Calls for monitor for Syracuse over hate crimes – Politico

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— Gov. Andrew Cuomo called on Syracuse University to appoint a monitor to probe recent hate crimes at the school.

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— Bard High School Early College is looking to open a campus in the Bronx via a new competition to create 20 schools citywide.

— New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza blasted a state law mandating the use of a single admission test at three specialized high schools.

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CUOMO WANTS OUTSIDE MONITOR AT SYRACUSE — POLITICO’s Nick Niedzwiadek: Gov. Andrew Cuomo is calling on Syracuse University to install an outside monitor following a string of hateful incidents that have roiled the campus, and he is criticizing Chancellor Kent Syverud’s handling of the situation. Several racist and anti-Semitic slurs and symbols have been reported on or around the campus over the last two weeks.

— Syverud issued a message Tuesday afternoon about the administration’s next steps, including a standalone reply to student protesters’ demands. Syracuse’s board of trustees gave the chancellor a message of confidence.

— A white supremacist manifesto written by the Christchurch mosque shooter was allegedly pushed to Syracuse students’ phones at a campus library.

— A Syracuse professor of Jewish and Mexican heritage allegedly received an anonymous anti-Semitic email.

CARRANZA CRITICIZES ELITE SCHOOL LAW — POLITICO’s Madina Touré: New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza called on the state Legislature to “get out of the way” and repeal a state law that mandates the use of a single admissions test at the city’s specialized high schools. “All I need is for the Legislature to get out of the way, repeal that law and then hold me accountable for the quality of those schools,” he said during a town hall meeting hosted by Community Education Council 11 at the Richard R. Green Campus in the Bronx on Tuesday night. “No one has given me a better proposal.”

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF HOMELESS STUDENTS — New York Times’ Eliza Shapiro: “Darnell, 8, lives in a homeless shelter and commutes 15 miles a day to school. Sandivel shares a bedroom with her mother and four brothers. She is 10 and has moved seven times in the past five years. The number of school-age children in New York City who live in shelters or ‘doubled up’ in apartments with family or friends has swelled by 70 percent over the past decade — a crisis without precedent in the city’s history.”

BARD EYES THE BRONX — Chalkbeat’s Alex Zimmerman: “A small network of coveted public high schools where students can earn an associate degree by the time they graduate is vying to launch a campus in the Bronx through a new competition to open 20 city schools. Bard High School Early College, which operates schools in Queens and Manhattan, has been eyeing a move to the Bronx for years.”

PROBE INTO SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER’S ‘YELLOW FOLKS’ REMARK — New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said that his team would investigate after a school board member in Brooklyn referred to Asians as “yellow folks” in an email thread. He called the comments “inappropriate and divisive.” “I was appalled to learn one parent leader used a racially insensitive remark to describe Asian-American families,” Carranza tweeted Tuesday. “It’s completely unacceptable, and while her public apology was an important first step, I’ve asked my team to look into this further. Parents leaders serve on autonomous, elected bodies, and I am respectful of that.” — Madina

FULLY FUNDING EDUCATION AID — Chalkbeat’s Reema Amin: “During a nearly four-hour discussion, parent leaders and advocates for high-needs students shared stories about how funding constraints held schools back from offering certain programs and services. Bronx parent Tom Sheppard, a member of District 11’s community education council, said he spent his own money for a year to create an after-school photography club ‘for 10 kids, just to hopefully make a dent.’“

SUNY INTERNATIONAL ENROLLMENT DIPS — POLITICO’s Nick Niedzwiadek: International student enrollment across the SUNY system dropped by more than 500 this fall compared to last year, according to data presented at Tuesday’s board of trustees meeting. There are 20,731 international students enrolled this semester, down 2.6 percent from 21,285 in fall 2018. Still, the number of international students is up more than 10 percent from a decade ago, and represents about 5 percent of total student enrollment throughout the system.

NO MORE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS — New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza signaled that the DOE won’t be adding additional holidays. This comes as South Asian advocates seek to put pressure on the city to recognize Diwali as a school holiday. “We are on the road to being less competitive with neighboring state and states across the country,” he said during a Community Education Council 11 town hall in the Bronx on Tuesday night. “I just can’t advocate for more holidays in our already very truncated school year.” — Madina

EAST RAMAPO SCHOOL BOARD LAWSUIT TO MOVE FORWARD — Lohud’s Thomas C. Zambito: “A federal judge denied the East Ramapo Central School District’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit challenging how the district elects its school board members. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Seibel sets up a two-week trial in February trial that could alter how votes in May’s school board elections are tallied. The lawsuit filed in 2017 by the Spring Valley chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and several black and Latino voters sought a dramatic change in the district’s election process.”

CLOGGED PHONE TRANSLATION SYSTEM — Daily News’ Michael Elsen-Rooney: “Parent-teacher conferences are getting lost in translation. Dropped calls, poor connections and long waits have turned the crucial sit-downs into a nightmare for city teachers who rely on the phone translation system to communicate with non-English speaking families, according to multiple Education Department sources who spoke to the Daily News on the condition of anonymity.”

EXPAND GIFTED AND TALENTED PROGRAMMING — Michael Mulgrew and Kirsten John Foy for the Daily News: “Problems require solutions, and complex problems require sophisticated solutions. Consider Mayor de Blasio’s approach to struggling schools… In historically underserved neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, the mayor and Chancellor Richard Carranza worked with the UFT to develop what is known as ‘the Bronx Plan’ …That’s the kind of approach the city should take to reforming gifted and talented programs.”

PARK SLOPE MOM SEEKS EQUITY FOLLOWING ADMISSIONS SCANDAL — Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s Meaghan McGoldrick: “With the support of about 25 other families, [Lisa] Cowan created The College Opportunity Fund at Brooklyn Community Foundation. Participating parents then squared in on its first two recipients: College Access Research and Action and NYC Kids Rise.”

UNPACKING HISTORY BEHIND SCHOOL SEGREGATION — Cornell University experts Kendra Bischoff and Noliwe Rooks discussed specialized high schools, gifted and talented programming, charters and the issues of diversity, school segregation and educational inequality at a media-only lunch in Manhattan. “At every moment there is a state or a national will to start to desegregate education — if you say it’s about economics, if you say it’s about race, there is a pushback, there is a virulent pushback from parents who are benefiting from the system,” Rooks said. — Madina

STUDENTS AT STATEN ISLAND SCHOOLS STRUGGLE TO REPAY LOANS — Staten Island Advance’s Annalise Knudson: “Many students at Staten Island’s three colleges are still struggling to make loan payments since they left in 2016, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. SILive.com analyzed cohort default rate data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid office for New York State, including the three college campuses on Staten Island.”

ABBOTT DISTRICTS NEED UPGRADES — NJ Spotlight’s John Mooney: “The latest court challenge under the Abbott v. Burke school-equity rulings demands that the state meet its obligation to build and maintain adequate school buildings in some of the toughest cities in New Jersey. Exhibit A in that challenge may be the state’s own reckoning of the needs for new or renewed school infrastructure in those cities.”

STUDENT BOARD MEMBER BLASTS DEVOS — Bethesda Magazine: “The student member of the Montgomery County Board of Education took a jab at national Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Friday afternoon in a social media post. Nate Tinbite, 17, five months into his one-year term on the board, spoke Thursday afternoon at the National Blue Ribbon Schools recognition ceremony in National Harbor.”

FORMER DEVOS AIDE SPEAKS OUT — POLITICO’s Michael Stratford: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ former top aide, who is now running for a Senate seat on a platform of massive student loan forgiveness, pushed back on Tuesday against some Democrats’ concerns about the circumstances of his departure from the Trump administration.

#CAMPUSMETOO MOVEMENT EMERGES AT UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI — OkayAfrica’s Rufaro Samanga: “Kenyan students at the University of Nairobi have recently launched the #CampusMeToo movement which aims to tackle the sexual harassment of students on Kenyan university campuses.”

Two people were arrested at SUNY-Binghamton after a presentation by Arthur Laffer was forced to shut down by protests.

6 p.m. — Community Education Council 1 meeting, P.S. 20 Anna Silver School, 166 Essex Street, New York, NY. CEC8 meeting, MS 424, 730 Bryant Avenue, Bronx.

6:30 p.m. — CEC3 meeting, P.S. 242, 134 W. 122nd Street, New York, NY. CEC5 meeting, P.S. 154, 250 W. 127th Street, Manhattan.

7 p.m. — CEC26 meeting, M.S. 74, 61-15 Oceania Street, Queens.