Thursday, November 15, 2012

Blog 12: Uprooted in Storm, Students Endure Trek to Class.


Jenny Anderson wrote this article yesterday. Since the hurricane hit New York city, students have been walking past piles of debris, overturned cars and boats, and vans full of supplies for the city dwellers on there way to school everyday. A lot of students are living in bad situations where there is not electricity and rotting buildings from all of the rain and flooding. “Life for the students of Rockaway Park — among the 33 schools that remain severely damaged as a result of Hurricane Sandy— has been upended. Many have been scattered across New York City, with relatives or in shelters. “We’re concerned,” said Jennifer Izzo, the guidance counselor. “We still can’t find some of them.” The city’s Education Department has reassigned 15,000 displaced students to other schools; the students and teachers of Rockaway Park are being sent to the Maspeth High School campus in Queens. Parents were upset, since their new school, like their old neighborhood, is not easily reached by public transportation. So the city agreed to send coach buses to Rockaway Park to take the students to and from their temporary school. Supplies were short, despite the fact that some workers had defied orders not to enter Rockaway Park High School, sneaking in to smuggle out science and math textbooks, which were there when the students arrived at Maspeth.” (Anderson, “Uprooted”). A lot of the students now have nothing and Rockaway school used to require uniforms, since the storm, they postponed that rule and now its hard for students to find something appropriate for school. It’s going to be a long time for things in New York city.
            This article has to deal with education because students in New York city are having a hard time succeeding in school from missing books, having a hard time with the transportation of even getting there, and the fact that they don’t even have electricity to get on with their daily lives. What I don’t understand is why aren’t we getting more involved in helping them? It isn’t like they are across the seven seas or whatever; they are in the same country, just a few hours away. Those students need our help!


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