February 28th, 2010
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City schools Chancellor Joel Klein, together, have made sweeping changes within the New York City schools. Yet, many are questioning their intentions and spending of funds.
Creating smaller class sizes, especially in the elementary grades, has long been a priority of most parents, teachers and advocates in New York City. Many states and cities have passed laws requiring smaller classrooms, such as the state of Florida.
Studies have repeatedly shown that smaller classrooms improve student achievement, reduce teacher attrition, decrease student disciplinary problems, and increase parent involvement. They have proved especially effective for the elementary grades, but smaller classrooms in high schools are believed to reduce dropout rates, as well.
Today, the New York City schools classrooms are the largest ones in the state. The Court of Appeals ruled in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case that class sizes in the New York City schools were too large to provide students their “constitutional right to an adequate education.” The public is complaining that the mayor only plans to spend two percent of the money received from the lawsuit toward reducing class sizes within the New York City schools; yet, he plans to spend ten times as much on more school administrators and specialists.
According to the Gotham Gazette, the mayor and Klein are undermining the reduction of classroom size in six major ways:
?Ignoring State Law – Since 1999, over $500 million has been given to the New York City schools by the state to cut class size. According to an audit released in March by State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, only 20 extra classes in kindergarten through third grade were created as of last year, compared to the 1,586 classes the New York City schools officials said had been formed.
The audit also showed that officials had sharply cut back the number of K-3 classes by almost 900 over the last four years. Classes should now be 19.1 students per class; however, they remain with 65 percent of the students in classes with 21 students or more, and 26 percent in classes with 25 students or more.
?Not Allowing Voters to Decide – Over 100,000 New Yorkers signed petitions last year to put an amendment on the ballot that would require a minimum of 25 percent of funds owed the New York City schools from the lawsuit be spent on class size reduction. New York City schools officials blocked the proposal, stating it was “improper”, since the New York City schools are under the authority of the state and do not have to comply with city laws. Many voters and advocate groups are contesting.
?Fewer New Classroom Seats Are Being Created – Reporter Leonie Haimson believes the city is in danger of creating more seats in new stadiums than in New York City schools during Bloomberg’s administration. The following are the number of new seats added, according to the Mayor’s Management Report:
o22,267 seats in fiscal year 2003,
o12,921 in 2004,
o8,631 in 2005,
o4,287 in 2006, and
o204 thus far, this year.
Yet, all five boroughs are experiencing a development boom in their neighborhoods. In other major cities across the country, developers are being required to provide schools and other community needs as part of their development projects. New York City has no such requirement. Therefore, there are fewer seats with no expectation of more being added, even though development is increasing.
? No School Plans for Governors Island – When the mayor was elected in 2001, he pledged to put a major high school and university on the island, which has current facilities sitting vacant that once were used as classrooms. According to Gazette sources, no one is discussing a plan for a school in that location, and the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation has been told to maximize the island’s profit-making potential. A new high school on the island would have relieved a lot of overcrowding in the other secondary New York City schools.
? More Charter Schools Being Created – The mayor plans to create up to 100 new charter schools, and the New York City schools capital plan calls for 74 percent of them to be put into existing New York City schools buildings. With new charter schools taking currently used New York City schools classroom space that means more overcrowding and larger classrooms for the New York City schools.
? New Administrative Positions – The creation of new administrative positions within the New York City schools has exploded since the mayor was elected. The city comptroller found in 2005 that the New York City schools had lost over 2,000 teachers without replacement within two years, further crowding more students into each classroom. The Educational Priorities Panel recently found that the amount of money devoted to instruction had steadily declined during the first four years of the mayor’s administration. Meanwhile, the number of new administrative positions has escalated, with only a slight decline in administrators at the district level.
The public’s concerns over classroom size are growing, as the mayor and Klein appear to be focusing on other concerns for the New York City schools.
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February 28th, 2010
New York City, officially named the City of New York, is the most populous city in the United States, and the most densely populated major city in North America. The city is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture, and is one of the world’s major global cities (along with London, Tokyo and Paris) with a virtually unrivaled collection of museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations, and stock exchanges. The city is also home to the United Nations, along with all of the international missions associated with it.
History
Long before the arrival of European settlers, the New York City area was inhabited by the Lenape people, including such tribes as the Manahattoes, Canarsies and Raritan. Major events in New York history include¢ In 1524 the first European explorer enters New York Harbor¢ European settlement begins with the following the 1609 voyage of Henry Hudson¢ Founding of the Dutch fur trading settlement in Lower Manhattan in 1613 later called New Amsterdam¢ English ships captured the city without struggle in 1664¢ The Dutch formally ceded New York to the English in the Treaty of Breda at the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1667¢ The city was renamed New York, after James, Duke of York, and became a royal colony in 1685¢ After the Civil War, the rate of immigration from Europe grew steeply, and New York became the first stop for millions seeking a new and better life in the United States, a role acknowledged by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886¢ In two separate actions in 1874 and 1895, New York City (and New York County) annexed sections of southern Westchester County known as the Bronx¢ In 1898, New York City took the political form in which it exists to this day.¢ 9/11 changed the political map of the worldPlace of interest
Tourism is a major local industry, with hundreds of attractions and 39 million tourists visiting the city each year on average. Many visitors make it a point to visit Ground Zero, the Empire State Building, Times Square, Radio City Music Hall, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Wall Street, United Nations Headquarters, the American Museum of Natural History, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Fifth Avenue, and the Brooklyn Bridge, among other attractions. There are over 28,000 acres (113 km²) of parkland found throughout New York City, comprising over 1,700 separate parks and playgrounds. The best known of these is Central Park, which is one of the finest examples of landscape architecture in the world, as well as a major source of recreation for New Yorkers and tourists alike. Other major parks in the city include Riverside Park, Battery Park, Bryant Park, Prospect Park, Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, Washington Square Park, and Forest Park.
Museums & Art Galleries
New York is a city of great museums with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s assemblage of historic art, the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum’s 20th century collection, and the American Museum of Natural History and its Hayden Planetarium focusing on the sciences. There are also many smaller specialty museums, from El Museo del Barrio with a focus on Latin American cultures to the Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design. A number of the city’s museums are located along the Museum Mile section of Fifth Avenue.
In addition to these museums, the city is also home to a vast array of spaces for opera, symphony, and dance performances. The largest of these is Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which is actually a complex of buildings housing 12 separate companies, including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the New York City Ballet, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Other notable performance halls include Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. New York City boasts a highly active and influential theater district, which is centered around Times Square in Manhattan. It serves both as the center of the American theater industry, and as a major attraction for visitors from around the world. Broadway theaters are considered to be of the highest quality in the world.
Shopping
Shopping is popular with many visitors, with Fifth Avenue being a famous shopping corridor for luxury items. Macy’s, the nation’s largest department store, and the surrounding area of Herald Square are a major destination for more moderately-priced goods. In recent years 23rd Street has become a major location for “big-box” retailers. In southern Manhattan, Greenwich Village is home to hundreds of independent music and book stores, while the East Village continues to prevail as purveyors of all things “strange” and unusual which you can’t find anywhere else. The “diamond district” (located on 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues) is the city’s main location for jewelry shopping, and SoHo, formerly the center of the New York art scene, is now famous for high-priced clothing boutiques, and the art galleries are now concentrated in Chelsea. There are also large shopping districts found in Downtown Brooklyn and along Queens Boulevard in Queens.
Food & Drink
New York is the best restaurant town in USA and one of the finest in the world. New York has literally thousands of restaurants to choose from (more than 25,000, in fact), encompassing nearly every cuisine in the world. Some of the big names are Eleven Madison Park, The River Café, Boat Basin Café, Veritas. Like restaurants, thousands of bars and cafes are there in the city. A few old noteworthy among those are: McSorleys Old Ale House, Revival, Push Café and White Horse Tavern.
Universities
New York City is served by the publicly run City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban university in the United States, which has a number of campuses throughout the five boroughs. The city is also home to a number of other institutions of higher learning, some of national or even international reputation, including Columbia University, Fordham University, Manhattan College, New York University, the Juilliard School, The Cooper Union, Marymount Manhattan College and The New School. New York City is also a major center of academic medicine. Manhattan contains the campuses of the world-class Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, as well as Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and NYU Medical Center and their medical schools. New York City is home to several of the nation’s top schools of art and design, including Pratt Institute, the School of Visual Arts, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Parsons School of Design
Sports
Although in much of the rest of the country American football has become the most popular professional sport, in New York City baseball arguably still stirs the most passion and interest. A “Subway Series” between city teams is a time of great excitement, and any World Series championship by either the New York Yankees or the New York Mets is considered to be worthy of the highest celebration, including a ticker-tape parade for the victorious team.
Hotels & Accommodation
The City of New York is known as the “city that never sleeps”, but its visitors have to. The city hosts a large number of accommodations options.
Luxury Hotels
New York has many “grand dames,” classic elegant hotels that have been around for years and endured majestically. The St. Regis, the Waldorf, Tribeca Grand Hotel, Ritz-Carlton New York, Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers – are some to mention about.
Budget Hotels
Besides all those luxury hotels, a large number of budget hotels are available in New York City. They are comfortable, homely and light weight for the pocket. Some of them to mention are – The Whitehouse Hotel of New York, The Pioneer, Chelsea Center, Guesthouse and Harlem YMCA. Except these hotels and guesthouses, Skyline Hotel and Travel Inn are rare exception among affordable hotels for their services and facilities.
Tours and Sightseeing
To know and see the New York City with no tension way, a number of tour operators are there for travelers help. These tours contain city and outskirt of the city sightseeing. Tours may vary from its contents or theme. It may be a helicopter tour of Big Apple or may be a double-decker bus tour. Some fair tour agencies are there in the city. Tours can be booked from tour agencies or some hotels arrange them for its patrons. Another easy way to book any of these tours is online tour ticket booking. Some helpful websites for this purpose are:
http://www.newyork.com
http://www.allnewyorktours.com
http://www.thereservationcenter.com
Transport
The airport authority owns and operates the four major airports in the New York City area, John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in Jamaica, Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, La Guardia Airport in Flushing, and Teeterboard Airport in Teeterboard, New Jersey.Taxicabs are operated by private companies and licensed by the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission. Other than cabs, New York City has a mass transit system. Unlike most of America’s car-oriented urban areas, public transportation is the common mode of travel for the majority of New York City residents. The city is served by an extensive network of parkways and expressways, including four primary Interstate Highways enter the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area. The world-famous New York City Subway is operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). It is the most extensive subway system in the world. The subway system connects all boroughs except Staten Island, which is served by the Staten Island Railway via the free Staten Island Ferry. In addition to these, city residents rely on hundreds of bus lines, both publicly and privately operated. Many private ferries are run by NY Waterway, which provides several lines across the Hudson River, New York Water Taxi, with lines connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan, and other operators
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February 27th, 2010
Internet cafe software is very indispensable to internet cafe to monitor daily activities of the business as such the daily income and the report whether your customers increased in number or not. Internet cafe software is very helpful for you to scrutinize managerial decisions whether to expand your cybercafe cafe or not.
Internet cafe software is programmed application for internet cafe as such
1. Can track what computer is available to use.
2. Can protect your computer from any destructive vital information resources under siege such as Trojan or Worm (known computer viruses) through web filter and with the support of firewall.
3. Can grant you to customize the whole software by making an account for each of your employee through the time clock preset with the internet cafe software.
4. Can project the daily income of your internet cafe.
5. Can secure essential details of your customers especially with their accounts like pre or post paid account and their reservations accounts.
6. Can assess you to properly sum up all the costs made by a certain customers as such the computer rentals added with printing costs.
7. Can provide reliable database system of your clients.
8. Can present reports of your business’ activities with your description whether hourly, daily or even weekly.
Internet cafe is one of the booming business opportunities globally. However you should still need basic guidelines of establishing your own internet cafe. You can go online and seek details about how to start your own internet cafe and also consider the factors in procuring internet cafe software.
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February 27th, 2010
GETKO is a software solutions for the operation of an Internet Cafe, Cyber Cafe, Gaming Center, Internet Center or PC rental system. Designed primarily for billing Internet Cafe business and also can be used to control the PCs on your intranet. System functions and user interface has been designed to be easy to use with little or no experience in the computer industry. The software allows you to set up various marketing plans for each user to chose from.
GETKO is Client / Server application which allows you to easily manage and monitor all client machines status remotely from the Server in on-line and in real time. Administrators can just monitor or manage the things at clients easier from the server, such as shutdown, reboot, Wake-up on LAN, force the user to log-out, see the running applications, Remote Virtual Desktop, etc ….
* The complete Client Server solution for your network of public access computers.
* The #1 choice for Internet Cafe’s, gaming centers, libraries and more…
This is a centralized Server version of the GET KO ™. Each customer PC will be installed with NetTime Client. All of the NetTime Client PCs connect to NetTime Server from which you can centrally manage your NetTime Network.
We have been producing Internet Access Time Management solutions and Internet Cafe Software for over 10 years and have sold our products all over the world.
Our team specialize in timer software and software based control systems for Windows 98/ME/2000 and XP. We supply computer access solutions to hotels, cruise ships, hospitals, schools, libraries, colleges, learning centers, law chambers, youth centers, Cyber Cafes and many other diverse areas of industry. There are a number of Internet Cafe Software and public access timer solutions from a variety of companies in today’s market. They vary by their functionality, their look and indeed their stability. Choose wisely and join our ever growing global customer base, choose NetTime Software!
For more info: Internet cafe software
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