NYC NOW - Midday News: NYC Teachers Back School Phone Ban But Not Administrators, NJ Professor’s Fossil Collection Lost, and Plans to Reconnect Cross Bronx Communities

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

New York teachers support Governor Hochul’s proposal to ban student smartphone use during school hours, but school administrators are pushing back. Meanwhile, a North Jersey professor says his university lost his collection of 380-million-year-old fossils. Also, New York City is embarking on a multi-year effort to reconnect communities long divided by the Cross Bronx Expressway, while the Adams administration considers yet another redesign for the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Plus, we continue our series on how COVID-19 has reshaped our lives. We hear from New Yorker Roland Tec’s new morning ritual.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Tuesday, March 18th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. New York's teachers support Governor Hockel's plan to prohibit students from using smartphones from bell to bell, but administrators don't. WMIC's John Campbell reports. Organizations representing superintendents, principals, and school boards say they're not on board with the governor's approach. They sent a memo to policymakers saying they prefer proposals

that would let local districts decide whether to ban phones during lunch and other non-instructional periods. Among the groups that signed onto the memo was the Conference of Big Five school districts, which represents New York City. The state and city teachers' unions back Hockel's proposal, which would apply from opening bell to closing bell. The governor says it's necessary to prevent distraction. A professor says the North Jersey University, where he works, lost his life's work, a collection of 380 million-year-old fossils. W.E.M.C. Catalina and Gonella reports. Paleontologist Martin Becker is suing William Patterson University. Becker says last summer, he dropped off the fossils at the school's mailroom for shipment to a collie in Florida.

They include marine invertebrates that reached New Jersey over millions of years during the last ice age. But Becker's lawsuit says last fall, he found out UPS's fraud department had intercepted the shipment because the university hadn't paid its invoices. Turns out the packages had been tossed in a Tennessee landfill instead. Becker says he incurred medical expenses because of the emotional distress. 49 and sunny right now, sunny and 64 high than tomorrow's sunny and 61. This is WNIC. Stay close. There's more after the break.

I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. New York City officials are launching a multi-year effort to reconnect communities that have been for decades divided by the Cross Bronx Expressway. Meanwhile, the Adams administration is considering yet another new design to replace part of the notorious Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Highways are a part of city life. You may be experiencing this right now as you listen to this. Well, here to talk more about it. and some of these plans to reimagine our highways is Kate Slevin. She's the executive vice president of the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit group that has played a significant role in shaping

the urban planning for the tri-state area. Kate, let's just start with the background here, like the history of New York City's major highways. Most of them were built in the 1940s and the 50s. Can you talk about how they were received when they were first built and how they were different from what other cities were doing at the time? Sure. Both highways across Bronx Expressway and the BQE were constructed during the 1940s and actually it took them both decades to be built. And they were both devised by Robert Moses, New York's famed builder, who was really notorious for disregarding people and communities in his planning. So they really devastated the neighborhoods in their path. You know, highways had been built before, but you hadn't really seen the urban

construction of a highway of this scale. The Cross Bronx displaced 40 to 60,000 people in its wake. the BQE displays tens of thousands of more people. Yeah, let's talk more about that. How do these highways stand up today? And do they make sense for present-day New York City and where the city is headed? Well, the problem is now we're dependent on them. We've had them for so many years. And they are huge transportation corridors for vehicles.

A lot of the highways, both the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, are in a trench, right? So you could have the potential to cap it, put land on top of that highway. maybe create parks, create housing, reconnect the communities, create pedestrian pathways. And so there's some really exciting proposals for both highways to look at that as part of the future. Another big challenge, I think, moving forward, is going to be figuring out how to reduce the need to drive, right? So investing in mass transit is one key thing. We also need more walkability, more bike paths, more safer ways to get around. And we also need to reduce freight traffic. And the city

is looking at a number of proposals to move more things by barge and by ship and to reduce the impact of trucks on communities. And we've been very supportive of that. So let's talk more about the BQE. You mentioned some of the issues there. The triple cantilever is the thing that always gets a lot of attention plans to redevelop that and the truck traffic and the lanes issue. The current proposal that's out there that one architect is planning to present, How does that differ from previous attempts to fix the VQE? He's saying you can do it with less construction, shorter timeline. He's found some ways to kind of reduce the cost and increase the amount of public space that would be available to people.

And so, you know, it's worth a look. There's been a lot of good ideas out there over the years. I will say, though, that where we are now, you know, we have a mayor election coming up. And I think there's a sort of interest at this point to just repair the triple canter lever and make sure it's safe, you know, for the next 10 or 15 years and then really get a plan in place that can address the entire quarter. The city did just publish a report to reimagining the expressway and you've talked about some of those plans. Can you just talk more about that plan and do you think that it goes far enough? The Cross Bronx Visioning study came out a few weeks ago and it's really focused on improving connectivity, health. and safety and strengthening the communities along the quarter by preserving their history and culture.

And in the near term, there's a lot of ideas that are put out there, a new asthma center, transit improvements along Tremont Avenue, local pedestrian safety upgrades, and better greenways and cycling connections. And then longer term, it looks at capping over a number of portions of the highway and really reconnecting those neighborhoods and bringing even more livability. And that's really, I think, the exciting future to think about, right, if you actually had a park above parts of the Cross Bronx Expressway rather than what you have now, which is a giant trench. I mean, it would just transform those neighborhoods.

It's not the first time that we've seen proposals to redevelop these highways and these big ambitious plans to kind of address some of these historical inequities that were created by the construction. of them. Brass tax, what is the likelihood that we're going to see progress on either one of these projects? Well, I think what you're seeing here for the first time, the city and the state agreeing that something needs to be done and agreeing on a very forward-thinking vision in terms of capping the highways. And so I think that's progress there. And the BQE, you know, there's time if they do some repairs to the triple cancel lever. There's time to really use what's been done already and get a just bold, transformative vision for that entire

corridor. The other question is around federal funding and whether any of those sort of more ambitious ideas about capping and about reclaiming highway space, whether any of those ideas actually gain federal support and can receive federal money. That was Kate Slevin, the executive vice president at the Regional Plan Association. Kate, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. her stories about how COVID-19 changed her life and how those changes persist. Today we hear from New Yorker Roland Tech about a new morning ritual. I knew my people, my community was hurting. I was hurting. I was sitting alone in my apartment, staring at my piano. And one day I felt

my piano was, she was staring back at me with a question. Like, you know, like, so what's it going to be. What are you going to do? You're going to use me for something good or just sit there feeling sorry for yourself? So I started to write these short piano pieces that were easy enough for me to play. I had once heard David Hockney say that he used to use his iPhone to send flowers to his close friends in the morning. And I just love that idea. He said, who doesn't like flowers? So I thought, I'll do that. You know, so I started this Rolo morning music, and I just sent a little piece of music to my friends.

But I still do it every once in a while, and it feels good, and it feels like we're kind of in community and in conversation. Now we want to hear from you. What changes, good or bad, and came to your life during the COVID shutdowns that have persisted to this day. Send us a voice memo with your story to your voice at WNYC, That's your voice at WNYC.org. And we might get in touch and just, you might just hear your story right here on WNIC.

Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More soon.