Winner of Vol. 71, No. 31
What’s inside?
Disaster avoided A dying tree at Vinmont finally falls, but luckily without hurting anyone who might have happened by it. Page A3
the Pulitzer Prize
Thursday, September 10, 2020
$1.00
CB8’s racial equity committee seeks change Key findings include a need for more training, and focus on racial and gender issues inside some of the board’s committees
By KIRSTYN BRENDLEN kbrendlen@riverdalepress.com
Summer marks a well-deserved break for community boards across the city. Monthly committee meetings are typically suspended in July and August, allowing the hundreds of volunteers on the various boards enjoy some sunshine and take advantage of a chance to refresh. Community Board 8 is no different — but for one exception this summer. Sergio Villaverde, who unsuccessfully ran to become CB8’s chair, pushed the commu-
nity board instead to form a special committee on racial equity in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and weeks of protests across the country. Villaverde was successful in getting the committee formed, although not with him on it. Instead, it was RosAliNd led by board secretary RozAVRAs salind Zavras and included CB8 vice chair Bob Bender along with Robert Fanuzzi, Daris Jackson, Ju-
lie Reyes, Jyll Townes and Margaret Della as committee members. The committee met four times over the summer, intending to wrap up by the time CB8 returned for normal business in September. They succeeded, putting together a report clocking in at 50 pages, outlining recommendations giving board members more training in gender and racial bias, asking committees to address racism in their own meetings, and figuring out what skills and resources board members could provide in efforts to identify and solve such issues in the community. RACIAL EQUITY, page A4
Mentoring from a distance Not all
teachers convinced schools can reopen soon By ROSE BRENNAN rbrennan@riverdalepress.com
Key Food is sued City has filed suit against a North Riverdale grocer accusing it of illegally firing union workers. Page A6 Courtesy of Una darrell
HomeBuddies Mentoring co-founders Katie Koch, left, and Cecilia Needham cut and color hand tracings during a group activity. HomeBuddies, a personalized mentorship program, was designed to provide children with remote mentoring during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Riverdale Country School grads are ‘HomeBuddies’ for housebound kids By ROSE BRENNAN
Fantasy building? A developed wants to build a small residential tower in Marble Hill, but is he doing it on the most impossible piece of land? Page A8
rbrennan@riverdalepress.com
When Columbia University — and the rest of the city — shut down in midMarch, one of the first things Ernest Robertson thought about was the kids. As a college student, he didn’t think his social development from not being in class would suffer. Robertson navigated distance learning fairly easily, and he kept in touch with his friends virtually. But that wasn’t the case for those children younger than Robertson. They weren’t in classrooms. They couldn’t go on playdates anymore. And like anyone else in the coronavirus pandemic, they weren’t immune to feeling isolated from the people they cared about. To make matters worse, many par-
‘I could see in kids how difficult it is to go through this time right now.’
— Una Darrell
HomeBuddies Mentoring ents had to balance their work — some of which had been further complicated by the pandemic — with added child care responsibilities now that their children were learning from home. College students like Robertson weren’t unaffected from disappointment either. Some had internships and summer jobs canceled, clearing out their calendars for the foreseeable future once
the spring semester ended. Although the pandemic created particularly trying times, it was in this climate Robertson found inspiration for a unique program he felt might help ease the burden. Robertson and fellow Riverdale Country School alum Una Darrell put together a group of college-aged peers to develop HomeBuddies Mentoring, a remote mentoring program for children from preschool to seventh grade. In a time when children can’t interact with others as easily as they used to, HomeBuddies focused its attention on connecting children across the country with collegeaged mentors with similar interests. “What we saw was that a lot of kids were now not having the social interacMENTORING, page A4
Just hours before the city’s largest teachers union was ready to call for a strike, Mayor Bill de Blasio conceded a two-week standoff that would push back the physical reopening of school campuses by nearly two weeks. Still, there’s a lot to do between now and Sept. 21 — even if not everyone is keen on the deal United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew struck with de Blasio. In fact, rather than breathe a sigh of relief, many have actually described the decision to delay as “kicking the can further down the road,” rather than addressing obstacles standing in its way now. Alexandra Haridopolis, an English as a New Language teacher at a high school within the local school district, didn’t find the decision to delay reopening reassuring, nor does she think much can be done to improve conditions in less than two weeks. “They literally said, ‘We’re delaying because we want to make sure the health and safety protocols are being met,’ which means that they were going to send us in there without them having been met,” Haridopolos said. UFT released a reopening fact sheet to teachers explaining schools would remain closed to students “while final safety arrangements are completed.” That means a school nurse in every building, checks of campus ventilation systems, and ensuring there are enough protective and cleaning supplies to go around. Those are words of encouragement for Michael Simmon, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at IN-Tech Academy — especially since he’s itching to get back to his classroom. Even though the academic year will present some new challenges, Simmon believes there are adequate resources to meet those challenges. “You want it where everybody is healthy and negative,” Simmon said. “But they are trying to put things in place that will provide for that — from the hand sanitizer to the masks to the random COVID testing.” Even with new protocols in place to protect school communities, it still isn’t enough for many public school parents. REOPEN, page A4
No delay for Kinneret — School is back in session By ROSE BRENNAN rbrennan@riverdalepress.com
Delays in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic are a problem for public schools, but not at any school run by Rabbi Aaron Frank. The last time the private school administrator saw his students in person was in March, before Kinneret Day School — and the entire city — closed down because of the public health crisis. Now, school is back in session, as Kinneret reopened its Netherland Avenue doors for a new year Sept. 8. For those students walking inside, it will be classes as usual, five days each week, while some of their peers continue to learn many miles away in their own homes. Frank had waited for the first day of school at Kinneret for months, even though the pandemic for him felt like it started a
lifetime ago. He remembered when both SAR High School and SAR Academy shut down March 3 — the first schools in the state — maybe even the country — to do so under the threat of COVID-19. When that happened, Frank knew Kinneret’s own closure wasn’t far behind. The school shifted to a remote education model fairly quickly, becoming even more needed when Kinneret shuttered its physical campus March 11. The very next day, teachers spent a full day training on remote teaching, and just a day after that, the entire school had moved its classes completely online. Shifting to a remote model was a new world for nearly everyone at Kinneret. But it also presented some unique challenges for nursery teacher Ally Glassman. Her class of 3-year-olds led her to get creative, becoming the popular animated television KINNERET, page A4
AVAILABILITY AT 3656 JOHNSON AVE ALISON BARTLETT // 917.379.2045 ELLEN FELD // 917.734.9463 ANNE SHAHMOON // 914.262.5679
HiRAM AlEJANdRo dURÁN
Before the school reopened sept. 8, Kinneret day school educators had to train how to operate the camera systems for students learning from home. But most of Kinneret’s students will learn in the classroom five days a week.
Apt. 1C // 4 BD | 2 BA | $625,000
Apt. 2J // 1 BD | 1 BA | $179,000