Vaccinations (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
[Note: the vaccine numbers change every day; the data in the article reflect Federal, New York State, and New York City numbers as of April 17, 2021.]
The three counties in New York State with the lowest rate of residents fully vaccinated -- at 19% -- are Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Allegany County (pop. 46,000). This is the broadest measure of the population, everyone age 0 and up. There are 62 counties in the State. Brooklyn also has the lowest percentage of residents age 65 and up fully vaccinated in the entire State, at 42%.
The data are taken from a Washington Post table from April 17, with the source cited as the Center for Disease Control. Here are the ten counties in New York with the lowest rates of residents fully vaccinated.
The left number is % of all residents; the middle number is % age 18 and up; the right number is % age 65 and up:
It has already been widely reported that vaccination rates for Black and Latinos residents of New York City have lagged behind rates for white and Asians residents. The status of New York City’s vaccination rates as of April 17, taken from the New York City Department of Health vaccination tracker, shows key disparities. The criteria for vaccination differs from the above table; here the rates are for persons who have had at least one dose, age 18 and up. 46% of all New York City residents in this category have received at least one dose, but rates vary widely by demographic groups and by borough:
The current data show that vaccination rates for Black and Latino New Yorkers are far behind white and Asian city residents. The percentage of Black New Yorkers aged 18 and up who have at least one dose is 25%; for Latinos, 29%; for whites, 43%; and for Asians, 55%.
Rates for at least one dose among Bronx and Brooklyn residents, at 39% and 41%, respectively, also lag behind the rest of the city, compared to 47% each for Queens and Staten Island, and 56% for Manhattan. Among older residents, Brooklyn once again has the lowest vaccination rate for persons with one dose, at 59% for persons age 65-74, compared to 67% citywide and 75% in Manhattan.
CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine tracker, as of April 17, shows the following:
At Least One Dose |
Fully Vaccinated |
||
Persons Vaccinated |
129.49 m |
82.47 m |
|
% of Total Pop. |
39% |
24.80% |
|
Age 18 and Up |
128.3 m |
82.2 m |
|
% Age 18 and Up |
49.70% |
31.80% |
|
Age 65 and Up |
44.16 m |
35.7 m |
|
% Age 65 and Up |
80.70% |
65.30% |
For the nation as a whole, 39% of the overall population has received at least one dose; 24.8% are fully vaccinated. For persons 18 and over, 49.7% have received at least one dose, and 31.8% are fully vaccinated. For persons aged 65 and up, nearly 81% have received at least one dose, and 65.3% are fully vaccinated. New York State as a whole is doing better than the nation in the percentage of persons age 16 and up having received at least one dose: 51.5%, compared to 49.7 % nationally, age 18 and up, according to the Washington Post tracker.
New York City and its boroughs also fare poorly compared to vaccination rates across New York State and its regions. This below table, taken from the New York State Department of Health’s vaccine tracker for April 17, shows the percentage of the overall population with one dose, and percentage complete, for the regions, and percentages for one dose for the individual boroughs in the City:
NEW YORK STATE VACCINE TRACKER BY REGION |
NYC BY BOROUGH ONE DOSE |
|||||
% One Dose |
% Complete |
|||||
Statewide |
40.9 |
27.6 |
Kings |
33.5 |
||
Capitol Region |
46 |
32.7 |
Queens |
41.4 |
||
Cent NY |
43.7 |
31.6 |
Bronx |
30.6 |
||
Finger Lakes |
40.9 |
27.6 |
New York |
50.8 |
||
Long Island |
43.3 |
29.4 |
Staten Island |
38.6 |
||
Mid-Hudson |
42.4 |
28.5 |
||||
Mohawk Valley |
37.8 |
28.3 |
||||
NYC |
38.8 |
24.9 |
||||
North Country |
40.5 |
32.3 |
||||
Sthrn Tier |
40.1 |
28.8 |
||||
Wester >n NY |
41.2 |
28.7 |
The city’s overall vaccination rate lags about two percentage points behind the state’s overall rate ( in which New York City is averaged in), at 38.8% versus 40.9%. The Bronx rate is 30.6%, and Brooklyn is 33.5%, more than ten and more than seven points behind the state overall rate. Only one region of the State, the Mohawk Valley, has a lower overall vaccination rate than New York City.
I am sure that the city and state governments are trying to get the vaccine into the arms of New York residents as quickly as possible, and are making strenuous efforts to reach the minority populations of the state (which combine for a majority in the city). But the stubborn facts presented here show that these efforts to reach the Black and Latino populations, and the elderly populations, are simply not that successful so far.
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Jim Brennan was a member of the New York State Assembly for 32 years, where he chaired four committees. On Twitter @JimBrennanNY.
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Music class (photo: @ETMonline)
Two weeks before schools closed last March, our team at the New York City nonprofit Education Through Music brainstormed ways to provide music lessons online so that students wouldn’t miss a beat. At the time, we didn’t imagine we would be teaching virtually for an entire year. We’ve now hit the one-year mark of online learning, and while the past year has been filled with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the education sector has risen to the challenge.
Yet many difficulties remain. Our students have faced the trauma of isolation, fear and, in many cases, grief. Racial inequity remains widespread. And although music programs are vital to a well rounded education, over half of New York City public schools don’t have a full-time music educator on staff. Giving students access to music education is core to my nonprofit’s mission and vital to facing these continuing chall enges.
New York City Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter wants to prioritize learning from the lessons of the past year, including continuing to use digital tools. We also need to bring a new mindset going forward. There are three crucial principles we as a city and as education professionals must carry forward from the past year as we rebuild a more just system that serves all students.
Collaboration
To adapt as circumstances change, education organizations must collaborate effectively across teachers, administration, nonprofits, and the Department of Education. When possible, we should also build partnerships beyond educational organizations. We know working with other educators and partners enables us to achieve goals greater than individual organizations can reach separately. Going beyond sector-based partnerships multiplies our potential impact even further.
For example, by collaborating with BronxNet and WNET to provide on-demand lessons via TV, we were able to reach more students than ever, including those who can’t access music education elsewhere. Who else can we work with? Who is speaking to the students we struggle to reach? How can they help us? Educators must continually ask ourselves these questions as we rebuild better systems in the coming years.
Inclusion
The past year has made the public aware of the vast inequities still present in our country and education system. To rebuild in 2021 and beyond, we must foster inclusion in the classroom, schools administration, and through policy decisions, including financial commitments, across the city and state. Studies have shown that diversity in schools is beneficial to students, who are able to learn from one another and broaden their understanding of different cultures. This is equally true of lesson content and we must all push ourselves and our organizations to do more to include diverse perspectives and voices into our curriculum.
The National Association for Music Education explains that including all forms and types of music within the classroom allows students to explore and expand their communication, collaboration, and music literacy skills in a variety of formats, structures, and ensembles. To that end, Education Through Music has reviewed its music repertoire of roughly 2,000 pieces of music to ensure it is diverse and inclusive, and will be taught with cultural contexts, enabling us to share the rich diversity of music with our students. At the same time, we developed social justice resources and training for teachers. And we can do more by connecting music educators to the school community and providing opportunities for parents and the community to participate.
Drive
To promote a system where all voices are celebrated and empowered, we must have high aspirations, day-to-day flexibility, effective partners and a focus on the goal of inclusion. Challenges will always exist, and must not distract us from the bigger picture. In that spirit, Education Through Music launched its first high school music class this year despite the pandemic. As an almost-thirty-year-old organization, this has been a goal for a long time, and the pandemic threatened to jeopardize HS 223 students’ opportunity to experience music class as high schoolers. All parts of the education system must keep that focus on the next place for improvement at all times, even when facing monumental challenges.
Looking forward, I have hope that our students and staff can return to a sense of normalcy, and our teachers can have the in-person engagement with students that our educators crave. I am excited to see our students enjoy the live performance opportunities they’ve missed for more than a year. And I anticipate returning to a kinder society that supports an equitable and inclusive education, and recognizes children’s social and emotional needs.
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Penny Swift is the Executive Director of Education Through Music. She is a lifelong advocate for equality and excellence in education, a former special education teacher, and a proud alumna of New York City’s public schools. On Twitter @ETMonline.
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Starting the ESCR work (photo: NYC Department of Design and Construction)
When Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York City—killing 44 New Yorkers and causing $19 billion in damages—it instantly became clear that preparing for stronger storms and rising seas had to become a top priority for our city’s future.
City officials worked across agencies to draw up bold new plans for fortifying our shoreline, with a special focus on those areas that were hardest hit by Sandy. Since then, New York City has invested $20 billion to increase our resiliency to flooding and extreme heat, far outpacing the efforts of any other United States city.
This week, we’re celebrating a major milestone for our climate adaptation efforts as construction crews begin pile-driving for the East Side Coastal Resiliency project. This project will transform 2.4 miles of Manhattan’s waterfront from Montgomery Street to East 25th Street and is considered one of the most ambitious and complex climate adaptation projects anywhere in the world.
ESCR will directly protect more than 110,000 New Yorkers and improve waterfront open spaces in a racially diverse area that has one of the highest concentrations of public housing in the country. This area endured major damage from Sandy: 94% of residents lost power; homes and subway tunnels flooded; and grocery stores, pharmacies, and other essential businesses were closed for days on end.
Around the world, most climate adaptation projects have typically consisted of tide gates constructed in harbors or rivers, far from the communities they’re responsible for protecting. ESCR is different. The constraints posed by Manhattan’s density and geography led us to develop a bold project that will seamlessly traverse an area packed with housing and businesses, dotted with parks, and crisscrossed with subway lines, busy streets, underground utilities, and a major highway.
Catalyzed by hundreds of millions of federal disaster recovery dollars and supplemented by City funds, this project will install new protections and park improvements that will repel floodwaters from future Sandy-like storms for generations to come. Our world-renowned team of planners, architects, and engineers created an innovative design that uses raised parkland, floodwalls, berms, and movable floodgates to create a continuous line of defense.
A raised East River Park is the project’s centerpiece. This park is more than just a line of defense against storms. It’s the crown jewel of Manhattan’s east side; a place where generations of New Yorkers can work, play, and live.
To ensure that we didn’t wall the community off from their waterfront, we focused on creating better access, with new, universally-accessible pedestrian bridges that will create more inviting and inclusive points of entry. The park’s Robert Moses-era design has also been reimagined and improved to include new features and amenities sought by the community, such as new open gathering spaces and step-down areas where visitors can access the East River’s shore.
At the same time, we are making sure that beloved features like ballfields, tennis courts, exercise areas, and a track and field will return with stronger materials and resilient design. We have also meticulously phased construction so that nearly half of East River Park will remain open at all times. These choices directly reflect the voices we heard during our multi-year community engagement process, which involved more than one hundred public meetings, events, and other gatherings.
Cities can’t adapt to climate change overnight. And as long as the world remains addicted to fossil fuels, we’re forced to take aim at a moving target.
The start of this project, however, should offer New Yorkers hope and reassurance. We anticipate that the project will be fully complete by 2025, providing a much-needed sense of security to a neighborhood that’s as populous as the entire city of Albany. We may not be able to prevent the next big storm from coming—but we can act today to prevent damage and bounce back faster than ever.
The threats posed by global warming and extreme weather may be daunting, but New York City won’t back down. We will continue to build our resilience with a mix of creativity, grit, and innovation. New Yorkers deserve nothing less.
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Jainey Bavishi is the Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Resiliency. On Twitt >er @jaineytweets & @NYCMayorsOffice.
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Taking on covid (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
By now, every New Yorker knows someone who has been infected with COVID-19 or has had it themselves. Since the start of this pandemic, over 800,000 New York City residents have had a positive test. And a year into the fight against this disease, we know that the battle is far from over, as New Yorkers grapple with the effects of long -haul COVID: respiratory issues, brain fog, heart palpitations, and depression. We need more research and more data to learn more about the long-term impacts of COVID-19 and its impact on New Yorkers. That’s why we are pledging our support for this research when we are elected Manhattan Borough President and to the City Council, and fighting to advance it now.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, we all saw how first responders and the people living and working in the vicinity of the World Trade Center developed health issues ranging from COPD to depression to cancer. That’s why New York created a voluntary registry for survivors to help track and research long-term health conditions arising from the attacks. Working off that model, Senator Hoylman has already proposed legislation to create a voluntary registry run by the New York State Department of Health to track the long-term physical and mental health impacts of the disease — but more can be done.
New York City was the epicenter of this disease, but is also home to world-class hospitals and universities that are already engaged in groundbreaking research on COVID-19. When elected, we will work to provide additional funds for research into long-haul COVID, partner with public hospitals, and cut intergovernmental red tape. We are seeing that New York innovation now in our public university system: SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn was converted into a COVID-only hospital and The City College of New York’s work to create a new vaccine.
In our respective prospective roles as Borough President and City Council member, we want to be champions of STEM education and the best way to do that is by supporting research. For all of the tragedies we encountered over the last year, we also have seen breakthroughs in scientific research. Within 10 days of the virus being first detected, its DNA sequence was made available online. Because of the groundwork research being laid for mRNA vaccines in the preceding years, we had vaccine trials beginning just months after the virus arrived.
Our city must do whatever it can to combat the long-term effects of coronavirus. We know it has disproportionately hurt our most vulnerable communities: those that are low-income, those in communities of color, those with underlying conditions. As public servants, we want to do our part to make our society more equitable so the next time a deadly virus emerges, we will be ready. Once elected to these new roles, we are committed to investing in the research and partnerships needed to fight the long term effects of this pandemic — and any future pandemics — for years to come.
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State Senator Brad Hoylman is a candidate for Manhattan Borough President and Briget Rein is a candidate for City Council in Brooklyn’s 39th District. On Twitter @BradHoylman & @briget4brooklyn.
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Hospital staff (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
The new director of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control said the quiet part out loud last week – racism infects our public health system.
“What we know is this: racism is a serious public health threat that directly affects the well-being of millions of Americans,” Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the CDC director, said, citing disparities and inequities long-known to those of us who work to increase access to quality, affordable health care in Black and brown communities.
Dr. Walensky was blunt in her honesty, saying the COVID-19 pandemic had “revealed for all Americans a known, but often unaddressed, epidemic impacting public health: racism.”
It is especially gratifying to hear her words now during what has been designated Minority Health Month. We have seen as the pandemic took its toll in lives and health across the country that the highest percentages of disease and death occurred in vulnerable communities where disproportionate numbers of minorities live, where essential workers live, and where chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, asthma, and kidney disease afflict residents far more than in the overall population.
And it is why we cannot have as our goal coming out of the pandemic to return to ‘normal.’ We know what that normal was, and it’s the result of structural barriers that limit access to everything from fresh produce to safe streets to educational opportunity and, of course, to access to the quality, affordable health care that must be a right for all.
Our goal has to be a new normal, where holis tic approaches to health care replace the disjointed and unequal system under which the color of your skin or the zip code you lived in determined your opportunity to access that quality care.
It includes requiring, among other things, public and private insurance plans to cover mental health care, tackling the environmental racism that sees polluting infrastructure such as asthma-causing bus garages sited in poor neighborhoods, and jump-starting the scandalously slow removal of lead paint from public housing buildings, which stunts the educational and life potential of so many children.
For those of us across the country at Black Health, the organization I head, the pandemic brought us into contact with thousands of vulnerable residents through test and tracing programs early in the pandemic, and confronting vaccine hesitancy in the current phase. We learned that it takes trusted local voices – pastors, community leaders, educators, and others – to reach people where they are to press upon them the urgency of the moment in trying to defeat this greatest public health threat in our lives.
But we cannot stop at vaccines, as clearly essential as they are in trying to move beyond the moment of public health threats. It is more than the urgency of now. We have to turn it into the opportunity of now.
We are encouraged that the new administration in Washington, D.C., as evidenced by the long-overdue words of Dr. Walensky, has moved to separate access to health care from a person’s ability to pay. Expanding coverage under the Affordable Care Act to include a public option that can drive down the cost of health insurance is a critical, albeit insufficient step towards that goal.
Breaking the grip of the “sickness industry” – the interlocking financial interests of hospitals, drug companies, and the like – requires aggressive support through funding of preventive programs. It is no surprise that Medicaid, the primary funder of state-managed health coverage for the poor, will cover $50,000 to $60,000 per year for diabetes-related dialysis – a $35 billion a year business, with squads of lobbyists protecting their financial interests over the interests of sick patients – but will not cover the estimated $900 per patient for evidence-based, peer-education programs that help vulnerable residents drive down their blood sugar levels.
And studies have shown as the pandemic has progressed that blood sugar levels are directly correlated with higher complications and death rates for those with chronic diseases such as diabetes who contract COVID.
People don’t have to be that sick but under the “old normal,” far too often they were. And until we recognize the role that racism has played in skewing the public health system across the nation, we cannot create the “new normal” we need and deserve.
As we continue the struggle to conquer COVID-19, we can no longer ignore the social virus of racism. We stand with Dr. Walensky in her acknowledgement of what should be obvious to anyone paying attention. And we will hold her at her word as we work to rid the health system, and society at large, of that racist virus.
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C. Virginia Fields is the Founder and CEO of Black Health - the National Black Leadership Commission on Health. On Twitter @CVirginiaFields.
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Mayor and poice leaders (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)
Since the pandemic started, thousands of Black New Yorkers across the state have taken to the streets demanding that government officials treat our lives with dignity. A full year of pandemic grief, loss, and anxiety in places like Brooklyn and Buffalo has deepened our question: What would it look like if city spending truly invested in our everyday problems instead of inflated police department budgets?
Instead of spending on surveillance drones and riot gear, could we redirect public money to what we actually need—laptops for our students, emergency mental health care for our neighbors, support for the back rent so many out-of-work friends owe?
This past June, Governor Cuomo, under pressure to deliver police reform, issued Executive Order 203 (EO 203), requiring local governments to submit police reform plans to New York State by April 1. These plans mandated the leadership of mayors, county executives, police chiefs, sheriffs—local officials who are often targets of police accountability campaigns. Organizers like us and our groups’ members—working class, professional, and low-income Black folks—often don’t make it on their outreach lists.
EO 203 was a move by the governor to step in and moderate change in a time of uprising. By design, the process led by police and municipal leaders was meant to undermine our demands, falsely presenting the voices of a selected few as the will of the many. Using state funding as the means to hold municipalities accountable only exacerbated this issue.
Between our two organizations and decades of organizing in Black communities, we know that the only real way to drastically reduce police violence is to reduce the outsized funding, power, scope, and footprint of police departments and police unions.
The plan passed by the New York City Council last month included nothing that will directly decrease police violence or increase firings of abusive police or accountability – two criteria that should be central to any real police reform plan. Mayor de Blasio’s “community engagement” process to create New York City’s plan was a sham, and the final resolution that the City Council passed, and the mayor supported, lacked many reforms that would directly address policing. Those that do address policing directly are things that were already agreed to or required by law.
New York City’s plan includes moving homeless outreach from the NYPD to the Department of Homeless Services, which was agreed to last year and hasn’t been fully implemented. The NYPD is seemingly continuing its inhumane practice of carrying out homeless sweeps. The portion of the plan that talks about accountability and transparency relies on the NYPD ‘discipline matrix,’ which incentivizes and tolerates a wide range of police violence and codifies that officers will not be fired for many instances of violence.
In Buffalo, Mayor Brown hand-selected the members of Buffalo’s Commission on Police Reform, which released the reform agenda to the public with only 72 hours for public comment via email or voicemail. Like in New York City, the reforms put forth in Buffalo are either reforms the city committed to several years ago, and never implemented, or agenda items that would increase the community’s interaction with police. This plan also backtracks on previous community wins, specifically around police in schools. The four-page plan is one of ideas, with no concrete measures to bring any of them >to fruition, leaving the public wondering: is the city actually committed to reform?
Both the Buffalo and New York City plans included provisions that may lead to continued expansion of bloated police budgets and footprints in Black, Latino, and other communities of color, like more training for officers, and failed to remove police from schools—a long-held demand of the movement.
Training and diversity initiatives don’t uproot anti-Blackness out of policing. More anti-bias, mental health response, and de-escalation training doesn’t end police violence or ensure police accountability—officers still kill, brutalize, and harass.
Governor Cuomo’s mandate was a failed attempt to get ahead of an organized, bold, Black-led movement. EO 203 and the plans that resulted are meant to undermine our demands while claiming to be the answer. But the movement for Black lives and police accountability isn’t going away until our people get what we deserve.
We are fighting for more than Black lives—we are fighting for Black futures that are safe and secure without harmful policing. We are fighting for redirection of police funds to non-police safety alternatives. We are fighting for removal of police where they don’t belong, like mental health care. We are fighting in solidarity with young people demanding #PoliceFreeSchools where they can be supported to flourish.
As organizers, our reality is that if police departments could reform themselves, we wouldn’t be fighting at all.
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Anthonine Pierre is a steering committee member of Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) and Deputy Director of the Brooklyn Movement Center. Phylicia Brown is the Executive Director of Black Love Resists in the Rust (BLRR), based in Buffalo. They serve together on the steering committee of the NYS Black Freedom Project. On Twitter @AnthoninePierre & @BLRRBuffalo.
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A Success school (photo: DOE)
A new Class Size Matters report, DoE Overspending On Charter School Facility Costs and Underspending On Matching Funds To Public Schools reveals that the New York City Department of Education has overspent by many millions on rent for charter schools, while denying co-located traditional public schools millions of dollars of their legally-required matching funds for facility upgrades and repairs.
This report was an update from our earlier 2019 report, which found many of the same problems after analyzing Department of Education (DOE) spending data that we had acquired through Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests and spreadsheets posted on the City Council website.
As a result of this earlier report, the city Comptroller’s office sent a letter to the schools Chancellor in January 2020, asking him to respond to our findings. When Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark replied several months later, she surprisingly did not refute any of our conclusions and actually confirmed some of our findings. She also sent a new spreadsheet that purported to show DOE’s matching funds that contained data completely different from the data provided to us earlier by DOE via FOIL and/or from the City Council website.
Yet the data in the new spreadsheets still revealed considerable shortfalls in matching funds nearly as egregious as we found in our original report. The state passed a law in 2010 requiring that any spending undertaken by co-located charter schools to enhance their spaces be also offered to traditional public schools that shared the buildings, in recognition that too often traditional public school students were subjected to separate but unequal conditions inside the same building as well-funded charter schools, which are privately run. Nevertheless, we found that only four traditional public schools out of 812 instances over six years had received funds equal to the amount spent by their co-located charter schools on facility upgrades, and not a single traditional public school received the cumulative amount owed to them from fiscal year 2014 to fiscal year 2019.
Instead, 127 co-located traditional public schools were owed a total of $15.5 million over this six-year period. A searchable database of schools that lacked matching funds is posted here.
Two of the five schools that were the most shortchanged were District 75 schools for children with serious learning differences and disabilities, despite the fact that staff and parents at these public schools reported considerable needs for upgrades and repair. One of those D75 schools is the Mickey Mantle school in East Harlem that shares space with Success Academy Harlem 3 and lacked over $1.5 million in matching funds over six years. According to the school’s Building Condition Assessment Survey, as of last summer, the school had windows without gates, emergency exit doors without alarms, and a non-operational emergency lighting and sound system.
Air conditioning is especially important in D75 schools, as their schools are open all summer and many of their students have complex health issues that are exacerbated by the heat. However Allister Johnson, a teacher and the UFT chapter leader at the Mickey Mantle school, told us that their air conditioners break down constantly: “We cannot use the classrooms for summer school. We have fragile kids with breathing problems. It would be dangerous for them to be in classrooms where all the air conditioners are not working properly.” He added that the staff bathroom has leaked for at least six years which floods the floors of the stalls, and that the children’s bathroom lacks hot water on a regular basis.
Another school that lacked nearly a million dollars in renovation funds is Mosaic Preparatory Academy in the same building. A parent and PTA officer at the school, Shaheem Lewis, reported that for years, the school had asked the city School Construction Authority to fix the seats in the auditorium that were falling apart and to repair the floors of the stage and the gym that had become dangerously worn.
In response to a Daily News article on our findings, DOE officials claimed that “some of the matching money may not arrive at public schools concurrently with the charter schools’ spending, and thus would not have been reflected in the spending reports analyzed by Class Size Matters.”
Yet this statement ignores that the 2010 state law requires that the matching funds be provided to the traditional public school within three months of the charter school’s expenditures, and our report found millions of dollars missing in cumulative matching funds over a period of six years.
According to the DOE spreadsheets, officials claimed several reasons for not matching these funds, including that these funds were not necessary if the charter school expenditures were made on air conditioners, repainting and/or reflooring projects. The DOE repeated this claim to WCBS-TV, which aired a segment on our report, focused on the lack of payments to Mosaic Prep:
“…data shows from 2014 to 2019, Success Academy Harlem East received about $929,000 in renovation funding not matched by the Department of Education…the DOE says $913,000 of those expenditures, including the cost of new AC units, are exempt.”
Yet as our report pointed out, charter school spending on air conditioners as well as repainting and reflooring are specifically cited in Chancellor’s regulations A-190 as triggering matching funds.
In 2014, another change was made to state law requiring that charter schools be given space within New York City public school buildings or that the city help pay for their rent in private spaces. Yet even given the mandate in this law, we found that the DOE has been overspending on charter school rental payments by millions of dollars over many years.
According to our analysis, in fiscal year 2019, the DOE overspent by $21 million on lease subsidies for 39 charter schools by paying them >more than their base rents. We also found that the DOE has been leasing eight buildings directly for charter schools, rather than asking them to rent the buildings themselves, and thus has made itself ineligible to receive an estimated $8 million in state reimbursement in fiscal year 2020 alone.
The DOE payments for charter school lease subsidies also increased sharply, by 41% from fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2020. In many cases, this was triggered by ballooning charter school rent that needs further explanation. For example, the rent skyrocketed at all three sites that housed Hebrew Language Academy Charter Schools: at the school in Manhattan, the rent increased from approximately $148,000 to $2.9 million in one year, while more than doubling at one site in Brooklyn from $931,000 to $2.5 million and increasing by more than 13 times at another Brooklyn site, from just over $80,000 to $1.06 million.
DOE has also been paying rental subsidies for eight charter schools whose Charter Management Organization or affiliated organization owns their own space, at a cost of $11.6 million in fiscal year 2020. In some of these cases, the rents of these charter schools also grew dramatically, raising questions about whether these rents were fairly assessed or were hiked for the purpose of self-dealing.
In one especially startling example, we found that the rent for the two Success Academy charter schools housed at Hudson Yards increased from approximately $793,000 to over $3.4 million – more than quadrupling – despite the fact that the space is owned by the Success Charter Management Organization. (The picture of that facility is above, from the cover of the report.) This increase in rent allowed Success to charge the DOE over $3 million in rental subsidies for those two schools alone in fiscal year 2020.
To address these concerns, we are proposing that the Department of Education regularly post online all funds spent by co-located charter schools on facility upgrades within three months of these expenditures, and the data provided to principals and School Leadership Teams at the traditional public schools that share their buildings.
These reports should include any matching funds DOE has provided to the traditional public schools or intends to provide in the future, along with the time frame. If the DOE determines that any of these charter expenses are exempted from triggering matching funds, the reasons for this exemption should be clearly described, along with a citation from the law or the regulations that allow for the exclusion.
The city Comptroller’s office should also audit all DOE spending on matching funds and if our findings of shortfalls are confirmed, demand that the DOE contribute the full amounts to the co-located traditional public schools that have been denied their proper share of funds for renovation and upgrades over the last six years.
The city Comptroller should also analyze whether the DOE actually did overspend on rental assistance to charter schools by $21 million in 2019, as the spreadsheets indicate. If so, the DOE should demand that these charter schools reimburse those funds in future years or subtract the amounts from future payments. The Comptroller should also annually analyze whether the rents charged to charter schools are fairly assessed, especially those whose buildings are owned by their CMOs or other allied organizations, to ensure that these schools and their landlords are not gouging the city by charging more than they would otherwise.
Finally, the state Legislature should eliminate any obligation on the part of the city to require that charter schools be given space in public school buildings or provide rental assistance through the state. The New York City Department of Education is the only district in the state and indeed in the nation required to help pay rent to charter schools, and it is simply unfair to burden them with this mandate. especially given the poor record of many charter schools in enrolling and retaining high-needs students. In fiscal year 2020, this legal mandate cost taxpayers nearly $108 million, an amount that the Office of Management and Budget has projected will increase to $160 million by fiscal year 2022, as charter schools continue to expand in enrollment and the per-student subsidy for rent rises over time.
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Leonie Haimson is the Executive Director of Class Size Matters. On Twitter @leoniehaimson.
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ThriveNYC help desk (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography)
As New York City continues to navigate the fallout of COVID-19, a new crisis is upon us. In October 2020, nearly 40% of New Yorkers reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. In January 2021, The New York Times reported fivefold increases in psychologist services and long waiting lists for mental health care. A mental health crisis in New York City is playing out among family members in cramped apartments; among frontline workers providing essential services in grocery aisles, delivery trucks, and emergency rooms; and increasingly in the city’s public spaces like sidewalks and subways.
Our city is not unique in facing a public mental health emergency. However, one piece of good news is that we are uniquely prepared to respond.
Though often maligned by some, the ThriveNYC initiative has consolidated and strengthened New York City's broad spectrum of mental health services, from efforts to destigmatize asking for help to intensive 24/7 treatment for people living with serious mental illness. While public policy efforts must be—and are—held accountable for resource allocation and results, ThriveNYC’s innovation in how a large and complex city approaches its residents’ mental health is the kind of groundbreaking civic initiative that has long-defined New York City.
By and large, ThriveNYC has created a robust citywide infrastructure of mental health services that are now pivoting to rapidly respond to New Yorkers’ increasingly urgent needs. Cutting funding to ThriveNYC—as has been suggested by some candidates running for Mayor—would cause significant harm to hundreds of thousands of individuals in need of assistance; individuals who currently rely on ThriveNYC programs. Such cuts would disproportionately impact communities of color and people who rely on publicly-funded health services, the very individuals and communities most severely impacted by COVID-19. And they would directly hinder the city’s recovery from the mental health crisis surging in the pandemic’s wake.
Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have relied on the more than 30 programs ThriveNYC has funded since 2016. This >is possible through the partnerships ThriveNYC has fostered with more than 200 nonprofit organizations, many of which have been working for years to provide New Yorkers facing difficult challenges with the holistic, wraparound care they need not just to survive but to succeed. While these organizations receive funding from diverse sources, ThriveNYC’s commitment to funding innovative approaches to mental health has allowed us to deliver the cutting-edge services that people in a city as complex as New York need and deserve.
These innovative services mean help is available in schools, senior centers, homeless shelters, or wherever in the community someone calls home. It means support for mothers with newborn babies, for veterans, and for New York City employees. It means victim advocates in police precincts citywide. It means intensive services for individuals with serious mental illness involved in the court system.
Community-based organizations funded by ThriveNYC are the frontline defense against the mental health crisis New York now faces, a crisis likely to be experienced as individual and community trauma long after the last vaccine is administered. Recovery as a city from this pandemic requires continuing investment in mental health. Let's leverage the investment we’ve made in ThriveNYC to help all New Yorkers bounce back.
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Joel Copperman is the CEO of CASES and Liz Roberts is the CEO of Safe Horizon. We are joined in this statement by Muzzy Rosenblatt, Bowery Residents Committee, Amy Dorin, The Coalition for Behavioral Health, Traci Donnelly, The Child Center of NY, Michelle Yanche, Good Shepherd Services, David Garza, Henry Street Settlement, Mitchell Netburn, Samaritan Daytop Village, and Keith Little, SCO Family of Services.
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Voters (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)
It’s been nearly a year since New York City was almost entirely shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time, only essential services like health care, transportation, and food services remained open. We witnessed so many heroes step up to keep our city functioning and help us remain safe and secure. Among them are the half-a-million immigrants who have been on the frontline in hospitals, restaurants, grocery stores, subways and busses, and more.
As New York City moves towards rebuilding its economy, we have an opportunity to create a more inclusive recovery by fully integrating into our civic life the immigrants who are helping us survive this pandemic, giving them a voice in shaping the policies that affect their lives. If we are serious about creating the culture of civic participation our city needs in order to function as a healthy democracy, we must expand democracy’s foundation.
New York City can do this by restoring the right to vote in local elections to the nearly 1 million legal permanent residents who call the city home.
Although 40% of our city was born abroad, we have never centered immigrants in our narratives, and certainly not in our city’s policies and budgets. Elected officials know they can safely ignore those without voting power, so problems remain unsolved and unaddressed election after election. The result is the predictable disengagement that comes from not feeling wholly belonging to the very place one calls home.
Despite the fact that many immigrants in the Big Apple are our city’s parents, students, workers, and small business owners, these New Yorkers have been unfairly denied the right to shape their community. As a further testament to how vital immigrants are to our city, non-citizen New Yorkers represent one in five frontline, essential workers who are literally risking their lives to keep us healthy and keep our city functioning during the ongoing pandemic.
New Yorkers like Hina Naveed deserve a say in how their public transportation works, how often their trash gets picked up, and how schools are run. Hina, a Pakistani immigrant and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, was on the frontlines during the height of the pandemic last year working in a Brooklyn hospital and a Staten Island nursing home. While many of us were lucky enough to work safely from home, during the height of our public health crisis, Hina took care of sick patients and comforted the elderly who were lonely and missing their families during New York City’s shutdown. But despite her contributions as an essential worker, she’s excluded from the process of how our neighborhoods and elected officials respond to a devastating crisis like the one that we are experiencing now.
How can we expect to have a fair and just covid recovery if 1 million taxpaying New Yorkers like Hina don’t have a say in deter >mining who will make those recovery decisions? How can we expect to address issues of police reform, affordable housing, equitable land use, and educational disparities if elected officials know they can still get elected while ignoring one out of every nine New Yorkers?
The City Council and Mayor must pass Intro. 1867 and give these immigrant New Yorkers a voice and real political power and they’ll make sure our elected officials are truly accountable — not just to the privileged few, but to every one of us, especially the 1 million New Yorkers who have been effectively silenced for decades. Together we can build a city that reflects and works for all of us. And in the process, we can energize our civic life, and make a statement to the rest of the world about what a 21st century democracy should look like.
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Murad Awawdeh is co-executive director of the statewide New York Immigration Coalition, based in New York City. On Twitter @HeyItsMurad & @TheNYIC.
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Assemblymember De La Rosa, the author, speaking at a rally for 'excluded workers'
The approval this week of the nation’s first-ever Excluded Workers Fund is a bold statement that New York recognizes the humanity in everyone, and that we must secure the basic necessities of all people during a global pandemic. It also acknowledges that immigrants contribute greatly to our tax-base and the backbone of our community.
No one deserves to go hungry or die, or to not have money to bury their loved ones, pay for housing, health care, and other fundamental needs while a pandemic wreaks havoc across the world. It is a matter of compassion, empathy, solidarity, and core human decency.
Since the pandemic first hit in March 2020, thousands of undocumented and nontraditional workers across the state have suffered the injustice of being excluded from every government relief program. Over 192,000 undocumented workers (who records show pay $1.4 billion in yearly taxes) lost their jobs, none of whom were eligible for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), according to a report by the Center for NYC Affairs at the New School. The Center also reported that 68% of jobs lost in New York City were among people of color.
In May 2020 I partnered with New York State Senator Jessica Ramos to introduce a bill for the first-in-the-nation Excluded Workers Fund before the New York State Legislature. It was a long road before the Fund’s approval, including hearings, a rally that shut down Brooklyn Bridge, and a 22-day hunger strike led by excluded workers.
The $2.1 billion fund, part of the new state budget, will provide retroactive benefits to workers who have been unable to access a single penny in government aid up to this point. This funding will be crucial to closing the economic disparities of the pandemic, which has disproportionately affected Black and brown communities such as Washington Heights and Inwood, the communities of Assembly District 72, which I represent.
As we move towards implementation, I thank Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and my colleagues in the Assembly, Senator Ramos and colleagues in the Senate, Make The Road New York, New York Communities for Change, New York Immigration Coalition, and the members of the FEW Coalition, who joined us in the quest for budget equity and justice for excluded workers. We will now provide oversight over the state Department of Labor to ensure that a fair process is built to apply for and receive benefits from the Excluded Workers Fund.
While working class New Yorkers reeled from the virus and struggled to pay rent, the wealth of New York’s 120 billionaires grew by $87.7 billion. It is about time that New Yorkers finally demand that the ultrarich pay their fair share and that all New Yorkers are taken care of. New York’s new budget serves as a model for how governments can pursue progressive revenue streams to redistribute wealth, move toward budget equity, and better serve the people. The revenue raised will transform the live >s of millions of New Yorkers as we fund excluded workers, expand affordable housing, and invest in our schools.
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Carmen De La Rosa is the State Assembly Member for the 72nd District in Upper Manhattan. On Twitter @CnDelarosa.
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