Rose Garden shows youngsters life’s basics

By Samantha Murphy and Desiree Wiley

BengalNews Reporters

 Imagine spending the day outside under the warm sun listening to the birds chirp and bees buzz while you plant a garden. Afterwards, you return inside to finish kneading organic dough for your homemade pizza.

 As you enjoy the smells escaping your kitchen, you unwind by taking part in some arts and crafts. Maybe you’re thinking it would never happen, but for children at The Rose Garden Early Childhood Center, it is a daily routine.

 The Rose Garden sits cozy at 257 Lafayette Ave. and is occupied by 43 children, ranging from ages of 12 months to five years. Director of The Rose Garden, Judith Frizlen, says she was inspired to open the center after discovering the LifeWays model for learning. 

 Judith Frizlen, on the genesis of The Rose Garden:

In celebrating three years of success, Frizlen says providing such needed services is extremely fulfilling.

 The Rose Garden was modeled after the LifeWays childhood center, opened in 1998 by Waldorf kindergarten teacher Cynthia Aldinger in Wisconsin.

 As director of LifeWays North America, Aldinger provides families and teachers with training and support of the model’s principles and practices.

 LifeWays practices focus on engaging childhood development on all levels. Children are able to grow, learn and become comfortable in their skin in a homelike environment.

 The Rose Garden provides children with basic skills needed for daily function. Children experience movement through gardening, building, cleaning, cooking, drawing, playing outside and more.

 “It’s a language rich environment,” said Stephanie Neikirk-Epes, assistant director. “Our goal is to provide opportunities for a whole experience. The children like coming to school and doing things they enjoy.”

 Staff at the center provides close and continuous care with each child. Frizlen believes the homelike environment allows children to embrace their surroundings, making learning enjoyable.

 Lori Kostusiak, a pre-school teacher in the Sweet Pea room, has been with the center since its construction days.

 “I’ve been here since the opening of the Rose Garden, when our playground was still a mud pit and the school was a construction zone,” said Kostusiak.

 Kostusiak prides the center on its natural way of teaching, from playing with nature made toys to eating organic home cooked food and its emphasis on interaction.

 “Children are not built for sitting at desks,” said Kostusiak. “They are built for running, jumping and interacting with each other. That’s how they develop the basis and foundation for a healthy life.”

 With childhood obesity numbers at alarming highs, Frizlen believes teaching children the benefits of organic and wholesome eating is a great way to support a healthier lifestyle.

 “We’re promoting childhood health,” said Frizlen, “If you eat well and move around a lot you won’t be obese. We serve all organic grains and everything is made right here. We don’t serve anything out of a box.”

 While childhood health is of the utmost importance, there are many other reasons why the children of the Rose Garden Center eat organic.

 “It’s good for the environment,” said Frizlen. “By buying a 50 pound bag of organic oats, I’m not wasting packaging and, since we buy locally, we’re also supporting our local economy.”

 The Center not only practices green eating habits, but also promotes energy efficient building standards. The building, built in 1928, was home to several schools before it became vacant in 2004. Frizlen bought the building in 2009 and has made some significant improvements since then.

 “We still have some of the beautiful, old features but with some modern elements,” Frizlen said. “Because the building has a flat roof and we like to use green sensibilities in architecture, we have solar panels on the roof. All the electricity on the first floor is generated by them.”

 In addition to the solar panels, the Rose Garden Center also has a composter. The composter turns the kitchen waste into nutrient rich fertilizer, which they then use to feed their garden where they grow carrots, beets, parsley and tomatoes. They also have a rain basin, which collects rainwater and saves it for later use.

 As for the daycare’s location on the West Side, Frizlen couldn’t be happier.

 “It’s a great location,” she said. “We love it here. We have lovely neighbors and they’ve been so supportive. They’re happy too. It’s never good to have a vacant building in your neighborhood and our building is so full of life.”                                Edited by Kaitlin Riznyk

It’s school then athletics at Lafayette

BY KAITLIN FRITZ AND KAITLIN RIZNYK
BengalNews Reporters
 One minute she received a pat on the back and only minutes later was given an exasperated shake of a head, but this is the mixed reaction high school principal Naomi Cerri was expecting when she made a bold move to push academics over athletics.
 With more than 20 years of experience in teaching and academic administration, Cerri saw her new position as principal of Lafayette High School as a way to improve the education of students attending the often criticized Buffalo City Schools.
 Cerri entered the school for the first time two weeks before the semester began and met the staff only days before the first day of school. While trying to get acclimated in a new setting and battling to get assistance in areas of the school, Cerri received a disturbing surprise. Each year students who play sports must have an academic eligibility form approved by the principal in order to play. Student athletes' eligibility is based predominantly on their grades followed by attendance and classroom.

Lafayette High School Principal Naomi Cerri discusses the importance of academics:

  When Cerri got the forms of the football team she looked at the player’s report cards and spoke with assistant principals about behavior. After the evaluation she found 12 of the team’s players to be academically ineligible to play.
 For a football team the size of Lafayette’s (where most players have positions on both offense and defense), losing 12 players unfathomable.
 “It was nothing I had planned. I had no idea it would happen,” said Cerri.
 Although in the past, Cerri said, she is sure that students who were academically ineligible have not been reprimanded athletically, she was unwilling to turn a blind eye to the football team’s struggling teenagers. After weighing decisions she told the coaches what her plan was.
 “I spoke with the coaches first and had the dialogue that needed to be had to have them understand how critically important it was,” she said.
 Her plan was the forfeit Lafayette’s second football game versus rival school, Fredonia. The coaches and players didn’t take the news as well as she had hoped.
 “It hasn’t been the best situation for everyone emotionally. I think it’s definitely taken a toll on them emotionally but things like that happen, it’s part of the process but in the end I think they will get it,” she said.
 The forfeit resulted in a 0-2 loss on the record for the team. Cerri installed a policy for all sports players in which eligibility will be determined weekly via progress reports from teachers. The team has had two games since the forfeit and the football coaches have noted that the team morale is down.
 The coaches aren’t the only ones seeing the negatives of having to forfeit a game while the season is underway. Darnay Carpenter, a mother of one of the football players was upset at the way the situation was handled,
 “I understand it, but I would have stopped it before the first game. My son practiced from 9am-3pm since the summer just to have the second game cancelled.”
Carpenter was also worried about how the situation could hurt the students,
 “All of them cried. A lot of them wanted to quit. I told my son ‘if you start it, you finish it’ we aren’t quitters, but for some of these kid their ticket out of the inner city is sports.”
 Principal Cerri said her main concern is giving students an education, which, she says, is something that no one can take away from you while sports are just a privilege.
 Cerri said since she enacted the weekly progress reports the teachers and administrators have noticed a tremendous difference in the student’s attendance, behavior and work ethic.
 A Math teacher at Lafayette, Elizabeth Kent told the principal she had her full support,
 “I have many of the football players in my classes. This is a huge motivation and I have noticed a huge change in work ethic.....some of them wouldn’t do any work, [football] is all they want to do, but [getting an education] is part of paying our dues as a member of society.”
 While at a Lafayette’s football game at JFK a teacher from South Park school district approached Cerri to congratulate the principal on the bold move. Cerri said she’s been receiving positive messages from teachers outside the district as well as inside,
 “[The teachers are] loving it. They’ll come to me and say ‘so and so’ has been working in my class.”
 Cerri has made it mandatory for every sports player in the school to attend after school tutoring sessions designed by their coaches or advisors and instructed by students from Buffalo State College, Daeman College or University at Buffalo.
 Since the weekly progress reports have began every student has been eligible to play in their respective sports. Cerri is confident that students, coaches and others in the district are beginning to understand why she is making the moves that she is and hopes it continues that direction.
 “We are teaching them how to be better students, more well rounded. They are starting to realize ‘I have choices, options and decisions to make. I need to have an A plan a B plan and even a C and D plan, especially in this economy,’” Cerri said.

Buffalo schools have anti-bully policy

By Bridget DeMeis and John Patrissi
Bengal News Reporters

 A resolution seeking to amend the current Buffalo Public School district policies and regulations regarding bullying and harassment was sponsored by the president of the board of education, Ralph Hernandez, and was unanimously passed among the other board members on Jan. 12.

 Spurred by New York State’s recent legislative passage of the Dignity for All Students Act and a national push for tolerance of diversity, the sponsored resolution will implement new district-wide anti-bullying procedures with the expectation of curtailing such behavior both in and outside of the classroom.

 State law doesn’t require school districts to enforce the new policy until 2012 but school district leaders plan to have all provisions implemented and functioning adequately before the scheduled deadline. 

Board President Ralph Hernandez

 “We wanted to be proactive on this for many reasons,” said Hernandez, who represents the West District.  “First of all, it’s a legislative amendment long overdue, and of course we want to be prepared because it’s my understanding that there are resources and grants the state will be offering in the near future that will assist in developing a more comprehensive anti-bullying program.”

 Citywide anti-bullying legislation comes at a time when there appears to be an increase in the number of anti-refugee sentiment occurring at Grover Cleveland High School. Burmese students are being targeted, said Gary Welborn, chair of the sociology department at Buffalo State College.

 Although not refuting such occurrences, Associate Superintendent for Educational Services William Keresztes offers a different explanation for the apparent increase of bullying targeted towards refugees.  

 “I wouldn’t necessarily say that there’s a known quantitative increase in the numbers, but by default the numbers of some students who are enrolled in our schools have gone up and it’s quite likely that as consequence there are more of these unfortunate instances,” he said.

 To abate the potential harassment targeted towards an ever increasing refugee student populace, Kereztes mandated the district’s code of conduct, which contains the anti-bullying policy, be translated into the five most commonly spoken languages among the city refugee populace—Arabic, Burmese, Karen, Somali and Spanish.

 “Last summer I thought it necessary that parents knew their rights—parents that come from foreign countries should not think that somehow bullying is acceptable in the United States and that it’s a price-to-pay to become a citizen here,” he said. 

 According to the resolution, district policy will make it certain that no student will be preoccupied by fear of harassment and discrimination to an extent where they will be unable to receive a meaningful education.  

Associate Superintendent for Educational Services Will Kereztes  discusses anti-bullying measures"

 When an instance of bullying or harassment is brought to any school official’s attention, not only are they obligated to follow State law mandating the report of the incidence to a State official, but the school is required, by district policy, to call in the district’s Bias Response Team.   

 The response team, consisting of three social workers, a lawyer from the city’s legal department and a high ranking member of the school board, will be responsible for going into a school where a reported instance of harassment has occurred and assess if a broader social problem exists.

 “We don’t want to just deal with bullying as a misconduct issue—we will deal with it swiftly and severely as a misconduct issue—but, it has been my experience that if bullying is treated as just as an isolated act of misconduct we really don’t take the time and opportunity to really eradicate what caused the bullying in a particular building in the first place,” Keresztes said.

 Broader social problems have been an issue for the school district in the past, where not only discriminative attitudes are held among students, Keresztes said, but also among school staff who feel some students are inherently responsible for the bullying geared towards them.

 The school district has enacted programs to educate and train all professional and non-professional school officials, including cafeteria staff and bus drivers, about how to react to and prevent bullying.    

 Information provided by Bonnie M. Kirisits, a district Social Worker and member of the Bias Response Team, indicated all school staff were required to view a 40 minute video titled "Bullied" and use handouts from the website www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov.

 The district has also held anti-bullying workshops at D’Youville College where both students and staff role-played bullying scenarios and discussed appropriate ways to diffuse the situation. 

Edited by Erica Lindo and Amanda Steffan

Language barriers hurt schools' test scores

By Mike Chiari and Tim Daniels
Bengal News Reporters
 Imagine that you’ve just relocated to a far away country. Having lived in your home country for all your life, you have no knowledge of this new country's language or customs.
 To make matters worse, you're living in a refugee camp, so you've had no chance to assimilate into this foreign culture. Despite these struggles, you're still expected to become proficient in a new language within a year. If you're unable to do this, you risk being left behind.
 While this may seem like a far-fetched scenario, this is exactly what refugee students in third through eighth grade have to endure in West Side schools, according to Amber Dixon, executive director of evaluation, accountability and project initiatives for Buffalo Public Schools.

 Recently released test results from last May's English and math assessments have shown a drop in proficiency across the state. West Side schools, in particular, struggled to meet the requirements set by the New York State Education Department. A major reason for this, Dixon said, is the vast amount of refugees located on the West Side.
 “We have students who could arrive here May 1 and they've been in the refugee camp, and haven't been in school in three years,” Dixon said. “They enroll in one of our schools and they don't speak English, and on May 11 state law requires they take the New York State math assessment and be proficient in it. While we can get interpreters in and do what we can, we still have that child who doesn't have that command of the language, and we're expecting them to show proficiency.”
 State law allows a one-year grace period for refugee students to become proficient in English, but these students should be afforded more time, Dixon said.

 “We're setting a bar for English language learners that's too rigid,” Dixon said. “Some students absolutely can get there, but some students, it's going to take them three years, and they're just as bright as the other students.”
 Samuel Radford, vice president of the District Parent Coordinating Council, agreed that refugees should be given a longer timetable to become English proficient, but there should be a limit, he said.
 “I think they should be given more time, but I don't think it should be like it was before where it was an indefinite amount of time,” Radford said. “ I think the reason why they cut the time was because teachers were not going to have a sense of urgency with the need to teach the children the language.”
 While the testing changes have some merit, they were instituted for all the wrong reasons, Radford said.
 “They changed it in the middle of the school year. They changed it after all the kids had taken the tests, I think that was extremely unfair,” Radford said. “I think the reason why they did it is because they wanted to qualify for more federal money. Because the state is broke and they don't have the money to put into education they used to have, the kids had to appear to need more help.”
 In comparison to past years, the scores haven't changed significantly, but the score required to reach proficiency has, Dixon said. This has heightened an already tall task for refugee students, she said.
 The result was that a score that might have been considered proficient in previous years might not have been proficient on last year's exams or any future exams, Dixon said.
 “It's almost like saying in your class, you get a 25 on three quizzes you'll get an 'A,' Dixon said. “After you get your 25 on three quizzes your instructor says 'that's not really an 'A' anymore, I think that's worth a 'C' now.'”
 Some community organizations such as Journey’s End Refugee Services are trying to speed up the process involved with teaching refugees the English language.
 “We have four full-time academic coaches that work with students individually,” said Kelly O’Brien of the Journey’s End education department. “Any teacher in Buffalo schools can call the office and get help.”
 Journey’s End also offers services such as explaining English meanings in the students’ native language and translating exams for students, O’Brien said.
 Due to the scoring changes, the average percentage of proficiency across West Side schools, and across grades three through eight, is just over 26 percent. Also, no grade level at any West Side school reached 50 percent proficiency in English or math.

Edited by Ariel Hofher and Corey O'Leary