Op-Ed: Building Stronger Communities

By Carmen Fariña, Schools Chancellor As Chancellor, I love talking to our students and parents at  community meetings, forums, town halls and even in the grocery store –and I hear the same message time and again: every parent wants to see their child graduate ready to conquer the world—and every child wants to follow their…

Op-Ed: The Bilingual Advantage

By Carmen Fariña NYC Schools Chancellor I grew up speaking Spanish with my parents, who fled their native Spain during its Civil War and settled in Brooklyn. I didn’t know any English when I started kindergarten and the teacher marked me absent for six weeks because I didn’t understand her mangled pronunciation of my last name.

Harlem Charter Fight Moves to Court (audio)

The controversial founder of the Success Academy charter schools, Eva Moskowitz, said on Monday that her network and a group of parents filed a lawsuit to reverse the city’s decision to block a middle school from opening this fall even as Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would find alternate seats for the 194 children affected.

15-Year-Old Jumps To Her Death

A tormented 15-year-old girl who mused on Facebook about committing suicide jumped to her death Thursday from the roof of her grandmother’s Upper West Side building (just south of Harlem), police said.