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March 04, 2010
THE FUTURE OF BRENTWOOD BREAKING THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE
By Profesor Martin Danenberg "El Quijote del GED"
The GED Testing Center in the Sonderling was closed years ago. Does anyone in the community care about the GED, dropout prevention, and English language acquisition for the immigrants? Do you feel these initiatives are needed? As the school year winds down at Brentwood High School and it is clear that many students are not going to return to school to complete the high school diploma, is this community going to rest knowing that youth without a diploma may express themselves through violence? Don't you think the school should have a real dropout prevention program to bring those students back into high school and make the streets safer? Don't you want the youth to obtain the GED at nineteen instead of 29 or 39? What do you want? What do your elected officials want? What do Steve Levy and other county officials want? You are being shocked by the fact that there are not 200 more police to patrol Brentwood. Is that shock going to prevent you from making the commitment to educate every youth in your community?
As people (strangers) were finding out about me, I spent the last two days reaching out to the mayor of Central Falls where the school board voted to fire all the teachers in the high school. I spoke with the superintendent and she wants my help. I was on the phone uniting Haitians in Connecticut in my campaign to bring the French GED to Haiti. I called the office of Secretary of Education Melanio Paredes in Santo Domingo and emailed information about my efforts to bring the Spanish GED to the Dominican Republic, dropout prevention, and English language instruction to the entire country. I have time to help Brentwood and the rest of the world. It is time to do an educational conference in Brentwood, which I urged at Somos El Futuro last year, but I have not heard a thing about doing it. I expected that and I got it!
The residents of Brentwood know that there have been big changes in the last forty years or more. Each year the little and big negative things have taken their tolls on people and their lives, property values and taxes, and their hopes for their community. I have helped hundreds of people from Brentwood and Central Islip who either went to the Consulate of El Salvador, called me, or met me in the Brentwood Library or at a meeting. The school boards and superintendents have held back progress (for sure), but we have to work with them. Everyone has made mistakes. The teachers tell the community that the schools are good and gang activities are in check, but we hear a different story. The same apathy and bad decisions that led to the deaths in New Orleans after Katrina are apparent in the educational problems and community leadership in Brentwood as youth are killing youth. A much brighter future awaits Brentwood, but not just by good policing alone.
MARTIN N. DANENBERG
7 BLAZER DRIVE
ISLANDIA, NEW YORK 11749
631-348-1341
GEDHOTLINE@AOL.COM
New:
www.mygedhotline.com
www.geocities.com/gedhotline
www.ahorre.com/ged
www.ahorre.com
www.aspira.org
Profesor Martin Danenberg March 4, 2010 10:08 PM