Klein allocates $100K to education program

State Sen. Jeffrey Klein has allocated $100,000 for a program that helps students in the Riverdale and Kingsbridge Heights areas apply to selective specialized high schools and to colleges.

Klein presented the check on Feb. 16 to Riverdale Neighborhood House, which together with the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center runs the pilot program for students, Bronx Edge. The grant will cover some of the costs of helping students prepare for the Specialized High School Admissions Test, SHSAT, and advising older students on college applications.

“I’m glad that Riverdale Neighborhood House is always so innovative about coming up with new and different programs,” Klein told The Press after presenting the grant. “This was what I was trying to do on a citywide level. So, it just made sense for me to invest taxpayer dollars to make sure this program was up and running so we could use it as a model.”

Robyn Spiegel, director of College Bound Programs at the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, said the grant offered a chance to “work together and bring our kids together and… bring our expertises together.”

“We’re also doing more work with specialized high schools. Both of our agencies have middle school programs so we’re working with some of the middle schoolers to kind of beef up their high school application process and their high school going,” Spiegel said. The focus on the college advisement would also get students to think about life after high school, Spiegel added.

Nancy Nuñez, Riverdale Neighborhood House’s deputy director of youth services, said the funding could also expand its college advisement services to 60 students from the 35 current and increase the number of college trips to 10 from the current three. Services include one-on-one counseling, college and financial aid application assistance. The grant will also cover the salary of a full-time career and college program manager.

Another goal of Bronx Edge is to bring together students from different communities, so they can get to “know each other, to collaborate, to interact,” Nuñez said. Twenty-five students from each center are expected to participate. Spiegel and Nuñez said they plan to create monthly or bimonthly programs that will give students a chance to interact.

“This was a great opportunity… It was more bringing the kids together. Bringing the expertise together from both agencies and using the funding to help us do both,” said Donald Bluestone, Mosholu Montefiore Community Center’s executive director.

“It’s a good way to help our young people strive for success… There is not enough support within the school system,” said Daniel Eudene, Riverdale Neighborhood House’s executive director, of the partnership and expanded services for both centers.

According to figures from the Department of Education, in the 2015-2016 school year, 11 percent of students enrolled in the city’s eight specialized high schools were black or Latino, while at public schools, 68 percent of students are black or Latino students.

Only 22 percent of black and Latino eight-graders took the Specialized High School Admissions Test in fall of 2015, compared to 52 percent of Asian and White students.

Nuñez said that she was excited about the chance to partner with Mosholu Montefiore Community Center. “We really will have an opportunity to tap into the needs that have been so evident in our communities and in our programs and this support from Sen. Klein is going to make that possible. It’s big job. It’s tremendous job. And, it’s good to know that you have people in your corner to help you achieve this tremendous task,” Nuñez said.