A summer in NYC wouldn’t be complete without a trip to Rockaway Beach, and though parts of Rockaway beach will be closed again this summer, NYC Parks is showing Rockaway Peninsula some love by way of a $33 million makeover.

The $33 million budget includes six different projects, all of which have either been recently completed or are moving through the final stages of construction. From a performance space and playground upgrades to a brand new parkland, all six of the projects are expected to be open for fun this summer.

Of the six projects, three are currently open, including a completely upgraded playground at Beach 59th Street, a new performance space at Beach 94-95th St. Gateway Plaza, and a brand-new Shorefront Labyrinth & Seating Area.

The Beach 59th Street Playground received brand new play equipment, rubber surfaces, and spray showers along with a new shade structure. In addition to the original entrances on Beach 59th and Beach 60th Streets, a new ADA ramp has also been built at the Beach 60th Street entrance.

At the foot of Cross Bay Parkway, just off the Cross Bay Bridge, is the Beach 94-95th Street Gateway Plaza and Performance Space.

This new stage serves as a venue for theatrical and musical performances, community events, and worship services, and even features a large screen for movie screenings.

The brand-new Shorefront Labyrinth & Seating Area serves as an escape from the craziness of NYC.

Located on Shorefront Parkway between Beach 92nd and 94th Streets, the area features a passive recreational area centered on an inlaid labyrinth for contemplative use–i.e. it’s a great place to clear your mind and meditate for a bit. Additional seating, game tables, drinking fountains, and new bike racks also make up the space.

Of the projects set to open soon at Rockaway Peninsula, the Shorefront Parkway Multi-Purpose Area will be the first to do so.

This project will bring new recreational amenities along Shorefront Parkway at Beach 77th Street, including sand volleyball courts, a lawn for playing or relaxing, table tennis tables, and adult fitness equipment.

Improved sidewalks, additional seating, game tables, drinking fountains, bike racks, and new landscaping will also be implemented.

A second playground, this one located at Beach 98th Street, is set to open early this summer.

Designed to suit visitors ranging from tots to seniors, the playground will include an obstacle course, tot play near the beach concession island at 97th Street to allow easy access to the bathrooms, and new shade structures and umbrellas for caregivers and other park-goers.

Lastly, set to open at the end of the summer is Nameoke Park.

Located at the corner of Nameoke Ave. and Augustina Ave., this brand-new park will feature benches and game tables, an adult fitness area, and two play units–one for children ages 2-5 and one for ages 5-12.

A central spray shower will provide a sense of relief from the summer heat, and in the colder months the shower area will serve as a flexible, free-play area.

Three of the Rockaway Peninsula projects have been funded by FEMA through cost savings from the Rockaway Beach boardwalk reconstruction after Hurricane Sandy’s devastation back in 2012.

“Rockaway Beach is one of the city’s premier destinations for sun and fun, and with multiple new park improvement projects opening this summer, Rockaway will be better than ever this year,” said NYC Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue.

“There’s nothing like visiting the beach for a day of fun and relaxation, and I encourage all New Yorkers to come out this summer, take a dip in the water, visit the concessions on the boardwalk, and enjoy these brand-new amenities,” added New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

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Harlem Bespoke:  The Studio Museum in Harlem’s permanent collection represents more than 700 artists, spans 200 years of history and includes over 2,500 works of art, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, watercolors, photographs, videos and mixed-media installations. The collection is a record of the growth of the institution and its activities, including its foundational Artist-in-Residence program.  A full breadth of the collection is available now to be viewed online: LINK

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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The NAACP over the weekend issued a travel advisory for Florida, joining two other civil rights groups in warning potential tourists that recent laws and policies championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida lawmakers are “openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.”

The NAACP, long an advocate for Black Americans, joined the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Latino civil rights organization, and Equality Florida, a gay rights advocacy group, in issuing travel advisories for the Sunshine State, where tourism is one of the state’s largest job sectors.

The warning approved Saturday by the NAACP’s board of directors tells tourists that, before traveling to Florida, they should understand the state of Florida “devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”

An email was sent Sunday morning to DeSantis’ office seeking comment. The Republican governor is expected to announce a run for the GOP presidential nomination this week.

Florida is one of the most popular states in the U.S. for tourists, and tourism is one of its biggest industries. More than 137.5 million tourists visited Florida last year, marking a return to pre-pandemic levels, according to Visit Florida, the state’s tourism promotion agency. Tourism supports 1.6 million full-time and part-time jobs, and visitors spent $98.8 billion in Florida in 2019, the last year figures are available.

Several of Florida’s Democratic mayors were quick to say Sunday that their cities welcomed diversity and inclusion.

“EVERYONE is always welcome and will be treated with dignity and respect,” tweeted Mayor Ken Welch of St. Petersburg in a message echoed by the mayor across the bay in Tampa.

“That will never change, regardless of what happens in Tallahassee,” tweeted Mayor Jane Castor of Tampa.

The NAACP’s decision comes after the DeSantis’ administration in January rejected the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies course. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers also have pressed forward with measures that ban state colleges from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as critical race theory, and also passed the Stop WOKE Act that restricts certain race-based conversations and analysis in schools and businesses.

In its warning for Hispanic travelers considering a visit to Florida, LULAC cited a new law that prohibits local governments from providing money to organizations that issue identification cards to people illegally in the country and invalidates out-of-state driver’s licenses held by undocumented immigrants, among other things. The law also requires hospitals that accept Medicaid to include a citizenship question on intake forms, which critics have said is intended to dissuade immigrants living in the U.S. illegally from seeking medical care.

“The actions taken by Governor DeSantis have created a shadow of fear within communities across the state,” said Lydia Medrano, a LULAC vice president for the Southeast region.

Recent efforts to limit discussion on LGBTQ topics in schools, the removal of books with gay characters from school libraries, a recent ban on gender-affirming care for minors, new restrictions on abortion access and a law allowing Floridians to carry concealed guns without a permit contributed to Equality Florida’s warning.

“Taken in their totality, Florida’s slate of laws and policies targeting basic freedoms and rights pose a serious risk to the health and safety of those traveling to the state,” Equality Florida’s advisory said.

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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at @MikeSchneiderAP

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NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (AP) — Richard Evans makes his way through rows of his students in his third grade classroom, stooping to pick up an errant pencil and answering questions above the din of chairs sliding on hardwood floors.

The desks, once spread apart to fight COVID-19, are back together. Masks cover just a couple of faces. But the pandemic maintains an unmistakable presence.

Look no further than the blue horseshoe-shaped table in the back of the room where Evans calls a handful of students back for extra help in reading — a pivotal subject for third grade — at the end of each day.

Here is where time lost to pandemic shutdowns and quarantines shows itself: in the students who are repeating this grade. In the little fingers slowly sliding beneath words sounded out one syllable at a time. In the teacher’s patient coaching through reading concepts usually mastered in first grade — letter “blends” like “ch” and “sh.”

It is here, too, where Evans jots pluses and minuses and numbers on charts he’s made to track each child’s comprehension and fluency, and circles and underlines words that trip up a student a second or third time.

In a year that is a high-stakes experiment on making up for missed learning, this strategy — assessing individual students’ knowledge and tailoring instruction to them — is among the most widely adopted in American elementary schools. In his classroom of 24 students, each affected differently by the pandemic, Evans faces the urgent challenge of having them all read well enough to succeed in the grades ahead.

Here is how he has tackled it.

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GOING FROM PANDEMIC TO ‘NORMAL’ IS HARD

It is a Thursday in October, early in the school year. Six students surround Evans at the blue table, each staring down at a first-grade-level book about baseball great Willie Mays. Many are struggling.

“What sound does ‘-er’ make?’” Evans asks 9-year-old Ke’Arrah Jessie, who focuses through glasses on the page. She puts “hit” and “ter” together to make “hitter.”

Next to her, a boy takes a turn. He pronounces “high” as “hig.” Evans grabs a pen and jots down “night” and other “igh” words for a sidebar phonics refresher on the letter grouping. Meantime, the rest of the class reads on their own. While some page through below-grade-level readers, others plunge into advanced chapter books.

Most of these students were sent home as kindergartners in March 2020. Many spent all of first grade learning remotely from home full- or part-time. Even after schools reopened full time for second grade, COVID-related obstacles remained: masking and distancing rules that prevented group work, quarantining that sent kids home for a week without warning, and young children by then unaccustomed to — and unhappy about — full weeks of school rules.

Says Evans, who came to teaching at age 40 after a career as a computer graphics designer: “All year long, I had kids ask me, `Why do I have to be in school for five days?’”

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MOVING FROM ‘LEARNING TO READ’ TO ‘READING TO LEARN’

At the beginning of this school year, assessments showed that 15 of Evans’ initial 23 students were reading below grade level. Of those, nine were considered severely behind, lacking basic foundational skills usually learned in first grade. In a typical year, four or five students would be reading at the lowest level, he said.

“I know I have to do something about that. That’s my job,” Evans said, looking back.

There is no time to waste. Third-grade students are under urgent pressure to progress from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Studies show those who don’t read fluently by the end of this school year are more likely to drop out or fail to finish high school on time.

Among those starting out behind is Ke’Arrah, who spent more than a year learning remotely early in the pandemic. Her mother, Ashley Martin, could see the toll on her daughter’s drive to learn. So when Ke’Arrah was assigned to a new elementary school for this year, her mother re-enrolled her in third grade.

The pandemic cut first grade short for Ke’Arrah. To keep the family safe, Martin kept Ke’Arrah home in second grade, too, even when she had the option to return to school in person two days a week. She has four children younger than Ke’Arrah, including a son born just three days before COVID-19 shut down schools and businesses in March 2020.

“It was good for me, but not great for her because she’s on a computer,” said Martin, whose employer, a restaurant, temporarily closed.

Ke’Arrah, who likes math and wants to be a police officer, remembers the pull of her nearby toys as she tried to stay focused on her on-screen teacher.

“She was talking about boring stuff,” Ke’Arrah says. Last year’s transition back to in-person school was rocky, her mother said. She finished behind in math and reluctant to read.

Midway through her second stint in third grade, Ke’Arrah shows progress. Martin has passed her love of the Junie B. Jones series of books to Ke’Arrah, and the pair read them together at bedtime. Small moments become reading lessons, too.

“She’s on the phone, I’m like: ‘Read that to me. Tell me, what does that say?’ We’re out somewhere: ‘Read this to me. What does it say?’” Martin says.

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DOUBLING UP ON KIDS WHO NEED IT MOST

While many students are behind, Evans also referred more candidates than ever — five — for the school’s honors program because of their advanced scores on early assessments.

He pulled aside students who were reading well above grade level as the year began and explained they might not get as much one-on-one time with him, something he had never done before. That has allowed him to double up on the time he could spend helping other students to catch up, working with some groups twice or three times a week. The advanced readers spend that time reading and working together.

The range highlights the varied experiences during the pandemic, where some had more support at home than others.

“Were they read to? Was there someone to support them to do assignments and homework when they were not physically with the certified teacher and having direct instruction?” says Marcia Capone, assessment administrator in the district, which provided devices and internet hotspots to families.

In Niagara Falls, about one in four people live in poverty, and 80% of the district’s students are economically disadvantaged, state data shows. Despite swarms of tourists to its namesake falls, the Rust Belt city has been scarred by an exodus of heavy industry and population that began in the 1960s.

Districts like Atlanta have sought to address learning losses by adding time to the school day. Others, like Washington, D.C., have pursued “high-impact” tutoring. Niagara Falls City Schools have doubled down on remedial work and differentiated learning, customizing students’ lessons to keep each student moving forward. The district has used federal pandemic relief money to put 12 reading specialists to work with first graders in its eight elementary schools, Superintendent Mark Laurrie said.

Using assessments to identify students’ individual needs is the top strategy American schools are using to help kids catch up from the pandemic, followed closely by remedial instruction, according to a federal survey.

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WITH THIS STUDENT, IT WORKED — FOR A WHILE

Evans invested his own time in one of his neediest students, a boy who is repeating third grade at Evans’ urging. He started keeping him after school once a week for an hour of intensive reading intervention.

“He’s like my little experiment,” Evans said after one tutoring session in November. “With intense intervention, can you turn this around?”

The two had just slowly worked through a phonics worksheet that had the student circle words that began with the same letter as pictures. In one problem, “candy,” “open” and “after” followed a picture of an ant. “Open?” guessed the fidgeting student.

Evans had him close his eyes and say the words, thinking about the first sound of each. The trick eventually led him to the correct word, “after.”

In other lessons, the student struggled to identify rhyming words and consonant blends. Each problem revealed another concept not yet mastered.

“Very good!” Evans said after the boy correctly added the missing “rd” to the end of lizard. He responded with a satisfied smile.

In a matter of weeks, the boy went from knowing just 11 sight words — common words like “because” and “about” that students should instantly recognize — to 66 of the 75 on the district’s third grade list.

“I want to be able to read chapter books, and I want to read big old dictionaries!” the boy said after a one-on-one tutoring session that had him working on what sounds letters make when together, like “sp,” and “sn.”

Then, midway through the school year, the child stopped staying after school. Evans said his student lost interest; without a parent’s nudging, there is only so much he can do.

Earlier in the year, the child’s mother had described pandemic remote learning as fraught. The family had internet connection issues, and it was difficult to schedule school sessions around her work as a nursing home aide.

“I have a younger daughter at home and it was just a mess. She’s screaming. It was just a whole thing,” she said by phone.

When the tutoring stopped, she did not respond to follow-up calls or texts.

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SHOWING LEARNERS ‘THERE’S A CONCERN FOR YOU’

Halfway through the school year, a new set of assessments suggests Evans’ strategy is, overall, working. He loads results into an Excel spreadsheet which, combined with his own running charts, lets him evaluate growth from September to January and regroup students based on where they need help most.

“Thank God for paper and sticky notes,” Evans says.

What he saw in the charts arrayed in front of him was encouraging. Fifteen of his students had met or exceeded their scoring goals for this round of tests. Several who are receiving targeted help showed the biggest gains.

Ke’Arrah leapfrogged from a bottom level to the upper middle — to the relief of her mother, whose decision to have her daughter repeat third grade appears to be paying off.

“I know it’s going to be embarrassing when she gets older: `Oh, you’re a grade behind,’” Martin said. “But she’s going to have that knowledge.”

Despite the students’ progress, even some who see another big jump by the final assessments in May could finish behind typical third-graders. Evans has arranged for extra services for next year for three of his neediest students, including the boy he was tutoring after hours. But they will be far enough along to move on to fourth grade.

For the first time in his seven years teaching third grade, everyone improved, Evans says. “I don’t know if it’s the programs we’re using or if it’s the fact that everybody is more invested in it right now.”

Maybe, he said, having so many students behind has made everyone in the building more invested in catching them up — “making them aware, `You know what? There’s a concern for you.’”

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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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