing was that they were working in such a jargon-filled, complicated world of hacking and counterhacking that I really could barely scratch the surface of what exactly was going on.

These cadets were roaming through random computer folders, looking for malicious files, and NSA operatives managed to sneak into the system using a dormant program that only pops up every few hours on a computer.

The thing that really cooked my noodle was that the cadets were running the entire exercise on “virtual computers”—or computers run on computers—so all the viruses and hacks won’t mess up the expensive hardware.

Cadet Andy Wolfe told me using a virtual computer is kind of like when you copy a Microsoft Word document—you can do whatever you want with the copy and the original file remains the same. I still don’t really get it.

I had the opportunity to interview four North Rockland sophomores who volunteered to talk about how cancer had touched their lives.

I asked the students whether being exposed to cancer made them more aware of cancer or affected how they talked about it with their friends. Here is what Raven Hopkins, 15, said:

“Knowing so many people (affected by cancer), it makes me want to inform them what’s involved, show them what it can do to you, show them how the cancer rate is exploding. It makes me want to shake them, (say) ‘You to take care of yourself to make sure you are not the one’ because it’s hard being sick. I don’t think people realize how much they are affecting their family when they are gone. It makes them—it looks like people are selfish, they don’t care. They don’t.”

Here’s how Spencer Kennard, 16 answered the same question:

“I talk about it with friends and family. I think that cancer is so rampant in society, I think that people have all—either they have seen something like ER —like it’s become numb and unless it happens to you, people blank it off.”

School districts here in the Lower Hudson Valley often are comprised of more than just one town. Here’s a letter I recently received talking about how the system “is badly broken” and is “tearing us apart” because of tax inequalities between different towns.

“Hello Diana.  My name is Marc Kirschner.  I’m a trustee on the Tarrytown BOE; I’ve served for the past 13 years.  Thank you for your accurate and informative coverage of our upcoming budget vote.  I’m writing because we believe there is a much bigger story here, involving the inequity in the tax system that drives the massive split in tax increases for our proposed budget this year (9% in Tarrytown and 3% in Sleephy Hollow).

It’s important to note that this problem affects not just us, but many districts all across the state, who have residents split between different towns.  In fact, there’s a relationship between this problem, and its negative impact on the trends in shared services and governance that are being championed by influencers like AG Andrew Cuomo.  Mr. Cuomo knows that combining services and governance between small villages can help save real money, but tax issues like this one serve to severely undermine the success of those efforts.

In short, the system is badly broken—and “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more.”  Not mad at our villages or towns; they’re doing nothing wrong.  We’re mad at the system that is, in effect, tearing us apart.  When you have two villages, in two separate towns, and one shared school district, the tax system serves to effectively pit one side of the district against the other—every year.  As a resident, it’s only natural to feel uncomfortable when you know one village is paying more than the other in its school tax increase.  But when the town assessments drive a huge differential like this, then you have a problem that could threaten passage of your budget.  And that’s a problem we don’t need.  We need support.  We need an equitable tax system that treats our residents fairly.

What’s the solution?  We need to have the two villages treated as a single tax district for the purpose of levying school taxes.  Tax assessables across two entire towns are not meaningful or applicable when it comes to setting school taxes for two small villages.  But that’s what’s going on.  How we achieve the solution—fair tax treatment—needs to be figured out.  Reassessments at the village level? Some sort of exemption?  Secession from the towns?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that this is a tax system that is unfair, and, as in this year, has the potential of causing our budget to be voted down—even though the district has worked extremely hard to get to an average tax increase of about 6%.  That increase is in line with most districts in our area, and has been achieved even though we are also managing a roughly $60 million construction program.  But the success of our budget vote is placed in jeopardy by an unfair taxation system.

As a school board we have decided to work hard to bring attention to this problem.  We are starting the process of mobilizing our community and contacting legislators to push for action.”

Anna Gottlieb, executive director and founder of Gilda’s Club Seattle.

“We didn’t do a lot of teen things. We couldn’t get kids to come into the clubhouse. They didn’t want the stigma of it. We were sitting around brainstorming ways to get teens in and I said ‘why don’t we try a teen writing contest?’

“The foundation said, ‘I don’t think kids will do it’ but they agreed anyway and we put a brochure together. This is the our third year doing it.

“I think our first year, we got about 50 essays and they were mind-boggling. They were unbelieveable. Now you can read them online. They were incredible. They were things we kind of suspected kids might be thinking or feeling but they never talk about it. We had one girl who wrote shewished her father had died because his leukemia had taken up her childhood. This year, we had over 150 submissions.

“We found something that started out so innocently and grew into some of the most important things we do.”

Erin McAllister, program director of Gilda’s Club South Jersey, on how a school staff member with cancer affects the school:

“I think it has a huge impact, especially if it’s a favorite teacher. A lot of kids spend more time with their teacher than their families. That routine is so important for them. Then they see a teacher hasn’t been in and hear rumors … it’s important to be up front and honest with them.

“It’s something they put in the back of their mind that has a lasting impression. Kids who have lost a teacher to cancer have been drastically impacted by it. If it’s a bad experience, every person will die. If it’s a survivor, then that person, that teen, is going to learn that if someone is diagnosed they can survive.”

BRIARCLIFF MANOR — Members of the Greenhouse Club at Briarcliff Middle School are watching not only their own garden grow but are helping inner-city special-needs students at the Hawthorne Country Day School in Harlem grown theirs as well. The Briarcliff students are creating a five-part video miniseries on the how-to’s of gardening, and the teachers at the Hawthorne Country Day School will use the series as a tool to teach their students the basics of planting and gardening.

The video series will be accompanied by worksheets and diagrams for the students to complete, which will be devised by BMS students and their Greenhouse Club coordinator and Science and Special Education teacher Bob Iovino.

“The students and I are extremely excited for this opportunity,” says Mr. Iovino, who adds that the idea to partner with the Hawthorne School came from him and Hawthorne Country Day School teacher and administrator Christine Montalto.

Currently, members of the Greenhouse Club are busy creating worksheets, scripts, and videotaping for the project, which will culminate in late June with the children at the Hawthorne School planting a community garden of their own in Harlem.

Paul J. Donahue, founder and director of Child Development Associates in Scarsdale, will speak at the Wooster school in Danbury, Conn., on May 15 about “the influence of computers, video games, and other forms of technology on our children.” His talk is the second lecture in the school’s “Focus on Ethical Education” speaker series, aimed at expanding the school’s message of ethical education to the community. The event, which starts with a reception at 7 followed by his talk at 7:30, takes place in the Middle School Common Room on the Wooster School campus, located at 91 Miry Brook Road in Danbury. The event is free an open to the public, but an RSVP is suggested by calling (203) 830-3944 or emailing elizabeth.mcdevitt@woosterschool.org.

An educational leadership search firm has been appointed by the Yorktown Central School District Board of Education to conduct a search for a high school principal.

At its meeting last week, the YCSD Board appointed Orchard Hill Consulting to direct the search. Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Ralph Napolitano, recently met with Dr. Ernest Piermarini and Dr. Kathleen Zazza of the firm to discuss the search protocol, procedures, and the timeline in which the search will be conducted.

As part of the community wide outreach, on Wednesday April 30, 2008, between the hours of 10am and 4pm, Orchard Hill representatives will hold a Stakeholder’s Forum to field questions, to listen to commentary and to share ideas. All are welcome.

The consulting firm has set up an online SurveyMonkey survey and a Search Timeline that are posted on Yorktown’s website at www.Yorktowncsd.org. The community is encouraged to check the site to participate in the survey and to check for periodic updates to the search process.

Pop artist Charles Fazzino recently donated his time and efforts to work with the 2008 Ursuline School AP Art Class to create a large, three-dimensional painting celebrating the school and its heritage. The resulting work, “Ring Day at Ursuline” has been permanently installed at the school.

Fazzino, who has a studio in New Rochelle, has motivations close to home:

“My daughter is graduating from there this May and I wanted to do something that would make sure that she remembers her experiences here for the rest of her life. And I wanted to give a gift to the school that has been so instrumental in her up-bringing,” he said in a statement.

Purchase College’s Joe Williams Scholars will perform at a jazz concert Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Choral Hall of the Music Building with special guests vocalist Cyrille-Aimee Daudel and drummer Dan McGuiness.

The five Jazz Studies students are on scholarship at Purchase College through a program established by the late jazz vocalist Joe Williams. The concert is free and open to the public.  They are freshmen Anne Boccato, piano; Dave Saeva, trombone; Cameron Kayne, trombone; Alex Segal, saxophone; and Martin Peters, saxophone. Daudel, a junior at the college, won the Montreux Jazz Festival Vocal Competition last July in Switzerland.

Ossining High School seniors have been accepted to many
prestigious schools for fall 2008—including seven Ivy League colleges
or universities, the most Ivys that have accepted Ossining High School
students in a single graduation year.

Lee Saper has been accepted to Brown University; Yingna Liu has been
accepted to Columbia University, Cornell University and Harvard
University; Jennifer Brooke Hampton has been accepted to Cornell
University; Jessica Palmer has been accepted to Cornell University;
Andre Popescu has been accepted to Columbia University; Micah Joselow
has been accepted to Cornell Unviersity, Dartmouth College, Princeton
and the University of Pennsylvania; and Robert Levine has been accepted
to Cornell University.

“Ossining’s latest Ivy acceptances, following four seniors accepted to
Harvard for fall 2006, continues to validate the quality of education
our students receive here, as well as the talent we nurture,” said
Assistant Principal Lorraine Longing, who leads the guidance department.
“This year, as in the past, our students were accepted not only to Ivy
League schools but other renowned institutions as well, including
Barnard, Duke, Georgetown, New York University, Smith, West Point and
Vassar.”

Amy Kirkham, a senior at Mamaroneck High School, is one of about 560 semifinalists in the 2008 Presidential Scholars Program, the school has announced. The group was winnowed from more than 3,000 candidates on the basis of their superior achievements, leadership qualities, character and community and school involvement.  Finalists will be announced in May.

Leslie Cohen, assistant vice president for human resources at Empire State College at the State University of New York is embarking on a solo bike ride across New York state to raise money for scholarships at the college. He plans to ride more than 1,000 miles in one month, from April 18 to May 19, and will start his effort this weekend in New York City, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley.

Between today and Monday, he’ll kick off his ride at the college’s Staten Island location, bike to the Manhattan and Brooklyn campuses,  and swing Saturday through the Hudson Valley, where he’ll bike between Hartsdale, New City, Middletown, and Highland. He’s also expected to ride through Riverhead, Hauppauge and Old Westbury in this stretch of the trip.

The college serves adult learners, who, because of their predominantly part-time status, often have more difficulty acquiring financial aid. Anyone who would like to pledge to support one or more legs of Cohen’s trip can do so at www.esc.edu/bikeride.



ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says he is subpoenaing BOCES districts statewide because they may have been complicit in listing part-time lawyers as full-time employees to get additional state tax dollars.

Cuomo is targeting the BOCES districts that operate regional services for a number of public school districts. Cuomo says the BOCES appear to have gained more state school aid by providing health and pension benefits to BOCES attorneys who worked part-time for school districts in addition to their full-time private practices.

Cuomo’s broader investigation of benefits provided to lawyers by school districts and local governments continues.