This week, the Board of Regents awarded the inaugural Vice Chancellor Emerita Adelaide L. Sanford Scholarship to My Brother's Keeper (MBK) Fellow De'Andre Brown of Yonkers High School and Arleth Durand Mendoza of Brentwood High School, part of the MBK Community Network. The Board of Regents and Vice Chancellor Emerita Sanford recognized Brown and Durand Mendoza at this week's Board meeting.

The two scholarship winners also participated in a student panel moderated by Senegal Mabry, a Binghamton University student who serves on the National Advisory Council of the MBK Alliance. Additional panelists included Noah Moreno of Monticello CSD, David Armah of Yonkers Public Schools, and Kiara Ekeigwe of East Ramapo CSD. The remarkable students spoke eloquently about the challenges they have faced and about the opportunities they have had as a result of the MBK initiative. Congratulations to all the student panelists on their impressive accomplishments. They represented their schools and communities well.

The end of the school year will be here before we know it. Our Summer Reading at New York Libraries program is once again partnering with myON in 2019 to bring digital books to young readers via unlimited access to the myON by Renaissance digital library! The myON library has a collection of over 6,000 fiction and nonfiction ebooks geared toward children from birth to 12th grade, with recorded audio, text highlighting, and an embedded dictionary all included. 

Families can access the myON digital library from May 1 through September 30 with one simple statewide login. A mobile app is also available allowing up to 20 books to be downloaded and read while traveling or away from home. Discover "A Universe of Stories" at your library and online with myON!

The New York State Regents exams are also just around the corner, and students can prepare for them with Regents Review 2.0, a free service presented by New York's public broadcasters. Regents Review 2.0 includes specially prepared television episodes, online videos, and resources. The programs are also being broadcast on most New York State public television stations. Check with your local PBS station for dates and times.

Finally, as I have mentioned in previous letters, NYSED is developing a Parent Dashboard to increase transparency and make information about school performance and other school-level data easier for parents and the public to access.

To guide the work of developing the Parent Dashboard, NYSED is gathering feedback from parents and stakeholders. Please complete this five-minute survey and tell us how we can make the Parent Dashboard as useful as possible. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email us at [email protected].

Thank you for all you do to support strong family and community involvement in our schools.

 

Sincerely,

 

MaryEllen Elia

Commissioner