The TreeHouse Toy Store is one of many Elmwood Village
businesses preparing for Small Business Saturday on Nov. 26. Co-owner Gaetana
Schueckler has run the business at 793 Elmwood Ave. with her husband David for
20 years. The store offers complimentary gift wrap, asks fun trivia questions and
gives free locally made caramel corn on that day, all special things the
store does on that Saturday to get customers in the holiday spirit. The store continues to offer its range of playthings from the selection of $4.99 items to the unusual, difficult-to-find toys that are available year-round, Schueckler says. “We don’t want
our customers to have to jump through hoops to come in on a special day or a
special time to get a different price,” she said. “We try to help them pick the
right toy, be the toy expert. We do the heavy lifting so they don’t have to
wrack their brains trying to find the perfect toy. That’s our job.” By Anthony Callens and Benjamin Joe
Buffalo Public Schools Assistant Superintendent Dr. Fatima Morrell and Lafayette High School Principal John Starkey
By Franklin Hagler and Matthew Neidhart
Bengal News West Reporters
Try walking through the hallways at
Lafayette High School and finding the bathroom.
You don’t see the traditional sign
marking the room; it even lacks the symbol that would normally be seen as male
or female.
At Lafayette every room is labeled
with a sign that shows what that room is in six different languages. The
multi-linguistic paper signs can be deceiving in appearance.
“Half of our population is African,
from Central or East Africa, we have Arabic kids, a big population of the
Burmese speaking and Korean community. The other 50 percent are from Puerto
Rico and speak Spanish,” Lafayette Principal John Starkey said.
Buffalo is the most linguistically
diverse place in New York State according to Buffalo
Public Schools officials. Over 84 languages are represented in local
communities, and with the influx of refugees on the West Side that can grow.
This is causing a change in the way that teachers and the Department of
Education are approaching education and Lafayette High School
has become ground zero for this experiment.
Working with Dr. Fatima Morrell,
assistant superintendent for curriculum and Mrs. Nadia Nashir, assistant superintendent
for multilingual education, Principal Starkey has helped install changes in the
way teachers speak to students from different cultures, create a Parent Center
for everyone in the community and make tangible changes to the textbooks and
resources available to all students.
“Students learn better when they
see themselves and their history and culture represented in the curriculum,”
Dr. Morrell said. “We want to create a warm and welcoming environment for our
parents and students and make them feel appreciated.”
Lafayette High is not set up as a
traditional school, as there are three distinct schools housed in this one
building. Lafayette Proper School 204 has an 11th and 12th
grade class. “Phase-Out” is what it is being called as the junior class will be
the last set of students under that school.
Lafayette Phase-In School 207 is a
new program that was started by Starkey. This school has just a ninth grade,
100 of the new freshmen have been in the country for four years or less.
The last school is Newcomers
Academy that has grades 7-12 and nearly 300 students. This academy is mostly
made up of Students with Interrupted Formal Education or SIFE students.
“We have students coming from war
torn countries or impoverished conditions so they are coming with a lot of
socio-emotional needs and so we can’t just look at the academic support for
them but look at the comprehensive support for them,” Starkey said.
Eighty
percent of the students in Buffalo public schools come from poverty, which is why community schooling and building
relationships with the families has become so important.
“If we truly want to improve student
learning we have to improve adult learning, ” Mrs. Nashir said.
Her department has hired six cultural
research specialists that are holding workshops for teachers and parents. This
month they plan on training 150 teachers and by June they want all teachers to
be trained.
“In the
multilingual department we understand that many of our teachers have not had an
English language learner in front of them,” Nashir said. “ The ecology has to
speak to our students.”
Pierogi-making runs in the family for Andy Ruszczyk, who is
now bringing a few of his grandmother’s recipes to the West Side. Ru’s Pierogi,
a restaurant at 295 Niagara St., opened last month, complete with a bar and a
food truck. Ruszczyk plans on using the restaurant's large-scale kitchen in the
back to produce pierogi and distribute along
the East Coast. The restaurant, managed by Rob Rush, is one of the only places
on the West Side specializing in pierogi and other Polish favorites. Customers
enter a laid-back atmosphere where they can dine in or take their orders to go.
While waiting for orders, customers can watch their food being made. Ru’s is
open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on
Friday and Saturday. By Dave DeLuca and Patrick Koster
Artwork
adorns the walls. Comfortable furnishings fill each room. The kitchens come
fully stocked with pots, pans and other utensils.
Does
it come with a washer and dryer, too?
Sure
does, but this isn’t an apartment for you to move into. It’s an Airbnb.
Airbnb
is an online peer marketplace for listing and renting residential properties
for a temporary period of time. Airbnb has grown in popularity so much over the
past few years that legislation has been implemented to control its use.
Gov.
Andrew M. Cuomo signed a bill on Oct. 21 banning the advertising of New York
Airbnb rentals of less than 30 days in multi-unit buildings if the tenant isn’t
present. Hosts can be fined up to $7,500. A 2010 law involving renting a
property in a multi-use building for less than 30 days only pertains to New
York City and will not affect Buffalo properties.
Joe
Galvin, who owns an Airbnb property at 49 19th St., thinks the 2010
law will spread throughout the state of New York.
“I
don’t think that it’ll affect us now, but in the future, when the politicians
revisit this issue and see what’s going on, I’m sure they’re going to want to
do it for the rest of New York,” Galvin said.
A
majority of Galvin’s tenants stay for less than 30 days.
"We'll
rent them out to people that want to come to Buffalo for the weekend. Maybe
that weekend is two, three, four days. I've had some long-term tenants. I've
had some tenants that have stayed four months, three months, a month and a half,"
Galvin said.
One
sponsor of the new bill is State Sen. Liz Krueger, D- Manhattan. Justin Flagg,
Krueger’s communications director, said Airbnb hosts have been providing
cheaper housing of entire apartments in multi-unit buildings, which is devaluing
the housing market in New York City.
Previously,
tenants would list their apartments on Airbnb without their landlords’
knowledge. When the tenants/Airbnb hosts would illegally rent out their
apartments, their landlords would be held accountable. With this new bill,
Flagg said landlords have the ability to hold their tenants accountable.
“So
this new law basically does two things,” Flagg said. “It allows you to use the
actual posting on a web platform as evidence of breaking the law and it allows
the city to issue the fine directly to the person who is responsible for the
listing, as opposed to the landlord.”
But
Airbnb is fighting back. It recently filed a lawsuit against the City of New
York for alleged violation of Airbnb’s free-speech rights.
“In
typical fashion, Albany back-room dealing rewarded a special interest—the
price-gouging hotel industry—and ignored the voices of tens of thousands of New
Yorkers,” Josh Meltzer, Airbnb’s head of public policy for New York
said in a statement. “We will continue to fight for a smart policy solution
that works for the people, not the powerful.”
Flagg
said Airbnb has moved past its professed intention of having a sharing economy,
such as renting out a bed, couch or room. He said Airbnb is now monetizing the
affordable housing stock for profit.
“We
get calls from our constituents, older people who their neighbor is renting out
an apartment on Airbnb and somebody comes in and has a big, loud party, and
they’re afraid to confront them because it’s not the neighbor they know,” Flagg
said. “The landlord doesn’t like it because they’re causing problems in their
building. We have hotels that are equipped to deal with those sorts of things.”
While
New York City Airbnbs are coming under scrutiny, back in Buffalo, Galvin has has
had just one bad experience when he rented his property to a college student
who threw an unauthorized party. only seen one problem with Airbnb tenants.
Overall,
Galvin thinks Airbnb provides guests with unique opportunities.
"The
classic theory about hotels are when you fly into a city, you stay out by the
airport and stay in a concrete box," Galvin said. "Here, we try to
give the experience of being in a home away from home."
Betty’s Restaurant employee Benjamin Perrello serves up
scrambled tofu hash, which is tofu sautéed with caramelized onions, sweet
potatoes, roasted red peppers and black beans. It is one of the many gluten-free
offerings on the menu. At Betty’s, 370 Virginia St., any item on the menu can
be customized to fit a gluten-free diet, such as barbecued “pulled”
veggie sandwich. November is Gluten-free Diet Awareness Month, and Betty’s was
ranked first in a Foursquare list of “The 15 Best Places with Gluten-Free Food
in Buffalo.” Foursquare is a location-based search-and-discovery mobile app,
where users can rate and review local businesses and restaurants. Betty’s serves
breakfast, lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch. By Clifton Robinson and Brittany Schmidle
Michael A. Rizzo, and his son, Michael A. Rizzo II, present their steak
& stuffed hot pepper specialty pizza along with their self-acclaimed “best
barbeque wings in Buffalo.” The father-son duo recently opened Sports City
Pizza Pub on the corner of Niagara Street and West Delevan Avenue on the West Side,
which features 13 flat screen TVs and more than 20 craft beers on tap. After
starting his business in Kenmore, the elder Rizzo moved the company to the West
Side where he is originally from. Recognizing that this area of Buffalo was on
the rise, Rizzo thought it would be the perfect place to offer his family’s
unique services and reach a diverse population. By Franlkin Hagler and Matthew Neidhart
The Thin Ice
gift shop, 719 Elmwood Ave., has two unique feline staff members. The store
owner, Therese Deutschlander, brings her two cats Simon and Atti to work with
her each day. Deutschlander says not only do the cats feel right at home in the
store, but customers delight in seeing the cats and will even show her
photographs of their own pets. “A lot of customers are visiting from out of
town and they’ve had to leave their cats at home so they miss them, so it’s
nice to kind of get a little cat fix,” Deutschlander said. By Melissa Burrowes
