4/4/09

A tear for FRHS




Tri-O's Oddities, observations, and opinions
By Herb Kandel


Chances are folks hereabout have likely never heard of Rockaway Beach in New York City. That said, they wouldn't know about Far Rockaway High School either. This should no longer be the case in weeks to come. FRHS which served the area from ninth through twelfth grades will be getting national attention by dint of only a single past graduate.
Rockaway Beach is a nine mile peninsula barrier island to the south of the borough of Queens. It is similar to Alabama’s Gulf Shores/Orange Beach (fondly called the “Redneck Riviera”) in that it has a large oceanfront and is sometimes referred to as the “ Irish Riviera” (because of a high population of Irish-Americans). Another parallel is that the locals are small in number in comparison to the crowds that swell it during the summer months. It’s sands are not the fine sugar white quartz kind of Pleasure Island but rather more coarse and tan/gray in color This is place where I was born and grew up.
Several miles to the east of Rockaway Beach is the town of Far Rockaway and FRHS. I am an alumnus of the school. It is for that reason only that I, along with fellow graduates, have received several e-mails pertaining to it. One was from the PBS series FRONTLINE for the purpose of a documentary film. The other was from a writer for Harper Collins Publishing. Both sought any background of the school during the times we attended and in particular any memories we might have of Bernard Madoff.
Let me hastily state I never met the man. It seems my time there preceded his by several years. He met his future wife, Ruth Alpern there. I've since learned that he was on the swimming team and she was a cheerleader.
About two score and seven years ago I said goodbye to that northern sandy beach where the Atlantic laps the shore. Inevitably, just as time takes its toll on the body, changes overcame FRHS, all to it‘S detriment. The school, after 110 years, is being phased out by the Department of Education and renamed The Far Rockaway Educational Campus. In the future it will consist of up to four small specialized schools.
Some say it’s closing is deserved. Only 30% of the students graduated in a five-year period and 34% barely met standards on standardized tests. A recent survey reported “only 23 percent of the students, teachers and parents who responded believed that there was a culture of safety and respect in the building.” In other words it has become a virtual ‘blackboard jungle’. According to one report from an educator who asked anonymity for obvious reasons, “They haven't graduated anybody but felons for years,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had called it,in 2004, one of the 12 most dangerous schools in the city.
The downturn probably got it’s start when Board of Education initiated magnet schools which replaced the zoned schools thus leaving students at the school who could not matriculate elsewhere. Those who could avoid going there sought other places. The student population shrunk from more than 2000 in the 1950’s and 1960’s to just over 800 recently. This impaired situation was not always the case. There was a time when FRHS was an academic and athletic showcase. They had won city football and baseball championships on several occasions. Included among the alums are Nobel Prize laureates Richard Feynman (Physics-1965), Baruch Bloomberg (Medicine-1976), and Burton Richter (Physics-1976). There is also financier Carl Icahn, Psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers, basketball great Nancy Lieberman, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, John Warren former member of the New York Kniks, comic actor Stubby Kaye, and singer Mary J Blige.
Many former grads are saddened that this school, as reported by School Library Journal “needs metal detectors at every entrance, video surveillance cameras, and 16 uniformed guards employed by the New York Police Department patrolling its halls. And it’s still the kind of school that has its own health and dental clinic because parents can't or don't provide such basic needs for their kids.”. However, we past alumnae are grateful that we attended at the time we did. We also take pride in the fact that up to 1976 FRHS was the only high school in the U.S. To have produced three Nobel Prize laureates ( Since then four New York City and one Urbana, IL high school has had three or more Nobel recipients).
Hey, with three Nobel winners and one world’s master criminal -------three out of four ain't bad for an “out in the boondocks” beach town!

http://www.baldwincountynow.com/articles/2009/04/06/columnists/doc49d66e4c0f8f6567393283.txt