MORNING BULLETIN: BIG RED COLUMBUS AVENUE BUILDING SELLS, EXAMINING A LACK OF SCHOOL DIVERSITY

Making pizza at Patsy’s. Photo by Avi.

January 16, 2013 Weather: Rain, High of 38 Degrees.

Notices:
A meetup for people who work from home, bar trivia and some free concerts on our calendar.

Starting on Friday, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is holding special screenings of three Oscar-nominated documentaries for a week. The Invisible War, 5 Broken Cameras, and How to Survive a Plague.

News:
The big red 43-unit rental building at 380 Columbus Avenue (78th Street) just sold to Newcastle Realty Services for $50 million. The building houses Gazala’s restaurant and 78 Below bar. No word yet on whether the new owners may try to take it condo. (The Real Deal)

At PS 163 on 98th street, the gifted and talented program is filled with white children, with just a handful of black and Hispanic students. The rest of the school is mostly black and Hispanic (63%). Some people blame the nature of the testing program for the discrepancy, and think it favors white students with more money. “They contend that gifted admissions standards favor middle-class children, many of them white or Asian, over black and Hispanic children who might have equal promise, and that the programs create castes within schools, one offered an education that is enriched and accelerated, the other getting a bare-bones version of the material.” (Oddly, the word “preschool” only comes up once in the entire article. Couldn’t better preschools be a part of the solution?) (NY Times)

Where do the Central Park ducks go in winter? Nowhere! (NY Times)