Feature stories

Teacher Tricia Moses' colleagues at PS 233 in Brooklyn threw a surprise fundraiser to help defray medical expenses for Moses, who is awaiting a lung transplant.

Students and staff at MS 202 and Goddard HS can tell you just how much the change in color in their shared-space school has lifted spirits. The Ozone Park school is one of 155 schools across the city that have been repainted by students under the guidance of the nonprofit organization Publicolor.

The field next to Richmond Hill HS in Queens doesn’t have a baseball diamond or soccer goal posts. Instead, it is cluttered with 22 trailers in which approximately 600 students from the overcrowded school have class. The existence of the trailers, which the DOE has been promising for years to replace with an annex, is just one of the many examples of the DOE’s neglect at Richmond Hill.

In a moving ceremony at the 102nd Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire commemoration on March 20, 4th-graders called out the names and ages of each of the 146 garment workers who had either perished in the flames or jumped to their deaths in the 1911 tragedy.

Drama teacher Lisa-Erika James at Pan American International HS in Elmhurst, Queens, uses theater course and after-school theater program to teach English skills to her students, almost all of whom are recent immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America.

The 9th-grader was hard at work on a large clay sculpture with a pleasing, organic shape reminiscent of one of sculptor Henry Moore’s more abstract pieces. 


Wide-eyed with amazement, the Richmond Hill 5th-grader hesitated a moment in front of the small figure: ”Is it real gold?”

A lifelong resident of District 20, where she attended PS 186, IS 96 and New Utrecht HS, Laurie Windsor devotes her free time to ensure that the neighborhood and its schools stay strong for this generation. Now a resident of Bath Beach, Windsor has served on the District 20 Community Education Council as treasurer, vice president and now president for eight years and is active on two School Leadership Teams.

“If any PTA president and parent volunteer ever deserved recognition, it’s Jimmy Orr,” said Chapter Leader Andrea Carte of PS 114 in Brooklyn’s Canarsie neighborhood. He makes sure that technology is up to par and solves any glitch that’s called to his attention. A native of the area and a graduate of South Shore HS, Orr was a New York City policeman for eight years when he was injured on the job. He opted to become a stay-at-home dad 12 years ago. Soon he became a community activist and a full-time volunteer at both PS 114 and MS 366, where his children are enrolled.