D’Youville renovating new science building

By Peter Murphy and Bill Schutt 
Bengal News West Reporters 

            D’Youville College will begin demolition in mid-April as part of the school’s $20 million construction project on 606 Niagara St.in an effort to stay current and competitive.

            Renovation has already begun on the new 85,000 square foot Arts, Sciences, and Education building, which will replace the 40-year-old Dr. Pauline Alt building on the college campus, said  Ed Cogan, the associate vice president for operations for D’Youville.

            Financing for the project is not complete, but the D’Youville College Institutional Advancement Group is working with local foundations involved with sciences for funding of the project. Donors will be given naming rights to building.

        

Former Letchworth Mansion

    The building at 606 Niagara St. is centered by the historic Letchworth family mansion, which most recently housed Gateway-Longview, a child and family service organization.

            The 60,000 square foot building currently has three sections, built in 1922, 1928, and 1952. According to Cogan, the college will retain the façade of the 1922 section and gut or demolish everything else. He said originally, the college wanted to keep the entire building, but the layout would not accommodate the space needed.

            Uniland Development, of Amherst is the general contractor.

             “The main crux of it is that the college knew it needed to stay current with the new sciences because a lot of things have changed with labs in the last 40 years,” Cogan said.

     

Dr. Pauline Alt Building

       One other reason D’Youville wanted to create more new science labs was because the current site of the labs, the Alt Building, contains asbestos. The building was built in the late 1960s and has not been upgraded to match the changing technologies.

            The college’s best option is to move the labs to the new building then focus on renovating and removing the asbestos from the Alt Building, Cogan said.

            The new building will include a 50-car parking lot, but parking still remains a concern for some students, including Jennifer Woelfel, a biology major, who said the majority of her classes will be in the new building.  

            “One of the only concerns I have is for parking, whether or not they will be able to provide adequate spots for all the people using this new building,” Woelfel said.

            The student also had safety concerns despite the proximity of the building to the rest of the campus. She did acknowledge, however, the type of impact this could have on Niagara Street.

            “Hopefully it helps turn Niagara into a better area,” she said.

            D’Youville hopes to gain a competitive edge with the new building. SUNY Buffalo State and Canisius College have upgraded their art and science buildings.

 

Renovations underway at back of 606 Niagara St.

           “We are building a new art, science, and education building to stay competitive with local colleges and it’s something we wanted to do,” said Cogan.

            Cogan said that D’Youville let the surrounding neighborhood know about the renovation plans during a community meeting.

            “Over 100 people showed up, and were thrilled that the college was going to make a new building for local use instead of just tearing down another building,” said Cogan.

            The college also purchased five years ago the lot on the corner of Fourth Street and Porter Avenue where the original Ted’s Hot Dog restaurant was located. The college plans to add a soccer field to the list of renovations coming to D’Youville.

Canisius H.S. gets clear look at West Side

By Fran McCann
Bengal News West Reporter

Canisius High School, a private all boys’ Jesuit institution on Delaware Avenue, is known for helping perceived “less fortunate” communities like the West Side.

But one trip in December to Frank A. Sedita School 30 not only changed the pre-conceived notions some students had but changed their hearts as well.

Griffin Schultz, a Canisius senior and East Amherst resident, had a stereotype of the West Side that some can relate to. He used to eschew the idea of living or even traveling to the region, since it had a high crime rate.

“This year my view towards the West Side really changed,” Schultz said. “Going to School 30 and seeing all these kids reminded me of when I was a kid and at that age there is no real difference between anybody.”

About 50 percent of the West Side is Hispanic and African American. According to www.city-data.comhttp://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/West-Side-Buffalo-NY.html, 44.3 percent of people fall below the poverty line in the region. Along with this, 15.2 percent of them speak very little English, or none at all.

Schultz and 40 of his classmates traveled in December to School 30, located at 21 Lowell St., to help with holiday celebrations and participate in afterschool activities with kids in kindergarten and  first and second grades.  They decorated the gym and threw a holiday party for all the kids. Schultz and his classmates put smiles on the kids’ faces and left an impression not only with them, but also with Schultz himself.

And earlier this month, Canisius returned to School 30 for a visit that paired about 25 high school students with sixth and seventh graders to serve as "big brothers," Ann Marie Moscovic, a Canisius counselor and the program’s leader, said.

 “With a lot of the kids coming from different backgrounds, most of them spoke Spanish and almost no English,” Moscovic said.  “Fortunately, we had two students with us who spoke Spanish fluently so the kids took to us very quickly. They were happy, had fun, and overall it was a great experience.”

One of the students who spoke Spanish fluently is Thomas Ezquerro, a senior at Canisius. Ezquerro, a Lackawanna native, said he spent a great deal of his early childhood on the West Side.

“My best friend lives on the West Side and I’ve seen the good and bad parts of it,” Ezquerro said. “I have seen drug deals go on countless times and I heard gun shots one time when I was at his house.”

Ezquerro explained that even though the region has its struggles, there are many great things that go on there.

“I’ve seen the bond between the neighbors and I believe that it is stronger than anywhere else,” he said. "They look out for each other and talk to one another when they believe something suspicious might be going on.”

Many students from Canisius come from the suburbs, and a lot are overwhelmed by the West Side at first. Ezquerro explained that many of his classmates were frightened due to the pre-conceived notions they had for the region.

“I noticed many students were jumpy and nervous when they went on their first service. They would ask me where they should park their car, if they should lock their doors, or cover anything up,” Ezquerro said.

Ezquerro said that many students’ stereotypes dissolved soon after they realized the West Side “wasn’t such a bad place after all.”

West Buffalo Charter adds ‘Core,' expands

By Oliver Colbert and Kimberly Hylton

Bengal News West reporters

            West Buffalo Charter School has adopted the Common Core standards for learning and added more than 100 second- and third-grade students to its building on Lafayette Avenue.

            Third grade teacher Rachel Banas under the Common Core, student are not just solving problems, they're thinking them through and making connections.

          “It’s challenging but you see their thinking has changed,” Banas said.

            WBCS has small classes with a total of 24 students, a teacher and teacher’s assistant. In addition to the assistant.

A smaller classroom leaves room for teachers to help students more affectively. Teachers at WBCS can figure out what level each student is at and help them grow.  Principal Andrea Todoro  says smaller classes also make it easier to enforce the Common Core curriculum. 

            The support doesn’t stop with just teachers and students. Parents are also supporters of the new curriculum at WBCS. Todoro said that the school hosted parent nights where  the differences between thenew curriculum and the old were compared and explained .  Parents have also been invited in to see Common Core being taught.

            “I think once you empower them with knowledge they understand what it is and they can see it coming home in their child’s book bag and then they respond positively,” said Principal Todoro said.  

            Along with the new curriculum WBCS has recently added a class of second graders and three third grade classes of third grade. The  additional grades brought more than 100 students to the school. Todoro said the biggest impacts of the new students are space and budget.

            “There are more bodies in the school so traffic flow, use of the lunchroom and scheduling is all impacted by the additional students,” Todoro said.

             Todoro said planning for the extra classrooms, purchasing the furniture and the technology, and staffing has impacted the budget.

            WBSC’s had originally planned to expand out of the building creating a new wing, four floors total, and a new gymnasium. Those plans have been put on hold. Instead the school will add fourth grade classes and renovate the first floor. The original plans were denied by the State of Education because the charter school is too  new, Todoro said . The cost of the original expansion would have been $2 million. WBSC has worked out a new plan to renovate the first floor where the cafeteria is located along with a long corridor hall. The new project will add three new classrooms for the incoming fourth graders this  May. The project will cost WBCS $400,000 including furniture and technology.

            “We’ve made use of every inch of the building now that we’ve been in here for a couple of years. We know what spaces we’re utilizing and what spaces we’re not…so we’re reworking the interior,” said finance and operations officer, Elizabeth Sterns.

            Although school leaders were disappointed that the school  couldn’t expand the way they intended, they  are still excited to be renovating.

            “I’m really excited about it, it’s an opportunity for us to take what we already have and make it better. I think it’s more fiscally conservative to do it the way we’re doing it. It’s kind of like staying in your starter home longer than you would have normally,” Sterns said. 

            Sterns also mentioned that other successful charters have taken the same route. The original project wasn’t a complete fail. Sterns says the school  not has the opportunity to save money and tackle the expansion outside the building in a better financial footing.  

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn4402FQn-g

VERY GOOD JOB ON THE VIDEO. INFORMATION IS ADDED TO THE STORY,  RULE OF THIRDS NICELY APPLIED, TODOR IS SOLDLY IN THE LEFT VERTICAL, HEADROOM AND LEADROOM ARE PERFECT. AUDIO IS CLEAR. B-ROLL CORRESPONDS WITH AUDIO.