THE WORLD READS WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER — 8,324,077 VISITS IN ONE YEAR | 2,905,611 VISITORS VISIT 8,324,077 TIMES 3 TIMES EVERY DAY IN ONE YEAR. HIGHEST ACTIVITY IN WPCNR HISTORY.White PlainsCitizeNetReporter lifted its worldwide visits from unique visitors to wpcnr.com to 8,324,077,a 1,306,419 increase in visits in one year from 7,017,658 visits to the site last year which covers White Plains and Westchester County. The 8,324,077 visits were made by 2,005,611 unique visitors who visited wpcnr an average of 3 visits a day. ON JULY 20- -2026 visitors have accessed wpcnr and made 3,072 visits an average of 1.6 visits. In the last week 33,495 individual vistors made 54,458 visits, averaging 1.6 visits. In the last month, 152,940 visitors recorded 229,338 visits (1.5 visits)

White Plains Housing Sales Up in last quarter of 2015–BUT PRICES SLIGHTLY LOWER THAN SLUGGISH. “SLOGGISH”

Posted on January 18, 2016 by John Bailey

WPCNR QUILL & EYESHADE. By John F. Bailey. Based on statistics From Rand Realty. January 18, 2016:

Single Family Home Sales in White Plains were slightly up, and it takes 5 months to sell your home if you cooperate and lower your price.

According to 4th quarter stats on White Plains from Rand Realty’s Mike Graessle, the average price of a single family home closing in the 4th quarter was $620,000 down 14% from the 2014 4th quarter. The median price of a Single Family was $565,000. 61 single family homes closed in Oct, Nov, Dec of 2015 compared to 46 last year.

Condos are going going gone. The Condo sales last quarter were up 38%, 54 selling in the 4th quarter compared to 39 last year. However the average condo selling price is down 7% $680,000 compared to $733,874 last quarter of 2015. Median price of the condos that closed was $517,000 up 35%–lifted by the high end condos moving out.

Coop sales picked up slightly 8%, 228 to 211 in the 2014 4th quarter Coopies are going for $189,701 on average, the median, is $170,000, again lowered by the lower priced coops.

Multi Family homes were up slightly in sales 17 in last quarter of 2015 compared to 11 in 2014’s last quarter. Average price of a multi-family home: $478,000, median…$418,950, down 1% and 4% in price.

Be prepared to drop your price about 4% to move your home from when you first put it on the market.

WP Schools Consider Training Nurses, Trainers to Administer Opionoid drug overdose treatment in case of drug-induced coma.

Posted on January 17, 2016 by John Bailey

The School Board is positive on the possibility of training nurses, coaches, trainers in the use of administering the Opioid antidote injection used by police to stop a student or person from having a drug type seizure.

The program administered by the state at no cost to the school district would train key school personnel in the use of the emergency injection credited by police with saving the lives of youths recently in a drug induced coma.

The presentation on the program was given by the District Nurse Practicioner, Brenda Madera.

The Board was all set to vote for the program when they had second thoughts and wanted to check with an attorney first to consider possible issues.

Board of Ed Tables Consideration of Solar Panel Installation at 5 Schools

Posted on January 16, 2016 by John Bailey

WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. JANUARY 16, 2016:
In other action at the School Board this week, the Board tabled the decision to hire Solar City to install solar panels on 5 city schools: the high school, Eastview, Highlands, Ridgeway and Post Road School. Dr. Fried said the Board of Education had some questions.

Fred Seiler, Assistant Superintendent for Business said that the school would receive one guaranteed kilowatt rate for the electrictiy provided for those five schools, but would not receive any payments for excess electricity generate that Solar City would sell to the grid. The agreement is for 18 years, and would save the district approximately $1,000 a year.

BOARD OF EDUCATION TASK FORCE DELAYS DECISION ON ADDING ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS CLASSES UNTIL JANUARY 2017

Posted on January 15, 2016 by John Bailey

WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. BY JOHN F. BAILEY JANUARY 15, 2016:

The White Plains City School District has been unable to come to a consensus on how to add State-mandated instruction to English Language Learners.

Dr. Paul Fried, Superintendent of Schools announced Monday evening, the task force reviewing options suggested a year ago to augment English Language Learners if one particular language group exceeds 20% in any one grade, had been unable to choose between expanding Kindergarten in 2016-17 at George Washington and Post Road schools or adding a dual language program in a third school. He said the task force wanted to evaluate it some more and bring in in more stakeholders’ opinions.

Jessica O’Donovan said, this year 157 of approximately 500 Kindergarteners enrolled are English Language Learners with Spanish their present language. This would mean that by adding a dual language program at a third White Plains Elementary, only 77 or 31% of the 157 Spanish speaking kindergartners would be served next fall by the new dual language class no matter whether it is added to GW or Post Road or at a third elementary.

The solution presumably will be decided by the task force by January 2017, allowing the district to comply or at least begin to address the burgeoning (at least this year) population of Spanish Language kindergartners beginning in the 2017-2018 year.

The solutions of adding a new dual language to the present two schools or starting it at a third school were on the table at least a year ago, and are nothing new.

Ms. O’Donnell told WPCNR that as teachers retire the district is seeking to hire dual language teachers to fill the expected future English Language Learners demands by the state.

Dr. Fried said the difficult problem is the district has no way of knowing how many Spanish Language speaking kindergartners will be joining the district before they sign up during the school choice period.

The school district can estimate by birth rates, but apparently do not have the information by ethnicity,

The state also demands that parents English Language Learners if their child is in the 20% English Language Learners designation have to have a choice of either dual language instruction for their child or..a self-contained class of English Language Learners. This caviat, Fried said impacted the White Plains school choice program for kindergartners in complicating the choice English Language Learners have in where they go to school. Do they all have to go to either GW or Post Road is just one question that comes to mind.

It’s up to the Task Force.