Broadway Elementary brought in Ms. Parker in January out of exasperation with students who, left to their own devices, used to run into one another, squabble over balls and jump-ropes or monopolize the blacktop while exiling their classmates to the sidelines. Since she started, disciplinary referrals at recess have dropped by three-quarters, to an average of three a week. And injuries are no longer a daily occurrence.
“Before, I was seeing nosebleeds, busted lips, and students being a danger to themselves and others,” said Alejandro Echevarria, the principal. “Now, Coach Brandi does miracles with 20 cones and three handballs.”
The school is one of a growing number across the country that are reining in recess to curb bullying and behavior problems, foster social skills and address concerns over obesity. They also hope to show children that there is good old-fashioned fun to be had without iPods and video games.
The Times reports on a new model of structured recess in use at eight NJ schools to focus students on cooperation and sportsmanship.
Tomorrow, the United Nations will be announcing a special Social Media Envoy group that will use the power of social media over the next year to raise awareness for malaria control in African countries.
The special envoy is made up of well-known figures from both the social web and broadcast media, including Mashable’s own Pete Cashmore. Those that have joined the group have pledged to take one “social” action — such as a tweet or a Facebook post — every month for the next year starting from World Malaria Day on April 25, which last year saw Malaria No More also use Twitter for the cause.
The hope is that the tweets, posts and other social actions will inspire and motivate social media audiences in support of malaria control. The UN’s goal is to provide all endemic African countries with malaria control interventions by the end of 2010, working towards the aim of near-zero deaths from malaria by 2015.
Mayor Booker will be one of the represntatives in the UN’s envoy.
Through Twitter, Mayor Booker was able to connect residents with snow removal resources and alert response agencies to areas in need of action.
Required to give his acceptance in Twitter’s 140-character maximum, Mayor Booker read his remarks from his phone and said, “Newark is rising thanx 2 the power of people working together. Thank u Twitterverse & Tech Corps 4 unifying people 4 inspiration & justice.”
Mayor Booker has been an active Twitter microblogger since August 11, 2008 and currently has 1,076,008 followers.
However, if the city as a whole lacks the edge of a major campaign contest — “quietist I can ever remember an election year at this time,” observes one South Ward insider – Pantoliano, notwithstanding the odds, is undisputably making an enthusiastic effort to unseat incumbent Amador.
Pizarro gives a rundown of the remarkably muted 2010 election politics.
Then someone sent me some T-shirts. One was made for a city swim program, one for a community mentoring program, and a small, bright orange one for a children’s basketball program. They’re all paid for by the City of Newark division of recreation. Printed across the backs of the shirts:
Mayor Cory A. Booker
“Here to Win in 2010”
Making Newark’s Recreation/Cultural Affairs “The International Destination.”
I’m not sure what the last two lines mean, but the first two sure read like politicking at public expense.
Smart piece on City Hall’s apparent misuse of public funds for political means. The shirts were not distributed, and the city’s Inspector General is investigating the incident.
However, this is the type of political shenanigans that were business-as-usual in years past, and the exact culture Booker ran to reverse.
It is a deeply flawed process. But COAH succeeded in creating 45,000 affordable housing units over 25 years that otherwise would not have been built. It needs fixing, but Lesniak’s bill would gut it.
Filmmaker Tonia Grady said the documentary “is nothing more than a call-to-action by one woman who is watching helplessly as her daughter is caught in the throws of this merciless disease — I like to call fatherlessness…I sink to a new low every time my child asks me, “Mommy where is my daddy, and why doesn’t he come to see me?” I have always despised the vicious cycle of fatherlessness, but never did I think that a child of mine would fall victim to it.”
Great writeup by Ninapilar about Man Up, a 10-city documentary about the heartbreaking issue of fatherlessness, featuring Newark Now’s Comprehensive Center for Fathers.
After a February 2009 shoot-out in the troubled West Ward complex left five people injured, Georgia King worked with Newark Now to establish an on-site family success center and a resident council. Since August, it has seen no shootings and a stark reduction in drug sales and violent crime, according to city leaders.
Through financial counseling, field trips for children, bookbag giveaways, and similar “community nurturing programs” residents from the buildings and officials from the non-profits say they have begun to turn the complex around, but point to continued work if the effort is to be sustained and duplicated throughout the city.
Very exciting to see what can happen when you creatively take limited resources and direct them to focused solutions.
“More police on the beat” is only one solution to the problem of crime, but it doesn’t affect lasting change. The true challenge is to restore neighborhoods with lasting solutions that get to the root cause issues.
Newark, once the bicycle capitol of the world, is a breeding ground for new talent and innovation. Folk Engineered helps to bring the cycling tradition back by resurrecting an ancient trade. Custom framebuilders offer something different than bike shops and department stores. Each bike is built for a specific rider and with extreme attention to detail. “Building custom handmade bicycles is a scientific art form,” Pasquariello says. “It is geometry, physics, chemistry, visual thinking, and sculpture.”
From the some of the people who brought Newark the Brick City Bike Collective, Folk Engineered builds handmade bicycles right here in Newark, USA. Bonus: they also have some great photos from their shop on their website:
I recently sat through a jarring press conference at which officials abruptly announced that the city has run out of Section 8 vouchers. Other tax incentive programs have reached limits that may or may not be curable in the near future. And locating and implementing subsidy programs will be harder now because of unresolved animosity between Ratner and anti-project leaders.
Much of it is petty. City Councilwoman Letitia James (D, WFP-Brooklyn), who represents the people who argued for killing the project long after its inevitability was clear, says she wasn’t invited to today’s groundbreaking. That is an unnecessary slap in the face. (James told me she will remain at City Hall working on budget issues during the ceremony.)
Should they decide to continue on to the Atlantic Yards after two or three years in Newark, the New Jersey Nets get to make their new home in the midst of this kind of drama. Should they stay here, they would have an amped-up fan base, a neighborhood that would welcome their arrival, and the benefit of the Cory Booker Twitter marketing machine.
Carl Dranoff, the Philadelphia developer who unveiled plans in January 2008 for a 28-story luxury apartment high-rise across from the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, now pegs his new Two Center Street at 44 stories — still far short of the state mantle but enough to overtake the circa 1931 National Newark Building at 744 Broad St. as Newark’s tallest building.
“It will become a transformational project,” Dranoff said of the $190 million project. “We expect it will have an enormous impact. We’ve seen this in other cities where we build a big anchor project. Usually, others follow. We sort of have the play-books to make it happen.”
Site plans for the milestone project note that Two Center Street’s 44 floors, topping off at 482 feet, 2 inches beats National Newark Building’s 465 feet by 17 feet, 2 inches.
“Redefining Newark’s Skyline” reads the plug on the company’s online portal, where the developer touts its location across from NJPAC and near historic Military Park and the new light-rail line.
Indeed past governors and lawmakers have treated the authority as their toy box. Political interference has including a bloated staff of political appointees, free tickets and catered meals to favored politicians, poorly negotiated contracts with football, basketball, and hockey franchises, bad decisions regarding Xanadu, and insistence on perpetuating the money-losing race track business.
Blue Jersey levels some biting criticism about the NJ sporting organization that, of late, seems to have turned everything it’s touched into lead.
“At that moment, I’m very excited with my girlfriend, and I didn’t think too much,” Mr. Jiang, 28, said Tuesday in his first interview since causing the six-hour shutdown at the airport and the five-day manhunt that followed. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble at the airport.”
On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty in Newark Municipal Court to the charge of defiant trespass, and besides the community service, he must pay a $500 fine and $158 in costs and fees.
I may have felt differently if I was stuck at that airport, but I’m glad this guy wasn’t given jail time or worse — he was hardly a national security threat.
“We are not rock stars,” he says. “We are Newarkers. We stayed, we stayed, and we always survived. And we’ll keep surviving. Mr. Booker – I’m going to call him an alien – he needs to go back on his spaceship, wherever he came from. He doesn’t know how to interact with us.”
That’s just the type of practical, fact-based sloganeering that adds real credibility to a campaign.
More than five million households are behind on their mortgages and risk foreclosure. The government’s $75 billion mortgage modification plan has helped only a small slice of them. Consumer advocates, economists and even some banking industry representatives say much more needs to be done.
For the administration, there is also the concern that millions of foreclosures could delay or even reverse the economy’s tentative recovery — the last thing it wants in an election year.
Taking effect on April 5, the program could encourage hundreds of thousands of delinquent borrowers who have not been rescued by the loan modification program to shed their houses through a process known as a short sale, in which property is sold for less than the balance of the mortgage. Lenders will be compelled to accept that arrangement, forgiving the difference between the market price of the property and what they are owed.
The Times examined the impact of subprime lending in Newark back in 2007, revealing the heartbreaking impact of this long-running crisis. While the prospect of short sales were originally shunned by banks, the Obama plan introduces some hope of stemming foreclosures and preventing a slide back into economic decline.
In which your humble narrator promotes, then explains, then defends the raison d’être for the Daily Newarker:
LOL, trust me: I’m not making $$ on the Daily Newarker, from the Booker Campaign or anyone else. We’ve had fits and starts with advertising programs, and haven’t been able to generate a sustainable income from the site. I have a day job that feeds my family.
As to wishing the site shut down: I think a rising tide raises all boats. The more online discussion about our city, the better. And, whether it’s parents trying to find a space for advocacy to networking non-profits, I’d like TDN to be a resource for Newarkers, new and life-long.
After Hal Laessig and his wife lost their downtown Newark art gallery and living space in an eminent-domain fight with the Newark Housing Authority over the Prudential Center, they were determined to save an old building.
Three years and $3 million later, an 1879 former button factory in the Ironbound District houses their gallery, the Sumei Multidisciplinary Art Center, and serves as their home. They developed Button Factory Lofts into 14 condo units, nine of which have sold since the building opened in October.
The couple are among a wave of preservation-minded developers turning industrial buildings into loft spaces to accommodate Newark’s growing population of artists and professionals.
“When things were booming, developers were clearing multiple blocks, so a lot of the old industrial buildings got demolished,” says Laessig, 54. “Now, with the few that are left, people are thinking, let’s save them and convert them for living, because otherwise they’ll all be gone.”
Good overview of some recent condo conversions happening in the city and the personalities behind them.
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