Non-Resident Student Tweets from “30 Bus” Heading from Yonkers towards New Rochelle High School

Written By: Talk of the Sound News

Jamal2.jpgJamal, a Yonkers resident, who also goes by the name “Buggz”, tweeted enroute from Yonkers to New Rochelle High School earlier today to complain that the school were he lives was almost finished for the year but that his school, New Rochelle High School, still has more days of school before the year is over.

It should not be terribly difficult for school officials to find Jamal is they want to find him. His Twitter account Jamal_LTL links to his blog with his photo. A review of Jamal’s tweets over the past few months shows that he is taking Art, Spanish, Science and Global History. He carries a Blackberry phone, is in the Big Brothers program (his “Big Brother” is Brian Williams of the University of Tennessee basketball team

Jamal spends a fair amount of time tweeting from the “30 Bus” which refers to Route 30 of the BeeLine Bus system which runs Yonkers-Bronxville-New Rochelle/New Rochelle – Bronxville- Yonkers.

For those not up on Internet slang the LTL in his Twitter account Jamal_LTL refers to Living the Life.

Jamal’s online breadcrumbs.

Jamal-small.jpg

30 Bus Timetable

30 Bus.jpg

16 thoughts on “Non-Resident Student Tweets from “30 Bus” Heading from Yonkers towards New Rochelle High School”

  1. NJ couple fake residency- owe 25k….wake up New Ro!
    This is a must read
    New Jersey couple accused of faking N.Y. residency so kid could attend prestigious school

    BY RACHEL MONAHAN
    DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

    Wednesday, June 23rd 2010, 4:00 AM

    RELATED NEWS
    Manhattan Supreme Court saved 19 schools, Education Department plays musical chairs with new schools
    A New Jersey couple faked a city address so their daughter could attend elite public schools for the last five years – and they owe the city at least $20,000 in “tuition.”

    Jill Schifter and Anthony Maulella of North Bergen enlisted upper East Side friends in an address scheme to get their daughter a coveted spot at Manhattan’s prestigious LaGuardia School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, investigators determined.

    The now-17-year-old girl began attending city public school as a seventh-grader at Manhattan’s Professional Performing Arts School.

    Maulella and Schifter gave the school Con Edison and Verizon bills from July 2005 to verify they had a city address, but investigators determined the apartment belonged to Janice and Bradley Lewart.

    Bradley Lewart told investigators his wife was friends with Schifter.

    After attending seventh and eighth grade in the city, the girl successfully auditioned in 2006 for the prestigious specialized high school’s drama program, where she is a junior.

    In February of this year, five months after the investigation began, the couple signed a lease for an upper West Side apartment, investigators determined.

    Calls to the families and their lawyer were not returned yesterday.

    Special schools investigator Richard Condon recommended the city Education Department collect between $20,000 and $25,000 for the past four years of tuition “as expeditiously as possible.”

    The report states that each year of tuition would have cost about $5,000 for out-of-state residents.

    Education Department officials said they would pursue the matter.

    “We will seek reimbursement for out-of-state resident tuition,” spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said.

    The department collected $692,895 last school year for the roughly 100 kids who attend city public schools but live outside the city. The city has collected $466,521 this year.

    Condon also referred the matter to the Manhattan district attorney’s office for action.

    A spokeswoman for DA Cyrus Vance Jr. confirmed they had received the complaint.

    It’s not the only time New Jersey residents sneaked their kids into well-regarded city schools.

    In 2006, Lee McCaskill, the former principal of Brooklyn Tech, resigned after officials discovered his daughter attended Brooklyn’s Public School 29 for four years.

  2. Another Tweet
    Off topic, but highlights another issue at New Rochelle High School…

    I decided to do a search on “New Ro” in Twitter and saw this post from today:

    FLy_JAi #iConfess I’m a smart nigga, in high skool I failed on purpose jus so I could go 2 new ro summer skool & bag mad females #DontJudgeMe

    I was at a town meeting where Mr. Organisciak had no problem with the number of students that fail to graduate on time saying that New Rochelle firmly believes in the No Child Left Behind act… A New Rochelle Senior at the same meeting indicated that many students purposely don’t graduate on time choosing to go to summer school (but did not elaborate on any reasons for this)

    Perhaps the school district needs to do some research into why students are purposely failing in order to finish up over the summer? I would like to think my tax dollars aren’t subsidizing “FLy_JAi”‘s quest to “bag mad females”.

    1. Why would you use my username with a _2?
      Dear newroresident_2,
      I mean please, can’t you think of your own username?

      The District is a disaster on so many levels on that we agree, but your username is going to really bother me.

      Be original.

  3. There must be a reason
    Why would the school system allow this? It’s been going on for years. Kids from the bronx, mt. vernon, eastchester, scarsdale etc. The school officials know about it. Even when they are informed about a family of kids in the system that live outside of New Rochelle they still don’t take action. Maybe a class action lawsuit is in order.

  4. Marginal Cost
    Let’s see…the marginal cost is overcrowded classrooms, overcrowded lunchrooms, extra costs for bus transportation, extra textbooks, additional teachers, wear and tear on facilities, ratio of students to guidance counselors, bonds for construction, etc.

    Jamal deserves an education paid for by the State, Federal, and County taxpayers, just like every kid in Westchester, however he doesn’t deserve an education paid for by the New Rochelle taxpayers.

    If he wants a free New Rochelle education he should just move into the Avalon.

    1. not disagreeing
      I’m not saying non-residents going into the school district is not a problem

      The cost you mention are the marginal costs of all the students combined, not just this one. (even though, yes he is taking some money out of the system and, barring some extraordinary reason not yet apparent, should be taken out of the district)

      I’m not arguing that there aren’t costs associated with the extra students. I’m just saying that you can’t equate taking one kid out of the district and consider it to be 19k of taxpayer money saved.

  5. Thanks for the added research
    Thanks, Bob Cox, for the added research, especially the geocoding from the blackberry to the number 30 bus.

    I have heard that the police, etc. use this type of technology (twitter, Facebook, etc.) to solve crimes. This is no different. It is worth the time if it saves the NR taxpayer money. At 19K per student it really adds up.

    1. Keep in mind that an average
      Keep in mind that an average cost of 19k per student is different from what the marginal cost may be.

      1. Taking away 1 student isn’t
        Taking away 1 student isn’t saving 19k because many of the resources used on the student are shared by other students. Infastructue costs, electricity, ect. have to be paid for regardless if the student is present or not. Sure, some money is allocated on a per-student basis. (A textbook the school provides to each student would be an example) But most of the cost are already in place and the cost of 1 non-resident coming in is most likely small. (exactly how much is hard to calculate.

        This is NOT saying that it is okay to allow free-riders. (Indeed if a lot of students from out of the district come in (or if they are currently coming in), that could mean the hiring of more staff, more wear and tear on the building ext.) If the number of students out of district is as high as this blog has stated in the past, they ARE costing taxpayers a lot of money. It is just important not to think of each non-resident as a walking and talking 19k expenditure.

      2. It depends on the services the student needs
        How many non-residents receive services? That’s when you start to talk about real money. How many non-residents receive services so that there aren’t enough resources for New Rochelle residents?

        Will anything happen, or will this be just like the crossing guards crossing imaginary students at lunch all year.

        Nothing to see here…just move along…nothing to see…

      3. who said anything about cost?
        The article makes no mention of the cost of educating students in New Rochelle so this appears to be bordering on a troll-like attempt by letsbefair to hijack the discussion. Be advised that Talk of the Sound does not tolerate hate-speech, the use of all caps and trolls.

        For the record, the per pupil cost for a student in New Rochelle is over $20,000 according to the budget document prepared by the district for the May 2010 election. The issue is not applying the average cost per pupil to one student but using that figure to look at larger groups of students.

        Letsbefair may want to consider that the Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak has reported to the board since last July on the number of students removed or blocked from “wrongful enrollment”. At last count that figure stood at 250. What Organisciak has not reported is, of students removed, how many years were they in the school system. If 100 students are removed after having been wrongly enrolled for 2 years then you account for them on an “Annual FTE” basis so that they count as 200 students. So, on an FTE basis that figure is surely far higher.

        The district ADMITS to blocking or removing 250 kids since last July. Does anyone believe that EVERY kid was removed? Obviously not considering the report above.

        Finally, let’s recall that during the 2009 school board campaign, Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak and board members including Quay Watkins and Mary Jane Reddington loudly denounced residents including one school board candidate for daring to suggest that there were ANY wrongly enrolled students in New Rochelle. That was in May 2009. In July 2009 the district admitted to 150 students and by December that figure had grown to 250.

        The record is clear: the Board of Education, the Superintendent and its supporters have absolutely zero credibility on this issue. They have repeatedly lied about wrongful enrollment and even in reporting numbers understates them by not disclosing how long a student was wrongly enrolled prior to removal.

        For those new to this issue, realize that the administration, the union and the BoE (which is a create of the union) all want MORE students in New Rochelle. It is in their interest to artificially inflate enrollment whether that be by enrolling students from outside New Rochelle, expanding adult education programs or dragging out how long it takes a student to graduate to 5 or 6 years or more. The most students New Rochelle has the more teachers and staff we need so the bigger the union gets, the more dues they collect. Under state and federal formulas, the district gets more money with more kids, especially lower-income and special educations students. The bigger the big district and the more the money the more power the administrators have and the more they get paid.

        That all of this is done on the backs of New Rochelle taxpayers simply does not matter to a union president from Yonkers, a Superintendent from Long Island, contract negotiators from New York City and Eastchester, and even board members from Orange County.

      4. Trespassers allowed on school grounds????
        If they don’t live in New Rochelle, they don’t belong on the school grounds. If they injure my child I will sue the School district. They know about these kids, they have internal memo’s pertaining to these reports and they do nothing. They do not belong in the school system nor do they belong on the school grounds.

      5. His Parents owe the District $$$$$
        I believe New Rochelle charges out of city students a certain amount of money to enroll in a public school. Doesn’t New Rochelle have cause to sue the parents/parent of a student that has enrolled in the school fraudulently for the costs? And wouldn’t it only take one case to reach the media to have all the other parents pull their kids out before they were sued? Make an example of one cheating family and the rest will follow.

      6. was responding to other comment
        I wasn’t responding directly to article but to the other comment.

        I was responding to:

        “This is no different. It is worth the time if it saves the NR taxpayer money. At 19K per student it really adds up.”

        I just think it is somewhat misleading sometimes when per student costs are mentioned.

        I apologize for my use of caps and can say that I am not trying to “hijack” the forum. I certainly am not using hate-speech.

        I also am not disagreeing that this is a serious issue. I am somewhat offended that you appear to be attacking me. I am not saying anything unreasonable or making an argument for or against whether the school board has been doing its job or not. (As a New Rochelle resident I am extremely concerned about how our tax dollars are spent)

        But I will admit to distracting away attention from the main point of the story. It was not my intention.

    2. average cost vs marginal cost
      Keep in mind that an average cost of 19k per student is different from what the marginal cost may be.

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