THE NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT
OF EDUCATION
718-782-0589 - 718-384-7715
FAX
Principal Assistant Principals
MARTHA
MISSERI LEANDER E. WINDLEY
October
16, 2009
Dear Parents:
I
would like to take an opportunity to thank all the parents for the cooperation
that we received with respect to the beginning of the 2009/2010 school
year. The following are several issues that
we are trying to address:
- Presently
we are experiencing problems with some students and their after school programs.
When
a
class of 30 students is dismissed at the end of the day, they may disperse to
20 different after-school programs. It
is not possible for a teacher to escort each child to their individual
program. Students have the
responsibility to get to their after-school program independently. This is the same responsibility they have
during the school day. They must get
from one class to another independently.
If a student is scheduled to attend an after-school program and for some
reason he/she has to leave, it is their responsibility to go to the main office
and notify his/her parent. We do this to
assure that parents are aware of where their child is at all times.
- We
are also experiencing difficulty with students who remain in the school yard
after school hours. This has become an
issue because students from other schools will harass I.S. 318 students who are
playing basketball, football or handball.
We have found that students involved in our after school football,
basketball and soccer programs in our school yard do not have these
problems. The problems occur when students
stay after school when there is no official program taking place in our school
yard. The other area that we have
experienced problems with is Lindsay Park.
Students will congregate in the park after school and they are harassed
by students who are returning home from our various neighboring Intermediate
and High Schools. We are encouraging
students to go directly home upon dismissal from I.S. 318.
- Another problem that we are experiencing is
that parents are making arrangements to pick up their child, at a predetermined
time and place, and their child leaves and walks or takes the bus without
notifying the parent. This causes a
great deal of stress for the parent when they arrive to pick up their child and
the child has departed without notifying them.
- It has also come to our attention from
students and parents that they are receiving text messages stating there will
be gang initiation on October 21, 2009 after school. This is the third year that students and
parents have received these messages and these messages always come from an anonymous
source. We have notified School Safety
and in turn, School Safety has notified the 90 Precinct. We are going to have a rapid dismissal on
October 21, 2009, which means students will be dismissed 5 minutes
earlier. In previous years, we have
never experienced any problem with respect to these messages, but we always
want to err on the side of caution.
I am asking you to have a discussion with your
children about some of the issues in this letter and to impress upon them the
importance of their responsibility that they have with respect to these
matters. I am going to follow up this letter with an auditorium program for
each grade that will address these specific issues. Once again, I would like to
thank you in advance for your cooperation with respect to these very important
matters.
Sincerely,
Fortunato V. Rubino
Fortunato V. Rubino
Principal
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