For Immediate Release

UFT awards $1 million in scholarships to 214 students

Jun 3, 2008 6:00 PM

Two hundred and fourteen New York City public high school seniors who have excelled academically received four-year college scholarships when the United Federation of Teachers awards $1 million worth of grants at the union’s 39th Annual Albert Shanker Scholarship Awards Banquet on June 3.

The students – many of whom are immigrants or have overcome daunting obstacles in their personal lives while successfully pursuing their studies – were recognized for their achievements at the banquet in the second-floor auditorium of UFT headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

Each student received a $5,000 scholarship – spread out over four years – from the union’s Albert Shanker College Scholarship Fund, named for the crusading teacher who became president of both the UFT and its national affiliate union, the Washington, D.C., based American Federation of Teachers. The awards are based on both academic merit and financial need.

In addition, six former undergraduate UFT scholarship winners each received graduate scholarships to pursue master’s degrees or otherwise continue their studies. One of the graduate scholarships is for medical school, another is for law school and a third is the Jonathan Levin Teaching Scholarship, named in honor of a city high school teacher murdered in 1997 by a former student he had tried to help.

The keynote address was delivered by WABC-TV Channel 7 news anchor Lori Stokes.

The students, representing every New York City neighborhood and a wide diversity of the city’s public school population, were accompanied by their families at the event.

The recipients include:

• Marlen Amaro, a Mexican-American whose family lived in various shelters for years. She came to New York speaking no English but was encouraged by her mother to pursue education as the key to a better life. While doing so, the senior at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx has worked for a city agency delivering supplies to shelters for the homeless and has tutored young students.
• Ebony Irby, a Brooklyn native born and raised in a single-parent low-income home in a neighborhood where drug addicts and violence were facts of everyday life. But rather than succumb to her environment, she used it as motivation in her school work at the Urban Assembly School of Law and Justice in Brooklyn, knowing that education could open the door to a new world. She also has committed herself to helping others by acting as a mentor to younger students and by helping to create after-school activities such as sporting teams, dance classes and academic programs.
• Rosemary Pineda, who realized at an early age that she would have to help her mother raise her and her two siblings because of the crushing poverty in which they lived. At the age of 14, Pineada, now a senior at Marble Hill High School of International Studies in the Bronx, took a job at a local supermarket to help the family pay its bills and she has never looked back. She stays active in community service activities to give other youth access to cultural and social opportunities, and she plans to enter the field of medicine and become a diagnostic medical sonographer.
• Grisselle DeFrank, who grew up in a home where the threat of domestic violence was constant. Despite the ever-present tension, Grisselle, a senior at Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, managed to stay focused and channeled her energy into school. She managed a volleyball team, volunteered at the school’s program office and would stay late at school, often until 7 p.m., to achieve good grades.