Mondaire Jones Visits Scarsdale
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- Written by Joanne Wallenstein
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While Republicans were rallying around the Trump-Vance ticket in Milwaukee, a group of determined Democrats assembled in Scarsdale to support Congressional candidate Mondaire Jones in his bid to represent NY Congressional District 17.
Following his first term in Congress, Jones lost his seat due to redistricting and is now back, vying to unseat Mike Lawler to represent Rockland County, Putnam County, Northern Westchester and portions of Southern Duchess County. A native of Spring Valley and a current resident of Sleepy Hollow, this is Jones home.
At a fundraiser in Scarsdale on July 17, Mondaire reviewed many of his legislative accomplishments during his first term and emphasized his enthusiasm to continue to work on behalf of the American people. He discussed the infrastructure bill, rescuing the economy during the COVID crisis, passage of the marriage equality act and support for housing and healthcare. He said, “Democrats believe in a functioning government and in what we can get done.” He voiced his support for a woman’s right to choose, voting rights legislation and for Israel.
In contrast his opponent favors banning abortion, opposes gun control and backs Trumps and his agenda.
Jones emphasized the need to provide financial support Democratic candidates for Congress so that Democrats could regain control of the House of Representatives. He was optimistic about success in his district where Democrats outnumber Republicans and called his district “ground zero” in the fight to save our democracy. He said, "We can save this country."
Learn more about Mondaire Jones here.
https://www.mondaireforcongress.com
Pedestrian Safety Improvements to be Implemented in the Village
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- Written by Joanne Wallenstein
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After a series of pedestrian accidents, seniors pressed the Village to make changes to the crosswalks and signals at the intersection of Popham, Chase and Overhill Roads in the Village. The work began when Jane Veron was Mayor when the Village retained consultants from FHI who made a series of recommendations to improve traffic patterns, pedestrian safety, bike lanes, signage and more.
Though those changes were never implemented, at the July 9 meeting of the Village Board Acting Village Manager Alex Marshall announced that the Village Manager’s office has commissioned another study from DTS Provident who prepared a Pedestrian Improvements Concept Sketch for proposed pedestrian improvements to the signalized intersection of Popham Road and Chase Road/Overhill Road in the Village. The goal of the intersection improvements is to improve pedestrian safety through the provision of modified crosswalks, additional pedestrian signals, new ADA ramps, signage and other modifications.
The study of the intersection of Popham Road and Chase Road/Overhill Road found that three of the existing crosswalks at the intersection are generally standard crosswalks. However, the location of the eastern crosswalk is not typical. Because of the previous relocation of the eastern crosswalk across Popham Road, the crosswalk is currently approximately 70 feet from the southeast corner of the intersection and a driver traveling northbound on Overhill Road turning right onto eastbound Popham Road cannot always see the crosswalk until they are already into their turn and starting to accelerate as it is offset further to the east. Thus, some non- standard wide crosswalks were recommended by the consultant as part of the Study and the Village was in favor of them.
The aerial photo above illustrates the existing conditions at the intersection of Chase Road and Overhill Road, that are at different widths and intersect Popham Road at angles, the streets are offset and therefore the intersection is not the standard four-way intersection.
DTS recommends providing wide crosswalks with non-parallel outside lines.
Other improvements will include:
• New ADA pedestrian ramps in the northwest and southeast corners
• Truncated dome detectable warning surfaces at all existing and future pedestrian ramps
• New signage to alert drivers that pedestrians may be present
• Relocated stop bar on the eastbound approach
• A new bollard system on the northeast corner so that the bollards are more spread out (to allow pedestrians to cross) and do not have the elongated base plates, but significant enough to direct vehicles
•A new bollard system on the northeast corner so that the bollards are more spread out (to allow pedestrians to cross) and do not have the elongated base plates, but significant enough to direct vehicles
• New pedestrian signals and/or signal poles on the northeast and southeast signal poles.
See below for a diagram of the improvements that will be made Marshall announced that the work would begin later this month. See more on the study here.
The Class of 2024 Walks the Red Carpet
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- Written by Joanne Wallenstein
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In Scarsdale’s own version of the Met Gala, the Class of 2024 with dates and friends turned out in formal attire for the Red Carpet event before the Scarsdale Prom on Thursday night May 30, 2024. Crowned by an arch of balloons, the red carpet extended the length of the north parking lot of Scarsdale High School to accommodate the parade of excited students headed for the much anticipated prom at Glen Island in New Rochelle. Parents, relatives, teachers and friends lined the walkway to see the spectacle and wish the students well.
The weather could not have been better – sunny and warm enough for bare shoulders but not too steamy for formal wear.
What were the trends in prom wear this year? In the crowd we spotted many gowns in solid shimmering colors – reds, pinks, brilliant blues, yellows and greens. Other’s wore tulle gowns sparkling with sequins, and some couples preferred to both wear black or black and white for a more traditional black tie look. Many girls completed the look with metallic or platform sandals. As is the custom, senior girls wore long gowns while underclassman sported short dresses above the knee. Not everyone went the usual way to secure a gown. One young lady reported that her uncle, who is a dress designer in Barcelona, made her a custom gown. Another said that she was unable to find what she wanted and her mother sewed her gown for her.
Hair was loose, long and curled.
Dates coordinated the look with matching bow ties, ties or vests and many sported wrist corsages and boutonnieres.
It was a long day for many of the partygoers, who started out with hair and makeup in the morning, then onto pre-prom gatherings for photos, followed by the red carpet event, the bus ride to Glen Island and a night of dancing and dinner.
Buses returned to the school around 10 pm. Some chose to extend the night even further, by changing outfits, boarding private party buses and going to venues in New York City for more celebration.
Take a look at the Class of 2024 in the photo galleries here. To add your photos, email them to scarsdalecomments@gmail.com.
Westchester Becomes Greener Away from Home
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- Written by Midori Im
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With the approval of new amendments to the Westchester County’s Source Separation Law, it will now be easier for individuals to maintain sustainable practices outside the home. The amendments require that nonresidential waste generators include separate recycling bins in spaces open to the public wherever garbage receptacles are already located. The recycling and garbage receptacles must be in close proximity to each other and clearly labeled.
Entities mandated to offer recycling bins include schools, houses of worship, and businesses. Eco-conscious individuals will no longer need to trash recyclable items or bring them home for recycling. Being able to recycle away from home may also encourage other people to adopt more sustainable practices when they return home.
The recent amendments also made mandatory for both residential and nonresidential waste generators the curbside recycling of cartons (juice, soup, milk etc). Please note that cartons get included with commingled (plastic, glass, aluminum) recycling.
If nonresidential waste generators are not complying with these new amendments, a complaint form can be completed here. Alternatively one can contact the Department of Environmental Facilities.
The Notorious RGB? Not so Much. How Rolling Gradebook Might Help Make SHS The Opposite of Loneliness
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- Written by Wes Phillipson
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(The following was written by Wes Phillipson, SHS English Teacher) It was April or May of 2003 when I eased my forest green Honda Accord into that spot by the big tree overlooking the brook in the Yearbook picture above. Some epic R&B was playing. I was floating. It was the first time I’d seen Scarsdale High School in all its ivy-league-edifice glory. The only second-hand knowledge of SHS I had came from a middle school computer teacher whose son I taught in Rockland County, and my former colleague and friend Eileen Kelly who has since retired. Eileen told me she was - essentially - chained to her desk at SHS - but nothing could dissuade me from crossing the Hudson.
My first season at SHS ended with a major challenge that nearly ended me: a senior had failed my English class by not completing their research paper in the fourth quarter. Coming up on 22 years later, I’m still here, coming off what I feel is my single-best year of teaching, but I sincerely wonder: what if Rolling Gradebook had existed in 2003? Perhaps that student would have graduated on time, instead of scrambling to enroll in a G.E.D. program, resentful if not forlorn.
In 2021 I found sophomore Alex Ben-Gera staring back at me over a rumpled face-mask in Room 207: Peak Covid days, remember them? He looked younger than his age, and he seemed anxious — on high alert. It surprises me now that Alex helped do some initial background for this article you’re reading, as he was not a “writer” at that time. It lights me up that his Senior Options internship was spent at the headquarters of this storied publication (10583). His first essay for English 10 was (by choice) an opinion piece about Tom Brady’s irrefutable greatness. It didn’t work out. We collaborated on a new topic, this time about Alex’s relationship with Eli Manning and how watching Giants’ games with his father was transformative. That essay had the kind of legs that could match Dorsett or Henry’s 99-yard rush. To push that metaphor further, RGIII — the NFL QB — has rather fitting initials here: RGB = Rolling Gradebook. Once Alex shook off his imposter syndrome, found not just his legs but his voice in our English class, he was off and running. Even from the cheap seats, it’s clear that - had Rolling Gradebook been in effect for Alex’s first quarter - he wouldn’t have felt the direct hits that come with risk-taking, experimentation, and just getting things wrong the first few times in any class.
Alex’s final project was a video essay on the intersectionality of Inception’s antagonist Dom Cobb (DiCaprio), the title character from Macbeth, and a song lyric from a now-canceled rap star who shall remain nameless. Comparative analysis was not something Alex would have been comfortable attempting in September or October, but it just felt seamless - perhaps even effortless - in the spring. And while he doesn’t ever return to read his mash note to Tom Brady, he does watch his visual argument about the smokescreens that cloud reality whenever he needs creative inspiration for school or life.
For academic year 2023-24, I wasn’t certain if it would be “The Notorious RGB” (a menacing grading system that failed to reflect academic “truths” about my students), or more “RGB = Red, Green and Blue” (the primary colors that would allow me to paint the “truest” portraits of my classroom charges).
It was the latter.
And in one specific way, the “old gradebook” was akin to how some viewed the progressive R.B.G. (the late Supreme Court Justice) — maybe it, too, had overstayed its welcome, or had just hung on far too long.
In my senior English elective course Words & Images (it’s just like it sounds: we talk about words, we unpack images), I found some solace in RGB’s very existence. RGB was kind of my conscience when it came time to enter semester grades. My hallucination was that I’d always “aired on the side of the student,” but this time I had a license (if not a directive) to do so. In English classes (and - perhaps - the soft sciences), grading is largely subjective. What is an “A” on an essay, anyway? It’s not scientific, but grading is an art that I ask my students to participate in. My “rolling gradebook” - for the past 10 years or so - has been: grade it with me. Come to my office, sit down on my velvet tufted, faux mid-century chair next to me and let’s talk about this essay. Let’s read it aloud together. Let’s make sense of why you wrote this. Then let’s put a grade on it.
Now, will we always agree on the grade? No. But we get to have a conversation about it. It’s a discussion about standards. It’s a chance for the student to understand what I value, and that I grade (and put weight on) those things. It’s a chance for me to understand the person who (hopefully) wrote those words, who developed those ideas, and who made the form choices that they did.
I don’t think a science or math teacher can do that. In fact, I know that they can’t.
But that doesn’t matter: Rolling Gradebook can be, has been, and will be “the great leveler” for all students, and all disciplines. Or, at least it can play a role in creating parity.
Wellness at SHS has been “a thing” for quite some time now. I don’t know when it began, you could ask my friend and colleague Jennifer Rosenzweig who has been a great champion of students getting their heads on straight.
Much of Wellness within Scarsdale has the aftertaste of oxy-moron or cognitive dissonance for obvious reasons that I won’t go into. But RGB? That’s meaningful wellness. When we did away with summer reading, or prevented teachers from assigning homework over breaks, it’s not clear that that - inherently - boosts serotonin levels. But it’s likely that not having an academic quarter be put in quick-dry cement, or engraved (forever) like a grotesque tableau by Hogarth, is a sound idea that has been implemented by the administration at Scarsdale High School.
From the point of view of an SHS veteran teacher, who lived on Garth Road for 2 years long ago, and who even married a woman who grew up in Scarsdale, I think that our High School is (to borrow a term from Marina Keegan who died immediately after her Yale graduation), “the opposite of loneliness.”
Despite how massive and compartmentalized the place is, I never feel alone here.
It’s possible that RGB will make us all less lonely. Sounds strange? Well, I can tell you that there is just ONE set of faculty here that have nothing to do with grades, yet everything to do with grades: The Deans.
The Deans are entirely exempt from the phenomenon of: “The honeymoon is over.” Deans don’t grade their students. Teachers grade their students. Grades change relationships. There’s no avoiding that. Ask any student if they feel differently about a teacher after first quarter report cards come out.
Perhaps RGB will de-emphasize grades, allowing teachers and students to focus on building (and strengthening) esprit de corps, long-term rapport (independent of grades), and collaborators.
I have zero interest in grading students’ work in isolation, by my lonesome. I do - truly believe - that our HS is the antidote to loneliness. I do, however, want to build students who feel and believe they have a stake in the company. At least, they’re shareholders. I want to produce learners who dismantle the myth of gradelocking once and for all. For how can one be gradelocked if they hold the key?
Early on in all of my English classes this year I shared an essay that I wrote that articulates my singular educational goal: I want to be your producer. Jack Antonoff doesn’t “grade” Taylor Swift. He brings out the best, creatively, in Tay-Tay. Mark Ronson doesn’t “grade” Bruno Mars. He unleashes BM. If you don’t believe me - just watch.
And RGB has the power to help me, and to help my students simply focus on making some beautiful music together so we can dance like no one’s watching, and stop criticizing each other’s footwork. Wanna lead?
