DOE Performs Air Quality Tests in Building

At our meeting with DOE and Con Edison representatives on December 17, Bernie Orlan from DOE committed to performing a series of near-term air quality tests prior to those Con Edison plans to perform in February as part of a broader indoor environmental assessment. As a representative of the DOE's Division of School Facilities, Mr. Orlan could gain immediate access to our school building and take air samples that would help us gain quicker feedback on the school's heating season air quality, rather than having to wait for Con Edison to secure the necessary access letter from the DOE's central office.

Students began their winter break at the close of school on Friday, December 21. The next day, before the custodians began major cleaning, Mr. Orlan arrived at MCSM with summa canisters (see picture above) to take air quality samples around the building. He sampled at various locations that had already been agreed upon by DOE, Con Edison, and the NY State Department of Health when they met at MCSM on December 17. Once Con Edison has returned in February for its air and soil gas tests in our building, we will be able to compare results from the December and February tests taken in exactly the same building locations.

Air quality samples must be sent to a technical laboratory for analysis, after which a report will be prepared. As soon as results are available, we will present them at the first available PTA meeting, post them to this site, and report on them in the Parent Newsletter.

Stay tuned for more.

J. David Jimenez Appointed Principal at MCSM

On Tuesday afternoon, January 8, we received official word from High School Superintendent Francesca Pena that J. David Jimenez, our Interim Acting Principal since September, has been appointed as MCSM's permanent, full-time Principal, succeeding Ms. Corinne Vinal. Mr. Jimenez's appointment comes in part as a result of the recent C-30 process in which parent, teacher, staff, and student representatives interviewed candidates and submitted their consensus recommendations to Ms. Pena.

Congratulations to Mr. Jimenez on his appointment. With new leadership in place, MCSM is poised to move forward toward even bigger and better things and more and greater recognition for the accomplishments of its students and teachers. Parents, please support your school and Mr. Jimenez's efforts to help bring a world-class education to your children.

Barnes & Noble Book Fair

MCSM’s second annual Barnes & Noble Book Fair will take place from April 3 – April 6, 2008. This is a great opportunity for you to buy books, cards, and other items you need or want and support the MCSM PTA at the same time!

Simply go to the Barnes & Noble Book Store on East 86th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, between April 3 and April 6 (you must go to that store location only). Take the book fair coupon with you that you will be receiving in March. Turn in the coupon to the cashier as you make your purchases, and MCSM will get credit for whatever you’ve bought. Depending on our total purchases, the PTA will receive a cash rebate of 10 – 15% from Barnes & Noble that we can use to support our school programs.

U.S. News & World Report Magazine Gives MCSM Silver Medal!

In November, U.S. News and World Report unveiled its list of the top public high schools in the United States. After analyzing data from 18,790 high schools, the news magazine announced its 100 top schools as Gold Medal winners and another 405 schools as Silver Medal winners. Together, these 505 schools represented the top 3% of the nearly 19,000 schools surveyed, and MCSM as a Silver Medal winner, is one of them!

This year’s list was created by analyzing each school’s total student performance on state tests relative to other schools in that state, adjusted for economically disadvantaged students. Performance of minority and low income students was also measured relative to other schools in the same state, and a final factor looked at the school’s performance on Advanced Placement (AP) exams. Only 42 public high schools in New York State (only 16 of them in NYC) rated a Gold or Silver medal, including Baruch College Campus (Silver), Bronx High School of Science (Gold, #20), Brooklyn Tech (Gold, #39), LaGuardia (Silver), Economics & Finance (Silver), Marble Hill HS for International Studies (Silver), NEST+M (Gold, #74), Staten Island Tech (Gold, #22), Stuyvesant (Gold, #15), and Townsend Harris (Gold, #45).

For more information, click on the following highlighted text: U.S. News & World Report Best High Schools 2008.

DOE Report Card Gives MCSM an "A" !!

MCSM scored an A rating in the DOE’s first-ever Progress Report. This new system uses a variety of factors to assign a single letter grade, from A to F, to every public school in NYC. For high schools, these grades are based on a combination of last spring’s parent, teacher, and student surveys, average daily attendance rate, four- and six-year graduation rates, Regents exam pass rates, and the percentage of students accumulating ten or more course credits each year. Citywide, 22.3% of all schools received an A rating.

Getting an A is always great, but a close look at MCSM’s report card shows that we cannot afford to rest on our laurels. There is plenty of room for improvement, especially considering that MCSM’s underlying score was 67.6 out of a possible 100, the lowest possible score to still earn an A grade.

To see MCSM’s Progress Report on your computer, click on the blue text below or type it, exactly as shown, in the address line at the top of your browser page: http://schools.nyc.gov/schoolportals/04/M435/default.htm.

Then click on the word “Statistics” on the left side of the screen, then click on the blue words “High School” (2006-2007) where the next screen says Progress Report. This will allow you to download MCSM’s Report Card onto your computer.

A detailed explanation of the MCSM Progress Report will be available to parents as a hand-out at every PTA meeting. Those wishing to receive a copy by email should contact Steve Koss at mathman180@aol.com.

C-30 Update

The C-30 Committee met for a second time on the evening of December 10, 2007 to interview candidates for Principal at MCSM. A panel of parents, teachers, staff, and one current student listened to each candidate’s answer to a set of questions developed by the Committee at its earlier meeting on November 29.

Following the interviews, the panel discussed the candidates, rated each one, and made its recommendations. This information will be presented to High School Superintendent Francesca Pena who will conduct further evaluations and background checks before making a final appointment. We anticipate a decision by early January.

On behalf of MCSM’s parents, we would like to thank our network manager, Ms. Sanda Balaban, for leading the C-30 meetings and making a conscientious effort to ensure that parent and staff concerns about the selection process were properly addressed.

Con Edison Update - 12/17/07 Meeting

Following up on their presentation to MCSM and Isaac Newton parents at October’s PTA meeting, representatives of Con Edison, the DOE, and NY State Department of Health returned to MCSM on December 17th for further discussion of the issue of toxic contaminants (specifically, coal tar from a former coal gasification plant) buried under the school building and grounds) and Con Edison’s remediation plans. MCSM was represented by Principal David Jimenez, Assistant Principal Devorah Zamansky, and 10th grade parents Deirdre Rose, Don Redish, and Steve Koss. Also in attendance were David Palmer of NY Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), Simeon Banister from NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum’s office, and Yvonne Przybyla from State Senator Serrano’s office.

The main purpose of this meeting was to discuss next steps following upon the October PTA meeting, with particular focus on environmental safety testing. Everyone at the meeting agreed that indoor air quality and soil gas testing during the heating season is essential for monitoring environmental safety at the MCSM site. Con Edison has committed to conducting indoor air and soil gas tests, working with the NYCDOE and NYSDOH, during the mid-winter school recess in February and again during the summer break and the following winter (heating) seasons. Results of these tests will be made available to the MCSM school and parent community in written and electronic form.

Because Con Edison cannot enter a NYC public school without a signed access agreement letter from the DOE, Bernie Orlan from the DOE’s Division of School Facilities committed to conducting similar air quality tests during the winter holiday break (December 22 – January 1). Results from these tests will give MCSM parents earlier feedback on the winter season air quality in the building and provide an early alert in the event of negative readings.

Con Edison offered at the December 17th session to meet with parents, teachers, and other members of the community upon request, as reasonably needed, to assist them in understanding the site remediation plans, processes, and results. However, in response to a request from NYLPI for funding to enable the community to engage an independent consultant to review the testing data and remediation plans, Con Edison indicated that it is not their corporate policy to provide such funding.

Remembering MCSM’s Founder – Colman Genn

This 25th Anniversary year for MCSM gives us an opportunity to look back at the extraordinary life of our school’s founder and first Principal, Mr. Colman A. Genn. Most of us have probably never heard of Mr. Genn or know that his picture can be found on a memorial plaque on the wall next to the entrance to Room 126, the College Office.

One of five children in a Brooklyn family, Genn grew up as a Bensonhurst “tough,” looking for gang fights and being, by his own admission, a “very poor” student. After getting a Bachelor’s degree in health and physical education from Brooklyn College and a Master’s degree in the same area from Michigan State, he began his education career in 1958 as a math teacher at Brownsville Junior High, eventually moving on to teach social studies and physical education in East Harlem.

By the 1980’s, Mr. Genn had begun actively working with local superintendents Anthony Alvorado and Carlos Medina to help found three alternative, public choice schools in East Harlem: the Academy of Environmental Sciences, the Harbor School for the Performing Arts, and MCSM. Genn and Alvorado were early supporters of the small school movement for NYC. From 1982 – 1986, Mr. Genn was Principal of the newly-founded MCSM, operating in the old Benjamin Franklin HS building where typical daily attendance was below 50% and graduation rates below 10% before that school was closed. Mr. Genn led MCSM’s first class, the 143 students from the Class of 1986, to a 100% graduation rate that earned our school a front page story in the New York Times.

By all accounts, Mr. Genn achieved his greatest fame as a witness to the Gill Commission, formed by Mayor Koch to investigate fraud and illegal activity in the public school system. While working as Superintendent of District 27 in Queens, he wore wires to record meetings over a period of eight months in which school board members discussed creating phony jobs and filling them with friends. His testimony before the Gill Commission made him a star witness in disclosing to the public the pervasive corruption that permeated the City’s community school boards. His courage in speaking out against corruption won him the great honor of being profiled on a 60 Minutes story.

Even after he retired as a school superintendent in 1991, Mr. Genn remained active in education as a senior research fellow at the Center for Educational Innovation, where he continued to support school reform and helped found more small schools in NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, and Newark. He passed away in 2004 at the age of 68. The NY Times (June 30, 1986) described Colman Genn’s dream for MCSM: “what Cornell University was for Ithaca, N.Y., his high school would become for East Harlem.” It’s up to all of us to make and keep our founder’s dream a reality.