CITYWIDE

UFT CALLS IN INDEPENDENT ARBITER FOR NEGOTIATIONS WITH CITY The teachers union called on independent state arbiters yesterday to step in on contract negotiations between the city and its teachers.

“If I thought further discussions with the city and the DOE would help reach the goal of a contract, I would be at it 24/7,” the union president, Randi Weingarten, said at a news conference. “But negotiations have to be a two-way street – a matter of give and take, not take and take.”

The teachers contract ran out 18 months ago, and Ms. Weingarten blamed the problems on Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who she said hasn’t been directly involved in the negotiations. While she wouldn’t say the mayor should fire Mr. Klein, she said it seems the Bloomberg administration has shifted its position repeatedly based on his advice. Even as Ms. Weingarten told reporters the negotiations had “collapsed,” the mayor was saying talks were continuing.

“Any time anybody wants to talk, Jim Hanley is under express instructions from me to talk whenever we can,” he said at a news conference, referring to the city’s commissioner of labor relations.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

NEW GUIDELINES PROPOSED FOR CLASSIFYING DANGEROUS SCHOOLS Under existing state standards, no school in New York classifies as “persistently dangerous” – but that could change if the State Education Department implements the stricter standards it recommended yesterday to the governor and Legislature.

Currently, only gun-related incidents can get schools classified as persistently dangerous, a status that qualifies students to transfer to safer schools under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The state wants to change that so that drug and alcohol offenses, sexual offenses, personal injury and intimidations including assault, criminal harassment, intimidation, harassment, bullying, and kidnapping are also included. If more schools statewide are designated as persistently dangerous with the new standards, more students will be eligible for NCLB transfers.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

ENVIRONMENTAL COMMISSIONER DEFENDS AGENCY The acting commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, David Tweedy, defended his agency yesterday against recent reports that it violated federal rules by reporting incomplete information about lead levels in the city’s water supply and silencing employees when they tried to report concerns. Mr. Tweedy testified at a City Council hearing that the department was aggressively implementing programs to “detect and prevent” violations after it pleaded guilty three years ago to allowing contaminants into the city’s water supply. The chairman of the council’s Environmental Protection Committee, James Gennaro, said it was “extremely troubling” that the department was not acting with more urgency and said the agency needed to change its culture.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

BRONX

MAYOR ANNOUNCES FOUR NEW SCHOOLS TO BE BUILT IN THE BRONX Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein unveiled a plan yesterday to construct a campus of four secondary schools in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx. The new $129 million complex will accommodate approximately 2,000 students in the small schools, which would serve students in grades 6-12 and 9-12, as well as a charter school. “High school overcrowding is a problem throughout the five boroughs, but in the Bronx, the rate of overcrowding is sharply higher than it is in the city as a whole,” said Mr. Bloomberg. “These schools will give thousands of students and parents in this community the chance to have the kind of rigorous and satisfying education that every neighborhood deserves.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

MANHATTAN

COURT ALLOWS LAWSUITS FROM 1993 WTC BOMBING More than 175 lawsuits against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey arising from the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center can go to trial, a state appeals court in Manhattan ruled yesterday. A five-judge panel of the State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division affirmed a lower court ruling issued in January by Justice Stanley Sklar. In his decision, Judge Sklar rejected the PA’s claim that the agency, operated by New York and New Jersey under a bistate compact, had immunity and that the bombing was unforeseeable.

– Associated Press

REPORT: COSTS OF TEMPORARY PATH TRAIN STATION JUSTIFIED The $473.9 million it cost to build a temporary PATH station at the World Trade Center site was justified, and the contracts were handled properly, according to an audit by State Comptroller Alan Hevesi released yesterday. The audit was prompted by press reports charging cost overruns, and by a $17 million lawsuit filed by a subcontractor on the project claiming that the main contractor reaped “windfall profits” and overcharged the Port Authority.

– Associated Press

LONG ISLAND

DEFENSE WITNESS SAY AMMON WAS KILLED EARLIER A defense expert testified yesterday that he believed millionaire investment banker Theodore Ammon was killed three to four hours after dining at an East Hampton restaurant, not up to 10 hours later as an autopsy had concluded. The discrepancy is one of the defense’s centerpiece arguments – that Daniel Pelosi was not in East Hampton when Ammon was killed there. “I’m not saying it’s totally impossible, I’m saying it’s highly unlikely” that the autopsy findings were correct, said Dr. Werner Spitz, who retired in September as a medical examiner in the Detroit area.

– Associated Press

POLICE BLOTTER

FIVE POLICE INJURED IN HIGH SCHOOL MELEE An after-school melee among a dozen female students at a troubled public high school in Bensonhurst yesterday resulted in the minor injury of five police attempting to break it up, police said. At about 2:45 pm, just a few blocks from the 2,200-student Lafayette High School near a small city park, the group of female teenagers were seen brawling in the street. All twelve involved were arrested. Charges ranged from assault to disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Six of the twelve received juvenile reports. The school had made headlines in February when its principal, Alan Siegel, was knocked unconscious after a rowdy student barreled over him trying to flee from police. Meanwhile, at the nearby Roy Mann junior high school in Brooklyn, a 12-year-old student was arrested yesterday for bringing an empty 22 caliber semiautomatic pistol to school. The student showed the gun to a friend, who then alerted the school’s principal, police said.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

GIRL HIT BY BULLET AT BRONX DELI A 4-year-old girl was hit by a stray bullet while on a routine shopping trip with her grandmother at a Bronx deli early yesterday afternoon, police said. The girl was in stable condition and was taken to Jacobi Medical Center. The manager of the Fadel Deli and Grocery on White Plains Road, Morshad Alrwyai, said he was uncertain about how the bullet entered the store.

– Special to the Sun