73 percent of NYC high schools don’t have a newspaper. There’s a push for more.

Good morning and welcome to the Monday edition of the New York Education newsletter. We’ll take a look at the week ahead and a look back at the past week.

QUICK FIX

New York City high school students interested in journalism lack opportunities to get in-school experience, Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat reports.

A study conducted by journalism professor Geanne Belton found that 73 percent of high schools in the city don’t have student newspapers or websites.

“I think it’s a huge loss for a school and for students when there is no newspaper,” Belton told Chalkbeat, “especially now, with the importance of news literacy education.”

Belton’s research found that student newspapers began their decline over the last 15 years, but it’s not exactly clear how much. Data shows that high schools in Queens or Staten Island are more likely to have a newspaper than in the Bronx or Brooklyn. The study also found that schools with higher concentrations of Black and Latino students are less likely to have a school paper than schools with higher populations of white and Asian American students.

There are efforts to promote the creation of more student-generated news in high schools. Belton started a training program for educators on launching their own programs with a $1,000 stipend to get started. The goal is to launch 25 new student newspapers by the end of 2023.

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DOMINICAN TEACHERS THREATENED BY DOE STAFFERS TO KEEP QUIET OVER STEEP LIVING COSTS — OR FACE DEPORTATION — New York Post’s Georgia Worrell and Susan Edelman: “Bilingual educators brought from the Dominican Republic to work for the city Department of Education were ordered by a middle school teacher to shut up about the steep cost of the rooms they were forced to rent — or be exiled from the program, they told The Post. The Dominican recruits said Rosse Mary Savery, a teacher at MS 80 in the Bronx under Principal Emmanuel Polanco, warned them not to tell a soul about having to fork over a monthly $1,350 to $1,450 each for a single room in apartments where they share a kitchen and bathroom with colleagues.”

IN NYC, PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE OFTEN THE MAIN SOURCE FOR YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH CARE — Gothamist’s Michael Hill: “By law, public schools are required to provide a fair and appropriate education to all students — including those with mental health challenges. But what happens in reality is that families are forced to navigate an incredibly complex system, in a process that can take years to obtain the right services for their child. A new report published by ProPublica and news outlet The City looks at glaring inequities in this system. Tiffany Caldwell is a parent who has lived through it, and Abigail Kramer is a journalist who spent a year covering the topic. They joined ‘WNYC Morning Edition’ host Michael Hill to talk about how public schools do — and don’t — serve children with mental health issues.”

JPS MAY NEED TO EVALUATE USES OF ‘RED RAIDERS’ NAME — The Post-Journal’s Eric Tichy: “Jamestown Public Schools over the years has pulled back on the use of Native American imagery for its mascot and logo. The potential loss of state aid may now require JPS to evaluate its Red Raiders nickname for the high school. In a memo to all districts sent this month, the state Department of Education said schools in New York must stop using Native American references in mascots, team names and logos by the end of the current school year or face penalties. That includes the possible loss of vital state aid.”

ARTICULATION AGREEMENT HELPS JCC STUDENTS TRANSFER TO SUNY UPSTATE — 7 News Staff: “Jefferson Community College has an articulation agreement with SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. Assistant professor Jerry Zoanetti says the agreement makes it easier for students in JCC’s Allied Health School of STEM to transfer to Upstate.”

SUNY PLATTSBURGH PRIORITIZING STUDENT’S MENTAL HEALTH — WCAX News Team: “SUNY Plattsburgh received two new federal grants to expand student mental health services. $400,000 dollars will go toward covering the cost of an evening mental health counselor, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and a student assistance program. Adding one new counselor creates availability for 30 to 40 news students to be seen. While that doesn’t seem like a lot, the current waitlist for a counselor is two weeks.”

SCHOOL OR NO SCHOOL? THE FACTORS THAT COMPLICATE BUFFALO SCHOOLS’ DECISION — The Buffalo News’ Ben Tsujimoto: “Buffalo Schools told parents Tuesday morning that there would be school on Wednesday — the day before Thanksgiving break — after three snow days. A barrage of complaints ensued. The overarching sentiment was that snow cleanup in South Buffalo had not progressed to the point where transportation was feasible for students at schools such as South Park and Southside Elementary, even if schools elsewhere in the district were mostly cleared. Would students have to wait outside for a bus that might be hours late, or risk climbing over snow banks to bus stops that might not be cleared? Superintendent Tonja M. Williams changed course abruptly Tuesday afternoon, messaging parents that schools would actually be closed Wednesday after she received feedback and visited several schools with chief operating officer David Hills.”

PERSPECTIVES:

MORE NYC HIGH SCHOOLS NEED STUDENT NEWSPAPERS — Daily News Editorial Board: “New research reveals that just 27% of New York City’s public high schools have student newspapers. You don’t have to be a reporter or editorial writer or former student journalist to be very troubled by this fact. The overall numbers are worrisome, the demographic breakdown even more so. Baruch College Prof. Geanne Belton and her team surveyed all the district-run high schools they could over the course of a year and got answers from 439. While 36 of the 50 high schools with the lowest poverty rates had newspapers, just three of the 50 high schools with the highest poverty rates did. (Yes, this counts papers that are only online, not in print.) In the Bronx, just 14.5% of high schools had papers, and in Brooklyn, 18.7%. Manhattan (31%), Queens (47%) and Staten Island (50%) were better, but still not good enough.”

Across the River

GOV. MURPHY SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER ADDRESSING TEACHER SHORTAGE — Hudson Reporter’s Jordan Coll: “Governor Phil Murphy has signed an executive order creating a new task force intended to help address the state’s school staff shortages, in wake of a nationwide survey by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Education Department. The new task force would fall under the Office of the Governor and include no more than 25 members, including the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education, school administrators, members of the New Jersey Education Association of School Administrators, and superintendents representing a separate and distinct sector of the diverse student population across the state, as stated by the order.”

Around the Nation

AT WASHINGTON STATE SPECIAL EDUCATION SCHOOLS, YEARS OF ABUSE COMPLAINTS OF LACK OF ACADEMICS — ProPublica’s Mike Reicher and Lulu Ramadan: For years, the complaints languished with Washington state education officials. A therapist emailed about a teenage boy with severe autism, who had wailed for hours inside a locked room in her school, pleading to be let out. A local education official saw a teacher shove her foot in a student’s face as he lay on the ground and threaten to step on him. A special education director observed uncertified teachers struggling with no curriculum and urged the state to step in to protect “these extremely high-risk students.” The alarming reports cataloged a failure to serve kids with disabilities at the Northwest School of Innovative Learning, a private school designed to cater to Washington’s most vulnerable students.”

PERSPECTIVES:

‘OUR SCHOOLS HAVE BECOME BATTLEFIELDS’: TEACHERS CONSIDER ARMING THEMSELVES IN THE CLASSROOM — Megan Doney in The New York Times: “The text message was brief: ‘I’m hearing there is an active shooter near the school and the kids are on lockdown.’ This past week, for the second time this year, my daughter was near a school shooting. The terrified comments from anxious parents flew back and forth until we learned we had again been spared. Last spring, a gunman opened fire at a nearby school. This most recent shooting had taken place outside a different neighborhood campus. My elementary school-age daughter came home talking about what it felt like to have to shelter in place.”

ARE THE U.S. NEWS COLLEGE RANKINGS FINALLY GOING TO DIE? — Colin Diver in The New York Times: “Yale’s law school made the stunning announcement last week that it would no longer participate in the influential rankings published annually by U.S. News & World Report. Given the outsize importance attributed to the rankings by prospective applicants and alumni, Yale’s decision sent shock waves through the legal profession, and indeed all of higher education. Yet the law schools at Harvard, Berkeley, Georgetown, Columbia, Stanford and Michigan quickly followed suit. Will the universities of which they are a part join the boycott? Will other colleges and professional schools do the same? Could this be the beginning of the end for college rankings?”

Around the World

TEACHERS WORKING SECOND JOBS TO ‘KEEP EATING’ DURING COST-OF-LIVING CRISIS — Independent’s Andy Gregory: “Teachers are being forced to work second jobs in order to “keep eating” and pay for essentials during the cost of living crisis, with one in 10 believed to have taken on another role alongside teaching. Tens of thousands of teachers at schools in England and Wales are voting for the first time in a decade on whether to go on strike, with the government’s offer of a 5 per cent pay rise for most educators falling well below unions’ demands of 12 per cent.”

Extra Credit

Six candidates up for the presidency at SUNY Potsdam — via North Country Now’s Adam Atkinson.