By Rich Bockmann
A city councilman from southeast Queens wants Nelson Mandela to continue to inspire young students.
Councilman Donovan Richards (D-Laurelton) met with students and school staff in Springfield Gardens earlier this week to announce he had allocated $2.5 million to schools in his district in the name of the late civil rights activist.
“I thought it was fitting to name it after Nelson Mandela because he stood up for equality and freedom,” Richards said Monday inside the auditorium shared by MS 355 and MS 356 at the campus, at 145-00 Springfield Blvd. “There are not as many computers in these classrooms as there are in some of the wealthier parts of the city.”
Richards said the Nelson Mandela Technology Grant set aside at least $50,000 in discretionary funding to each school in his Council district.
At the Springfield Gardens campus, formerly the home of IS 231, $500,000 was designated for upgrading the playground.
“Right now there’s just blacktop,” said MS 356 Principal Tamra Collins. “The kids need more options outside. It keeps them engaged and also fit. They need the break, too, because they’re going all day long.”
The eighth-grade classes at the two middle schools will be the first to graduate and head on to high school at the end of the year.
The Bloomberg administration began phasing out what had been IS 231 Magnetech at the beginning of the 2010 school year, citing English and math proficiency levels that had fallen to 25 percent or below, and replacing it with the two smaller schools.
Breaking larger institutions up into smaller ones was one of the more controversial aspects of Bloomberg’s education agenda, and while recent studies show students at the smaller schools perform better than their peers at the larger, traditional schools, the jury is still out on the long-term effects of the educational reforms implemented over the last 12 years.
Neither school had an English or math proficiency rate higher than 10 percent last year, the first time that students were tested on the more rigorous Common Core standards. Citywide proficiency rates dropped to the low 20s.
About three-quarters of students at MS 355 and MS 356 receive free lunch.
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
