Harvest Collegiate HS is using the PROSE provision in the UFT contract to gain more freedom to veer from tradition this year. This year’s plan is to increase teacher leadership positions and conduct a grand experiment in peer evaluation.

Second-graders at PS 261 in Boerum Hill brightened the lives of the veterans at St. Albans Community Living Center in Queens by donating their artwork as part of the Art of Giving project, a collaboration between UFT elementary schools and local hospitals.

Harlem Success Academy chief Eva Moskowitz’s planned expansion of her charter network into a Fort Greene school is raising alarm among parents and staff, who say the co-location threatens the music and arts program at the heart of the 6-12 grade school.

Judge Tingling, who halted Bloomberg’s ban on oversized sugary drinks, went to school in Harlem in the 1960s. “My 3rd-grade teacher Ms. Commack recently reached out to me; my teachers say they are proud of me. But not more than I am of them,” he says. “There’s no way I’d be doing this today without them."

Marisa Tomei shot to national attention in 1992 in “My Cousin Vinny,” in which she played brash, foul-mouthed New York mechanic Mona Lisa Vito, a longtime fiancee (with her biological clock ticking) who is called to testify as an expert witness in a murder case in Alabama. She won an Academy Award for best supporting actress for that comedic tour de force and hasn’t slowed down since, appearing on Broadway and in TV shows and other movies. You may have seen her in “Anger Management” (2003), “The Wrestler” (2008) or “Crazy, Stupid Love” (2011). Her latest movie, “Parental Guidance,” in which she appears with Billy Crystal and Bette Midler, opens on Dec. 25. But before all that recognition, Tomei was a Brooklyn girl whose mother, aunt and cousins all taught in New York City public schools. She grew up attending public schools in Midwood, where her dramatic talent was first sparked and nurtured. After graduating from Edward R. Murrow HS in 1982, she attended Boston University for a year before moving back to New York City to become a professional actress.