Tuesday, 21 July 2015

Wake to be held for 1 of 2 students killed in driver's ed crash

Family and friends will gather Saturday in Orange County, New York to say goodbye to a teenager killed during a driver's ed crash.

A wake will be held in Goshen for 16-year old Antonio Baglivo, one of two Goshen High School students killed when a student driver crashed into a tractor-trailer Tuesday. Baglivo's funeral will be held Monday in Brooklyn.

A vigil was held Wednesday night as mourning continues for the victims of the horrific crash in Warwick.

The students were taking a driving lesson when their Chevy Malibu sedan collided with a tractor trailer at Blooms Corner Road and County Road Tuesday morning. The driver of the tractor trailer says the car initially stopped at a flashing red light, but then pulled into the intersection and into his path.

Many cried uncontrollably at the vigil, overcome with emotions for students Baglivo, Paul Van Doran, Lucas O'Connor and Claudia Krebs.

Baglivo and Vandoran, both 16, passed away in the immediate aftermath of the crash. O'Connor and Krebs were rushed to Westchester Medical Center.

On Wednesday evening, Goshen School Superintendent Daniel Connor said that O'Connor had also died, but on Thursday, Connor said he may have been given incorrect information and that he was unable to confirm the boy's status.

More than 100 students, parents and teachers turned out to grieve.

"These students, it's too young," parent Alene Swift said. "They shouldn't be grieving, but they'll get through this."

Police say Krebs was behind the wheel of the sedan, with the boys in backseat and 61-year-old instructor Julio Anglero in the passenger seat. Anglero and the truck driver were not seriously hurt.

The Decat Driving School declined to comment.

No charges or tickets have been issued for the crash.

As police continue to investigate, members of the Goshen community are focusing on getting through this together.

"Our hearts are broken," teacher Joanne Karchawer said. "They are broken. We are here to support everybody in the community."

"It's important that we remain together, that we remain strong, and remember that together we can get through this," middle school teacher Bill Rolon said.

The intersection where the crash happened has been the site of numerous accidents and fatalities, according to Town Supervisor Michael Sweeton.

"If that had been a permanent signal with a red stop, that young person would not have entered that intersection," he said.

County officials have agreed to meet over the safety issue.

"Hopefully we will get some positive response and get the county out there to put in a permanent signal," Sweeton said.

Since 2005, there have been a total of 36 accidents at the intersection. Two fatal accidents, including this one, have left three people dead. Additionally, 16 people have been injured to go along with 18 instances of property damage.

The school superintendent released a letter that read in part,

"I encourage families to communicate with their children as much as possible. If parents/guardians feel that they need advice about how to speak with their children or what to share, they should feel free to reach out to the Guidance Department and speak to a counselor who can offer support. Additional resources are:

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Monday, 13 July 2015

NJ Common Core changes might not go far

ust five years after signing on to adopt the Common Core State Standards, New Jersey officials are unceremoniously signing out.

To implement the Common Core standards — a set of educational benchmarks aimed at increasing classroom rigor — New Jersey public schools spent five years training teachers, investing in new technology and buying textbooks.

Bowing to political pressure, the state is now reversing course and reverting to a not-so-distant past when New Jersey educators set their own academic bar. A six-month review of the existing standards for math, English and language arts commenced Wednesday, with an aim toward putting a New Jersey stamp on new standards.

Despite the about-face, nobody is forecasting wholesale changes in New Jersey. Such 360-degree turns can take considerable time and money. Similar turnabouts elsewhere have mostly amounted to rebranding or cosmetic changes, rather than sharp departures from the status quo.

ASBURY PARK PRESS

Education waiting game: Common Core review begins

"We will not be tearing down and starting over, but rather looking critically at where are there opportunities for clarification, for omission and for addition, to make sure that we always have the top standards for our students," Kimberley Harrington, chief academic officer in the Department of Education, said last week.

In fact, New Jersey is retaining perhaps the most controversial aspect of the education reforms — the standardized tests that large numbers of parents and students boycotted in the last school year. Among teachers especially, those exams have been a lightning rod for criticism because the results are factored into teacher evaluations.

"My sense is that most people are treating this as more of a political statement than one that is based on a detailed analysis of the content of the standards," said Drew Gitomer, a professor at Rutgers University's Graduate School of Education.

Bipartisan scorn

Once supported by Republicans and Democrats alike as a tool to drive stronger student performance, Common Core has instead become a political pinata, with critics assailing it from across the political spectrum.

Its critics say the standards are confusing, lead to learning gaps, and diminish the rights of states and local school boards to make educational decisions. Additionally, they have been panned as top-down reforms from Washington, even though the nation's governors and state education commissioners played key roles in their formation.

Some of the backpedaling — and the fallout — elsewhere:

•South Carolina's Board of Education voted in March to replace the Common Core with standards written by teams of state residents.

•In 2014, the U.S. Department of Education threatened to force Oklahoma to provide school choice and free tutoring after the state repealed the Common Core. The federal department relented after Oklahoma reverted to its old standards, which were deemed sufficient.

•Indiana dropped the Common Core in 2014 and its Core-aligned state test. Schools there struggled to quickly administer a replacement test. For a time, Indiana, like Oklahoma, faced similar threats of school choice and free tutoring from the Department of Education.

"You can't even mention it in Indiana now," said Jonathan Plucker, an endowed professor at the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut who previously ran the Center for Evaluation & Education Policy at Indiana University.

In Indiana, "a lot of people learned the hard way," he said. "You can't do this in a couple months. It takes a lot thought."

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Thursday, 9 July 2015

State considers requiring school bus drivers to clear kids before they cross road

A proposal before the North Carolina Board of Education would require drivers to watch for traffic at each stop and give hand signals to students crossing in front of the bus when they feel the coast is clear.
The recommendations come from the National School Transportation Specifications and Procedures. The State Board of Educators has been considering the change since meeting with consultants earlier this year and hearing positive reviews from two test programs, one in Guilford County.
The changes will be discussed at the state Board of Education meeting on Thursday in Raleigh. If approved, the hand gesture could be included in state-mandated training for school bus drivers later this year and put into practice starting in January.
At least one school advocate in the Winston-Salem area believes questions about drivers’ liability in the event of an accident should be addressed before the rules are changed.
“How about if you give a signal for a child to cross and suddenly a car comes around the bend and a child is hit? Is that bus driver going to be held liable?” wonders Angie Vaughn, outgoing president of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Parent Teacher Association Council. “I think it’s a good idea, but I think there are a lot of things that need to be worked out first.”
Vaughn would also like to see more drivers take responsibility and reduce the danger to children around bus stops.
“There are many times that people are busy — they are on their phone, they are driving listening to music, they are talking to someone else — and they don’t even notice the school bus stopped with the lights on and the stop arm out,” said Vaughn.
The state Board of Education said state numbers show that 13 deaths since 1999 happened while kids were getting on or off a school bus.  Additional data cited by state educators show between 3,000 and 3,500 cars a day illegally pass a stopped school bus.
Linda Thompson said she hopes no one ignores stop signs on the bus when her grandson is on it. He’s still taking the bus daily to get to day care. She meets him at the stop to walk him home.
“Some kids, they don’t even know if it’s clear for them to cross the road, they just dart out there. But if someone is out there saying, ‘No, no; wait,’ directing them across like a school guard, yeah that would help out a lot,” said Thompson.

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Friday, 3 July 2015

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