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Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Matthew Peyton/Getty Images)

In his campaign for re-election, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pointed repeatedly to rising test scores among New York City public school students ...

'Do not skip the steps! Do not skip the steps. Go step by step.'

The students in Professor Jorge Perez's remedial algebra class, at LaGuardia Community College, hear these words a lot.

For most of these students, math is challenging -- even frightening. They all failed an assessment ...

Adolfo Carrión Digs Potatoes in urban Philadelphia garden (Andrea Bernstein)

 

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Last July, Adolfo Carrión, Jr. paid a visit to an urban garden in Philadelphia. In casual khaki slacks and rolled-up shirt sleeves he was digging up potatoes, throwing the long stems into a wooden wheelbarrow, to be turned into compost. The potatoes, he offered, would be good for “home fries.”

Carrión is now the director of the brand-new White House Office of Urban Affairs, part of a campaign promise President Barack Obama made to re-focus attention on urban America.

A small crowd was gathered around Carrión in the garden--the Mayor of Philadelphia, a Deputy Secretary from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, a host of neighborhood activists and a few teenagers. Two of the teens, Amber and Shardae, were standing a bit off to the side, knee-high in collard greens.

The high school students were part of the “Teens for Good” program. The program hires local teens, gives them summer jobs, and sells the produce the raise at a neighborhood farmers market. Amber and Shardae were joking about sneaking a few of the ping pong ball-sized raspberries. But for Amber this was serious.

Last July, Adolfo Carrión, Jr. paid a visit to an urban garden in Philadelphia. In casual khaki slacks and rolled-up shirt sleeves he was digging up potatoes, throwing the long stems into a wooden wheelbarrow, to be turned into compost. The potatoes, he offered, would be good for “home fries.”

Carrión is now the director of the brand-new White House Office of Urban Affairs, part of a campaign promise President Barack Obama made to re-focus attention on urban America.

A small crowd was gathered around Carrión in the garden--the Mayor of Philadelphia, a Deputy Secretary from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, a host of neighborhood activists and a few teenagers. Two of the teens, Amber and Shardae, were standing a bit off to the side, knee-high in collard greens.

The high school students were part of the “Teens for Good” program. The program hires local teens, gives them summer jobs, and sells the produce the raise at a neighborhood farmers market. Amber and Shardae were joking about sneaking a few of the ping pong ball-sized raspberries. But for Amber this was serious.

Brooklyn residents fill out paperwork and get ready for their H1N1 flu vaccines at a health deparment clinic.

It's the day for the WNYC health ...

Finally, a bright spot on the economic horizon for New York City. A new report by the Independent Budget Office says the city's fiscal outlook isn't as bad as it appeared last spring, and that the financial sector is making a comeback.

The IBO projects record Wall Street profits ...

A groundbreaking ceremony for a Lower Manhattan building raised more dust from officials than it did from the ceremonial shovels.

Brooklyn City Councilman Charles Barron took the podium at the groundbreaking for Fiterman Hall in Lower Manhattan and accused Mayor Bloomberg and other officials of disrespecting him. City University trustee ...

Today is World AIDS Day... and here in the city, that means the annual reading of the names of those lost to the disease.

The 24-hour vigil is taking place at City Hall Park.

The 24-hour vigil ...

Newly infected people with HIV are much more contagious than people who’ve had the disease for a while. That's because, in the first months after infection, they don’t yet have antibodies fighting and reducing the virus.

The city estimates there are almost 5,000 new HIV infections each year, but detecting ...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg took on the teachers union today when he announced that principals will be directed to use student test scores this year when evaluating teachers who are up for tenure. WNYC's education reporter Beth Fertig has been following the story and answers some key questions.

...

The Food Bank for NYC is pushing hunger awareness with a "Go Orange Campaign"

Across the city, emergency food providers say they're seeing more first time visitors at ...

New York City is the former oyster capitol of the world. There was a time when New York Harbor had over 350 square miles of oyster beds, half of the world supply. Street-side oyster vendors were as popular as hot dog carts are today. Local oysters were a delicious treat, they cleaned the waterways and they bolstered aquatic wildlife. But oysters have since disappeared from New York Harbor, mostly because of human intervention. Now, there are new efforts to reintroduce them in Jamaica Bay.

Mark Kurlansky, the author of The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, and Jeffrey Levinton, distinguished professor of ecology and evolution at SUNY Stony Brook, visit The Brian Lehrer Show to talk about the history of oysters in New York Harbor, and plans to reintroduce them.

Listen to the whole show:

Andrea Bernstein: Let's start with a history. I'm very intrigued by this idea of oysters being sold like hot dogs.

Mark Kurlansky: Well, oysters are an animal that lives in brackish water, which is water that's saltier than fresh water but not as salty as the sea. Estuaries of rivers, places where fresh water dumps into sea water are the ideal climate. New Yorkers too easily forget that the five boroughs of New York City are at the magnificent estuary of the Hudson River and the estuary used to be full of oysters.

That means the East River and the Hudson and out in the harbor around Staten Island and Liberty Island and Ellis Island, which used to be called Big and Little Oyster Island. The coast of the Bronx, back when the Bronx had a non-industrial coast, and the Brooklyn coast into Queens and Jamaica...it was all full of oysters. There was this tremendous natural resource that was identified with New York so that, for centuries, if somebody said they were going to New York City, the typical response was 'Enjoy the oysters!' They were sold everywhere.

Bernstein: Until when?

Kurlansky: Until 1927 when the last bed was closed. A process began in the 1880's when they started understanding about germs. There were chronic epidemics in New York history and they never really understood the cause of them. Everybody sort of assumed that it must be caused by foreigners and immigration and poverty. Then they started understanding what really caused things like cholera and developed the ability to trace them. They kept tracing them to oyster beds. One by one, with each disease outbreak, a bed was closed. The last bed, which was in Raritan Bay between Staten Island and New Jersey, was closed in 1927. Then it was over.

Emily Reese, 27, is from a small town in New Mexico. She is an out lesbian currently living in New York City. Here she reflects on growing up gay in New Mexico, where it wasn't okay to be out, even decades after Stonewall.

"As a kid, I wasn't really aware ...

Imam Talib Abdur-Rahman and Amy Eddings

The four men accused of plotting to blow up two Riverdale synagogues and attack military targets upstate, have all been cast as Muslim extremists by federal and ...

The front steps of I.S. 238, the Susan B. Anthony Middle School, after one of the school\'s assistant principals, Mitchell Wiener, 55, died of complications related to the H1N1 swine flu virus over the weekend, the city\'s first fatality related to the outbreak, and the nation\'s sixth. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

Twenty-six schools in New York City have been shut down because of swine flu concerns. For the latest information on how swine flu is affecting New York City's public schools, you can visit the Department of Education web site and a list of schools is provided at the end of this post.

New York health officials are looking into the death of a 16-month-old toddler who was taken to a Queens hospital with flu-like symptoms. Elmhurst Hospital Center said the little boy had a high fever when he was brought in last night.

On Sunday, a public school assistant principal, Mitchell Wiener, became the city's first swine flu death. Hospital and city officials say complications other than the virus probably played a part in Wiener's death. But his family has said he suffered only from gout, a joint disease.

The city is increasingly encouraging people in certain health categories to get medical help – and even go to the hospital -- if they think they have swine flu. For weeks, Mayor Bloomberg and health officials discouraged most people from heading to emergency rooms. But following the flu death of Wiener and the possible flu death of the 16-month old, Bloomberg says people shouldn’t be shy about getting help.

'If you have an underlying medical condition, such as asthma or diabetes, and you have a fever with either a cough or sore throat, see your doctor immediately for medical treatment.'

Health officials say they are assembling a statewide system for tracking sick students amid the H1N1, or swine flu, outbreak. This follows concerns raised by Governor Paterson who's worried about the lack of a centralized system that could help detect flu cases earlier.

Mayor Bloomberg announced his selection of Dr. Thomas A. Farley – a pediatrician, epidemiologist, and expert in public health policy – as the city’s new head of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

A New York City Transit official named Eric Barthell briefed the MTA board members Monday on rats, and what transit system is doing about them. He brought a helpful prop, pictured above, though much of his message was that rats ...

Hundreds of people are at a public school in Brooklyn testifying before state lawmakers on whether the mayor of New York should keep control of the city's schools.

Patricia Connelly and Ellen Raider of the parent commission think the mayor has too much power over school zoning and siting issues, and doesn't listen to communities.

Mayor Bloomberg is hoping the state will re-authorize the law it approved years ago before it expires in June. But as WNYC's Beth Fertig reports, there are several other ideas out there.