Yonkers Partners In Education

IN THE NEWS

Journal News

December 5, 2007

Yonkers education summit to feature speech by Bloomberg

by Ernie Garcia

YONKERS - A $500-a-plate breakfast featuring New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will launch a nonprofit organization's 2008 fundraising drive for Yonkers schools.

Yonkers Partners in Education will host the Jan. 15 breakfast and education summit at the Yonkers Public Library's Riverfront Branch. About 400 city residents are invited to attend the post-breakfast event that will feature an address by Bloomberg, followed by work sessions where community representatives will discuss how to improve education in the city.

Yonkers Partners in Education is a nonprofit organization launched earlier this year and dedicated to raising private-sector money for Yonkers' public school students.

The organization uses the money for programs like its effort to send 300 public high school seniors to Scholastic Aptitude Test preparation courses to boost their scores on the exam.

"We wanted our keynote speaker to be somebody who has made a marked contribution to education in the inner city and the first person who came to mind was Michael Bloomberg," Wendy Nadel, Yonkers Partners in Education's executive director, said yesterday.

The breakfast will be held at the X2O restaurant on the Yonkers Pier and it is expected to raise $75,000.

Nadel said the SAT preparation courses have already boosted student performance. Anecdotal feedback to Nadel indicates that the first group of low-income students at Lincoln and Saunders high schools who have taken the preparation courses have received successful SAT scores.

Michael Lisbin, a parent with two children at the PEARLS Hawthorne School, praised the idea of raising money for enrichment projects like SAT prep classes or extra field trips.

"I'm sure there are a lot of kids in Yonkers whose parents never take them to the zoo or the library," Lisbin said.

Reach Ernie Garcia at elgarcia@lohud.com or 914-696-8290.