The Department of Education is holding a hearing tonight at JHS 80 (commonly called MS 80), so the school’s community — parents, students, faculty, local residents, alumni, etc. — can weigh-in about the DOE’s decision to designate MS 80 for the federal turnaround program, which would essentially close the school and re-open it with a dramatically different administration, faculty and programming.  Read more about what’s going at MS 80 here and here.

The hearing is tonight, Monday, April 16, at 6 p.m. at MS 80, 149 E. Mosholu Parkway N., inside the school’s auditorium. It is expected to last three hours. After tonight’s hearing, the fate of the school will be determined at a Panel for Education Policy meeting next month in Brooklyn. The PEP rarely votes against a DOE-backed re-organization or closure plan.

The school’s principal since 2004, Lovey Mazique-Rivera, was fired last month as part of the coming transformation. Last week, the Daily News reported that in the next few weeks, the DOE is planning to replace the interim principal, Lauren Reiss. In the article, celebrities who attended the school were listed, including Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Penny Marshall. Marshall, actor/director and star of “Laverne and Shirely,” said she still had her yearbook from MS 80. “It was a big part of my life,” she told the Daily News from her home in California. “Public schools in New York were great back then.”

admin

Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.