Funding for the new outdoor play space was secured with help from Fordham’s Center for Educational Partnerships, a part of the University’s Graduate School of Education. The center partnered with MS 331 beginning in 2015, providing administrative help and assisting with tasks such as funding requests. GSE graduate Serapha Cruz is the principal of MS 331, which shares the complex with an elementary school, PS 306X. 

Anita Batisti, Ph.D. associate dean and director of the Center for Educational Partnerships, said that one of Fordham’s mandates is to improve the wellness and well-being of students and the community. Studies have shown that clean, well-kept playground equipment helps students feel more connected to their community while promoting exercise and play.

“It really was a natural progression for us to do this,” Batisti said. 

“With our skills for raising money and helping to prepare proposals and bids, we were able to move this process along through the various funding sources.” 

Fordham President Tania Tetlow joined Batisti at the Oct. 25 ribbon-cutting ceremony for the 46,0000-square-foot play area. Also in attendance were GSE Acting Dean Ji Seon Lee, U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres; Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson; Councilmember Pierina Ana Sanchez, who helped secure funding for the project; and representatives from the Trust for Public Land and the Department of Environmental Protection, which oversaw the design and construction of the space.

When work on the $2.85 million project began in 2021, the space in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx was a cracked, crumbling stretch of asphalt. It now features a full basketball court, a volleyball court, game tables, an outdoor classroom, a gazebo, and play equipment for younger children. There is also fitness equipment for older students and community members, benches, a running track, and a turf field for soccer and football.

The center was recently awarded a $496,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide mental health awareness training to personnel serving public elementary schools in the Bronx. The goal is to help school staff learn the early signs of mental health disorders. Along with that, they will be able to provide referrals to external organizations that can provide consistent services to families.

“It’s about strengthening the connectivity of resources that are in the Bronx,” said Anita Batisti, Ph.D., associate dean at the GSE and director of the center.

“There are a lot of things going on, but everyone operates in silos, and we are trying to provide referrals to existing programs that the constituents can avail themselves of.”

The grant will last four years and each year serve eight elementary schools in the Bronx, conducting eight training sessions for 12 to 15 members of each school, such as the school’s staff psychologist, social worker, nurse, teachers, and school safety agents.

Dr. Kathleen Walsh, the center’s program coordinator said the sessions will begin in April.

“Say you’re a new guidance counselor in the school in the Bronx. You know your craft as a guidance counselor, but you don’t necessarily know all the resources available in the Bronx,” she said.

“So partnering with places like St. Barnabas Hospital, we’ll be able to say to them at these sessions, ‘If you see this sort of situation, and you need a person to refer to, here’s the place they could go.’ It will really help speed up the services that are given in a mental health situation.”

The center will focus its efforts on Bronx schools whose populations have higher mental health needs. The workshops will be specifically tailored to each school. Walsh noted as an example that one of the schools the center has worked with in the past suffered from the loss of community members to a fire; for them, consultants would emphasize access to trauma care.

This is the second major grant of this kind that the center has received recently. In 2021, the center was awarded a $580,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice—STOP School Violence Program to provide trauma-informed practices support to Bronx middle and high schools.

“It’s exciting that we have a part in it, certainly in a geographical area with a lot of need,” said Walsh.

“Everyone deserves good services. Who else but Fordham can do that?”

“That fact that the New York State Department of Education selected the Community Schools Technical Assistance Centers to coordinate and implement the CARES Act funding is recognition of the work the statewide centers are doing,” said Anita Vazquez Batisti, Ph.D., associate dean for educational partnerships and the executive director of the Graduate School of Education’s Center for Educational Partnerships, which is responsible for CS-TAC. “We welcome the opportunity to distribute this much-needed funding.” 

Fordham CS-TAC is one of three state-funded centers across New York that support community schools in a specific region; Fordham’s center has been responsible for more than 250 community schools across New York City’s five boroughs since the center was founded in 2018. 

Last spring, the federal government passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to provide quick and direct economic assistance for American employees, families, businesses, and industries. A portion of the federal funds allocated to New York were given to two of the state’s CS-TACs, which are now responsible for distributing them to areas that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.  

There are two phases for this 18-month initiative. In a few weeks, Fordham CS-TAC will invite community-based and faith-based organizations across New York City and on Long Island to apply for state CARES funds—which are separate from the city’s CARES funds—in grants ranging from $10,000 to $25,000; grants will be awarded in May or June. 

“Those organizations will be doing everything from providing mental health support to resolving food insecurity—all the different things that families are struggling with now,” said Kevin Coyne, Fordham’s CS-TAC director. “Ultimately, our goal is to connect schools and districts to organizations that already exist in their community so that this initiative can be sustainable.” 

This fall, Fordham CS-TAC will begin the second phase: professional development workshops that train teachers and staff on how to incorporate social and emotional learning into their lessons—and in turn, teach those strategies to their students. To create more inclusive workshops, Fordham CS-TAC will collaborate with professionals in special education, bilingual education, and family engagement. 

“There’s an urgent need to provide not only monetary and physical help, but also the ability to process the trauma that they’ve been experiencing,” Coyne said. “If we want our kids to return to school and be successful, we need to make sure that we’ve met their physical and emotional needs.”

Coyne said he hopes the $1.25 million in CARES funds will be put to good use. 

“It seems like a huge grant when you hear the number, but we’re going up against really significant headwinds in terms of hardship,” Coyne said. “The hope is that these CARES funds will help to resolve some of the inequities and negative impacts from the pandemic.” 

The grants—totaling $600,000— have been awarded by the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation. They will fund University efforts to provide mental health services to young people, help women asylum seekers, and teach English language learners.

Fordham Provost Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., said he’s grateful to the foundation for supporting the University’s work in the community.

“Fordham is deeply committed to applying its academic and programming expertise in partnership with organizations in the surrounding neighborhood to help address the most pressing needs within the Bronx community,” said Jacobs. “Through the generous support of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, Fordham is particularly focused on how it can assist those who have been most devastated by the interconnected crises of 2020.”

The Mother Cabrini Health Foundation provides grants to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable New Yorkers, aiming to eliminate barriers to care. The foundation’s values reflect Fordham’s mission and those of the organization’s namesake, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, who was known during her lifetime as a staunch advocate for immigrants, children, and the poor. The foundation originated from the 2018 sale of Fidelis Care, a nonprofit health insurer run by the bishops of the Catholic dioceses of New York.

Virtual Mental Health Services

The first grant of $300,000 will support a virtual mental health program to be run by the Graduate School of Education called Clinical Mental Health Services in the Bronx Community. It will use telemental health services to reach at-risk students between the ages of 8 and 16. The program responds to the pandemic-related suspension of existing programs that Fordham delivered at schools and community organizations before the crisis began. Four cohorts of 25 students in need of help—whether from stress related to gun violence, racism, the pandemic, or other factors—will be assessed and receive therapy. The program will offer two 45-minute intensive sessions per week for the students. Anita Vazquez Batisti, Ph.D., associate dean for educational partnerships at GSE, helped facilitate the grant and GSE psychology professor Eric Chen, Ph.D., will direct the program.

Helping Women Asylum Seekers

A second grant of $150,000 will be used to help women asylum seekers in New York City gain access to much-needed mental health care. According to a 2020 report from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, more than 79 million people are displaced worldwide, more than half are under the age of 18, and more than 50% are women. In 2019, there were 46,000 asylum seekers in New York City alone, said Associate Professor Marciana Popescu, Ph.D., of Graduate School of Social Services (GSS). Popescu has extensively researched the problem and will be directing the program with GSS Professor Dana Alonzo, Ph.D., a specialist in mental health treatment. With increasingly restrictive policies pushing asylum seekers to go underground, few attempt to access mental health care services, said Popescu. The pandemic has only made the situation worse—for asylum seekers in general, and for women in particular. The project aims to identify the challenges of these women and connect them to services that are within their rights.

English as a Second Language

An additional $150,000 will go toward expanding the Institute of American Language and Culture’s Community English as a Second Language Program (CESL). That grant follows a $116,000 grant awarded by the foundation in 2019. The program provides free ESL instruction primarily to adults in the Bronx in partnership with churches and other community organizations. The CESL program began in 2018 with financial support from the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, which has annually renewed funding, scoring the program’s attendance, educational gains, and program management as “above standard.” The Cabrini grant will help the initiative continue to grow. CESL serves more than 300 students and hopes to serve at least 500 a year by 2023.  Institute director James Stabler-Havener will continue to direct the program with Jesús Aceves-Loza, who serves as the institute’s advisor for Latin America.  In spite of the pandemic this year, students continued learning and instructors continued to teach virtually via apps and cell phones. In the coming year, the group plans to build on existing partnerships with community organizations and the city to offer citizenship courses as well. The growing initiative will also provide internship opportunities to underrepresented students at the University.

Last summer, the New York State Department of Education awarded Fordham GSE a contract to establish a center that will work with existing community schools, K-12, to improve their services and help other New York City public schools transition to community schools. Last November, it officially opened and hit the ground running.  

“We are providing webinars and citywide and borough-wide workshops to build the capacity of the existing schools and work with other public schools that are considering the Community Schools strategy,” said Anita Vazquez Batisti, Ph.D., GSE associate dean and director of the Center for Educational Partnerships.

Fordham was awarded a five-year, $1.6 million state contract to establish the Technical Assistance Center for the New York City region, home to more than a million students. New York City is one of three regions, and Fordham will work collaboratively with the other two centers in New York State.

What distinguishes community schools from other public schools is that they heavily collaborate with their surrounding community in specified ways. They partner with community organizations and secure resources for after-school programs, school-based health clinics that can provide free vision screening, and adult education programs for parents, Batisti said.

“There are some schools, in certain areas, where parents have better access, where parents pay for tutoring, Suzuki violin, or karate lessons. But not all parents can do this,” Batisti explained. “The community schools give access. It’s special funding—and the services are free [to students’ families].”

It takes time for a traditional school to transform into a community school, said Michael Pizzingrillo, director of the new Technical Assistance Center at Fordham. One of the first things that a potential school completes is an asset/needs assessment—an inventory of what they have and what they’ll need on an annual basis.

“Sometimes schools can be challenged in finding help,” he said. “They may need guidance from those who have an understanding of the grand scheme of what resources the five boroughs can provide.”

The University is already partnered with two community schools in the Bronx: MS 331 and PS 85. Some of the issues that community schools face are evident at these schools, where challenges range from high absenteeism to a paucity of parent engagement.

“Fordham can definitely help,” said Bruce Wallach, Fordham’s Community School director at MS 331. “Training parents, helping individuals who want to work, but for various reasons aren’t able to.”

For the next five years, Fordham’s Graduate School of Education will remain at the forefront of assistance for New York City’s community schools through this state-contracted center, he said.

“The community school is at the heart of Fordham’s mission because it recognizes the importance of addressing the whole person,” Pizzingrillo said. “Fordham [now]has this Technical Assistance Center, and can deliver for thousands of New York City public school kids.”

Batisti, associate dean and executive director at the Center for Educational Partnerships, has been spearheading coordination between the GSE and the New York City schools since 2006, when she was tapped by Dean Emeritus James Hennessy to create a center that would be a bridge between academia and working teachers.

For her efforts, Batisti was awarded this past academic year with the Fordham President’s Meritorious Service award. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. issued a proclamation recognizing her work, and also declared Nov. 16 to be “The Center of Educational Partnerships Day.”

Although the New York City educational landscape has changed much in the past 10 years, Batisti said the center’s core goal—to deliver applied research to schools—has never wavered. The center does this by training teachers in literacy, math and science, and social studies; supervising a regional bilingual education resource network; and helping implement educational reforms.

That last charge of educational reform has been very important, she said, as New York City schools experienced a shift when Bill de Blasio succeeded Michael Bloomberg as mayor, and Carmen Farina took over for Dennis Walcott as chancellor. Under Bloomberg, school principals were encouraged to identify with CEOs and contract  to help schools secure individual services, many of which Batisti’s center offered. Under the current system, that Partnership Support Organization model has been replaced by more comprehensive partnerships with low performing schools, focusing on the whole child. The center is currently partnered with three schools in the Bronx.

“The mandate that Dean Emeritus Hennessy gave me was, create a center to go into schools and do more than what we’re doing now,” she said. “We wanted GSE much more involved at all levels of school life in schools throughout the city and throughout the metropolitan area. I think we’ve done that with the initiatives we’ve implemented, and the services we’ve provided.”

The center has brokered agreements with groups like Mentoring in Medicine at Montefiore Hospital, which sends pre-med students into Fordham community schools to conduct science workshops, and Footprintz, which recruits former college basketball players to teach basketball at the schools. Footprintz has been successful in boosting attendance at schools by scheduling “zero period” sessions at 7:30 a.m., before school officially opens.

“I never thought I’d be negotiating a memorandum of understanding with an almost-NBA player. We’ve really broadened our circle, and that’s been quite an undertaking with the community concept, because the focus is on the whole child, which includes mental health,” she said.

“I’m very proud of who we’ve brought into the schools because we all worked as a team, and our goal is the same.”

Closing the gap between schools that are resource rich and those that are not is a big priority for the center. For the last three years, Batisti has recruited Fordham undergraduates to tutor elementary, middle, and high students in STEM subjects on Saturday mornings. The center also alerts schools when opportunities arise; for example, when New York Botanical Garden is giving away 150 tickets to its annual holiday train show. When the center was partnered with schools under the Bloomberg administration, it was instrumental in helping its network of all 35 schools procure white boards, as well as obtain several grants.

The intense focus on nitty-gritty, on-the-ground details is key, as is the ability to obtain outside funding, Batisti said. Over the past 10 years, the center has raised over $91 million in both grants and earned income.

Batisti, a native New Yorker who still at the elementary school she attended (PS 183 on Manhattan’s Upper East Side), would like to expand the center’s efforts nationally and internationally.  In July, she will travel to Soria, Spain for the III International Colloquium on Languages, Cultures, Identity in School and Society. There, she and Center for Educational Partnership Assistant Director Nancy Rosario Rodriguez will present “Developing Leadership for the Changing Demographics: The Multicultural Education Teacher Leadership Academy Model (METLA).”

As schools in the United States and Europe cope with increases in student populations that have different language needs, and different socioeconomic statuses, Batisti said that working in New York City has taught the center’s staff how to thrive in a fast-paced environment where resources are scarce.

“It’s not impossible but it’s become even more challenging, and you have to keep thinking  differently,” she said. “You can’t just keep doing the same thing if it doesn’t work.”

The office’s modest size and relative calm are deceptive, however. The center actually has nearly 80 employees who provide outreach across New York City—and Batisti is at the helm. In addition to serving as associate dean at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), Batisti is the founding director of the center and CEO of the center’s Partnership Support Organization (PSO). The organization is one of only two housed in a New York City university and it provides technical assistance and support to 35 public schools serving more than 19,000 students.

A veteran educator, Batisti is a former administrator in the city’s public school system and has been an adjunct professor at Fordham for 25 years. She recently turned her sights toward early childhood education, a topic that has drawn national attention in the year since President Obama called for high-quality preschool for every child in America. The need for pre-kindergarten education has been proven, Batisti said; satisfying that need in the form of free, full-day, universal pre-K is another challenge entirely.

Nevertheless, Batisti is optimistic that universal pre-K can become a reality, beginning here in New York. This year, GSE and the Center for Educational Partnerships are spearheading a research-based pilot program focusing on early childhood literacy—an initiative that can help bolster the city’s vigorous efforts to provide pre-K for every 4-year-old in New York City.

Why is pre-K so important for children?

AB: In 2000, the U.S. Department of Education convened a National Reading Panel to evaluate the best ways to teach children to read. One of the recommendations was to give young children greater access to school. This gave way to many pre-K classes and all-day kindergartens. As a result, because children were going to school earlier, people felt their reading needs were being addressed. But then the question is: What are kids getting by going to school at younger ages? It’s easy to provide more access, but the panel’s other recommendations, such as strategies for teaching vocabulary and reading comprehension, were harder to implement.

I’m happy that Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Fariña are focusing on early childhood, especially for students in high-needs situations. Because the problem is that by the time many of these students reach kindergarten, they have an almost 30 million-word gap [compared to their peers]. If this gap isn’t addressed as early as possible, it becomes harder and harder for them to catch up. Coming in to school with a rich vocabulary is very important both for comprehension and for higher-order thinking and questioning.

How is GSE responding to this national need?

AB: In June, the center received a planning grant from the Brooke Astor Foundation to devise early childhood reading strategies. We’ve selected three high-needs elementary schools that our PSO works with—one each in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx—in which we’re going pilot a program designed by GSE faculty members Arlene Moliterno, Lynn Huber, Chun Zhang, and Fran Blumberg. Starting in October, staff developers who are licensed in early childhood literacy will offer 38 days of in-classroom coaching to five teachers at each school. The idea is to provide the teachers with strategies for teaching vocabulary and comprehension, because if the teachers teach better, the students will do better.

What are your expectations for this project?

AB: If this works, we will apply for an implementation grant, which can run for up to three years and allow us to work with many more schools. Right now, we are using this planning grant to fine-tune and pilot the strategies that we’ve developed. If we get this right, I know Fordham will be able to replicate it. The New York City school system is the largest in the nation, with about 1,600 schools and 1.1 million students. So if an initiative like this will work here, it will work anywhere. I think Fordham will be able to come out with a solid model on early childhood vocabulary strategies that any pre-K program will be able to adapt and learn from.

What are GSE and the Center for Educational Partnerships doing to support parochial schools?

AB: The parochial schools in Brooklyn and Queens have large numbers of English-language learners, including newly arrived immigrant students. We recently received a grant from the diocese for a multiethnic teacher leadership program, which will allow a cohort of parochial school teachers to get a master’s in administration at GSE and special training in multi-ethnic and bilingual education. We are beginning an exciting collaboration between the Diocese of Brooklyn and the GSE’s Center for Catholic School Leadership and Faith-Based Education.

The Graduate School of Education (GSE) was a major sponsor of the two-day conference that brought together thinkers, practitioners and more than 10,000 educators at the New York Hilton in Manhattan.

Meyers discussed his highly acclaimed young adult novels, such as Monster (HarperCollins, 1999), winner of the 2000 Coretta Scott King Author Award, andLockdown (Amistad, 2010). He read an excerpt fromKick (HarperTeen, 2011), which he co-wrote with teenage author Ross Workman.

“Teachers tell me kids are reluctant to read books, yet they will read my books,” he said. “I think it’s because I’ve given them a voice. I went to Stuyvesant High School and dropped out twice. I couldn’t tell teachers what was going on in my life—that my mother was an alcoholic and my family was dysfunctional.”

Myers, who speaks frequently at youth prisons, said that his books resonate with inmates.

“A young prisoner once told me that he has felt the way my characters have felt,” he said.

Growing up in Harlem, Myers said, all he was given to read were works by British writers.

“When I began writing as a child, I’d write ‘Ode to a Fire Hydrant.’ There was something there, but it wasn’t me,” he said, adding that the lack of diversity in literature forced him to reject a lot of himself in his early years.

“I didn’t want to be black or a Harlemite anymore because those things weren’t found in the books I was given to read,” he said. “But when I read James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues, it’s as if it gave me permission to write about black life. I knew I enjoyed writing, but I couldn’t write about my own life before then.”

Chun Zhang, Ph.D, was among a handful of Fordham faculty and administrators to present workshops at the two-day event. Photo by Bruce Gilbert

Myers said he knew he had connected with readers when he gave a talk at a school and a young African-American girl was adamant that he wrote a character wrong.

“She kept saying [the character]wouldn’t do that and I said, ‘I’m onto something here,’” he said.

Myers was blunt about the responsibility of adults in urban areas to push education in general and literacy in particular.

“Education is real freedom,” he said. “We need people publicly addressing this, saying, ‘Not only should you do this; you must do this. This is your future.’”

The Celebration of Teaching and Learning was hosted by public television stations Thirteen/WNET and WLIW 21, among other supporters. Headline speakers included Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, Mehmet Oz, M.D., host of the “Dr. Oz Show” and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Several members of the GSE faculty and administration presented workshops, including:

• Vincent C. Alfonso, Ph.D., professor and associate dean of GSE, on “Assessment of Young Children: Special Considerations for Diverse and Underserved Populations;”

• Carlos R. McRay, Ed.D., associate professor, on “Cultural Collision and Collusion: Reflections on Hip-Hop Culture, Values and Schools;”

• Anita Batisti, Ph.D., associate dean and director of GSE’s Center for Educational Partnerships; Marge Struk, network leader for Fordham’s Partnership Support Organization (PSO); and Joseph Porzio, project associate for PSO, on “What We Should Teach and Why: The Common Core Standards;”

• Amelio D’Onofrio, Ph.D., clinical professor and director of the Psychological Services Institute on “Learning to Love the Bully: Breaking the Cycle of Violence,” and

• Chun Zhang, Ph.D., professor, on “Documenting the Impact of Teacher Candidates’ on Student Behavior and Learning.”

Though he no longer lives in Harlem, Myers said he visits the ever-evolving neighborhood at least once a month.

“People moving into the million-dollar brownstones [in Harlem]are not connecting with that kid whose father is in Green Haven [Correctional Facility] and whose mother on welfare,” he said.

“The Kennedys gave physical fitness a shot in the arm. You’d see pictures of them throwing around a football. We need someone—an Obama, anyone—saying to the kids in these communities, ‘Put a book in your hand,’” Myers said.

The center, funded by a five-year, $675,000 grant from the state of New York, will serve as a central repository of information for both aspiring bilingual school psychologists and those currently working in the system. It is estimated that the New York City school system has 200 vacancies for school psychologists who speak both English and Spanish. In addition to the 14-member staff in the Bronx, the center will also feature a website that will direct psychology students to English as a second language and certification programs throughout the city, including those offered by colleges and universities other than Fordham.

“We’re very pleased at that fact that we’re regarded in such esteem, that we advertise equally for everyone, but we’re the hub,” said Anita Batisti, Ph.D., associate dean of the GSE’s Center for Educational Partnerships. “The center is housed at Fordham, but we’re advocating for the profession.”

More than 100 educators, policymakers and politicians celebrated the grand opening of the Graduate School of Education’s Center for Educational Partnerships (CEP) in October. The $7 million center expands Fordham’s role in providing educational services to metropolitan-area teachers and students.

“This is a great step forward for the Graduate School of Education, which is, and always has been, a service school and a partner school,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “This is what Fordham is about—teaching teachers, and helping them set hearts on fire in their students, so that a greater city and a greater nation can be built.”

Father McShane praised James J. Hennessy, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Education, as the genius behind the initial vision of the Center and its development. Since January 2006, Hennessy and Anita Batisti, Ph.D., associate dean for partnerships, have shaped the center into a five-part program meeting the needs of school children through grassroots outreach on several levels. Shelia Evans Tranumn, associate commissioner, New York State Department of Education, declared the Graduate School of Education a partner with the state.

CEP’s current programs include New York State Bilingual Education Centers (BETACs) at the Rose Hill and Tarrytown campuses; scholarships for shortage areas, a program in

partnership with the New York City Department of Education offering 100 students full scholarships at Fordham in the short-staffed areas of adolescent biology and adolescent mathematics; teacher coaching in math and literacy for K-12 students; and Improving Literacy Through Libraries, a program in the Yonkers Public Schools and Yonkers public libraries (in partnership with Sirius Thinking, Ltd.), to provide family literacy workshops.

In addition, CEP is developing three new programs: a partnership with the Boston-based Schoolworks to provide professional development for charter schools; a special education initiative; and a partnership with Mentoring USA to initiate a volunteer mentoring program with Fordham students and K-12 students. All programs are under the direction of Batisti, andinclude faculty participation.

– Janet Sassi

The New York State Education Department has awarded Fordham University’s Graduate School of Education $4.5 million in contracts for two Bilingual Education Technical Assistance Centers (BETACs) to serve more than 51,300 students in grades K-12 in the Bronx and Lower Hudson Valley. The highly competitive awards each total $2.25 million over a five-year period.BETACs were established by the New York State Education Department to assist districts and schools in developing high quality educational programs to help English Language Learners (ELL) or Limited English Proficiency (LEP) students meet New York state’s learning standards.

The Bronx center, on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, will serve more than 36,000 LEP students (primarily Spanish speakers), at every K-12 school in the Bronx; 326 schools across six districts. The Lower Hudson Valley center, on the University’s Tarrytown campus, will serve more than 15,000 students at K-12 schools in Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam Counties. The majority of students to be served by the Lower Hudson Valley center are Spanish speakers, followed by Arabic speakers, attending 340 schools in 62 districts.

Both centers opened on July 1, as part of the new Center for Educational Partnerships headed by Anita Batisti, Ph.D., associate dean, Graduate School of Education. Under the direction of Angela Carrasquillo, Ph.D., professor of graduate education, and a recognized authority in ELL education, the centers provide technical assistance, information and professional development for educators and parents of ELL students. Each center has a full-time director, two resource specialists and a variety of consultants to provide the instruction necessary to boost ELL student performance, especially in districts identified as needing improvement under New York state’s accountability system.