CITYWIDE

SUMMER SCHOOL BOOSTS EXAM SCORES

Thousands of youngsters who failed math and English exams last spring boosted their scores enough to jump to the next grade after attending summer school, Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday.

More than half of the 6,259 third graders who attended summer school passed the re-test, up six percentage points from last year, the first year the mayor’s plan to end the “social promotion” of struggling students started.

Forty-three percent of fifth-graders who attended summer school passed the re-test, compared to 28% last summer, the year before the fifth-grade policy began. Mr. Bloomberg said the results were proof that his plan was working and that students would be more prepared for the harder work that comes with more advanced grades.

“In ending social promotion, our intention has never been to punish, but to help,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Never to find students to hold back, but to identify those that weren’t doing as well as they could and giving them the extra instruction they needed to advance.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

NYU CALENDAR PHOTO SHOOT DELAYED

A New York University student, who offered friends alcoholic drinks in exchange for loaning him thousands of dollars in cash to be used as prop for a photo shoot, said yesterday that he needed at least another week before he could raise enough money.

Gary He, 20, a former photo editor for the Washington Square News student newspaper and former photography intern for The New York Sun, said he came up more than $15,000 short of the $32,000 he wanted to borrow. His plan was to snap pictures of a naked undergraduate rolling in a dormitory bed with the money, the sum of which was supposed to represent NYU’s undergraduate tuition. The image would be incorporated into a calendar he was producing to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

Mr. He said he came up short because the mother of a student who was supposed to lend him $18,000 used the money instead to pay off a student loan. He said he would conduct the photo shoot in a friend’s apartment because university officials have forbidden him from using NYU dormitories for his project.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

POLICE BLOTTER

BROOKLYN WOMAN SHOT DEAD IN WHEELCHAIR

A woman in a wheelchair who survived a shooting during a robbery two decades ago was fatally wounded yesterday when an unidentified shooter opened fire outside her Brooklyn home.

Hyacinth Cespedes, 54, was entering her home in the Crown Heights section at about 4:45 a.m. yesterday when the shooting started, police said. Cespedes, who was coming home from a party, was hit once in the chest. She died about an hour later at a hospital. Cespedes, a native of Jamaica, worked recently as a party promoter who organized dances in the West Indian community, her family said.

– Associated Press

MAN ACCUSED OF FONDLING GIRL ON SUBWAY

Police arrested a man who allegedly fondled a little girl on a subway. On Friday at 12:15 a.m., the girl and her mother were riding a northbound A subway when a man seated behind the 9-year-old girl started talking to her, the district attorney’s office said.

Between the stops at 103rd and 110th streets the suspect allegedly put his hand down the girl’s shirt and touched her breast. Efrain Viera, 67, was arrested and charged with two counts of sexual abuse and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

PREPPIE KILLER JAILED IN DRUG CASE

The “Preppie Killer,” Robert Chambers, was sentenced yesterday to 100 days in jail and ordered to pay a $200 fine for misdemeanor heroin possession and unlicensed driving.

Justice Gerald Harris tacked on an extra 10 days to the expected three-month term after Chambers showed up more than an hour late for his sentencing in Manhattan Criminal Court. Chambers was released from prison on Valentine’s Day 2003 after serving 15 years for the 1986 strangling of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin during a tryst in Central Park.

– Associated Press