The BroadsheetDAILY ~ 9/29/20 ~ Playing Hooky for Health More Than Half of All Students at Lower Manhattan Downtown Schools Opt for Remote Learning

Playing Hooky for Health

More Than Half of All Students at Downtown Schools Opt for Remote Learning

Like elementary- and middle-school students across New York, pupils of the Battery Park City School (P.S/I.S. 276) are slated to return to the classroom today, with high school students following on Thursday. But 28.8 percent of the school’s students have opted for remote learning, as have an overall average of more than 55 percent of students at nine schools throughout Lower Manhattan.

As children are slated to return to public elementary schools today (along with public middle and high schools on Thursday), slightly more than half of all students in nine Lower Manhattan public schools plan to stay home and focus on remote learning, according to statistics from a State Department of Health (DOH) website.

The DOH’s School COVID-19 Report Card site contains preliminary data about how many students are expected to return to each school throughout the State, relative to the overall size of every school’s student body.

The nine Downtown schools included in this analysis are P.S/I.S. 276, P.S. 89, I.S. 289, P.S. 234, P.S. 343 (Peck Slip), P.S. 397 (Spruce Street), and P.S. 150, as well as Millennium High School and Stuyvesant High School.

Overall, among the 7,576 students who attend all nine schools, the families of 4,187 (or 55.2 percent) have opted for remote learning, according to the DOH site.

Among elementary schools (which continue only through sixth grade), these cohorts range from a low of 17.1 percent (83 kids) at P.S. 89, to a high of 27.1 percent (or 137 pupils) at P.S. 343. But the percentages climb as students age. For the two kindergarten-through-eight schools (P.S./I.S. 276 and P.S. 397) these tallies jump to 28.8 percent (249 students) and 39 percent (208 students), respectively.

For the only stand-alone middle school on this list, I.S. 289, the total increases to 65.2 percent (173 students).

And for the two high schools, Millennium and Stuyvesant, the headcount of students opting for remote learning is 64.2 percent (451 students) and 80.1 percent (2,689 students), respectively.

These figures may indicate that, among Lower Manhattan families, very young children will have the greatest potential risk of exposure to the pandemic coronavirus, while middle-school and high-school students will be the most protected.

Matthew Fenton

CLASSIFIEDS & PERSONALS

Swaps & Trades

Respectable Employment Lost and Found

DOWNTOWN CALENDAR

Tuesday September 29

10:30AM

Zumba

Battery Park City Authority at the Irish Hunger Memorial

Exercise in disguise! Join in on the fun featuring easy-to-follow Latin dance choreography while working on your balance, coordination and range of motion. Come prepared for enthusiastic instruction, a little strength training and a lot of fun. Participants are expected to bring their own equipment: weights, water bottle, hand towel etc. Program is first come, first served for up to 15 participants. Masks and contact information required upon arrival. Spatial parameters will be set. Participants must remain 6 ft apart for the duration of the program. All programs will be held in accordance with New York State reopening guidance.

3PM

Battery Park City Authority in Rockefeller Park

Celebrate the nature found in our beloved BPC parks. Pick up a self-guided worksheet that will invite you to tour the gardens investigating plants and trees, as well as the pollinating insects and birds that visit the parks of BPC. Participants are expected to bring their own pencils and clipboards. Program is first come, first served for up to 20 children with accompanying adults. Masks and contact information required upon arrival. Activity is self-guided. Participants must maintain six feet of physical distance between households. All programs will be held in accordance with New York State reopening guidance.

6PM

Skyscraper Museum

Over the fall of 2020, The Skyscraper Museum will present a series of webinar sessions designed as a free online course on the early development of the skyscraper as a distinct building type.

This week’s topic is Masonry to Steel, 1870S-1890S: How and When Masonry Systems of Construction Transitioned to Steel.

Viewers will experience a pair of programs—led by New York structural engineer Donald Friedman, author of The Structure of Skyscrapers in America, 1871–1900, and historian of Chicago Thomas Leslie—which revisit the fabled architectural rivalries of America’s largest and most innovative cities.

Their talks will keep a tight focus on the key decades of the 1870s, the beginning of the end of “the age of masonry,” and the dawn of mass-production of rolled steel I-beams, which from the mid-1880s offered new economies for construction. Yet the eventual marriage of masonry and metal took time to birth the full steel skeleton, often called “the Chicago frame.”

Leslie and Friedman will explore the ways that traditional bearing walls enlarged window openings to illuminate interior workspaces until the wall became, in effect, a frame, and how hybrid systems of “cage construction” served practical purposes and were slow to disappear in practice. Both emphasize how construction moved toward industrial materials to reduce the cost of skilled labor, especially bricklayers. In Friedman’s succinct formulation: modern structure is industrialized structure. These programs will build on several past lectures at The Skyscraper Museum by both speakers: the videos of these previous talks are highly recommended as background for this discussion.

Getting a Corner on the Market

Retail Developer Wins Years-Long Struggle for Control of Legendary Bank Building

When the financial upheaval unleashed by the pandemic coronavirus begins to settle, a long-neglected local landmark may resume its erstwhile status as an iconic Lower Manhattan public space.

The building, 23 Wall Street (at the corner of Broad Street), is a former tabernacle of American capitalism. To read more…

‘A Fraudulent Scheme’

FiDi Renters Win Recompense for Years of Illegal Rent Overcharges

Rentals tenants in a Financial District building, who sued their landlord to demand restitution for years of illegally high rent, have won a $5-million settlement. The building is the luxury rental tower at 63-67 Wall Street.

Last November, Tallen Todorovich, a renter in 63-67 Wall Street filed suit, seeking class-action status on behalf of all current and former tenants, and alleging that they had not been given rent-stabilized leases for their apartments, even though the building received tax abatements under a program intended for rent-stabilized buildings.

This action (along with half a dozen other, similar suits) stemmed from a June, 2019 ruling by New York State’s highest court, which found that as many as 5,000 Lower Manhattan apartments had been illegally deprived of rent stabilization benefits.

Make-Believe Mennonite Market Denouement

Another Much Admired Downtown Small Business Says Goodbye

In another symptom of the life-and-death struggle being waged by small businesses against the economic downtown triggered by the pandemic coronavirus, the Amish Market, which has served Lower Manhattan since 1999, will be closing by the end of September.

In a story first reported by Tribeca Citizen, the owners (who are not Amish) have announced that their reduced volume of business—which has shrunk by roughly 90 percent since the health crisis began—has rendered them insolvent.

Bionomics Begins at Home

BPCA Launches Ten-Year Sustainability Plan

The Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) has begun implementation of a landmark plan to “achieve progressive sustainability targets over the next decade, and lay the groundwork for continued sustainability action after 2030.”

The Battery Park City Sustainability Plan focuses on three broad categories of goals.

• The first of these is “Resource Management & Reduction,” which aims to reduce the demand for energy and water in the community, while promoting reuse of resources and minimizing waste.

• The second, labeled “Innovation & Inspiration,” seeks to leverage Battery Park City initiatives as scalable models for other urban developments around the nation and the world.

• And the third, termed “Education & Collaboration” is designed to raise local awareness of sustainability-related issues and actions.

Pedagogical Prophylaxis

Alliance Distributes Masks at Lower Manhattan Schools

The Downtown Alliance has distributed 28,000 personal protective equipment masks to seven Lower Manhattan schools, for use by students, teachers and staff.

Alliance president Jessica Lappin, who delivered the masks to the Spruce Street School, said, “we are pleased to be able to present our local schools with necessary personal protective equipment to help them kick off the academic year. It’s essential to help protect our students, hardworking teachers and support staff as they embark on a safe, productive and healthy semester.” To read more…

Pull Down the Shades!

City Council Backs Study of Drones to Inspect Buildings

Lower Manhattan skies may soon be slightly more crowded. The City Council on Wednesday enacted legislation authorizing the Department of Buildings to study the feasibility of conducting facade inspections using the small, robotic aircraft known as drones.

City law requires such facade inspections every five years for all buildings taller than six stories. These reviews are usually performed by contractors suspended from the roof of each structure, but the danger of such overhead work requires the installation of the unsightly scaffolds commonly known as sidewalk sheds.

The impact of such a program would likely be especially significant in Lower Manhattan. To read more…

Quatrain Alley

Words Come to Life Amid New Installation in Battery Park City

Poets House—a library, creative space, and meeting place that invites poets and the public to step into the living tradition of poetry, while cultivating a wider audience for the art—will celebrate its tenth anniversary in Battery Park City by launching the Poetry Path, an immersive public art installation running the northern length of Battery Park City, from Rockefeller and Teardrop Parks to the North Cove Marina. To read more…

Rice and Beans

They are better

together.

Me and Jayden

We are better

together.

Josh, PS1 student

TODAY IN HISTORY

SEPTEMBER 29

SpaceShipOne

1227 – Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, is excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his failure to participate in the Crusades.

1717 – An earthquake strikes Antigua Guatemala, destroying much of the city’s architecture and making authorities consider moving the capital to a different city.

1789 – The US Department of War first establishes a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.

1864 – American Civil War: The Battle of Chaffin’s Farm is fought.

1911 – Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire.

1954 – The convention establishing CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is signed.

1960 – Nikita Khrushchev, leader of Soviet Union, disrupts a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with a number of angry outbursts.

2004 – The asteroid 4179 Toutatis passes within four lunar distances of Earth.

2004 – The Burt Rutan Ansari X Prize entry SpaceShipOne performs a successful spaceflight, the first of two required to win the prize.

2008 – Following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in its history.

Winslow Homer

Snap the Whip 1872

Births

106 BC – Pompey, Roman general and politician (d. 48 BC)

1547 – Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish author, poet, and playwright (d. 1616)

1901 – Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1954)

1912 – Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian director and screenwriter (d. 2007)

1913 – Trevor Howard, English actor (d. 1988)

1923 – Stan Berenstain, American author and illustrator (d. 2005)

1935 – Jerry Lee Lewis, American singer-songwriter and pianist

1936 – Silvio Berlusconi, Italian businessman and politician, 50th Prime Minister of Italy

1942 – Jean-Luc Ponty, French violinist and composer

1943 – Lech Wałęsa, Polish electrician and politician, 2nd President of Poland, Nobel Prize laureate

Deaths

855 – Lothair I, Roman emperor (b. 795)

1833 – Ferdinand VII of Spain (b. 1784)

1902 – Émile Zola, French journalist, author, and playwright (b. 1840)

1910 – Winslow Homer, American painter, illustrator, and engraver (b. 1836)

1913 – Rudolf Diesel, German engineer, invented the diesel engine (b. 1858)

1967 – Carson McCullers, American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet (b. 1917)

1975 – Casey Stengel, American baseball player and manager (b. 1890)

1987 – Henry Ford II, American businessman (b. 1917)

1997 – Roy Lichtenstein, American painter and sculptor (b. 1923)

2010 – Tony Curtis, American actor (b. 1925)

Credits include wikipedia and other internet sources

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