Tag: new york

NYC Proposes New Rules to ‘Silence’ Parents Critical of Education Policies, Parents Say

Outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is trying to leave behind him a rule that could potentially silence parents who criticize school board policies, according to two parents and board leaders.

In an op-ed published in The New York Post, Maud Maron and Danyela Souza Egorov said that a proposed regulation would allow the Department of Education (DOE) to “discipline and remove” parents elected to Community Education Councils (CEC)—New York City’s equivalent to a school board—if they “criticize the school district they are meant to hold accountable.” Maron is a former president of the CEC in District 2, and Danyela Souza Egorov is its vice president.

The proposed Chancellor’s Regulation D-210, which will be weighed by the DOE’s Panel for Educational Policy on Dec. 21, prohibits council members from engaging in conduct that “serves to harass, intimidate, or threaten.” Such conduct includes but is not limited to “frequent verbal abuse and unnecessary aggressive speech that serves to intimidate and causes others to have concern for their personal safety.”

The criteria used to determine what counts as a violation is vague, Maron and Egorov argued. The rule doesn’t explain how frequent is frequent or what kind of speech is unnecessary or aggressive. On top of that, an “Equity Compliance Officer” would be established to enforce the rule.

“This (no doubt expensive) bureaucrat would be charged with deciding who to target for removal for violating the newly expanded ‘code of conduct,’” they wrote, calling it “yet another administrative position to monitor parents.”

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Massive Mystery Blast Leaves Behind Huge Crater on New York Island

Authorities in New York are investigating a curious case wherein a massive blast created a huge crater on the beach of an uninhabited island. The odd mystery reportedly began on Sunday morning when people living in the southern part of Long Island heard and felt an enormous blast. As is often happens with such events, concerned residents flooded their local police station with calls and social media lit up with people wondering what had just happened. However, in this instance, questions surrounding where the inexplicable boom could have come from were quickly answered as cops managed to determine its origin.

Investigators traced the blast back to Fox Island, a small nearby spot that is accessible only by boat, where they found a huge and rather worrisome crater measuring four feet wide and two feet deep on the beach. Beyond the huge hole, however, they saw no signs of any explosive device having been detonated. Be that as it may, authorities believe that the blast was detonated by some individual or a group of people and have set their sights on a boat photographed in the general area at the time of the incident.

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Andrew Cuomo Personally Edited Report That Undercounted COVID-19 Nursing Home Deaths And Downplayed Impact Of His March 25 Directive

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo personally edited a July 2020 Department of Health report that undercounted nursing home COVID deaths by thousands, the New York State Assembly said in a report Monday.

Cuomo ordered the Department of Health (DOH) to produce the report to combat criticism of his March 25 directive ordering New York nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients, the State Assembly Judiciary Committee said in its report summarizing findings from its eight-month impeachment investigation of the former Democratic governor. Officials knew as they drafted the report that approximately 10,000 nursing home residents had died from the virus at the time, but the final version of the report only disclosed approximately 6,500 deaths, a figure that reflected only the residents who were physically present at a nursing home at the time of their death, the report said.

“Throughout the drafting process, the former Governor reviewed and edited the draft DOH Report on multiple occasions, and made edits to strengthen the defense of the March 25 Directive,” the report stated.

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Former prep-school student gets off with probation for raping teen girls

A “privileged” upstate New York prep schooler who admitted to raping four teenage girls in his home got off without jail time — getting probation and sparking outrage.

Christopher Belter, 20, faced eight years in prison after pleading guilty in the 2018 assaults of girls as young as 15 when he went before Niagara County Judge Matthew Murphy Tuesday — but only got a slap on the wrist.

The sentence — eight years of probation — infuriated Belter’s victims.

“I am deeply, deeply disappointed,” Steve Cohen, an attorney for one of the victims, told WKBW-TV. “I expected a different outcome today. Justice was not done today.”

“He is privileged,” Cohen added. “He comes from money. He is white. He was sentenced as an adult, appropriately. For an adult to get away with these crimes is unjust.”

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New York Gov. Hochul: School Mask Mandate Can Be Lifted When ‘Parents Do the Right Thing’ and Vaccinate Their Children

The school mask mandate in New York State can only be lifted after parents “do the right thing” and vaccinate their children, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) suggested this week.

Interim guidance for in-person instruction, issued June 7, 2021, states that masks should be required in school facilities, requiring them to be “worn by all individuals in all classroom and non-classroom settings, including but not limited to hallways, school offices, restrooms, gyms, auditoriums, etc.”

While masks are not required outdoors, schools may choose to require them in such scenarios. 

Currently, there is no end in sight for the school mask mandate. Rather, Hochul is placing the burden on the parents, suggesting the they must get their children vaccinated if they want to return to a state of maskless, pre-pandemic normalcy. 

“If parents do the right thing all over the state, get their kids vaccinated. There will come a time when there’s no reason to wear a mask, that every child is safe. But we need compliance,” she said during an appearance on WNYW’s Good Day New York this week.

“And in some communities it’s stronger than others. So let’s get the kids vaccinated. I don’t have a date. I’m not going to prejudge this,” she said, failing to even offer a rough timeline and suggestion it all hinges on compliance. “There’s no way I can know.”

“I need to know how people are doing, are a lot of people getting vaccinated, or is there an early rush and then it plateaus and then half the kids in the class aren’t protected. That’s what I’m watching. I’m always driven by the numbers. So that’s why I can’t say, ‘on this date, we’re going to do X,’” Hochul added.

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DHS Begins Releasing Gas on NYC Citizens at 120 Locations in ‘Biological Attack Simulation’

On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security and the Metro Transit Authority began a drill in which government agents will release a gas at over 100 locations to simulate a biological attack on the city. Authorities say the gas is “non-toxic” but will be released in closed spaces underground in the city’s subways system as well as outdoors.

The event, which is being referred to as an “airflow and dispersion study,” runs from October 18 through the 29th. It will simulate the aerosol release of a biological agent in a densely populated urban environment.

The project includes the release of “low concentrations of safe particle and gas tracer materials” as part of two programs, the Urban Threat Dispersion (UTD) program and the Chemical and Bio-defense Testbed (CBT) program, according to the DHS.

“The study will track movement of non-toxic material and the results from these tests will be used to learn more about the relationship between airflow in street level and underground environments,” the MTA said.

While a full list of locations was not made available to residents, a DHS document lists Times Square, Grand Central, Penn Station, Union Square, and the World Trade Center transit hub as sites for tests, with testing both indoors and outdoors.

The DHS claims the particle gas tracers are non-toxic and pose no health risks. The non-toxic substances include salt, glycerol, maltodextrin (sweetener), a fluorescent brightener, non-coding DNA oligos, amorphous silica among others. Sounds real healthy.

Naturally, the idea of government agents spraying the public with “safe gas” has many folks worried. Since these plans have been available for over a week, many folks are worried that they may be used as cover for an actual biological weapons attack. After all, many of the world’s recent attacks have taken place simultaneously with drills or exercises of a similar nature.

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New York City judge prevents Long Island father from visiting his three-year-old daughter in Manhattan during custody dispute unless he gets COVID vaccine or has weekly tests

A Long Island father is being refused the right to see his three-year-old daughter by a judge’s ruling unless he gets the COVID-19 vaccine.  

The father, who has yet to be identified, is in a custody dispute with the child’s mother, and until recently saw his daughter every other weekend.

But Judge Matthew Cooper ruled he will be banned from seeing her unless he either gets the jab, or submits to weekly COVID testing. 

‘Here, in-person parental access by defendant is not in the child’s best interests, and there are exceptional circumstances that support its suspension,’ wrote Cooper, who is presiding over the pair’s divorce and custody dispute.

‘The dangers of voluntarily remaining unvaccinated during access with a child while the COVID-19 virus remains a threat to children’s health and safety cannot be understated,’ Cooper added.

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De Blasio Moves To End NYC’s ‘Gifted and Talented’ School Programs

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio (D.) on Friday ordered the total elimination of the city’s advanced-learning programs in public schools. The move is a major concession in the closing months of the mayor’s term to racial-equity activists who have long called for getting rid of the classes.

The classes, known as “gifted and talented” programs, group together elementary school students who perform well on an admissions exam they take when they’re four years old. Under de Blasio’s overhaul, the programs will be phased out, with the current cohort of enrollees being the last to learn in gifted classes through elementary school.

Critics of the gifted and talented programs say they enforce racial segregation in schools and stand in the way of racial equity. The gifted classes comprise about three-quarters white and Asian students, according to the New York Times. But an April poll found that a majority of New Yorkers support the programs.

“The era of judging four-year-olds based on a single test is over,” de Blasio said in a statement. The mayor proposed an alternative to the gifted and talented programs that would see students assessed at the third grade and offered “accelerated instruction” in classes with other students receiving standard instruction.

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An NBA Star and New York’s Governor Show That Liberal COVID Discourse is Devoid of Science

It is virtually a religious belief in the dominant liberal culture that people who do not want the COVID vaccine are stupid, ignorant, immoral and dangerous. As large sectors of the population continue to question or disobey their COVID decrees, they have begun to make more explicit this condescending view.

Liberals feel free to disparage them as “stupid” notwithstanding long-standing (though diminishing) racial disparities among this group. A CNN headline from last month told part of the story: “Black New Yorkers may have the lowest vaccination rates, but community groups refuse to give up.” Citing data from the city’s health agency, the network reported that “citywide, just 28% of Black New Yorkers between the ages of 18 and 44 are fully vaccinated. The Hispanic community is the second-least fully vaccinated population in that age group, with 49% being fully vaccinated.”

Two weeks ago, Bloomberg reported that while some of the unvaccinated are unable to get the vaccine (due to work pressures or health conditions), most of them are vaccine-hesitant by choice and continue to reflect racial disparities. Under the headline “U.S. Racial Vaccine Gaps Are Bigger Than We Thought: Covid-19 Tracker,” the news outlet reported: “the White vaccination rate is not as bad as it had seemed and Hispanic communities are lagging more than previously thought.”

Yet liberal elites continue to call anyone who is unvaccinated “stupid,” ignorant and immoral. On Sunday, New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, when announcing her intent to use National Guard soldiers to replace health care workers fired for refusing the vaccine, told her audience: “yes, I know you’re vaccinated, you’re the smart ones.” She then said those who refuse to get the vaccine are not just stupid but have turned their back on God: “there’s people out there who aren’t listening to God and what God wants.” Gov. Hochul added that the vaccine “is from God to us and we must say, thank you, God,” and said to her “smart” vaccinated supporters: “I need you to be my apostles.”

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NYC Starts Enforcement of Vaccine Mandate

New York City started enforcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate Monday, with Mayor Bill de Blasio warning, “there’ll be consequences” for those who do not follow the rules.

The COVID-19 vaccine mandate, also known as the Key to NYC, requires people 12 and older to show proof that they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine for indoor dining, indoor fitness, and indoor entertainment.

Under the mandate, staff at these locations must be vaccinated as well. Places affected include restaurants, bars, nightclubs, catering halls, event spaces, gyms, fitness centers, pools, theaters, museums, aquariums, and zoos, among others.

“Look, you’ve got to be safe. Wherever you go—movie theater, gym, restaurant—you’re going to be safe,” de Blasio said during a virtual press conference Monday morning.

“For those who are unvaccinated, you got to make the move,” de Blasio continued.

De Blasio announced the mandate in early August and started the requirements on Aug. 17.

The mandate requires the establishments to put up certain signage and verify customers’ COVID-19 vaccine proof, such as vaccination cards issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), New York City vaccination records, other official immunization records, the NYC COVID Safe App, or the Excelsior Pass.

According to the New York City Department of Health, establishments can make some exceptions, such as for outdoor eating, allowing customers to use the bathroom, or for other reasons that will take a small amount of time, for example, less than 10 minutes.

Thirteen agencies will send out inspectors to enforce the mandate, the mayor announced.

“What we’re going to do is have our inspectors out from 13 civilian agencies,” de Blasio said. “We don’t want to fine people. We don’t have to. We want to just get it right and keep moving forward.”

“But I think folks understand by now we are resolute. And if anyone wants to not follow the rules that everyone else has to follow, then of course, there’ll be consequences,” de Blasio, a Democrat, added.

According to de Blasio’s legal counsel (pdf), an establishment found to be non-compliant may be subject to a fine of $1,000. Repeated violations may result in increased fine amounts or other enforcement action.

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