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For the past 17 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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This website includes selected articles from this week's edition of the Filipino Express. Not all the stories published in the printed version appear on this site.
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SCHOOL'S OUT. St. Aedan School of Jersey City will soon be added to a growing list of Catholic schools in New Jersey that shut down or merged with another. But parents said they would like to run the school for at leat one year and prove that the school is still viable. (Merpu Roa)
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Jersey City, NEW JERSEY --- a 93-year-old Catholic school in this city is closing down by the end of the school year, but parents of the predominantly Filipino students of the school are opposing the move.
On Monday, January 30, the Archdiocese of Newark announced plans to shut down St. Aedan School in Tuers Avenue in Jersey City at the end of the school year, citing dwindling enrollment as the reason.
The school’s 166 pre-kindergarten to eighth grade students will be directed to Visitation School on Kennedy Boulevard, said James Goodness, a spokesman for the Archdiocese, as reported by the Jersey Journal.
St. Aedan is the latest New Jersey Catholic school to be closed or merged with another in what appears to be a growing trend among Catholic schools not only in New Jersey but in many dioceses throughout the entire U.S.
The Archdiocese has cited dwindling enrollment due to changing demographics and rising cost of school operations were cited as main reasons for the decision.
“When you have a large building, a declining enrollment, you know the cost of providing that education is going to be higher,” said Goodness. “This is a way to make sure they can keep the education affordable and keep a Catholic school presence in the area.”
The Filipino Express learned that the archdiocese plans to either close or merge 11 schools this year. Just last month, it was announced that the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Hoboken and the Academy of St. Aloysius in Jersey City will be merged.
Parents were stunned to hear the announcement last Monday.
Willy Rue, who has two children at St. Aedan, said “the administration should have given us at least one year extension”
Erlinda Santos, the mother of an eighth-grader and grandparent of pre-kindergartner, said she’d be “depressed” if the school closed.
Majority of parents said they don’t want the school to close, citing the school’s good academic record, dedicated faculty and a strong and supportive home school association.
Several parents interviewed by The Filipino Express said they will suggest to the school administration or to the Archdiocese to allow St. Aedan’s to operate as an independent school.
Elisa Orencia, a grandmother of two St. Aedan students, said she is confident, with parents committing to participate in running the school, they can sustain it even for five years.
Teresita Chand, a fourth grade teacher, said for almost five years now, parents through the home school association, have been active in raising funds for school infrastructure projects, and have regularly volunteered in activities aimed at keeping the school clean and safe.
Her colleague, Maribel Ordoñez, a seventh grade teacher, described the independent Catholic school alternative as “very viable.”
The principal of the school, Sister Ma. Seldita Tiorosio, O.P., however, has a different suggestion. She said St. Aedan School should serve as the core school with which other Catholic schools should be merged.
Sister Tiorosio said St. Aedan is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Elementary Education for a 10-year certification up to May 2014. The Visitation School is not.
In her letter to the Archdiocese’s secretary of education and secretary of schools last month, Sister Tiorosio cited the school’s good facilities, faith-focused curriculum, exposure of students to state-wide education programs, active involvement of the home school association as sufficient grounds for making St. Aedan as a core school.
But several of the teachers and parents interviewed agreed that the young students are the ones who would be most affected by the impending shutdown of the school.
Mark Raymond Buensuceso is an eighth grade student who has been at St. Aedan since kindergarten.
Dreaming to become a politician or an actor someday, the 13-year-old student described how, aside from the high academic standards, he was given the chance to participate in school plays, and state-wide programs, like the Dr. Martin Luther King oratorical contest.
“I believe we should not allow the school to be closed and merged with another,” he said, adding “ I am really grateful to the school for making me into what I am today.”
The decision to close the school came after discussions among local priests, Goodness said.
The pastors couldn’t be reached for comment - and at least one won’t be around for long. The secretary at St. Aedan said Monsignor Jeremias Rebanal, the church’s pastor, has plans to retire next month.
Tuition at St. Aedan is $3,600 per student for children of parishioners and $4,050 for non-parishioners; the parishioner rate at Visitation is $2,750, Goodness said.
Visitation School itself is the result of the merger in 2003 of Mount Carmel School and the St. John and St. Ann School. In September, Assumption All Saints School merged with St. Patrick’s Elementary School.
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Jersey City, NEW JERSEY --- Christine Pechera’s biopsy results three days before New Year’s revealed a devastating discovery: her body was betraying her. Again.
The cancer she thought she had beaten has returned, and this time, without a bone marrow transplant, doctors are giving her less than a year to live.
“I’m still reeling,” Pechera, 34, of Los Angeles, said in a telephone interview last week. “I thought, oh my God, I have to go through all of this again.”
In 2002, Pechera, a budding Filipina filmmaker, was first diagnosed with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, in which cancerous tumors form in the body’s white blood cells.
There are 50,000 new cases of lymphoma in the United States annually, with the average age of patients between 50 and 60 years old, according to the National Marrow Donor Program.
Pechera’s tumor, the size of a pineapple, was first discovered in her chest in 2002. Doctors gave her a month to live. She stayed at City of Hope, a cancer hospital in Los Angeles, opting for chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant from her own body, a potentially fatal procedure.
While recovering six months later — even before her doctors allowed her to go without her protective mask — Pechera began working again on a short film. She had grown angry over her condition, she said, and wanted to put her energy into something she loved. Good news followed in May 2003: the lymphoma was in remission.
But then, last year, a couple of routine scans indicated abnormal activity in Pechera’s body. Doctors ran tests. It was cancer.
About 30 percent of Asian patients have a family member, usually a sibling, who is able to donate marrow or stem cells, according to Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches (or A3M), of Los Angeles, which has helped to match more than 120 people since 1991. The rest must look to a non-family member, with the best chance being someone in his or her ethnic group.
“The doctor said it was a problem because there are hardly any Filipino donors,” Pechera said. “My match is out there, but he or she probably isn’t on the registry.”
The National Marrow Donor Program’s database has more than 5.5 million people registered as potential donors, but only 6.5 percent of those identified by race are Asian.
Madhuri Mistry, an A3M spokeswoman, said she is encouraged by Pechera, whose willingness to seek help from other Filipinos is inspiring and unfortunate.
“It’s a sad thing when patients have to be the ones to go out and ask for help,” Mistry said. “The need is always there. Culturally, (Asian) communities want to give and help, but awareness and education is the key.”
Marrow is fatty tissue located inside the body’s larger bones. It contains stem cells, which produces red blood cells and white blood cells. When taken from a good donor, doctors say, a bone marrow transplant can allow someone with a blood-related disease to eventually live a normal life if they survive the procedure after at least two years.
On February 6, Pechera planned to begin a clinical trial at City of Hope for new medication as she awaits a donor match.
“We’re crossing our fingers and praying it works,” said her boyfriend, Jacob Krueger, a screenwriter in Brooklyn.
A non-family transplant is the only option for Pechera since cancer runs in hers; of the four siblings, three have battled with a form of the disease, including Pechera’s younger brother, Francis Rex, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at age 12.
To try and save his life, Pechera was his bone marrow donor. He lived long enough to see his 16th birthday. Faced with her own mortality, Pechera said she is living day to day. She is excited that the documentary she helped to co-produce, called “F*CK,” is set to be screened at a couple of popular film festivals this year. “With my brother, he accepted (the disease) with so much grace,” Pechera said. “I learned that you never know when life is going to turn on you, so you might as well enjoy it now.”
Beginning this month, the National Marrow Donor Program is sponsoring a donor drive for Christine Pechera. For those who want to find out if they can be her donor, mention her by name at your nearest donor center. To locate one, visit www.marrow.org or call (800) 627-7692. Pechera’s Web site is www.christine.site.ph.
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Goleta, CALIFORNIA --- A Filipino postal worker is said to be among the casualties of a shooting rampage in a California mail plant, now considered the worst postal rampage in the Santa Barbara county.
But in Manila, Foreign Affairs spokesman Gilberto Asuque said the report must first be verified by the Philippine consulate general in Los Angeles before it could be confirmed.
“We shall reserve comment until we receive the report of the consulate,” Asuque said in a report that published by The Manila Standard Today. “We have to get the name and contact the family to verify if he is a Filipino.”
The suspect, 44-year-old Jennifer San Marco, was described by a former colleague as “particularly hostile to Asians.”
In an interview with TV network ABC News, former postal worker Jeff Tabal said all the casualties were minorities: three blacks, one Chinese-American, one Hispanic, and one Filipino.
On Wednesday, February1, the death toll from the shooting rampage rose to eight after San Marco’s female ex-neighbor was found shot to death and another victim died of her injuries, police said.
Police said earlier that Monday’s bloody massacre in the sleepy California town of Goleta had claimed six lives, including that of the killer who turned the gun on herself after mowing down her former colleagues.
But a critically injured postal worker died in hospital early Wednesday as police revealed that San Marco appeared to have also killed her former neighbor before heading to the postal office.
Beverly Graham, 54, was found shot to death in her home in Goleta, about 160 km northwest of Los Angeles, late Tuesday, Santa Barbara sheriff Jim Anderson told reporters.
“She was clearly the victim of a homicide and had sustained a gunshot wound to the head, Anderson said.
“Investigators discovered evidence at the scene that linked this shooting to the postal distribution center shooting,” he said, noting that the 9-mm shell casings found at both murder scenes matched.
“It appears that the suspect lived in the same complex several years ago and may have known Ms. Graham,” Anderson said.
The carnage began late Monday, January 31, when San Marco, who police and former bosses say had a long history of strange behavior that led to her sacking from the mail sorting facility in 2003, walked back into her former place of work armed with a pistol.
She shot six colleagues before committing suicide inside the building, in which 80 people were working at the time.
The attack was the latest in a string of high-profile shootings by US mail workers over recent years, which gave rise to the colloquial expression “going postal,” indicating a high level of anger and frustration exploding into violence in the workplace.
In the first highly publicized event in August 1986, postal worker Patrick Sherrill shot and killed 14 fellow employees and wounded six others in less than 10 minutes in Edmond, Oklahoma.
In November 1991, another fired worker, Thomas McIlvane, killed four supervisors and wounded five employees at his former post office in Michigan before shooting himself.
Two years later, another disgruntled worker went on a deadly rampage in another Michigan post office, killing one and wounding two others before turning the gun on himself.
The huge facility in Goleta is close to the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California.
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NEW YORK --- Several immigrant organizations have formed a coalition to broaden the campaign against House Resolution 4437, a proposed bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives that aims to criminalize undocumented immigrants.
Robert Roy, executive director of the Philippine Forum, said the new coalition, the Immigrant Communities in Action, had set up a steering committee to coordinate actions aimed at blocking the passage of the anti-immigrant measure at the Senate.
The steering committee is composed of the Centro Hispano “Cuzcatlan”, Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM), the Forest Hills Community House and Humanist Center of Cultures
Among organizations who agreed to join the coalition’s immigration rights campaign were the Adhikaar, CAUSA, Centro Guatemalteco Tecunuman, Immigrant Justice Solidarity Project, the Prison Moratorium Project and the Philippine Forum.
Initially, they have agreed to launch a letter-writing campaign that will start on February 11. They then will bring the letters, signed by those opposed to the House resolution, to the office of Senator Chuck Schumer (Democratic-New York).
Roy of the Philippine Forum said the group is hoping that the letters of appeal will convince Schumer to vote against HR 4437 and other measures similar to it.
For its part, the Philippine Forum will hold a youth “Valentine’s Party” on February 10, from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm and a community “Valentine’s Party” on February 12, from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm.
Though both activities will have food, karaoke and film showing, these will be an occasion to write the letters of appeal, sign petitions and make Valentine’s cards pressing for the passage of a more humane immigration law.
Both events will be held at the Kalayaan and Bonifacio Halls of the Philippine Forum office at 54-05 Seabury St., Elmhurst, NY 11373.
House Resolution 4437, otherwise known as Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, was sponsored by House judiciary committee chairman Rep. James F. Sensenbrenner Jr., (Republican -Wisconsin) and homeland security committee chairman Peter King (Republican-New York).
It was approved by a 239-182 House vote on December 16.
The bill aims to turn 11 million undocumented immigrants or even legal immigrants with temporary status problems into criminals whom the police can arrest.
It also makes any relative, employer, co-worker, friend, advocate and church workers of an illegal immigrant into an “alien smuggler” and a criminal.
The Senate is expected to vote as early as this month on a version of several similar bills proposing immigration reforms.
A separate bill sponsored by Senators John McCain (Republican-Arizona) and Edward Kennedy (Democratic-Massachussetts), would allow immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally to apply for temporary, six-year work visas or to become permanent residents or citizens.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops warned that HR 4437 “would place parish, diocesan and social service program staff at risk of criminal prosecution simply for performing their jobs as well as also subject the spouses and colleagues of illegal workers to prosecution.”
Immigration lawyer Cristina Godinez of Philippine Forum said what is needed now is for the immigrant communities to come together and impress upon the Senate their objection to HR 4437.
Dr. Ben Ileto, co-chairman of the Philippine Forum, said a broad coalition from among several immigrant communities would be a formidable force that may just convince the Senate to junk the House resolution.
To get to the Philippine Forum office, take the V, G, R trains to Grand Avenue/Newtown Station in Elmhurst, Queens. Exit on the Southside of Queens Boulevard, then walk towards 54th Avenue and turn left on Seabury St.
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