Good Tuesday morning.
National Teacher Appreciation Week is underway. It kicked off yesterday with National Teacher Appreciation Day, which was launched in the mid-1980s to honor the individuals who dedicate their professional lives to educating the next generation.
It actually started back in the 1950s, thanks to then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who convinced Congress that setting aside a full day dedicated to honoring teachers would be a great idea. She memorably said the following, which pretty much sums it all up:
“I have always felt that we did not give an honorable enough place in our communities to the teachers. Next to parents they are the most important people in our communities. It is quite impossible to give teachers monetary compensation alone that will repay for their devotion to the job and the love that must go to each and every child. But I think we could compensate a little more adequately the teachers in our communities if we were conscious of their importance.”
That day used to be observed in March. But in 1985, the National PTA voted to establish Teacher Appreciation Week in the first full week of May, and moved National Teacher Day so it lined up accordingly.
Last week, the White House issued a proclamation in praise of teachers – something particularly close to the heart of the Biden administration, given the first lady’s long career as a community college professor.
As the proclamation rightly notes, we have always asked a lot from our teachers, and the amount they are expected to take on just keeps growing.
From mental health challenges to guns in school to online learning, technological advancements (or lack thereof, depending on what district, state, and community you’re in), and curriculum changes, a rise in absenteeism, bullying, politics, etc. and so on, teachers are constantly having to pivot and adapt.
And, as Eleanor rightly said, we don’t pay teachers nearly enough. Sure, they get summers off (those who aren’t teaching summer school or otherwise engaged in planning for the upcoming year), but honestly, it’s a tough job – just as draining as it is rewarding.
No wonder a growing number of teachers are planning to leave the profession, as fewer and fewer enter the classroom to begin with. In New York alone, officials estimate that 180,000 teachers will be needed over the next decade – even as the birth rate slows, and outward migration trends continue.
And New York is not alone. The national teacher shortage has only gotten worse since pandemic burnout forced many individuals to take early retirement or simply switch career tracks. And, according to an Economic Policy Institute Report, vacancy rates are higher among schools where kids of color make up the majority of the student body and/or in high-poverty areas.
A whole host of initiatives and programs are underway to try to address the teacher shortage. Even the United Nations has gotten in on the action. In the meantime, though, it might be worth thinking about what you can do on the local level – and I’m not talking about some grand advocacy here, but rather just taking a minute to say “thanks” to your local teachers and let them know you appreciate what they’re doing.
A little recognition goes a long way. And a pay raise wouldn’t hurt, either.
An amazing day is on tap, weather-wise. It will be mostly sunny today with temperatures reaching into the high 70s (!) Get that Vitamin D while you can, because it won’t last.
In the headlines…
Israel has begun its military operation into Rafah after rejecting Hamas’ cease-fire claim as a deception. Hamas said it told Egyptian and Qatari negotiators that it approved a cease-fire proposal to halt the war in Gaza.
Israel’s military today said it had seized control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, a vital entry point for aid to Gaza on the Egyptian border.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said that while the new proposal failed to meet Israel’s demands, it would still send a working-level delegation to talks in hopes of reaching an acceptable deal. Qatar also said it would send a delegation for the talks, in Cairo.
Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that the proposal Hamas was now willing to accept included three phases, of 42 days each, and stressed that its main goal was a permanent cease-fire.
President Biden had urgently warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against launching an offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah as the divide between the two leaders continues to grow along with the mounting Palestinian death toll.
Biden met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II as the two leaders “discussed the latest developments in Gaza and affirmed their commitment to work together towards an enduring end to the crisis,” the White House said.
The Biden administration last week put a hold on a shipment of U.S.-made ammunition to Israel, two Israeli officials told Axios.
Recent polls show young voters are more likely to sympathize with Palestinians in the conflict, but few of them rank the Israel-Hamas war among their top issues in the 2024 election. Like other voters, young people often put economic concerns atop the list.
Biden is facing more critical moments this week that will test his fraught relationship with his base over Israel’s war in Gaza and potentially widen the partisan split about the Jewish state that has been building for years.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont will be Biden’s most powerful emissary to progressives and younger voters, which will test the senator’s pull with the sectors of the Democratic Party most disillusioned with the president and his policies – especially on Gaza.
Anti-Israel protesters vandalized a World War I memorial in Central Park and burned an American flag after more than 1,000 marchers was blocked by cops from reaching the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the star-studded Met Gala was in full swing.
Biden recognized the U.S. Military Academy with the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy for besting other service academies in football.
The White House had a terse message for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who suggested one of President Joe Biden’s pets should suffer the same fate as the dog she admitted shooting to death.
The jury in Trump’s hush money trial got a look for the first time at the documents at the center of the charges he faces — the series of $35,000 checks, which prosecutors said were hush money reimbursements, bearing Trump’s black Sharpie signature.
Trump made the payment to his longtime fixer, Michael Cohen, reimbursing him for a $130,000 hush-money payoff to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, prosecutors say. Before Trump repaid Cohen, prosecutors say, he orchestrated a scheme to falsify the records.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan, the presiding judge in the case, announced he had held Trump in contempt of court for a second time and again threatened him with potential jail time if he continues to violate the limited gag order.
Former Georgia Republican Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan who was pressured by Trump to change the results of the 2020 election announced that he’ll be instead voting for Biden in this year’s election.
The Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit whose funding skyrocketed after it became a nerve center for Trump’s allies in D.C., has paid at least $3.2 million since the start of 2021 to corporations led by its own leaders or their relatives, records show.
In its most recent tax filings, the nonprofit’s three highest-paid contractors were all connected to insiders.
Columbia University canceled its school-wide commencement ceremony after weeks of disruptive and violent anti-Israel protests that brought campus life to a halt, and will instead hold “smaller-scale, school-based celebrations.
Thirteen federal judges announced that they will no longer hire Columbia University grads as law clerks because of the “virulent spread of antisemitism” on the troubled Ivy League campus.
The head of a radical activist group who urged anti-Israel protesters at Columbia University to channel the deadly Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 is a career agitator who spent “years” in Cuba.
More demonstrators were arrested yesterday as classes resumed at the University of California, Los Angeles, the site of some of the tensest moments during a wave of student activism at U.S. universities over the war in Gaza.
Tensions were rising at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology yesterday after pro-Palestinian demonstrators resisted an order from the school to clear their encampment, leading to some skirmishes between the protesters and the police.
Police officers in riot gear arrested dozens of protesters and began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, San Diego yesterday in the first sweep by law enforcement at the campus since the demonstration began last week.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said she “misspoke” and regrets it when she said at an event yesterday that “right now we have young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don’t even know what the word ‘computer’ is.”
Bronx politicians ripped Hochul, though Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who called her words “inartful and hurtful,” also added: “I don’t believe that is where her heart is; I firmly believe she wants to see all of our students excel.”
“Of course Black children in the Bronx know what computers are — the problem is that they too often lack access to the technology needed to get on track to high-paying jobs in emerging industries like AI,” Hochul later said in a statement.
Conservative forces – including former Rep. Lee Zeldin – are hoping the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposition on the November ballot, will help sway voters away from the Democratic Party as they try to keep the GOP gains in Long Island and the suburbs.
Advocates pushing for the passage of a “bigger, better” bottle bill were back at the Capitol this week with bags of beverage containers in tow asking lawmakers to pass the legislation before their session ends in a month.
The state Education Department is embracing the idea of new graduation requirements and plans to release a vision for what it is hinting will be big changes next month.
Attorney General Letitia James is suing an Ohio-based anti-abortion group — and 11 affiliated crisis pregnancy centers in New York — accusing the providers of misleading the public about the safety and efficacy of so-called abortion pill reversal drugs.
Prospective state employees at nearly all state agencies would see key civil service examination requirements waived if they want to fill thousands of positions across New York government under an incoming expansion of an emergency hiring program.
Tech leader Douglas Grose has rejoined the board of NY CREATES, the nonprofit that oversees Albany Nanotech, after spending two years working on plans to create a national computer chip research lab with the possibility of Albany as its headquarters.
Mayor Eric Adams will travel to Italy this week — where he’s expected to meet with Pope Francis. Adams will make a pit stop in Vatican City and then return to the Big Apple on Monday.
It is the first known in-person meeting between Adams and the Pope.
Adams announced that downtown Manhattan’s iconic waterfront Battery Park will be elevated 5 feet higher as part of the city’s ongoing waterfront resiliency efforts.
Two weeks after Adams unveiled his executive budget proposal, the City Council began a second round of oversight hearings on the $112 billion spending plan for fiscal year 2025, kicking things off by delving into the Department of Social Services.
Adams’ administration is spending $250,000 of city money to sponsor an upcoming tech conference whose organizer recently worked for Frank Carone, Adams’ political fixer and former chief of staff.
City public schools, vexed by racial segregation and a new state law mandating smaller classes, could find an answer in the recent “successful” merger of two Brooklyn schools, according to a new report from the city comptroller and New York Appleseed.
Many psychiatric patients at New York City’s public hospitals are cooped up during their stays with no opportunity to go outside, sometimes for weeks or months at a time, according to a new report by a state watchdog agency and a nonprofit legal group.
Ten days after a federal judge denied her request for a sentence reduction, Seagram’s heiress and longtime NXIVM loyalist Clare Bronfman was released from prison and moved to a halfway house or “community confinement” in New York City.
A Mohawk Valley judge arrested last summer in a cocaine trafficking investigation resigned after pleading guilty last month to a felony drug sales charge, according to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.
Alexa Kropf, 18, the University at Albany student hospitalized with grave injuries since she was hit by a dirt bike last month, is out of a coma and off a ventilator, her father said.
A 16-year-old was charged with first-degree arson, a felony, for allegedly starting a fire April 23 in a Bethlehem High School bathroom while classes were in session.
After a chaotic weekend in which an un-renewed liquor license led to losses totaling upward of $70,000 following the cancellation of its Kentucky Derby party on Saturday, the restaurant 15 Church was pouring drinks again yesterday evening.
Several Albany County legislators have proposed a new law that would limit what anti-abortion clinics, or crisis pregnancy centers, could say in advertisements and to their clients.
Michael McLaughlin, Jr., who was sworn in four months ago as Albany County’s deputy county executive, was arrested by State Police last week on charges of driving while intoxicated after he was pulled over for allegedly drifting out of his lane, records show.
Anna Wintour had one regret ahead of last night’s 2024 Met Gala. The Vogue magazine chief, who has presided over the star-studded fashion fete since 1995, apologized for any “confusion” over the theme of this year’s event.
The Pulitzer Prizes were awarded at Columbia University yesterday, honoring the achievements in journalism, books, music and drama.
Celebrities stunned last night at the Met Gala in New York City in earthen colors inspired by concepts like decay and fairytales.
The official dress code was “The Garden of Time,” which takes its title from a 1962 short story written by British author J. G. Ballard, set (as its title suggests) in a garden filled with translucent, time-manipulating flowers.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
