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Volume XVIII • Number 28 • June 16 - 22, 2011 •
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RKA students spending last days of term watching movies By MIAWLING LAM Students at Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy are spending up to one-third of class time watching popular Hollywood films, television shows and documentaries. Allegations have emerged of excessive movie-watching at the beleaguered M.S/H.S. 141. The Riverdale Review has learned that precious instruction time is being wasted and students are viewing movies with little or no educational value as the current school year winds down. The school’s Advanced Placement English class recently spent three periods watching “Clueless,” a comedy loosely based on Jane Austen’s 1815 classic tome, “Emma,” while those in the Advanced Placement History class watched Tom Hank’s blockbuster film “Forrest Gump.” A person at the school, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said a 12th-grade economics class even watched “Takers,” a 2010 crime film that follows a group of professional bank robbers. The source said the practice, which emerged late last year, can be used to enhance classroom learning, but
that the situation at RKA was out of hand. The person said it was becoming more prevalent and that teachers were using class time for passive viewing of movies. “You see a TV going down the hallway all the time,” the person said. “There are times when they’re showing documentaries—it’s educational and it’s part of the unit. But there are other times when the movies are questionable.” Students in a senior forensics science class also regularly watch “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” while those in the Spanish class watch films as the teacher oversees an exam, according to the source. “There are days when the kids just aren’t getting instruction because the teacher has to give the oral part of the exam out in the hallway,” the person said. “There’s no one tending to the class, and so she just throws on a movie to keep the kids quiet.” In many cases, movies are being shown after students have taken their final exams or have covered the syllabus, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to slacken off. “There is a little bit of ‘we did a lot of work, we cov-
ered the curriculum and now we’re going to chill out a bit,’ but ‘Clueless’ is…so inappropriate for an Advanced Placement class,” the person said. The trend has become so dire that students are even beginning to question their need to be in class. “Some of the kids are complaining that they were watching a lot of movies,” the person said. “You would see a kid in the hallway and say, ‘why aren’t you in class?’ and then the kid would say, ‘they’re just watching a stupid movie.’” As of press time, calls to the school for comment had not been returned. According to a 2009 study, using popular films to teach history can be a double-edged sword. Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis found students recall 50 percent more factual information when they read and watch a movie than when they just read the text. However, when the movie presents information that conflicts with historical facts, students were more likely to remember the film’s version of events, even if they are inaccurate and dramatized.
City plans to raise parking fees by another quarter per hour By BRENDAN McHUGH Nothing could come between the Beatles and their Lovely Rita, Meter Maid, but a handful of City Council members are certainly trying to come between the city and its meters.
For the second time in a year, the city is trying to hike meter rates outside of Manhattan to $1 per hour, and for the second time in a year, City Council members James Vacca (Bronx), Karen Koslowitz (Queens) and Diana
Reyna (Brooklyn) are attempting to block the hike. “This parking meter rate increase represents yet another hit to the average working-class resident of this city,” Vacca said. “Between parking tickets that
The updated pool at the Riverdale Y is only a twelfth as salty as the ocean, so if you’re hoping for the buoyancy of the Dead Sea, you’ll still have to travel farther away than Arlington Avenue. Salt is one component of the pool’s new sanitizing system. The slightly salted water passes through an electrolytic cell, which breaks down the salt into various substances—including sodium hypochlorite, or chlorine. The process generates just enough to keep the water sanitized but not enough to smell offensive, make you itchy or burn your eyes. The new green pool should be available to swimmers by the end of this week. But before suiting up, check with the Y at 718-548-8200 or RiverdaleY.org.
now exceed $100 and meters that could soon cost twice as much as they did two years ago, motorists are paying nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars every year to the City of New York.” In 2009, parking meter rates were at 50 cents an hour. Today, rates stand at 75 cents an hour, or 20 minutes per quarter. In January, following negotiations led by City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn and Vacca, Reyna, and Koslowitz, DOT postponed a planned outer-borough parking meter rate hike. The agency then reintroduced the hike proposal in its fiscal year 2012 budget proposal. Vacca has said he is looking into crafting legislation that will restrict how often and how much the city can raise meter rates. To drive home their opposition, the Council members revealed that the City of New York expects to collect nearly $700 million from parking meters and parking tickets this fiscal year— $250 million more than the total amount the city contributes to the operating budget of the Department of Transportation. The $700 million figure includes more than $520 million from parking violations and nearly $160 million in charges at the city’s meters, lots, and garages. “Here we go again!” exclaimed
Koslowitz. “It was just a few months back that we had the same fight with the administration. Breaking the backs of the middle class and small businesses is the wrong way to fix our fiscal woes in the city.” “This Band-Aid approach is unsustainable and empties the pockets of consumers and merchants while the economy is still recovering,” Reyna said. “We are sending the wrong message when we continue to burden working families, who are watching where every quarter is being spent.” Parking meters first came to New York City in the 1960s—not as a way for the city to make money or balance a budget, but to increase the turnover of cars in merchant corridors. City business advocates say that when faced with the options of shopping in the city or going to New Jersey, Yonkers or Long Island, consumers have increasingly flocked to suburban malls with free parking as the parking rates in the city increase. New Muni-Meters are also irking shoppers because drivers now have to park their cars, walk to a Muni-Meter, then walk back to their cars to put the receipt on the dashboard. City officials maintain that it makes collection of money easier and economically efficient and that it gives drivers the ability to pay with a credit card as well as cash.