Harrison REVIEW THE
January 20, 2016 | Vol. 5, Number 3 | www.harrisonreview.com
Lawmakers ask ATF to audit Harrison gun store
Fresh and Fast Dig Inn, a popular Manhattan-based eatery, has touched down in Westchester. Located at the Rye Ridge Shopping Center in Rye Brook, the restaurant offers healthy, fast-casual bowls filled with grains, vegetables and protein, and more. For more, see page 6. Photo courtesy Dig Inn
By COREY STOCKTON Staff Writer
Common Core still a concern amid new regulations By FRANCO FINO Staff Writer An imminent federal education regulation, which would strip Title I funding for public schools with excessive opt-out rates of standardized testing, is set to go into effect at the end of the month. Despite disapproval from lawmakers, parents and educators across the country, the U.S. Department of Education’s controversial amendment to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, ESSA, which was passed by Congress in December 2015, is set go into effect on Jan. 30. ESSA, which reauthorized the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act, expands the federal government’s
role in funding public education. “The outcome of this type of legislation will be to punish large segments of students who are in need of federal dollars to support their education,” said Dr. Louis Wool, the superintendent of the Harrison Central School District. “We do not have the ability nor the right to mandate that people engage in a process that they find to be not in the best interests of their children.” The new amendment to ESSA could label Westchester public schools as “in need of improvement” for any school where 5 percent of students or more opt out of state Common Core testing. As a result, school districts above that threshold would lose its federal Title I
funding, which is distributed to schools and school districts with a high percentage of students from low-income families. The contended Common Core State Standards Initiative, which highlights what students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade from kindergarten through 12th grade, is currently authorized and optional in New York state until 2022; the law was adopted in 2010. But in 2022, Common Core will be fully implemented without the option to opt out of standardized testing. The federal ESSA was drafted by U.S. Secretary of Education John King, the former New York state Education Department commissioner, and was
signed into law on the same day as the repeal of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, on Dec. 10, 2015. ESSA retains all the stipulations of the No Child Left Behind Act, but shifts the law’s federal accountability provisions to states. The No Child Left Behind Act previously required all public schools receiving Title I funding to administer statewide standardized testing with the stipulation that students make “adequate yearly progress.” For example, each year’s fourth-graders must score better than the previous year’s fourthgraders, or the federal government would step in and set mandatory improvement plans. CONCERN continued on page 8
A gun store in Harrison, which has drawn the attention of thousands of residents since it opened in November, now also has the attention of two Westchester County lawmakers. Legislators Catherine Parker, a Rye Democrat, and Ben Boykin, a White Plains Democrat, whose districts each entail a portion of Harrison, wrote a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF, in December requesting an audit of the license to sell firearms issued to Leesie & Lou Lou Inc., a corporation owned by Louis Zacchio, who owns the gun store on Halstead Avenue, L&L Sports. “We just asked them to make sure that they were looking at the application and making sure that everything was done properly,” Parker told the Review. The letter was sent to the ATF on Dec. 12, 2016. Boykin and Parker said they had not yet received a response from the agency as of press time. Some Harrison residents are likely to rejoice over news that county representatives have involved themselves in the saga. Those same residents have protested to the Harrison Town Council the location of L&L Sports since it announced it would be opening in November. Much of their concern is due to the shop’s proximity to an elementary school 500 feet away. As of press time, an online petition has garnered almost 3,500 signatures decrying the store’s location. In the letter from county
lawmakers, specific questions and concerns related to Zacchio’s license to sell firearms were raised, and whether some of his practices invalidate that license. The legislators referenced a license administered to Leesie & Lou Lou Inc., listing the premise of license as Zacchio’s home address on Orchard Place. The letter asks if Zacchio’s license had since been modified to allow him to operate at the Halstead Avenue storefront. The Review has submitted a Freedom of Information Law, FOIL, request to the ATF seeking a copy of Zacchio’s license to sell firearms; that request has not been fulfilled as of press time. Boykin and Parker have also questioned Zacchio’s compliance with a local law in Harrison which requires those who sell used goods—including guns— to obtain a permit to do so from the town. According to a response to a FOIL request submitted by the Review, the Harrison town clerk’s office has not issued any licenses to deal secondhand articles, nor had it received any applications for secondhand dealer licenses in 2016. Although he had not been licensed to deal used articles, Zacchio had listed on the store’s Facebook page that it sold used firearms. That claim has since been removed from the page. However, Zacchio’s lack of a license could be due partially to a lack of specificity in the town’s secondhand dealers law, which the town is attempting to amend. Earlier this month, the town GUN continued on page 10
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