By Mike O’Keefe Students at two Hunts Point middle schools, MS 424 and St. Ignatius School, are letting their neighbors know about important issues close to home, with the help of modern technology. The students used cameras and computers supplied by a New York based non-profit group to report on [...]
Her hands over heart, a passionate young woman reflects on how deeply she has fallen in love. She can’t tell the man she loves him, because she’s in disguise as a boy to protect herself from unwanted advances, and he thinks they can be buddies. Besides, the man she loves [...]
By Stephanie Litsas SLitsas089@gmail.com Hunts Point schoolchildren are speaking in Elizabethan English again. For the fourth year, The Hunts Point Alliance for Children (HPAC) has partnered with the Shakespeare Society, bringing fifth and sixth graders together to put on a full original Shakespeare play. The youngsters will perform Twelfth Night [...]
Diana Marino used to hate to read. The eighth-grader grew frustrated whenever she came to a word or phrase she did not know. Her grades suffered as a result. Then she met Alice Pak. Last year Pak “kept motivating me and taught me to read a little bit daily until [...]
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed laying off city school teachers in dramatic numbers to compensate for budget shortfalls. In Hunts Point and Longwood, Banana Kelly High School would stand to lose five of its 27 teachers to the Mayor’s buzzsaw, while the high school with which it shares a building [...]
“Rock That Body” by Black Eyed Peas pumps through the stereo in the dance classroom of Middle School 424 on Bryant Avenue, where 20 seventh and eighth grade honors students pop, lock and drop to the beat. “Hip op is really fun,” says student Ilearis Fernandez. “It helps with school [...]
As the closing of Bridges Juvenile Justice Center—better known as Spofford–nears, long-time activists who have fought to get the jail shut down are looking to get Hunts Point residents involved in deciding what to do next with the sprawling space. Representatives of the Correctional Association, a non-profit that advocates for [...]
By Venita Virgia Johnson vjo@hunter.cuny.edu For families of students from Bronx Charter School for the Arts, St. Athanasius, MS 424 and PS 48, Thanksgiving came early. They gathered at The Point CDC on Nov. 19, for a celebratory potluck dinner, joined by City Year, the organization of young volunteers who [...]
By Jeanmarie Evelly jmevelly@gmail.com Students from Middle School 424 and the Hyde Leadership Charter School on Bryant Avenue celebrated the opening of a new playground they helped design themselves. On a warm June afternoon, they clambered up rope ladders, swung from rings and climbed walls in the school yard on [...]