School board race a candidate shy
Three seats were up on the Kingston City School District’s Board of Education, and when the clock struck five last Wednesday, May 1, just two petitions had been received. This all but ensures incumbents Matthew McCoy, the board’s president, and the Rev. Arthur Coston will return for another three-year term, but leaves the trustees down...
Archdiocese allows both city parochial schools to stay open
It was news a lot of people had been waiting for, and were overjoyed to receive. The New York Archdiocese sent out an electronic “Iris Blue alert” Tuesday evening advising Kingston Catholic school families that they will not be merging Kingston Catholic and St. Joseph’s schools, as they had originally planned. Rather, both will stay...
Parental discontent with high-stakes standardized tests rises
Worry over and disapproval of the State Education Department’s high-stakes standardized tests has been simmering in Kingston, with some parents saying they’ve had enough and don’t want to subject their children to what they say is a stressful event and a destructive process. A member of the Kingston Board of Education bringing up the hypothetical...
Job-seeking teens crowd Kingston Youth Job Fair
The days of abundant jobs for teens have gone the way of the dodo. Here in 2013, young workers are competing with grownups for the scarce opportunities to earn a paycheck. It’s in this context that the Ulster County Workforce Investment Youth Council hosted their fifth annual job fair Tuesday for kids 16-21. Over 25...
School budget: Targeting 2 or less
Though hit hard by the recent federal sequestration numbers, officials in the Kingston City School District are still anticipating crafting an operating budget for the 2013-14 school year with a tax levy increase of 2 percent or less. “I can say confidently we are not going to 3.95 [percent tax levy increase],” said Superintendent Paul...
If it ain’t broke, why close it?
Attitude is everything. Only days before National Catholic Schools Week during which Catholic education is celebrated with the goal of raising a new generation of practitioners, St. Joseph’s School and found itself New York Archdiocese’s soon-to-be-axed-from-working-toward-that-goal-list. Nearly a week after the announcement was made that the school would be closed after this educational year wraps...
Kingston High School club redefines ‘pillow fight’
Many may mutter how there’s no hope for the future with “kids these days,” which makes meeting the kids from Kingston High School’s Pillow Fight for Cancer Club just that much more heartening. A dozen 11th-graders have been visiting cancer patients and survivors to offer them a token of actual, tactile comfort — soft, baby-fleece,...
Local cops, schools self-evaluate after Sandy Hook shootings
Even as word of Friday’s grisly massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was making its way over airwaves and the Internet, police and school officials were moving into action across Ulster County in a coordinated response. From posting cops at dozens of schools to monitoring social networks for would be copy-cat killers...
KHS teacher faces drug charges after neighbor turns up dead
A Kingston High School teacher is facing felony charges after, officials say, he sold hallucinogenic mushrooms to a neighbor who was later found dead. Matthew T. DiDonna, 42, was arrested by state police at his home at 12 Wayside Drive in Hurley around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday. He is charged with felony counts of third-degree...
City, residents, school district play parts in film shoot
Production on The Sisterhood of Night ended this week, but for many local kids involved in a variety of different ways in the Kingston-centered production, the memories will last long after the film is released. Working as extras and interns, many kids from the area had their first experience with Hollywood filmmaking without having to...
St. Joseph’s again on Archdiocese’s at-risk list, but school soldiering on
Only two days after the Archdiocese of New York announced that St. Joseph’s in Kingston is on their list of schools “at risk” of being closed down, a teacher was hunched over a glass-enclosed sign, changing the letters to encourage parents to reserve a spot for the 2013-14 school year. On Monday, Nov. 26, the...
New teacher report cards give more weight to standardized tests
Teachers in the Kingston City School District returned to the classroom this year with more to think about than usual. In addition to 2012-13 being the final school year before the largest piece of the comprehensive elementary redistricting plan is put into action, there’s also a new state-mandated teacher evaluation system in place. A system...