skip to main |
skip to sidebar
From the
Daily News:
The Bloomberg administration has abandoned a controversial plan to close 10 struggling city high schools.
Just seven of 17 troubled high schools that the city tried to close this spring ended up on the chopping block in 2012 after many posted gains on city progress reports.
The city had sought to close the schools this summer and immediately reopen them with new instructors, a turnaround plan the teachers union opposed in court.
A court battle that lasted six months, ending with a judge’s ruling in the union’s favor. Now it appears the city has reversed plans to close 10 of those schools.
Students and teachers were thrilled at schools that were spared the axe.
Newtown High School in Queens also jumped from a C to a B on its progress report this year and made it off of the city’s hit list.
From
NY 1:
Eleven days after Hurricane Sandy, the Rockaway Beach neighborhood around Scholars' Academy was like no-man's land. Residents fled, leaving behind downed wires, waterlogged debris and sand soaked with heating oil.
But the doors to the school building were open, similar to what we saw at other damaged schools across the city. Contracted crews moved in and out, pumping, repairing and decontaminating, all to get students back as soon as possible.
Yet at some point, school officials say someone must have entered the building and exited with about $100,000 worth of stolen equipment.
"We discovered that approximately 90 iPads were stolen and six to 10 iMacs," said Brian O'Connell, the principal of Scholars' Academy.
It wasn't just pricey tablets and computers. Also reported missing were two automated external defibrillators, each estimated to be worth about $1,600.
This was not an isolated incident. The New York City Department of Education says 30 schools have reported looting so far. Among the items missing include cameras, calculators and a projector.
Officials say they don't yet know the overall value, but there is no insurance to cover it.
From the
Daily News:
At least half the post-Sandy looting busts have been tossed out, despite much grandstanding on the part of Brooklyn and Queens DAs, the Daily News has learned.
One of the most publicized looting incidents — in which 16 people were rounded up for raiding a Coney Island Key Foods the day after the storm — resulted in just two indictments for third-degree burglary, records show.
Six other cases were dismissed by a Brooklyn grand jury late last week, and eight were knocked down to trespass raps, which are violations, not crimes.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown likewise promised “zero tolerance for looters who would exploit a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy for their own personal gain.”
Only seven of 22 Brooklyn looting cases will be criminally prosecuted. In Queens — where the cases are progressing more slowly — five of 15 Queens cases have led to felony indictments so far, prosecutors said Monday.
In the Rockaways, at least 15 people were arrested for breaking into a string of stores in at least seven separate incidents throughout the storm-ravaged peninsula. A grand jury declined to indict three of those cases, and six cases are still pending.
From the
NY Post:
When Queens state Sen. Malcolm Smith asked the mayor to send the National Guard to patrol the Rockaways a day after Superstorm Sandy hit, Hizzoner said, “F--k you,’’ a source told The Post.
Smith confirmed that he called the mayor to request the Guard after looting broke out in the area, which is part of his district.
“We exchanged aggressive words about the use of the National Guard,” Smith said when asked about the spat.
“I saw the devastation. I saw the looting going on. People were all over the street. Things were out of control. Someone even tried to break into my car with me in it. The mayor felt the resources we had were fine,” Smith recalled.
“In the end, I was correct and the National Guard got involved.”
Bloomberg had initially said, “The NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns.”
But spokesman Marc LaVorgna said the mayor never dropped the F-bomb and welcomed the Guard’s help in search-and-rescue missions — but thought the NYPD could handle security.
From the
Daily News:
When night falls in the Rockaways, the hoods come out.
Ever since Sandy strafed the Queens peninsula and tore up the boardwalk, it’s become an often lawless place where cops are even scarcer than electrical power and food. Locals say they are arming themselves with guns, baseball bats, booby traps — even a bow and arrow — to defend against looters.
Thugs have been masquerading as Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) workers, knocking on doors in the dead of night. But locals say the real workers have been nowhere in sight, causing at least one elected official — who fears a descent into anarchy if help doesn’t arrive soon — to call for the city to investigate the utility.
And another local surfer said he has knives, a machete and a bow and arrow on the ready. Gunshots and slow-rolling cars have become a common fixture of the night since Hurricane Sandy.
Grocery stores on the Peninsula are closed and some have been looted.
Making matters worse, the A Train crossing over Jamaica Bay, south of the Howard Beach station, was decimated, officials said.
The MTA took all trains off the Rockaway peninsula prior to the storm to prevent damage to the equipment. The MTA now can't even run the Rockaway shuttle on the peninsula because there are no trains, one official said. There is also no shuttle bus service.
Photo from
ABC News
From the Daily News:
