Marching in the street last night in solidarity with the Quebec student strike.

Yesterday marked the hundredth day of Quebec student's strike, the fourth day since the Quebec government passed an oppressive law intended to break the strike, and, as hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets in defiance of the law, possibly the single largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.

In New York, student groups and other activists made common cause with the Quebecois strikers, picketing the provincial government's offices in midtown, holding a teach-in, and marching through Manhattan, filling the streets.

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Sam Levin

Mayor Mike Bloomberg takes questions today at Google's headquarters in Manhattan.

Today, City Comptroller John Liu and Mayor Mike Bloomberg talked about the actual one percent of New York City. And unsurprisingly, they differ in their views on how the wealthiest top percent of New Yorkers impact the city's economy.

Liu, who is expected to run for mayor in 2013, released a report today on income disparity in the city, finding that the top one percent of income tax filers receive one-third of all city personal income -- a share which his office says is nearly twice the national average. The report, called "Income Inequality in New York City," -- drawing on Occupy Wall Street rhetoric -- found that nationally, the top one percent accounts for 16.9 percent of income, while in New York, the richest percent account for 32.5 percent of reported income in 2009 (which is the most recent data available from the state).

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Nothing like a quick sex scandal to spice up a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

In a 73-page lawsuit filed by a Manhattan teacher, the President of the United Federation of Teachers prez Michael Mulgrew, known for his heated relationship with Bloomberg's Education Department, has been accused of having sex with a guidance counselor at the high school he used to teach at in Brooklyn.

Apparently, a custodian walked in on him and Emma Camacho-Mendez in the workshop and, once caught, they forced the worker and the principal of the school to keep their mouths shut. Also, according to the suit, Camancho-Mendez was rewarded with a UFT job paying $22,000 a year on top of her $85,000 guidance counselor salary. 

However, as with every scandalous accusation, there is an overblown twist. And this one is serious: the lawsuit also name-drops Bloomberg, Chancellor Dennis Walcott and other high officials as knowing about the incident.

One word: blackmail. 

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As of now, the Out of School Time program reaches 154 schools in Brooklyn. According to its website, it offers "a mix of academic, recreational and cultural activities for young people (grades K-12) after school" and is free of charge. It's also a relief to parents who work longer hours and rely on the program to watch over their children into the evening.

But, according to a new report out by The Daily News, it looks like almost 10,000 kids in Brooklyn who participate in the program are out of luck this fall.

The OST program houses 52,567 students every weekday city-wide. This number will be halved once the budget cuts from Bloomberg's administration are installed. Here's the data: this year, the budget was $91.5 million; next time school is in session, the funds will have dropped to $73.3 million. Instead of 154 programs, Brooklyn will be left with 77 overloaded OST's, pushing 10,000 kids out of the program. And none of the parents involved are too happy about it.
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Twenty-five years ago, Aundaray Guess started college at the age of 19. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with HIV and dropped out of school. Guess, who is from Minneapolis, then got kicked out of his house when his mom found out about his status and sexuality.

For months, he slept in his car and applied for job after job until he was hired by a community theater. It was there that Guess began writing plays and launched Flayva Cabaret, a company focused on LGBT artists of color. About 11 years ago, Guess decided to move to New York for a life change. But it wasn't until a chance encounter at a drug store that he also decided to return to school and complete his degree.

Guess graduated from New York University with a social science degree on Monday, and received extensive academic accolades. The Voice caught up with him to talk about the challenges of going to school as an adult with HIV.

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From New Settlement Parent Action Committee flier.

This afternoon, parent advocates in the Bronx are organizing a march that will start at a transportation hub in the borough, move to a suspensions hearing center onward to an early care education site, and then to an elementary school and a middle school. The final destination of the rally is a juvenile justice center.

This, they say, is a reflection of the path that all too many Bronx youth take today -- from school to prison.

A South Bronx group called the New Settlement Apartments Parent Action Committee is holding a rally today to shed light on some alarming statistics around the arrests that take place inside schools and to push the Dept. of Education to make policy changes that they say would better address behavioral problems and curb the rates of youth incarceration.

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Maurice Peress, conductor, and Lorca Peress, director

Theater director Lorca Peress is directing two one act operas opening this weekend at Queen College's Goldstein Theater. My Kinsman, Major Molineau (making its New York premiere) and The Image Maker (making its world premiere) were both composed by Bruce Saylor and are conducted by Ms. Peress's father Maurice Peress, the legendary conductor and author of Dvorak to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America's Music and Its African American Roots . (When we covered it for Sound of the City, we had the pleasure of having Maestro Peres as our date at the world premiere of Philip Glass's Symphony No. 9 in Carnegie Hall last January, where he had once worked as Leonard Bernstein's assistant.)

We interviewed Ms. Peress over the phone last week about the new pieces, working with her dad, and creating new work at Queens College.

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Sam Levin

Paul Robeson student holds a Bill of Student Rights.

Students frustrated with the city's plan to shut down their high school walked out of class today and marched two-and-a-half miles in support of Occupy Wall Street's May Day.

Separate from the chaotic protests in Manhattan -- which, as expected, are getting a lot of attention for their arrests and police-protester confrontations -- the rally in Brooklyn was peaceful and remained focused on a number of key education issues in the city that have gotten support from Occupy Wall Street. The march was organized and led by high school students with some help from a handful of OWS-ers.

The Voice first caught up with students at noon in Crown Heights from Paul Robeson High School -- a struggling school the city is in the process of phasing out. It's the time of the year when education rallies and heated Panel for Educational Policy meetings make headlines as critics target Mayor Bloomberg's controversial practice of shutting down failing schools. It's one of a handful of policies that have fueled criticisms over mayoral control, the governance structure that gives Bloomberg direct authority over the education system.

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For New York's educators, to Facebook friend students or not to Facebook friend students is no longer the question.

That's because the Education Department just released "guidelines" for K-12 instructors, which make very clear that teachers should not be part of students' social media networks.

This means no Facebook friending, Twitter following, commenting on kids' posts, nor other forms of online messaging, according to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story.

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Sam Levin

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio in March.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio is upping the ante on the debate over teacher evaluations by calling on the mayor to release evaluations of staffers from his office.

De Blasio -- who is expected to run for mayor in 2013 and who frequently gets headlines for criticizing Bloomberg -- is rallying around the city's controversial release of teacher evaluations, likely as a way to, well, appeal to teachers and its powerful union.

In a letter sent out yesterday, de Blasio says that if Bloomberg is willing to release data on teacher evaluations to the public, then he should be releasing evaluations of his senior City Hall staff who play a vital role in government.

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