Posts tagged "on the streets"
on the streets
February 7, 2012
At Giants parade, students who skipped school to join festivities
A father and son walk uptown after joining crowds to celebrate the New York Giants' Super Bowl victory.
City students were among the hundreds of thousands of New York Giants fans who flooded the streets around City Hall today to celebrate the team’s Super Bowl victory.
I took a lunchtime walk near our Lafayette Street office to soak in the spectacle and encountered, amid the crowds, families who had pulled their children from school today for the ticker-tape parade along Broadway’s Canyon of Heroes.
It’s a practice that is not officially sanctioned but got encouragement from former Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2000, when he said students should be allowed to skip school for the Yankees’ World Series parade, as long as they read a book about baseball as well. After the Yankees’ 1998 World Series victory, high school attendance was 72 percent on the day of the parade, down from about 85 percent on typical days.
The Giants have been less of a draw in the past. In 2008, the last time the Giants won the Super Bowl, school attendance fell by about 4 percentage points on parade day across all grade levels.
About 20 seniors from Queens’ Bayside High School had gathered at the corner of Howard and Lafayette streets after the festivities. (more…)
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