Published: May 8, 2014 Publication: The Rye City Reviews By Liz Button Less than a week after she joined fellow reassigned teacher Carin Mehler’s lawsuit against members of the Rye City School District Board of Education, third grade Milton School teacher Dana Coppola was suspended with pay and brought up on disciplinary charges. Coppola, a tenured teacher since 2000, has 10 days to respond to the 10 charges leveled against her on May 1. She, Mehler and two other elementary s

Published: May 30, 2014 Publication: Lohud, The Journal News By Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy A federal judge Friday denied a motion by a Rye teacher for a preliminary injunction requiring the school district to end her administrative reassignment and return her to her classroom. Carin Mehler, one of four teachers who was placed on administrative reassignment following allegations of improper coaching during the state tests last year, sued the district in April, saying she had b

Published: November 21, 2013 Publication: The Villager Sam Spokony Opponents of a proposed co-location at a Lower East Side high school have filed an appeal with the city’s Board of Education to try to stop it. The Department of Education proposed in August to co-locate a new high school (designated 01M203) in 200 Monroe St., currently home to University Neighborhood High School. Although D.O.E.’s Panel for Education Policy voted in October to approve the co-location, the pla

Published: November 23, 2011 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson A protester held a judge’s temporary restraining order allowing Occupy Wall Streeters to return to Zuccotti Park with their tents and sleeping bags as a helmeted officer stood guard at the park Tuesday morning. The T.R.O. was soon overturned, but police allowed protesters back into the park, though without tents or sleeping gear. Attorney Arthur Schwartz, president of Advocates for Justice, joined Nati

Published: August 30, 2012 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is in hot water after it was revealed that the state Assembly paid a secret settlement of more than $100,000 to a female intern of Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Vito Lopez after she alleged that Lopez sexually harassed her. This week, Governor Cuomo asked his Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) to launch a probe into the situation surrounding the payout. Subsequent

Publication: The Villager THIS TIME, IT’S NOT ABOUT FRIENDS: Arthur Schwartz has announced he’s running for male Democratic district leader for Greenwich Village, the West Village and South Chelsea, a position he held from 1995 to 2005. Saying his experience in politics left him cynical, Schwartz said he “had to take a break and step aside” in ’05 because state Senator Tom Duane, who he thought was his friend, and City Councilmember Christine Quinn “had chosen Brad Hoylman to

Published: April 24, 2013 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson Photo by Lincoln Anderson Washington Irving High School is being phased out of the massive school building at 16th St. and Irving Place. A new K-to-4 Success Academy charter school is set to occupy the building’s second floor and part of the third floor. A new 500-seat charter school is planned to open this August in the Washington Irving High School building, and — as has frequently happened elsewhere wh

Published: August 1, 2013 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson Bill de Blasio will call for a comprehensive restoration of the city’s healthcare at Monday’s press conference. Taking his surging campaign for mayor right into Christine Quinn’s backyard, Bill de Blasio will reportedly hold a press conference this Mon., Aug. 19, at noon, at the site of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital. Arthur Schwartz, who is running for Democratic district leader, tipped The Villager o

Published: September 12, 2013 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson Christine Quinn about five minutes into her concession speech at the Dream Hotel in Chelsea on Tuesday night. Christine Quinn’s dream of becoming mayor ended at the Dream Hotel in Chelsea on Tuesday night. About an hour and a half after the polls closed — and after President Obama’s speech on Syria was shown live on the flat-screens arrayed around the room — early results of the Democratic primary ele

Published: November 7, 2013 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson Under Mayor Bloomberg’s Solid Waste Management Plan, Gansevoort Peninsula’s marine waste transfer station, above, was to have been reactivated and rebuilt. Photos by Lincoln Anderson It’s been five years since the state Legislature approved legislation to allow a marine waste transfer station on Gansevoort Peninsula in the Hudson River Park. However — as the clock winds down on the final weeks of the Bl

Published: November 14, 2013 Publication: The Villager By Sam Spokony and Lincoln Anderson Preservationist Andrew Berman spoke at Wednesday’s meeting about the Hudson River Park air rights bill. Minutes later, he informed the crowd the bill had been signed into law. Photo by Sam Spokony On the same day that around 200 Lower West Side residents gathered to discuss their fears about a bill that would allow the transfer and sale of Hudson River Park’s air rights, Governor Andrew

Published: December 12, 2013 Publication: The Villager By Albert Amateau Jerry Delakas has operated the Astor Place newsstand for 27 years. When vendor Jerry Delakas arrived on Tuesday morning at the newsstand on Astor Place that he has been operating for 27 years, he found the padlock broken on the pavement and a new lock in its place. “I thought it was a break-in and the police had put on another lock, but then I spotted the sticker,” he told The Villager. “This establishme

Published: January 1, 2014 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson Jerry Delakas has operated the newsstand at Astor Place and Fourth Ave. for 27 years. File photo by Jefferson Siegel In an update on Jerry Delakas’s struggle to regain his Astor Place newsstand, the longtime vendor’s attorney, Arthur Schwartz, told The Villager on Saturday that discussions have recently ratcheted up to a whole new level. In the waning days of Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, in November

Published: January 9, 2014 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson Jerry Delakas has operated the newsstand at Astor Place and Fourth Ave. for 27 years. File photo by Jefferson Siegel The news could be looking much better for embattled Astor Place newsstand vendor Jerry Delakas under a new administration. Arthur Schwartz, Delakas’s attorney, reported that Mayor Bill de Blasio was very sympathetic to Delakas’s plight when the vendor met him at a “public open house” the m

Published: January 16, 2014 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson Victory! Jerry Delakas at his Astor Place newsstand at Monday’s press conference announcing the news that he reached an agreement with the city allowing him to reopen the stand. Photo by Tequila Minsky Great news! Longtime newsstand vendor Jerry Delakas is back at his kiosk on Astor Place. A press conference with Delakas, his attorney, Arthur Schwartz, and supporters was held at the stand on Monday afte

Published: January 30, 2014 Publication: The Villager By Martin Tessler Celebrating the news on Jan. 13 that the city had agreed to give Jerry Delakas a license to operate the Astor Palce newsstand. Standing in the checkout line at Trader Joe’s on E. 14th St. this past September, a few weeks after primary day, I looked over at the neighboring line and saw an old friend from the “neighborhood wars” of battling the N.Y.U. 2031 Anschluss of the Village and other land-use issues

Published: May 29, 2014 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson Youths and parents are constantly streaming in and out of Pier 40 at W. Houston St., the Lower West Side’s “sports pier.” Photo by Lincoln Anderson The fallout continues to mount over the secret agreement to transfer $100 million worth of air rights from Pier 40 in Hudson River Park across the highway to the St. John’s Center site. The signed agreement has yet to be produced — despite politicians’ repeated

Published: June 12, 2014 Publication: The Villager By Lincoln Anderson Attorney Arthur Schwartz said he met with Madelyn Wils, the president of the Hudson River Park Trust, last Friday afternoon, and she informed him that the secret $100-million memorandum of understanding, or M.O.U., for transfer of Pier 40’s air rights has officially been scrapped. As reported by The Villager last week, attorney Arthur Schwartz said he was considering suing if a secret Pier 40 air-rights tr

Published: February 22, 2013 Publication: The Village Voice By Jason Lewis So, remember how in December we concluded that there’s nothing that a public school can do to successfully fight off co-locations with other schools? Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s reign, rulings on co-location proposals seem to be guided by an unspoken scientific law which asserts that a co-location in motion shall remain in motion. But, less than a week after dozens of BAHS students filed a lawsuit

Published: January 30, 2013 Publication: The Village Voice By Anya Kamenetz Former City Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, with Bloomberg’s union-busting blessing, is pushing her Success Academy edu-franchise into Brooklyn. The natives aren’t buying When the hipsters of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bushwick are ready to add a little hipster to the family, we inevitably join the Brooklyn Baby Hui. The hui (it’s a Maori term for “community,” natch) has all the information anxious ne