Northattan

When the New York City Department of Education last week released its updated list of 19 schools that are at risk of being shut down or phased out because of poor performance, one group of Northattan parents were relieved, because their school was no longer on it.

But for another group, the fight to keep their school open continues.

What next for Wadleigh Secondary School? Photograph: Xian Bu / northattan.com

The original list of 47 at-risk schools, released in October, included Harlem’s Frederick Douglass Academy II and the Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts. While the two schools share the same building on 114th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, FDA II was not on the latest list, while Wadleigh’s middle school is among five other middle schools that may be truncated. If this happens, no additional students will be enrolled in the school, and each year a grade will be eliminated until the middle school is completely phased out.

Wadleigh was established over 100 years ago and is currently Harlem’s only Performing Arts school, with 84 students in its middle school and 446 in high school. Frederick Douglass was established in 2000 as a middle school and expanded to include a high school in 2003, when it moved into Wadleigh’s building. It currently has 132 middle schoolers and 280 high schoolers.

Since the original announcement about low performance schools, parents, educators and community leaders waged different strategies to keep their respective schools from closing. Last Monday, Wadleigh’s speakers series featured professor and community activist Cornel West. When he learned about the school’s woes, he vowed to help keep the school running. According to DNAinfo.com, West said, “I want each and every one of you to know that any service I can render to keep this school where it is, just let me know. Dialogue, negotiation or protest.”

Parents are also being vocal about their support for the school. “I have had a long-term relationship with Wadleigh,” said Annette Nanton, who has a son in the 11th grade. Two of her older children graduated from Wadleigh in 2008 and 2009 and are now in college. Although the DOE’s decision will affect only Wadleigh’s 84 middle schoolers, Nanton is also worried about the high school. “If you take middle school away from us now,” she said, “what is the future for our high school?”

Nanton finds the school “like a community” for her family. “Don’t just shut the school down,” she said. “Give more resources to support the school to get a better grade.”

Wadleigh received a “C” on the education department’s progress report card for the 2009-2010 school year and a “D” for the 2010-2011 term.

A DOE source, who was not authorized to speak publicly and so asked not to be identified, said there’s a possibility for a poorly performing school to remain open if it can show that there has been some improvement and if the community galvanizes to show its support.

Harriet Fortson, chairwoman of the education committee of the NAACP Mid-Manhattan branch, said the overall grade fails to reflect Wadleigh’s extracurricular programs and their positive impact on the children. The school “does excellent work for the kids,” said Fortson. She said that 20 to 30 Wadleigh graduates visit the school regularly to assist students with schoolwork. Its medical program offers opportunities for students to learn about health care from professionals, and the school’s cooking program provided the reception during West’s visit.

Valentina Santos, 17, a student at Wadleigh, is saddened by the possibility of the middle school’s being truncated. “We’re still trying to do some stuff so they won’t close the school,” she said.

For Frederick Douglass, the outcome was better. After the school was listed as a closing target in October and education department hearings were held in November, the Parents Association from Frederick Douglass drafted a letter “In Support Against FDA II and Wadleigh School Closures.” This letter was disseminated throughout the neighborhoods to churches, local businesses and elected officials. Before they knew their school was no longer endangered, parents from the school also met with parents from other low-performing schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx to express their dismay about the DOE’s potential plans.

Also before the announcement, Frederick Douglass principal, Osei Owusu-Afriyie, who took the job in 2010, said he hoped that the DOE would realize that his school had fallen on hard times a few years ago, but was making progress.

“We have changed our curriculum,” said Owsui-Afriyie. “We’ve increased our academic support for middle school students who come in with any significant needs in math and English Language Arts.” The principal also said the school is trying to engage more parents and students to make sure teachers are well prepared. “We’ve just connected back into the roots of the school, which is a college preparatory institution,” said Owsui-Afriyie.

It’s not clear yet why Frederick Douglass was spared, considering it received a “C” in 2009-2010 and an “F” in 2010-2011, but it’s to the relief of many parents like Carleen Jones, the PTA co-president. “We are grateful” that the school is now off the list, said Jones. She attributes the school’s failing grades to the former principal’s less-than effective management. “Everything is going in a positive way,” said Jones, who has faith in the new principal and the school’s future. “The school can have a great turnaround.”

Jones has a daughter on Frederick Douglass’ honor roll and another daughter who is a graduate and now a third-year college student on the dean’s honor list. “The school has had an impact on both of their lives,” said Jones.

Akeylah Brown, a 17-year-old senior at Frederick Douglass, said the school was doing poorly until its new principal came on board. “Our old principal did not enforce the school uniforms or the school rules,” said Brown. Its former principal, Latasha Greer, has since moved to Florida.

Elizabeth-Ann Hendrickson, whose son is in the seventh grade at Frederick Douglass and is spending his second year here, said: “My son does well. I haven’t invested the time to see exactly how the school is performing years ago as opposed to right now. But as far as right now, everything they’ve put into place works for me.”

Another hearing with the education department was held at Wadleigh on Wednesday, where parents questioned why some F-grade schools in the city are not pinpointed for closure, but the D-grade Wadleigh is. Parents also argued that some of Wadleigh’s programs, such as the tutoring program, help middle schoolers start to prepare for college.

The education department said at the hearing that it will conduct at least two more public hearings in the following two months before it makes the final decision about the future of the middle school.

Projected image for the 2013 Sugar Hill housing development. Photo by Broadway Housing Communities.

On the northern boundary of West Harlem’s Sugar Hill neighborhood, scaffolding envelops a old garage building covering the block between Edgecombe and St. Nicholas Avenue. The garage is set to give way by 2013 to a spanking new apartment house, providing homes for 124 families, many of them among New York City’s poorest.

As city developments go, this one sounds like a win-win project: An urban eyesore will be removed, a new structure will replace it, and homes will go to those most in need.

But where some see progress, others see a charcoal zigzag structure with asymmetrical windows, cutting a modernist, high-rise gash in a neighborhood of elegant and historic low-rise brownstones.

“The building design has absolutely nothing in line with the historic nature of most every building in the vicinity,” griped a letter addressed a year ago by the Sugar Hill Block Association, a coalition of the neighborhood’s homeowners and residents, to the City of New York Department of Housing Preservation & Development.

For more than a year, the association has complained about the design, to no avail. In fact, the first complaints came only after Community Board 9 unanimously approved the project -– avant-garde exterior and all –- in early 2010.

Walter South, head of the Community Board 9 landmark and preservation committee, said the board saw the high-rise primarily as a means to provide better living conditions to many people in West Harlem. And the modern design was accepted as a compromise because “preservationists should not be locked into having to reproduce everything, and should be open to new ideas,” he said.

But the Sugar Hill high-rise is still a topic of protest, often raised at community board meetings.

“When you walk out of the subway, you don’t see gigantic 13-story buildings,” said Patricia Ju, resident of the area and chair of the Sugar Hill Block Association, in an interview with Northattan. “ The buildings are usually three-four story row houses or one-story commercial.”

Brownstones facing the upcoming project. Photo by Dalal Mawad/Northattan.

The architecture complaints are an unusual setback for Broadway Housing Communities, the nonprofit organization behind the new building. Over 25 years, Broadway Housing has built a reputation for providing innovative shelter for some of the neediest families in West Harlem and Washington Heights. In addition to low-income rentals, the projects house services such as medical and vocational training facilities.

Broadway Housing’s projects are usually restorations of older buildings. But at Sugar Hill,  “this is not what we had here. We had a garage; there was nothing to restore,” said Broadway Housing Communities’ executive director Ellen Baxter. Trying to build a new structure that replicates the century-old surroundings wouldn’t work, she said, because “it will look like a fake reproduction.” The modern high-rise design was pursued, she said,  “to reflect the history and show it in 21st century form.”

The Sugar Hill Project will be Broadway Housing Communities’ seventh project to offer even more innovations, including having tenants participate in the management of their own building.

Like its much-praised Dorothy Day Project in Hamilton Heights, the Sugar Hill building would provide rent-stabilized apartments, reserved for families and individuals currently living in “seriously substandard conditions” as well as homeless families from the city’s emergency shelters, according to Baxter. Families would also have access to educational programs a child-care center and a children’s museum for art and storytelling.

the scaffolded garage to be replaced by the housing project. Photo by Dalal Mawad/Northattan.

The neo-classical brownstones of Sugar Hill were built between 1905 and 1916.  With their detailed facades and ornate windows, most of the buildings provided wealthy African-American families with getaways from bustling Lower Manhattan. In addition to its architectural grandeur, the area was the epicenter of Harlem’s renaissance, roaring with music and art.

The Sugar Hill Block Association acknowledges that, despite its protests, the 13-story building will definitely be built. It’s still lobbying community leaders for one change, though: It wants to change the structure’s exterior color, from charcoal to terracotta, in keeping with the nearby brownstones.

This article was modified on 12/04/2011 to correct that the garage structure was not abandoned or empty; it was in use for parking until Broadway Housing Communities bought it.

The Save Half for Later Campaign wants to help shrink northern Manhattan’s waistline, and more and more restaurants are joining the cause.

Harlem’s first-ever Hair Expo wants women to love their hair, the natural way.

Harlem enjoys a glut of beauty supply stores, but only a few offer products made with natural ingredients. Even fewer of those shops are owned by the black women they serve. Harlem’s first natural hair expo sought to persuade black women that the “natural way” is better not only for their hair, but also for the wallets of black-owned beauty retailers.

Working in the garden has helped Jennifer Benitez come to terms with the death of her son. Photo by Dalal Mawad/Northattan.

If you happen to walk by the community garden on 138^th Street and Riverside Park, you might hear a woman’s voice call out to you, “Do you want some tomatoes, peppers, basil?” That’s Jenny Benitez, who has transformed a former garbage dump and drug haven into an urban oasis of flowers, vegetables and fruit.

At 78, Benitez, who was born in Puerto Rico, has the feisty spirit and physical vigor of a young soul. “Nature gives me energy,” she says while getting her hands dirty in the garden. “I watch life grow in here and it gives me years of life in return.” For 30 years now, April through November, Benitez has planted and harvested vegetables, trimmed plants and raked the two blocks of the Riverside Valley community garden.

“It all started with my children wanting to come down here to play,” she says, looking through her circular spectacles, “but it was dirty, full of homeless people and drugs.”

Benitez’s friend Steve Gallagher started cleaning the area and planting shrubs in the once-abandoned soil. Riverside Park did not allow plants around the park, “so they gave us this spot as a parcel of land for a garden,” she says. Benitez and Gallagher cleaned, planted and harvested through the years what has become a thriving community garden.

“I saved the garden,” she says proudly. “I talked the homeless people out,” pointing to a spot where shacks once rested. “Drug users like their privacy, they bring garbage with them, they like to keep it here,” she adds. “So when they see that you clean it up, you are displacing them and they never come back.”

Benitez says the community garden has also helped changed the neighborhood. “There are people that were in jail for drugs and remember this area and come back after all these years, and they don’t stay, because it has changed so much.”

Benitez has transformed the rundown public space into a fertile plot for growing fresh produce. Photo by Dalal Mawad/Northattan.

Today, Benitez’s flowers, tomatoes, strawberries, broccoli and potatoes have replaced the drugs and trash. “I love planting vegetables because I know I’m going to be harvesting them, giving them away for people to eat them.”

Vincent Stanley, a resident of the area, is among the passers-by that have benefited from Benitez’s gardening, even after he has visited a local produce market. “On our way back from Fairway she often calls to ask us if we’d like some vegetables,” he says. “She’s a wealth of gardening knowledge and is always eager to give advice or share some seedlings.”

But the garden is also Benitez’s daily sanctuary from pain and grief. “Gardening for Jenny is a blessing,” says her husband, Victor. “She doesn’t have the time to think about her son.”

Benitez lost her son, Victor Alvarez, 57, to a sudden heart attack a month ago. “I forget, I leave all my troubles away and I am not thinking, I’m raking, then I’m planting, I just don’t think…” Last week, she planted a magnolia tree in memory of her son. “A tree is life, so when I look at that tree I see him alive.”

Every year, Benitez trains groups of young people to take care of the garden. “They are the new generation, and you have to let them come up with their own ideas,” she says. Groups from around the city volunteer on a weekly basis. “I feel the years already beating me, and though I am confident many volunteers will take care of the garden, no one will love it like I do. It is my life.”

In November, Benitez, with the help of her husband and volunteers, starts preparing the garden for the winter. She adds soil and covers it with seeds in anticipation of the next harvest. While the garden is at rest, Benitez and her husband go back to Puerto Rico: “I leave it behind,” she says. “I don’t have to worry. It goes to sleep really nice and when I’m back, it’s back to life and I feel like I’m back to life as well.”

Two armed men attempted to rob Touba Electronics in South Harlem. Photo: Xian Bu/Northattan

It’s one of the worst nightmares for hundreds of small business owners in Northattan neighborhoods like South Harlem: a dark night, quiet streets, no customers – and then, someone with a weapon comes in. Alone and vulnerable, an owner or sales clerk has to decide how to react.

At Touba Electronics, 131 W. 116^th St. last Saturday around 8 p.m., one employee sat surfing the Internet as unseasonal snow fell outside, keeping customers away. The employee, who did not want his name published out of fear for his safety, said he heard someone enter the store. Before he could grasp what was happening, a gun was pointed at him and a man demanded “Give me money.”

His reaction: “If you got a chance to fight, you fight.” And fight he did, along with another employee of the electronics store, who was about to leave when the two robbers arrived, each holding a gun.

They tried to grab the guns from the robbers’ hands. “We don’t know how we did it, just followed instinct,” said the Touba Electronics employee. The entire struggle lasted perhaps three minutes, perhaps five, he said.

During the fight, one of the would-be robbers’ guns went off. Luckily, no one was hurt. “We don’t know which gun it was or how it happened,” said the employee, who could recall few details, including the colors of the intruders’ jackets. Both men got away, but one dropped his gun before running from the store.

The Touba Electronics employees may have been following their instincts, but not all small business workers react the same, if an informal survey of nearby shops provides any guidance.

Kevin Sellers, co-owner of Marilyn’s clothing shop on West 116^th Street, said that when two armed men tried to rob his aunt as she worked alone at the store a few years ago, she did not hand over any money. Instead, she ran screaming from the shop. Then she took a few months off from work.

Sellers himself uses a different strategy. If he’s working alone in the evenings, he waits for customers just outside the store. “They can’t rob me from outside,” he said.

But Bertrand Thomas, who helps out at his sister’s vintage store on the same street, believes fighting back is the best solution. “If you don’t fight back, they’re going to come back the next day and get you. They won’t be back to that guy,” he said, referring to the victim at Touba Electronics.

Other store owners in South Harlem say they have armed themselves in case of robbery.

“Everybody knows me, and everybody knows that I have a gun,” said Abdo Aonajai, owner of a deli store at 121 W. 116 St., which has run six years without robberies. Aonajai said that because he lives in a neighborhood where “a lot of people have guns,” being tough is the way to scare robbers away.

Just next door to Touba Electronics, in the phone card store run by her parents, 14-year-old Oumou Barry is not too worried about robberies. She said the store has been open 10 robbery-free years. But her 24-year-old brother, who declined to be identified by name, said that when his sister is working in the shop by herself, “we usually lock the door.”

Their mother witnessed part of last Saturday’s Touba Electronics robbery attempt as she headed out of her own store, according to her son. She heard the gunshot and saw the robbers run away, leaving their family unnerved. “She was shaken by that,” the son said. “She had to take a cab to go home. Usually she takes the train.”

At Touba Electronics, the employee who did not want to be identified said he phoned 911 as soon as the would-be robbers fled last Saturday night. Police arrived quickly, took the gun that had been dropped in the store and returned on Sunday to get the store’s video surveillance footage. As of Wednesday night, police told Northattan that no arrests had been made in the case.

Police statistics show 180 robberies have been carried out so far this year in the 28^th precinct, which includes South Harlem. The police department did not respond to a request for information breaking down how many of those robberies occurred at small stores like Touba Electronics.

Friends and family have reached out to comfort the traumatized Touba Electronics employee since the robbery attempt. He said the only weapon the store keeps is a baseball bat, which he did not have time to grab. He said he is now thinking, for the first time, about buying a gun for protection.

Police officers stop and frisk a man in Harlem. Photo by Khadijah Carter/Northattan.

New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly recently issued a memo to department commanding officers to stop arresting New Yorkers for possessing small amounts of marijuana. Kelly’s actions came after years of criticism of the police policy Stop and Frisk, which is closely related to the high rates of marijuana arrests. Reactions to the memo was mixed.

Khadijah Carter reports.

An interactive map by WNYC displays marijuana arrest rates as well as stop and frisk cases.

Mourners line up outside Harlem's renowned Abyssinian Baptist Church to commemorate Nick Ashford. Photograph by Morgan Radford/Northattan.

Motown legend Nick Ashford died this summer after losing his fight with throat cancer. At a Harlem memorial service in August, hundreds came to pay tribute to the songwriter.
Ashford, with his wife Valerie Simpson, penned classics like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “You’re All I Need to Get By.” But one man who crossed paths with him says Ashford’s legacy extends far beyond the simple love songs that made him famous.

Morgan Radford reports.

Swimmers prepare to compete in the Little Red Lighthouse Race in the Hudson River. Photo by Capri Djatiasmoro.

There are plenty of good reasons not to jump into New York City’s Hudson River. Though the waterways surrounding Manhattan have historically been plagued by pollution, city authorities are now reporting the best water quality in over a century. Still, other hazards make swimming in the Hudson dangerous. Even so, thousands take part every year in events like NYC Swim’s Little Red Lighthouse Race, which give adventure-seekers a safe way to brave the elements.

Russ Finkelstein Reports.