Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll meet a Bronx high school teacher who just won a $25,000 award — and decided to put the money toward a teaching prize in Gambia when his hopes for a State Department grant fell through. We’ll also find out about Senator Robert Menendez’s 11-year prison sentence, which starts today.
Alhassan Susso is a teacher at a high school in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx who has won numerous awards, including a national teacher-of-the-year prize in 2020. He has just been recognized again, this time with an award of $25,000. That money will now go to self-funding a project he is passionate about — a teacher-of-the-year prize in Gambia, where he is from — because his hopes for a grant from the State Department appear to have been dashed. For months, Susso had been preparing to submit an application for something called a public diplomacy grant through the U.S. Embassy in Banjul, the Gambian capital. Then, last month, the webpage with information about the grant program disappeared, Susso said. He had heard about the Trump administration’s plans to lay off nearly the entire staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development, more than 9,700 employees. He figured that U.S.A.I.D. had something to do with administering the public diplomacy grants. It did not. But a State Department spokesperson told me by email that there had been a comprehensive review of all State Department grants, including the public diplomacy awards, “to determine their alignment with the administration’s priorities.” The spokesperson also said that embassies are not offering new public diplomacy grants at the moment. Susso described his reaction as “disappointment.” He also said that spending his $25,000 prize to keep the project in Gambia going was “a no-brainer.” He had already put a lot of his own money into it. “The truth is, I took $45,000 out of my retirement” last year to underwrite a nonprofit he set up, the Namie Foundation. Named for his grandmother, Namie provided the structure for the teacher-of-the-year award in Gambia. The first-year budget was $75,000, “and we worked hard to raise the rest from friends and family,” he said. This year, he was counting on a public diplomacy grant to cover the teacher-of-the-year prize. By coincidence, the $25,000 for the prize in Gambia was the same amount he received as one of six winners of the Flag Awards, which recognize teachers in New York City “who inspire learning through creativity, passion and commitment.” The awards are administered by a foundation started by the financier Glenn Fuhrman and his wife, Amanda Fuhrman. “Could I have used the $25,000 for the benefit of my family?” he said. “Of course. I have three young kids who I need to think about, setting them up for a successful future, including college.” He also has his own future to think about. Susso, 41, is legally blind in one eye, and the vision in his other eye is impaired, the result of retinitis pigmentosa, an incurable disease. His sight was already deteriorating when he left Gambia as a teenager, though he did not know why until he was diagnosed in the United States. Some of the $25,000 would have gone to “setting myself up for stability in case of complete vision loss” if a public diplomacy grant had come through, he said. Susso decided to start the Gambia teaching prize after a visit in 2019. What he saw was troubling, he said, citing a UNICEF report that found that 88 percent of children there were not being taught reading and 91 percent were not learning math. He modeled the Gambian teacher-of-the-year prize on the one he had won in 2020, the Award for Teaching Excellence from the NEA Foundation. That program provides state awards, then five awards from among the state winners, then the top honor. Similarly, the Gambia teacher prize recognizes outstanding teachers from each of seven regions. One of the seven is then chosen as the national winner. As things stand now, Susso’s prize money will cover this year’s award in Gambia. Last year, apart from funding the prize, the Namie Foundation also provided a grant of $1,000. It covered the cost of the fuel for a minivan that picks up 15 visually impaired students and carries them to a special school. “Disability is stigmatized” in Gambia, he said. During his visit in 2019, “my message was, if I was living in this country, I would not be where I am. People who are disabled can be successful if they are given the proper support.” WEATHER Expect a cloudy day with temperatures around 74 and fog and a chance of showers early. At night, cloudy conditions continue with temperatures falling into the mid-60s and possible showers or thunderstorms. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Thursday, Juneteenth. The latest Metro news
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Former Senator Robert Menendez begins a new life as Prisoner 67277-050 today. Menendez, the only U.S. senator ever found guilty of acting as an agent of a foreign government, is expected to enter a federal prison in Minersville, Pa. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison, more than half as much time as he spent in the Senate. Prosecutors had argued for a longer sentence, calling the crimes at the heart of the case the most serious “in the history of the Republic.” Menendez went from having power and seniority on Capitol Hill to being a ward of the same government he had helped lead. His fellow inmates will include James Coonan, the onetime head of the Westies gang, and Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa, who rose from carwash attendant to millionaire gas station owner, only to be convicted of two murders. The case against Menendez involved a far-reaching bribery scheme. Prosecutors said he had sold his office, accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of payoffs — including solid gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz. After a separate trial earlier this year, Menendez’s wife, Nadine, was found guilty of playing a central role in their bribery scheme and trying to hide it after she learned that she was a focus of a federal investigation. METROPOLITAN DIARY Rain Gods
Dear Diary: I was leaving my house in Forest Hills for my usual morning stroll. The darkening storm clouds made things look iffy for a walk, but I decided to chance it. Off I went without an umbrella. I had only gone a few blocks when it started to drizzle. A little farther on, a steady rain began. I picked up my pace in the direction of the tennis stadium, hoping to take cover under some nearby trees. Once I got there, I spotted a lonely umbrella on a low stone wall. I picked it up and, reflecting on my good fortune, looked to the sky. “Thank you, rain gods,” I said. As I continued on, the rainfall got heavier. I saw a woman in business attire walking toward me. She was frantically searching her bag. I assumed she was looking for an umbrella. I approached her and waved. “Here,” I said. “Take my umbrella.” Then, as I handed it to her, I added, “It’s a gift from the rain gods!” — Alan Cory Kaufman Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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