Mickey Mantle School on UWS Receives Tablets to Help Students with Special Needs

Upper West Side City Councilmember Gale Brewer helped the Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network deliver 50 iPads to her district’s Mickey Mantle School on Wednesday, December 4.

Students at the 3K-12 public school on West End Ave.–which serves children with special education needs–will use them to master technology, while teachers will use them as an invaluable aid in the classroom. The tablets have to be formally processed by the Department of Education before they will be passed out to students.

John McCormick, the principal of the Mickey Mantle School, told The Spirit that “we serve children with emotional-behavioral challenges, as well as students with autism, and every student in between that spectrum.”

iPads will help these students for a “multitude of reasons,” McCormick said. “Obviously, everything has changed in the way instruction is delivered.” Teachers and school administrators will use them to “deliver academic screenings, core instruction, and academic and reading interventions. We have programs for students that are based on individualized assessments, where they can work on phonic-based needs that they have.”

“We’ve been using iPads for a long time, for at least 10 years, but the technology is growing left and right,” McCormick added. “They become somewhat obsolete quickly.” Hence the new shipment of tablets.

Mike Nieves, the CEO of HITN, described the broadcaster as a “friendly” national counterpart of NYC’s Channel 13: “Our model is to educate, and to entertain. This is part of our education process. We’ve given materials not just to this school, but to multiple others. We’re a big not-for-profit, and we’re required by the FCC to convert our spectrum into something that can be used by others. Back in the day we used to provide WiFi, but all the schools have WiFi now.”

Nieves instantly convinced Councilmember Brewer of the utility of delivering iPads to NYC schools at a conference that they both attended in Chicago, which they say was memorably held on a boat. He took a phone call with another school that HITN was handing out tablets to, intriguing Brewer and leading him to tell her about the rationale behind it.

“When we heard that Councilmember Brewer had picked a school for students with special needs, it was really great. The DOE had not given us a school that was for kids with special needs,” Nieves added. “These tablets are top-of-the-line. They come with three years of WiFi, which is on our tab. After that, the Board of Education has to cover it.”

Brewer explained that she had chosen the Mickey Mantle School because McCormick, the principal, “has a long history of understanding technology. Some other principals do not.”

“Secondly,” she said, “every student at this school needs support technology-wise. Some of them have no oratory ability. Maybe they can’t hear, maybe they can’t see. Maybe they’re not mobile. Technology is everything...these iPads look like something you or I use, but for these students it’s extraordinary.”