On Monday, January 11th, the Urban Youth Collaborative is rallying to protest against the cuts on student metro cards. If you haven’t already heard, student Metrocards will be phased out completely by September 2011. This affects Sophomores and below who will end up having to pay full fare during their senior year, but also Juniors, who will be paying half fare if they used to receive a full fare card. Metrocards will end up costing students nearly to $1000 a year.
Here is a quote from a Mass distributed email by the Caitlin Ervin, one of the leaders of the organization.
The Urban Youth Collaborative is a student-led coalition of low-income high school students fighting for educational justice. This meeting will be led by students and is open to all students and allies. We will be educating students on the process for getting these cuts reversed, and developing an action plan for reversing them that students themselves will lead. (more…)
Recent cuts toward education have been made. Some of them not to our liking. Some of YOU have opinions about this subject matter. We want to hear your voices. Post comments or E-mail us your opinion and we will post on our site. Let your opinion be heard. Tell us how you feel. Good or Bad we all have opinions, let them be heard!
Sade Baderinwa during a news cast
During the past 2 weeks the word has lightly spread about the iSchool and how it’s looking for students to join the group’s newscast. Well I regret to inform you that Wednesday will be the last day to audition.
During your lunch period you are invited to come on down to the studio and give it a shot. Everyone is encouraged and invited to come. There are no specific requirements. Your grades will not influence your chances what so ever (you do should be passing your classes though).
Some of you have already been told that you are finalist. For those of you who have not auditioned or who auditioned on Monday, the results will be posted by 7th period on this blog post and by the door of the studio.
Here is a Link to the flier (PDF reader required to view)
The finalists are (in chronological order):
- Ashley Gonzales
- Ashlyn Soto
- Fatuma Loukaka
- Paloma Bido
- Annabel
- Stephanie Abreu
Edit:
By a unanimous joint and teacher verified decision New anchors are:
Paloma Bido
Annabel Hernandez
Stephanie Abreu
Fatuma Loukaka (Weather)
As part of mayor Bloomberg’s efforts to overhaul the education system, 91 Schools have been closed due to low grades in the city wide school progress reports. Most of them were due to overall underachievement, others were closed due to low graduation rates, despite otherwise acceptable performance.
Our Senior Benjamin Brinson says ” It really makes no sense to close them.” While John White the deputy schools chancellor for strategy says that “This Proposal is a reflection of our belief that in some schools there is simply not the capaccity to fulfill our promise to kids to prepare them for the future.”
A new law requires a 45 day period of public hearings before closing a school. Some say this measure only ads contention to the already emotional procedure.
For more information:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/nyregion/03closings.html
President Kelvin Santana
Congrats to Sir Kelvin Santana and Sir James Pearson! You’ve won the Jonathan Levin Senior President election of 2009! Isn’t that amazing? Well, we’re all very proud and hope that you two follow up to our expectations. Voting was definitely tense, but it seems as if the school has decided on a good team, one who will not let the student body down. Remember running a school involves trial and tribulation so it is key to keep communication with us, the students, to see what can be done to improve our school no matter what means necessary. The other candidates, were also great choices for our school as well, and will continue to be a part of C.O.S.A helping in anyway they can. This year’s senior presidential elections was definitely one to remember, may there be more great ones to come.
Ms. Vieira witnessed how her office was ransacked for over a week while the candidates made over 300 buttons to give out to their followers. The pounding of the button machine and the roar of the candidates has never been louder. Indeed this year is a great year for the student body government. This is in part due to the fierce competition from the candidates themselves, but also small yet important changes in the way the elections are carried out.
Mr. Macholz, the head of the elections, has created new set of standards and changes for the students who wish to participate in the student body government. They are all fairly rudimentary and include a 4/5 Uniform usage policy, a clean deans record and a signature from all of your teachers. By themselves these requirements do not deter most candidates. The real change in the elections and the reason why this year they are so fearsome is the new ticket system.
The ticket system resembles that of the current U.S. government’s electoral system in that the president and the vice president have race together and are voted for together. The implication of this is that now the candidates have to put their campaign efforts to the ticket, and not just on themselves. This provides a built in hierarchy for campaigning that the ticket may choose to follow. The people who are running for president may spend the majority of their time giving speeches and talking to people hand to hand, while the people who run for vice-president may choose to recruit campaign managers, make posters and help out his or her partner in general.
Given the ticket system, the current candidates in no particular order are:
1. Kelvin and James
2. Lashae and Benjamin
3. Lizbeth and Reynaldo
The elections will be held on Friday, October 16, 2009.
President Obama watches as U.S. Olympian Tim Morehouse fences at a White House event that celebrated the Olympics,
President Barack Obama visited Denmark to pitch the plan to bring the 2016 Olympic Games to his home city of Chicago. The White House announced yesterday that President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama would be traveling to Copenhagen for Chicago’s final presentation to the International Olympic Committee. Hopefully the Windy City Will be the home of The Olympics.
Draft'ish 3D rendering of Taft
Microsoft’s response to Google’s maps takes a fundamentally different approach to giving the user a better idea of where they are. Instead of going around the city with a car and taking pictures of everything, bing maps used planes to survey over 300 cities from different angles and mapped them into a bird’s eye view of the city. This approach provides a middle ground between a satellite view and a street view.
Now you have 4 different ways of looking at your favorite school, bird’s eye view, street view, satellite, and 3d. Oh, did i forget to mention 3d? Silly me. With the information gathered from the satellites and planes, it is not hard to imagine how a company could build 3d models out of buildings, Including our own school. The downside is that you have to use Internet Explorer and download a plug-in for it.
Now if only we could see what is inside the school.
It seems that Microsoft has managed to stir up some fuss about its new search engine. Sites such as Blind Search and bing vs Google have been the result of the popular demand for an effective way to tell them apart. However, for most popular search terms the results seem to be almost exactly the same in a slightly different order.
Message from the White House
Here is an excerpt:
“Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/
Final Gathering
This year the levy awards were no disappointment. The Levi awards has become a big part of our schools tradition and is the schools replacement for the common talent show.
This years activities varied from a Michael Jackson thriller dance to one of our own teachers singing on stage.
