January 11-17, 2019 Your Neighborhood — Your News® 75 cents
SERVING THROGGS NECK, PELHAM BAY, COUNTRY CLUB, CITY ISLAND, WESTCHESTER SQUARE, MORRIS PARK, VAN NEST, PELHAM PARKWAY, CASTLE HILL, ALLERTON
Instructor keenly detects pupil’s brain tumor
‘Black Wha Books With Bharati shared the gift of literacy during its fi rst le Sign’ billl approved
Vol. 39 No. 02 www.bxtimes.com
Reading Is Fun’damental
PRE-K TEACH
SAVES A LIFE
Continued on Page 51
Continued on Page 51
event of the new year on Saturday, January 5 at Soundview
Cornerstone. Joselyn Somellian (r) enjoyed reading many books
with Bharati Kemraj. See more photos on page 41.
Photo by Aracelis Batista
BY ROBERT WIRSING
Teachers are often unsung
heroes, but one Bronx educator’s
quick thinking may have
saved her student’s life.
P.S. 93 Pre-K teacher Kathryn
Rivera, a 31-year veteran
educator, noticed one of her
students, Joshua Aponte, was
consistently having trouble
maintaining his balance and
vomiting several times a day.
She immediately notifi ed
Joshua’s mother, Yesenia, and
advised her to have him examined
by a doctor.
The initial examination
yielded no results and he was
given a letter of clearance to
return to school.
Unsatisfi ed with the diagnosis,
Rivera asked Yesenia to
take Joshua to a specialist.
Things came to a head the
weekend before Veterans’ Day
while Joshua was attending
daycare.
The daycare supervisor
phoned Yesenia to inform her
that Joshua was sick and experiencing
shortness of breath
and dizziness.
The four-year-old Soundview
native was taken to a specialist
who discovered that he
was suffering from a cancerous
brain tumor.
Joshua was diagnosed with
stage four medulloblastoma.
According to St. Jude Children’s
Research Hospital,
medulloblastoma, also known
as cerebellar primitive neuroectodermal
tumor, is a cancerous
tumor which starts in
the region of the brain at the
base of the skull called the
posterior fossa.
These tumors can spread
to other parts of the brain and
to the spinal cord.
Medulloblastoma is the
most common malignant
childhood brain tumor accounting
for approximately
20% of all childhood brain tumors.
Between 250 and 500 children
younger than 16-yearsold
are found to have medulloblastoma
annually in the
United States.
The disease is slightly
more common in boys than in
girls.
Symptoms often include
headaches, morning nausea
or vomiting which gradually
worsens, clumsiness, problems
with handwriting and vision
problems.
BY ALEX MITCHELL
It was an infuriating day
when the owner of The Black
Whale restaurant on City Island
was ordered to remove it’s
iconic wood-carved sign that
dated back to 1961 because it
wasn’t in compliance with an
outdated city signage law on
Saturday, September 15.
When the City Island mainstay
was fi ned by the NYC Department
of Buildings, Councilman
Mark Gjonaj defended
The Black Whale’s whimsical
nameplate, instructing the
restaurant to defy the city’s
mean-spirited regulations,
while promising to cover any
additional fi nes that the action
could incur.
The Black Whale, on
Wednesday, January 9, became
the poster (or sign) child
to initiate new legislature that
would temporarily place a
hold on the antiquated and impractical
city signage laws.
“Almost every single Bronx
business is technically in violation,”
said Lisa Sorin, president
of the Bronx Chamber of
Commerce.
She went on to explain that
during Mayor Bloomberg’s administration,
a moratorium
was put on the arbitrary signage
laws but was reinstituted
under Mayor de Blasio.
As a matter of fact, any business
that incorporates a phone
number, address or email address
to its outdoor signage
is out of compliance with the
city’s sign code and faces a
civil penalty that ranges from
$5,000 to $20,000.
The city ordinance only
permits a maximum of 12
square feet of text coverage
per sign, which barely allows
suffi cent room to display the
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