Never mind the kids who are being murdered by violent parents or drugged to death by foster mothers, the Administration for Children's Services is busy checking up on the home environments of kids who skip gym class too many times, even though that's not technically a violation worthy of an ACS home visit. Like her son blowing off gym class, Karen Dussack skipped a meeting at Bronx Science to talk about her progeny having......

Staten Island Ferry, by General Erin at Flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: missing children on 12th Ave. in Brooklyn, an overturned tractor trailer on the eastbound BQE in Queens, and an armed robbery on West 42nd St. in Manhattan. The contraband room at JFK International: it's like a freegan's vision of heaven. The clock atop the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower (now One Hanson Place) started ticking today at noon. A man was......

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein released the "first-ever" public school progress reports with letter grades. The reports are meant to give educators and parents a snapshot of how well schools are doing and empower them to keep improving. Mayor Bloomberg said, "With these Progress Reports, parents no longer have to navigate a maze of statistics to determine how their child's school is doing and how it compares to others. And our educators now......

Newsweek released that latest list of 1,200 top high school rankings. It is precisely the kind of list that makes people many parts crazy, because their schools aren't listed at all or because their schools are listed and it'll drive up property prices. The NY Sun says that the list snubs the city, as none of the city's prestigious schools are listed in the top 100: "The top-ranked city school, the High School for......

The Dept. of Education released its list of where 8th Graders are choosing to attend high school and apparently Queens is the place to be in the fall of '07. Townsend Harris High received the largest number (3,452) of incoming freshmen applicants listing the school as their first choice for the next academic year. According to the NY Post City schools and their students aren't bound by geography. 8th Graders are asked to list their......

NY State has the most semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search, with 117 entrants out of 300. Eighteen semifinalists are from NYC public schools. Here's the breakdown: Stuyvesant has 7; Bronx Science has 6; Townsend Harris, SI Tech, Murrow, Midwood and Brooklyn Tech each have 1. Mayor Bloomberg said, "It's another testament to the quality of our schools." Well, it's a testament to seven schools, at least. Forty finalists will be chosen on January......

NY1 has a good look at the differing rules for cell phone use at two very different public schools in the Bronx. One is DeWitt Clinton High School, where classes are frequently overcrowded and there are metal detectors at the entrance. The other is Bronx High School of Science, the magnet school whose has seven Nobel Prize-winning (in physics) graduates. Current Department of Education rules say that students are not allowed to bring cell phones......

Bronx High School of Science, one of the city's top magnet schools, is suddently in a pickle (or is that kimchee?) with Korean parents. The NY Sun reports that parents have raised more than $100,000 to start a promisd Korean language program at the school, but the school has only offered an elective since. There are lots of questions, like why did the school accept checks from parents while the Department of Education denies any......

The best article we've scoured in the papers today? The NY Times article about declining numbers of black and Hispanic students at the city's top schools - even in spite of the city's best efforts to encourage them to apply and attend. And at the same time, the number of Asian students is rising to new highs at schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. There are a number of reactions, quasi-explanations, and questions in......

Ah, yet another thing to confirm the horrible bureaucracy in the Department of Education. The Post reports that a Bronx Science student is suing the school because they are stonewalling efforts to get her Bronx Science diploma. Maria Casal failed pre-calculus during her senior year, and was told that she would have to complete summer school if she wanted a Bronx Sci diploma - at graduation, she got a regular Regents diploma. So she went......

Conan O'Brien gave the commencement speech to Stuyvesant High School students, and thank God for YouTube. To win over the crowd, he slams grandparents and Bronx Science right out of the gate and later he mentions that he researched Stuyvesant using Wikipedia. Gothamist hopes Stuyvesant Class of 2006 knows how lucky they were, as their commencement speakers are probably down hill from here. And certainly this is better PR for Stuyvesant than cuddle groups......

Bad, elite high schools, bad! Investigators found out that Brooklyn Tech, the Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant all made low-income students pay for AP exams, while the schools received NY State grant money to fund them. Some of you may remember that AP exams are expensive - $82 a pop nowadays (we think they were around $70-some circa 1993), and the NY Times explains that students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches......

- A suspended Bronx police officer was arrested again for allegedly raping a woman who he'd offered a lift. - We're not sure we'd call it a "Big Dig" yet, but this doesn't sound like fun. - Oy. A teacher at Bronx Science has TB. - Come to think of it, there are a lot of banks in Forest Hills, Queens. - The Department of Sanitation is working on getting some eco-friendly garbage trucks.......

We're glad we're not the halls of Stuyvesant or Bronx Science these days, as they were totally shafted when the Intel Science finalists were announced. In fact, none of the finalists for the 65th Annual STS are from NYC public schools - the only New Yorker is Horace Mann student Sarah Kate Rapoport. Does this mean the city's public school science curriculum, even at the magnet schools, sucks? Or was it bad luck? There were......

It's that time of year again - when the semi-finalists are the Intel Science Talent Search are announced! The NY Times says that NY State "dominated" the list, with 140 students coming from the Empire State - and there are only 300 semi-finalists total. While Long Island's Ward Melville High had 12 semi-finalists (tied for the most with Montgomery Blair in Maryland), we looked at the NY State breakdown and think we found 24 semi-finalists......

Bloomberg, beginning his final election push, yesterday announced the creation of seven new specialized high schools to take the run-off from the 28,000 students who annually apply to attend Stuvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech. The well-timed proposal came less than twenty-four hours before the first round of the city's eighth-graders took the exam to get into those highly selective schools (good luck!). To really rub in his point Bloomberg even pulled out the old......

City health officials are wondering what's going on at Bronx Science High School, one of the city's coveted magnet schools: Hundreds of students were ill last week. The bathrooms and cafeteria are all being tested, as complaints of nausea, stomach aches, diarrhea, and vomiting have increased. (Hey, that sounds like Wednesday nights at Gothamist!) The Health Department thinks it's a viral illness: The medical director of the Office of School Health said, "It's unusual, and......

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and other Staten Island politicans announced new education initiatives in the tiny borough. The big news is that Staten Island will get its own gifted-and-talent magnet school, like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, which would mean kids citywide might be taking the ferry over for high school. Staten Island Tech already is a well-performing school, but the mayor wants to give S.I. something special before he goes up for......

The lead paragraph from the Times says it best: "Two 17-year-old boys, apparently following instructions penned by Abbie Hoffman, caused a flash fire in a Brooklyn apartment yesterday afternoon while trying to make a smoke bomb on the stove." This was apparently on First Street, near Seventh Avenue, as the Park Slope St. Patrick's Day Parade marched by, so there were tons of police on the scene immediately. These kids also attend Bronx Science......