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Photo By Erica Sherman

Kingsborough Community College (2001 Oriental Boulevard) has had a roller coaster year. Like many institutions located in Southern Brooklyn, the college was slammed by Superstorm Sandy, suffering destroyed classrooms, walls and offices. Despite these setbacks, the college has persevered, rebuilding and rebounding, according to a report by New York 1.

Typifying the destruction visited on the school by Sandy, the school’s beach, which borders the facilities and is open to the public, was swamped with tons of debris.

“There were literally automobiles, refrigerators, debris of all types, right on the beach,” KCC Vice President of Academic Administration David Gomez told New York 1.

Since then,  the debris strewn across the beach has been cleared but in order to open it to the public again, the school will have to send divers into the waters to make sure that any large or dangerous debris isn’t floating around.

All of the destroyed classrooms and offices have also been replaced and transformers have been moved to platforms to prevent power outages in case of a future flood.

The school also set up a relief center to distribute aid to faculty, students and staff who needed help following the storm. They also continue to provide food to those still in need.

“We have our pantry that’s open five days a week here on campus and it’s been open prior to Sandy and it remains open. But every other week now for several months we’ve been doing large food distributions that serve anywhere from two-thousand to five thousand people,” Relief Program Coordinator Heidi Lopez told New York 1.

In spite of all the setbacks visited upon the institution in recent months, the school still managed to rank as one of the top four community college in the nation, pulling in a $100,000 prize from the Aspen Institute.

Dondre Samuel (Source: Facebook)

A 19-year-old Kingsborough Community College student was the lone survivor at the scene of an apparent double murder and suicide perpetrated by his mother, an NYPD officer,  in their Flatlands home yesterday.

Officer Rosette Samuel, a 13-year veteran of the NYPD who had never discharged her firearm in the line of duty, is believed to have fatally shot her boyfriend, their one-year-old son and then herself. A second son from a previous relationship, the 19-year-old student, fled out the back window when he was awoken by gunshots and called 911.

From the New York Post:

A cop who had worked with Samuel in the Manhattan traffic division before Samuel transferred to the 108th Precinct in Long Island City in January, said, “This is unbelievable.”

“She was tight with everyone here. It wasn’t her. Sometimes people snap,” that cop said. “Post-partum depression is the first thing that came to my mind. Didn’t show any signs of it.”

… The killings occurred just before 8:30 a.m. in Samuel’s first-floor apartment on E. 56th St. near Farragut Road in Flatlands.

Witnesses said they saw Samuel’s 19-year-old son Dondre Samuel, a biology student at Kingsborough Community College, frantically climbing out of the back window of that apartment wearing a pair of shorts and no shirt, just an Addidas jacket.

“He was shaken up,” said Anthony Beckford, 19. “My uncle asked what happened . . . he was all scraped up and he ran into the backyard. His elbows and his knees were scraped. He said, ‘Look, look!’”

“He was frantic. He couldn’t really talk,” Beckford said of Dondre, who is Samuel’s son from a prior relationship.

When Beckford looked at the front of the apartment, near the front door, he saw the body of Samuel’s boyfriend Peters, lying on the floor.

“I just the his head, and the top part of his body,” Beckford said. “He was facing down, surrounded by blood.”

Samuel’s body was found in bed, along with the one-year-old son.

Metro reports that a possible suicide note was found at the scene:

The source paraphrased Rosette Samuel’s note as saying, “Sorry I had to do this. I’m going to take Dylan with me because I can’t bear it alone,” referring to her 1-year-old son.

It also referenced a sum of money in a deferred compensation plan and specified it should be used for the college education of her other son, 19-year-old Dondre Samuel.

Cops reportedly found a sealed envelope as well. The contents are currently unknown.

Peruggi (Source: KCC Digest)

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: After nine years of serving as the first female leader of Kingsborough Community College, Dr. Regina Peruggi will retire at the end of the summer.

Peruggi, 65, announced her retirement in an April 5 letter to the school’s staff and faculty, in which she reflected on her time at the Manhattan Beach-based institution.

“These past nine years have been extraordinary ones for me. They have been challenging, creative, exciting, productive, and a great deal of fun,” Peruggi wrote in the letter. “I have met incredible individuals who have taught me a great deal and whose memory will be with me for years to come. Kingsborough faculty, staff, and students are the best in the country, and it has been a true privilege to work with each of you.”

Peruggi is expected to hand over the reigns to the school in August, although the school’s press office could not provide an exact date. The school’s spokespeople declined to comment on Peruggi’s retirement, as there has not yet been a public announcement.

Keep reading and see the farewell letter Peruggi sent to staff and faculty.

Photo by Erica Sherman

Kingsborough Community College (2001 Oriental Boulevard) continues to earn top honors, now ranked as one of the four best community college in the United States of America by the prestigious Aspen Institute.

The announcement follows our report last October,  when Kingsborough was named one of the best community colleges in the country at implementing modern technology.

The Aspen Institute ranked colleges by measuring the jobs found by students after graduation. On average, KCC grads earn annual salaries of $41,000 five years after finishing their studies.

KCC’s third place finish came with a $100,000 prize used to fund the school’s scholarship program.

Congrats to Kingsborough!

Kingsborough Community College administrators have moved the drop-off location of the yellow school bus that shuttles students from campus to subway station and back, no longer allowing it on the school’s property. The new location has a local civic group fuming that the school is piling on more traffic problems along the problem-prone Oriental Boulevard.

The school made a decision approximately five years weeks ago barring the Safe Coach bus from entering the campus out of a concern for safety, said Ruby Ryles, the school’s spokesperson.

“Public Safety feels they can scrutinize students and others entering the campus on foot better than on the bus,” Ryles told Sheepshead Bites.

The solution they came up with was to begin dropping students off in the same turnaround the MTA uses at Mackenzie Street for its B1 and B49 buses. The problem is, they never asked the MTA’s permission, and the Manhattan Beach Community Group said they feel like the school snubbed them by not asking their opinion.

“They just do things without telling us,” said the group’s president, Ira Zalcman. “They’re in our community, but they never bother listening to our concerns. This has been going on for years.”

Zalcman said he notified the MTA to find if the agency okay’d the co-location. The MTA said absolutely not.

“MTA New York City Transit runs very frequent service out of that loop,” MTA spokesperson Deirdre Parker told Sheepshead Bites. “We feel there is not enough room to accommodate Safe Coach in addition to NYCT buses at that location.  We are looking into our options which includes restricting the stop to Transit buses only.”

The school today agreed to move the location again – this time to Oriental Boulevard just outside of the gates. But they still won’t enter.

“The matter is now resolved,” Ryles said.

Not to the Manhattan Beach Community Group, though.

“Kingsborough almost capitulated. Almost,” Zalcman said when he heard the news. He pointed out that there No Stopping Anytime signs all along that stretch of Oriental Boulevard, which the DOT defines as “you may not wait, stop to load/unload packages or merchandise at curbside, or drop off or pick up passengers at this location.”

“We’re going to call the police station and we expect them to enforce all existing laws. They can’t stand there,” Zalcman said.

The problem, he claims is that it adds to traffic and safety concerns to have a large vehicle there, and to be unnecessarily dumping Kingsborough students into the community. He wants the school bus – and the MTA buses, for that matter – to drop off students on campus.

“It’s enough that we have cars sitting there all day waiting for students. We think they should have a waiting area that should also be on campus. The MTA turnaround should be on campus, the waiting area should be on campus, the yellow bus should be on campus” he said. “We have enough car safety issues in the community, and they just don’t want to listen to our concerns.”

Correction: The original version of this article incorrectly stated that the decision to discharge students off campus was made five years ago. It was five weeks ago, and the article has been corrected.

Kingsborough Community College’s campus. Photo by Erica Sherman

The Kingsborough Musical Society Chorus, which offers a mixed repertoire of theater, folk, and classical music, is seeking choral singers to perform two free annual concerts on the Kingsborough campus in December and May.

The first rehearsal and audition for new members will be Thursday, February 14.

Under the direction of conductor Mark Mangini, the chorus also performs additional community outreach concerts at various locations throughout the Brooklyn community.

Rehearsals are every Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. on the Kingsborough College campus, 2001 Oriental Boulevard, in room 8207 on the second floor of the T-8 building. Sight-reading is helpful but not mandatory.

This May 5, the Kingsborough Musical Society Chorus will be performing its annual Spring Concert.

For information about joining the chorus, call: Steve Friedman at (718) 338-9132.

Commuters might bemoan this week’s chilly weather, but students of Kingsborough Community College’s culinary arts program took it as an opportunity to hit the beach and chisel some ice.

We went down to the school (2001 Oriental Boulevard) yesterday to pick up some papers at Community Board 15′s office – which, by the way, is temporarily without phone or internet service – and had the good luck of running into Chef Thomas Smyth, one of the head professors with their culinary arts program.

Smyth told us the 16 students of his cold-kitchen class spent four hours on the beach, chiseling away at the giant blocks of ice. Smyth himself wielded the chainsaw to bring the blocks down to size, and the blocks were sculpted into a penguin, a whale and two items that the students jokingly described as ashtrays.

“They get a survey of everything they could do in a cold kitchen,” including creating these decorations, Smyth said.

It’s the first time Smyth and the culinary arts program have been able to do ice sculptures at the school, since the ice supply has been an ongoing problem.

“Actually, this is the first year we managed to get the bloody ice,” Smyth said. “Just to get somebody to deliver a couple of blocks of ice to Kingsborough was a big deal, but now we’ve got that figured out.”

Next year, we demand the class make an ice sculpture of a Sheepshead fish. You hear me, Smyth?

View photos of all the sculptures and the class.

The FDNY’s Marine 3 headquarters in 2009. (Source: Vlad Iorsh/Flickr)

The fire eaters of the FDNY’s local marine unit will have to rebuild their summer headquarters – or find themselves homeless, thanks to Superstorm Sandy.

The Marine 3 summer vessel. (Source: FDNY)

The unit – FDNY Marine 3 – operates a summer base at the tip of Kingsborough Community College (2001 Oriental Boulevard) in Manhattan Beach. When the waters whipped through the campus, it ravaged the unit’s four-year-old quarters, rendering them useless.

“Marine 3′s quarters sustained damage from flood waters,” confirmed an FDNY spokesperson.

It wasn’t alone. Several firehouses were damaged and many have not reopened since the storm. All are in the process of being repaired, and trucks have been stationed throughout the affected communities to provide quick response.

Marine 3′s headquarters will also be rebuilt, the spokesperson said, although he was unable to provide a timetable or estimated cost for the repairs.

In the meantime, local mariners need not worry. Marine 3′s vessel – used only during the summer, when boating and other water sports are at their peak – was pulled out of the area ahead of the storm, and was unharmed. When summer rolls around, it will again be stationed at Kingsborough, whether the headquarters are rebuilt or not.

“There is no impact to fire protection or fire service in that area,” the spokesperson said.

The Marine 3 headquarters opened in September 2008, featuring 24-hour security, a new kitchen and bathroom, and a state-of-the-art floating concrete dock. The location also became a training center for members of the Fire Department’s Marine Division, which was given access to Kingsborough Community Colleges’ Maritime Technology Program, a high-tech sailing simulator that puts students at the helm of various vessels to prepare them for careers on the water. It helped grow the city’s small vessel program, which FDNY brass lauded as allowing them to provide faster, more efficient responses to water-related emergencies.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Local mariners have something to be happy about this New Year: the Department of Environmental Protection reversed course on plans to destroy a 78-year-old navigational aid between Manhattan Beach and Breezy Point that mariners say makes them safer and shows them the way home when gizmos can’t.

According to documents released under a Freedom of Information Law request filed by Sheepshead Bites, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection decided to leave a wastewater diffuser pipe that locals affectionately refer to as the “roundhouse” after sailors and other mariners objected to its removal.

“Comments received questioned whether it would be more advantageous to leave the existing outlet chamber in place,” DEP reps wrote to partnering agencies in a September 2012 letter. “If kept, it could serve as an underwater fish habitat and provide opportunity for sea birds to perch.”

It wasn’t just the environmentalists that the DEP sought to please; the agency determined the now defunct roundhouse served a crucial purpose for navigation, and as a marker for underwater infrastructure that could damage vessels.

Continue Reading »

[UDPATE [12:25 p.m.): Ryles has notified Sheepshead Bites that power has been restored.]

A swath of Kingsborough Community College’s (2001 Oriental Boulevard) campus went dark this morning, forcing a partial evacuation as administrators and crews work to assess the system’s status.

A tipster on campus for a test at the school’s library notified Sheepshead Bites at approximately 11:00 a.m. that the library had been suddenly evacuated as the lights went out. The test administrators did not share details with our tipster, but did say that buildings without power were being evacuated due to an “emergency on campus,” and that it might have to do with a broader power outage affecting Manhattan Beach.

Ruby Ryles, a spokesperson for Kingsborough, confirmed that there was presently a power outage in her office in the Administration building.

“We just haven’t determined to what extent the outage is, but part, if not all, of the campus is without power,” she told Sheepshead Bites.

Ryles could not confirm if any buildings other than the library had been evacuated, or what the cause of the outage is. We are waiting to hear back from her if she receives more information, and will post when received.

It’s not clear how large the outage is. A resident on Hastings Street and Oriental Boulevard, near the neighborhood’s center, noted that he still had power. Menorah Home and Hospital (1516 Oriental Boulevard), located adjacent to the school, also has power, a rep told us.

Swaths of the community have been without power since Superstorm Sandy flooded homes and Con Edison infrastructure, and Con Edison has been doing construction work in the community.  Their outage map does not appear to reflect the Kingsborough outage as of press time, but there is a marker nearby on the map noting that there is an “emergency outage to make repairs.”

This is a breaking news story and may contain inaccuracies. We will update it as more information becomes available. If anyone has more information or additional photos, please send them to tips (at) sheepsheadbites (dot) com.