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Part of the million pennies raised by schools through Penny Harvest. Photo from Insideschools.

City principals will have to submit plans in October explaining how they’ll meet the Mayor Bloomberg’s new service requirement for schools, but it shouldn’t be an onerous task for most of them.

Most schools, particularly at the high school level, already engage in some service, according to Department of Education spokeswoman Kerri Lyon. At Manhattan Bridges High School in Midtown, for example, students have always been required to log 40 hours of service before they graduate, Principal Mirza Sanchez Medina told me yesterday. Other schools announced service initiatives this week that were planned before Bloomberg’s announcement: Students from the Academy of Urban Planning and the Bushwick School for Social Justice planted 16 trees in between their campuses in honor of Earth Day, and kids at Harlem’s PS 57 pitched ideas for community-improvement grants to Scholastic’s Be Big Fund.

For the many schools that already engage in service, the mayor’s initiative should expand the number of volunteer options available to students, Lyon said. And schools that have never participated in service before can start slowly, such as by joining Penny Harvest, the popular program where kids donate pennies to charities of their choice, she said. (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg today issued a new requirement for public school principals: Add instruction about community service to their schools’ packed programs of reading, writing, and math.

The directive came during an upbeat event today where Bloomberg unveiled a new citywide volunteerism initiative. The event was broadcast on MTV.com, the Web site of the cable network that is trying to remake its image for the civic-minded Obama generation, and included a brief speech by Caroline Kennedy. Under Bloomberg’s plan, every public school principal must integrate service into his or her school’s curriculum.

“We’re going to be asking every city principal to create a service plan — no exceptions,” Bloomberg said at the event, held at the Armory Track and Field Foundation in Washington Heights. “Because from now on, civic service and volunteering will be a core part of what goes on in every single school.”

Bloomberg’s NYC Service initiative is well-timed: Tomorrow, President Obama is set to sign the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which will increase membership in AmeriCorps, a national service program, from 75,000 to 250,000 over five years and encourage volunteerism in other ways. (more…)