The Sentinel published a not so well reasoned editorial on October 26. This prompted a spirited response from an elementary school principal in the Newburgh School District on November 9. The Sentinel deserves credit for publishing such a critical response, and for their usually more supportive attitude toward educators, which the response letter acknowledges. The principal has provided a necessary dose of reality and reason to the conversation, well worth a read.

What sources are there for news about the Newburgh Enlarged City School District? The district website is hopeless, and the Times-Herald Record's coverage is very limited. The Sentinel newspaper does a creditable job of printing the Newburgh School District's news releases.

The Sentinel is published two times a week, and includes several articles about school activities. In the October 26 edition there are blurbs, most with photographs, about:

• A special program at Temple Hill Academy where nurses from St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital visited with students.
• A reading program at Meadow Hill that was kicked off with an assembly with singer and songwriter John Farrell.
• Children's Country Day School receiving a $2,500 grant from Empire State Bank.
• Washington Street Pre-K students visiting a local appple orchard. The same story appears word for word, with the same picture at the Hudson Valley Press website.
• Washington Street Pre-K students "adapting to the classroom".
• Windsor Academy being visited by the Vails Gate Fire Department.
• An NFA art teacher, Yvette Lewis, is spending three weeks in Japan on a Fulbright Scholarship. That sounds like quite an honor!

The publisher of the Sentinel has a website at http://ewsmithpublishing.com/.

Here are two slightly older articles about the challenge the Newburgh School District faces teaching ESL students.

From the New York times, November 1, 2006: For Hispanic Parents, Lessons on Helping With the Homework

Here in this city of 30,000, where 36 percent of the school population is Latino, most of them Mexican immigrants, the school district is working hard to help parents immerse themselves in school from kindergarten on.

Carmen Vazqueztell, the district’s director of bilingual education, runs six workshops a year for parents, instructing them on monitoring homework and reading to children in Spanish, then having the children paraphrase the stories. Peter Gonzalez, the district’s bilingual liaison, pinch-hits for parents and helps students do homework.

And from the Times Herald-record, August 6, 2007 Course helps kids to grow; Literacy program uses books, gardens

The Newburgh School District, Orange County's largest and most diverse, is trying something new with its older elementary kids this summer. It's called "To Grow From Who We Are," a four-week multimedia literacy program that encourages students to explore their identities as they practice new language skills.

"This is about finding our roots," says Carmen Vazqueztell, the district's director of bilingual education. Hence the tiny gardens.

Students planted their window boxes on the first day of the program, the same day they started reading "Seedfolks" by Paul Fleischman.
...
The City of Newburgh, which anchors the school district, is three-quarters minority, with a large Spanish-speaking population. In the past 10 years, the number of English as a second language, or ESL, students enrolled in Newburgh schools has nearly doubled. The district enrolled more than 1,500 ESL students last year -- more than the total number of kids in the average Orange County high school. Of those, 94 percent are Hispanic, but there also are Chinese, Uzbekistani and Jamaican students.

This summer program sounds truly innovative and inspirational. Carmen Vazqueztell is doing great work for the Newburgh community.

At a dedication ceremony last week for a new playground at Horizons-on-the-Hudson Magnet School a student is quoted:

"At first there was nothing out here," said sixth-grader Savannah Ordonez, a member of the school's "Gardening Option" program, "and then we started clearing it out and planting. Now it's the most beautiful part of the school."

As she, and all students in grades 2 through 11 thoughout the district suffer the first bout of new district mandated "benchmark assessments" this week, we hope that Savannah remembers that there was at least one time when she and her classmates took a place where there was nothing and created something beautiful. And there was at least one time when teachers took the risk to try something with no guaranteed outcome. And there was a time to design, create, build, and accomplish something real.

We hope she remembers, yet we fear that by the third or fourth bout of "benchmark assessments" (there are four scheduled this school year!) she may succumb, and be tricked or brainwashed into thinking that filling in bubbles with a number two pencil is as important as having planted a seed.

Thanks to the staff of Horizons-on-the Hudson and all the volunteers who helped, for teaching creatively; thank you Senator Larkin, for finding funds for this project; and thank you to the Record for reporting this story.

Jonathan Kozol spoke at Mount Saint Mary College in August. Here's a quote, via the Mid-Hudson News Network:

"The greatest difficulty that these young teachers face is the testing-mania, the madness of repeated obsessive testing, that the White House has forced upon our public schools under the law called No Child Left Behind, which is probably the worst, most destructive piece of education legislation that I have seen in my entire lifetime," he said.

A little article in the Record gushes about how district enrollment "swells" to a "whopping 12,653 students". That is still less than 2003-04 enrollment of 12,716. The article also mentions:

And along with all those teens and tykes, the Newburgh district added 100 new teaching positions, paid for in large part by the state's Contract for Excellence initiatives.

100 new positions is substantial. Were all these new positions comfortably accommodated in the district's existing buildings?

Congratulations to the intrepid students and wise administrators of Chester, Goshen, Greenwood Lake, Highland Falls, Minisink, Monroe-Woodbury, Tuxedo and Warwick schools. Mandarin is an excellent subject to study.

One thing's for sure: The kids seem excited to start school, even at this information session about a week ahead of time.

About 120 sixth-graders in eight local school districts will take Mandarin Chinese this year, thanks to a three-year $1 million grant from the federal Department of Education. Elementary school students in some of those districts, too, will begin a cultural exchange, communicating with students at boarding schools in China via an interactive Web site and through video conferencing.

Local students take new Chinese class, By Simon Shifrin, Times Herald-Record September 04, 2007

The Record's Paul Brooks reports that a "Survey finds some mid-Hudson school subjects left behind".

It's terrific that the Record devotes some space to education policy. The impact of NCLB on local school districts should be examined and reported. However, the report this article is about appears to be Choices, Changes, and Challenges: Curriculum and Instruction in the NCLB Era. While the report is valuable for the information it provides, it's not clear whether any local districts participated in the surveys or interviews used as data sources.

How has NCLB affected curriculum in the Newburgh Schools?

The Record has few facts to share. There is only this puzzling anecdote:

The Newburgh School District is one of six local districts under special attention from the state. The attention brings a "contract for excellence" and some additional money to improve scores.

The money is paying for an additional 25 teachers and the district has wedged another instructional period into the school day by trimming other periods.

"The students are not missing a thing," said district spokesman Tom Fitzgerald. "They are getting another period."

What subjects will the new period stress? English and math, he said.

Link the Record Forum about this article.

The Times Herald-Record published an article today, 'Boot camp' for literacy, about a new reading and writing class for junior high students which is part of the Extended School Year program in the Newburgh School District. The article is generally favorable toward the program.

"Every aspect of the new SRA/McGraw Hill literacy curriculum is timed and scripted. It tells teachers exactly what to say, how to say it, even what hand motions to use."

"Students in the program are grouped according to reading level. The lowest tested at a third-grade level and the highest at a fifth-grade level. At the end of the summer, the students will be tested again to track their progress."

Is there no other way to measure the effectiveness of this highly regimented program than to purchase exams from McGraw Hill? The Record runs a Reader Reactions forum where there are some comments.

perfunctory, adj. Of an action, deed, work, etc.: done merely as a matter of duty, form, or routine, and so without interest, care, or enthusiasm; carried out with a minimum of effort; formulaic, mechanical.

This ad was published at taxpayer expense in the Times Herald-Record on Saturday, July 28, 2007.