Paul Robeson High School — soon to become P-Tech

Come this September Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights will be no more. Slated for closure by the Department of Education (DOE), it will be replaced by a new public high school underwritten by tech giant IBM and other funders. To be known as Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or “P-Tech,” this first-of-its-kind alliance between Mayor Bloomberg’s DOE and a major multi-national corporation will be a new model for vocational education and public/private partnerships in the city’s school system. IBM will shape the curriculum for the school, provide funding for the infrastructure, and offer internship and mentoring programs for students.

P-Tech will also offer students the opportunity to take part in a four or six-year program at the school during which they can earn an associate degree in addition to a high school diploma. CUNY’s New York City College of Technology (City Tech) will partner with the school and offer the degrees at no cost to students.

Capital New York notes that the school plans to accommodate 600 students from grades 9 to 14 and will not screen prospective applicants, but will give preference to those who attend informational sessions. Although IBM likely has altruistic goals in attempting to improve science and technology education, CNY notes that Big Blue is also doing some basic calculations about its future workforce–

“The Fortune 50 company announced its plans last week shortly after the alarming release of a report from researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education noting that American educators are doing a dismal job of producing mid-skill workers to fill the kind of slots IBM has in abundance. In other words, no one is training future IBM employees.”

Whether its intentions are high-minded, self-serving, or a reasonable dose of both, it’s clear that IBM and school administrators will have their work cut out for them. In fact, twenty-five years ago Paul Robeson High School was itself a new experiment in technical education, created to replace yet another failing high school. Alexander Hamilton Vocational High School was deemed unsalvageable by the Board of Education and closed in 1984 because of poor attendance, high drop-out rates, and terrible test scores. In 1985 Paul Robeson High School was opened in the same building with new teachers, a new curriculum, and a new application process. But as the writers at The Brooklyn Ink recently reported, despite becoming a success story by the late 1990s and early 2000s, Paul Robeson High was negatively impacted by many of the educational reforms of the Bloomberg administration and took a turn for the worst. Their piece details the sad chain of events that led to Robeson High’s demise at a DOE hearing in early 2010.

izreloaded2/Flickr

Tomorrow evening the Municipal Art Society will host a panel discussion on the future of digital connectivity in New York City. ‘Wireless City: Can All New Yorkers Get Connected?’ will feature a keynote from Rachel Sterne, the newly appointed 27-year-old ‘Chief Digital Officer’ for the city. A panel moderated by NY1′s technology reporter Adam Balkin will explore why expanded public wireless access should become part of the city’s long-term planning and development processes, how other cities have tackled the issue, and what stakeholders from local business improvement districts, the non-profit sector, and the corporate world can do to make municipal WiFi a reality for all New Yorkers.

Tuesday, March 8, 6:30 – 8:00 PM. Reception to follow.
NYIT Auditorium, 1871 Broadway at 62nd Street.
$15; $10 MAS members and students.
More info here.
Register here.

Queens Museum of Art/Facebook

The Panorama of the City of New York at the Queens Museum of Art was closed today for some spring cleaning. The QMA’s Facebook page posted some great photos of the Godzilla-sized caretakers vacuuming the Hudson River and dusting off the Palisades.

Built by Robert Moses for the 1964-65 World’s Fair, the massive 9,335 square foot architectural model includes 3D representations of every building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs of the city.

You can check out the now-spiffy mini city at the 4th Annual Panorama Challenge taking place next Friday, March 11 from 7:00 to 10:00 P.M. The Panorama Challenge is the World Cup of New York City trivia, where teams gather around the model to test their knowledge of NYC history and geography. Beer and snacks will be available for purchase (suggested donation) and will benefit the City Reliquary. There’s also free trolley service from the Willets Point/Citi Field 7 train station to the museum (and back to the station when you’re done) so you don’t have to trek through Flushing Meadows Park in the cold and dark. You can catch the trolley at the station exit on Roosevelt Avenue under the el tracks.

Commuters trudging through Grand Central Terminal today were treated to some free food and ads (there’s always a catch) for NBC’s new reality series, America’s Next Great Restaurant. A mock automat was set up in Vanderbilt Hall and menu items inspired by the show were available for the taking–though the mechanical element that defined the classic cafeterias was sorely lacking. The show will pit contestants against each other to see who has the best idea for a new national chain restaurant in an Apprentice/Hells’ Kitchen mash-up. The ‘automat’ will be open tomorrow as well from 9AM-7PM and Bobby Flay and Curtis Stone will drop by to pass out some of the freebies.

What? What is it, 1911 out there? That or a troupe of cabaret singers or Englishmen or (likely) some hipster had too much fun on the bar crawl.

Bedbugs Love NY/EmpireWire

As bedbugs continue on their inevitable march toward the complete domination of our fair city, the Museum of the City of New York offers concerned citizens a primer on our new overlords. Next week, the panel taking part in “Plague!: Bed Bug Myths and Realities” will examine how bedbugs have proliferated (since the ban on DDT, among other things), what the city is doing to stop them, and what we can all do to prevent a bedbug home invasion. It will include moderator Dr. Amy L. Fairchild from the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University, entomologist Louis Sorkin of the New York Entomological Society, Gale A. Brewer, Council Member from District 6, Renee Corea, former Director of New York vs. Bed Bugs, David Cain, Managing Director of Bed Bugs Ltd., Yasmine Hecker, CEO of Prep 4 Bed Bugs, and Ray Lopez of Little Sisters of Assumption Family Health Service, who will discuss how the recent plague of bed bugs is affecting city life and culture. The event is co-sponsored by the New York Entomological Society.

Tuesday, January 18 at 6:30 P.M.
$12 Non-Members
$8 Seniors and Students
$6 Museum Members
Purchase Tickets

Museum of the City of New York
New York Entomological Society

The Center for an Urban Future’s third annual ranking of national retail chains in New York City found that despite the floundering economy, chain stores have expanded 4.1% overall in the city. The largest percentage of expansion occurred in Brooklyn (5.3%), while Manhattan housed the largest number of chain stores (2,746), followed by Queens (1,479), Brooklyn (1,333), the Bronx (742), and Staten Island (403).

For the most number of stores city-wide, Dunkin Donuts crushed the competition with 466 stores, up from 429 last year. Second place went to Subway, and the bronze went to Starbucks. See chart below.

Chains that significantly expanded their presence in the city included T-Mobile, MetroPCS, Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Chipotle, Walgreens, GameStop, Pret A Manger, and The Children’s Place. Those that closed a significant number of stores included McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Blockbuster, Nine West, Tasti-D-Lite, Curves, and Quiznos.

Download the full report and see all the winners and losers broken down by borough and ZIP code here.

And here’s a partial list of the chains with the most stores in the city:

Although the official “SOS Week” for Pat Kiernan’s website has ended, it’s up to you to keep on clicking. Most know Kiernan as the NY1 morning anchor who delivers the news with a glorious placidity that could have only been honed in his native Canada. He’s become an indispensable part of the morning routine for countless New Yorkers. But since 2008, Kiernan has also edited his own site called Pat’s Papers–a bulked up, national version of the popular “In the Papers” segment on NY1. Pat and his team cull the nation’s morning papers to assemble a must-read list of stories that range from the serious to the lighthearted and continue updating throughout the day.

Unfortunately, the costs of producing and staffing the website have been adding up faster than the ad revenue, and now Pat’s having to subsidize the costs out of his own pocket. He bluntly noted, “the end of the cash is near. I really don’t want to shut the site down, but the traffic has to improve to generate enough ad revenue to make a dent in my costs.” The “SOS Week” has helped get things moving in the right direction, but there’s still a ways to go.

Before it comes to a complete shut down, show Pat’s Papers some love and visit the site, subscribe to the free daily email, and spread the word!