Students from Pearl River’s St. Margaret of Antioch Elementary School will perform with the internationally recognized Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall at 8 p.m. Thursday.

The children, from grades 4-8, will join students from schools throughout the metro area to create an ensemble choir to sing with the youth orchestra [...]

White Plains Mayor Joseph Delfino was named as this year’s College of Westchester honoree at its upcoming foundation event.

Here’s the press release:

“Mayor Joseph Delfino is this year’s honoree as The College of Westchester holds its annual Charitable Foundation Event on October 28.  The Foundation’s primary purpose is to provide a vehicle to supplement grant and [...]

Jazz musician Bob Mintzer will give a concert at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 10 at Nyack High School, playing along with the school jazz band and the Rockland county Jazz All-Stars. Tickets are $10 at the door.

A special two-day jazz workshop will be held for any student in the area of any level on Nov. 2 [...]

Here’s a press release from Katonah-Lewisboro schools:

“Each spring, thousands of students audition a New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) level 6 solo for a rating from a certified judge. The audition results are forwarded to a statewide selection committee and a proficiency list is generated, from which students are selected for All-State participation.

“For the [...]

Here’s a press release from Briarcliff Manor schools looking for submissions to its new Briarcliff Gallery of Writing. The submissions can come from anyone in the community, student or adult, with a submission deadline of Nov. 6:

” The Briarcliff Gallery of Writing, a website created by Briarcliff High School and dedicated to celebrating the importance [...]

Received this press release  from Jonathan Bryant, principal of Putnam Valley High School courtesy of Maureen Bellino, district clerk and Superintendent Marc Space’s secretary:

“More than a few people have asked the question, “What do principals do during the summer”?

This past summer, High School Principals from the Northern Westchester/Putnam Principals Association spent a day together talking [...]

Here’s a press release from Putnam Northern Westchester BOCES:

“Recently enacted New York State legislation clarifies that certain school administrators and supervisors must complete training in the needs of autistic children. This affects all those assigned on or after September 2, 2009, to serve as special education administrators.

The Hudson River Teacher Center will provide this required [...]

Westchester Community College is holding a family-friendly program at its Native Plant Center from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 4.

“At Play with Plants: A Day of Discovry for the Child in All of Us,” will be held in the classroom building and the main campus at 75 Grasslands Road in Valhalla and includes lectures, [...]

Yonkers Montessori Academy students participated in the United Nations International Day of Peace on Sept. 21 by creating pinwheels and planting them on their school lawn.

The Academy is one of 11 pre-kindergarten-thought-eighth-grade public schools in Yonkers.

Montessori students show off their pinwheels.

Photo courtesy of Elyse David

Irvington High School seniors Josh Bloom, Josh Kaplan, Lilianna Rembar, Zach Seigel and Gordon Steinberg were named National Merit Scholarship Program
semifinalists. More than 1.5 million high school juniors took the qualifying
PSAT exam; of those, 16,000 were named semifinalists. Semifinalists are the
highest scoring entrants in each state, and represent less than one percent
of the nation’s seniors.
The [...]

For parents and community members who were interested in more extensive information on the three Westchester schools chosen for national Blue Ribbon status, here are some details from the principals of the schools.

From  Margaret Longabucco, principal of Rye Neck’s F.E. Bellows Elementary School:

“We were nominated by the New York State Education Department based on fourth-grade [...]

The federal Education Department has announced the 2009 Blue Ribbon Schools awards.
Three area public elementary schools made the list: Eastchester’s Greenvale School, Mount Vernon’s Pennington School and Rye Neck’s F.E. Bellows School.
The three were among 314 schools to be awarded the designation. In all, there wre 265 public and 50 private schools to be named [...]

Beloit College each year puts together what it calls a “minset list” of the incoming freshman class. This year’s list was just released — it lets an older generation know just how old they are any more if they still had any illusions.

Here’s the complete list from the college Web site:

The Beloit College Mindset List [...]

A fellow education writer who is a staffer for Education Week has sent this data drawn from the Census Bureau.

Back-to-School Shopping

$7.6 billion
The amount of money spent at family clothing stores in August 2008. Only inDecember were sales significantly higher. Similarly, sales at bookstores inAugust 2008 totaled $2.4 billion, an amount approached in 2008 only by [...]

Here’s an interesting press release from the Business Council of New York State:

“New York Continues to Spend More Per-Pupil Than Any Other State, Says Census Bureau Data

ALBANY, NY (07/28/2009)(readMedia)—New York’s per-pupil spending in 2006-2007 was the highest in the nation, 65 percent above the national average, according to data released this week by the U.S. [...]