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The Governor's Dilemma: Gimmicks or Gumption


exec budget address

(photo: Governor's Office)


Next week Governor Cuomo will unveil his proposed budget for the state fiscal year beginning April 1. In his November modification of the current year’s budget and financial plan there was a preview of the severity of the problem he faces: a significant deficit -- originally $6 billion, now reduced to $4 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends in only 12 weeks -- that is projected at $6.1 billion for next fiscal year and to grow to more than $9 million in 2023.

The governor has acknowledged the magnitude of the budget challenge and hinted that serious structural changes are needed, but it is far more likely his budget will contain a variety of short-term fixes and avoidance devices to close the gap. 

Much attention has been paid to the fact that state deferred $1.7 billion in Medicaid expenses from fiscal year 2019 to 2020 to address the recent dramatic increases in the program’s costs. The current deficit is being papered over by again rolling about $2 billion of expenses into the next fiscal year, as well as cutting Medicaid reimbursement rates across the board by 1% and achieving other unspecified savings.

But these fixes are by no means sufficient to handle the cumulative deficit over the next four years, estimated at $28 billion, the largest faced by this governor since early in his first term. 

The size of the deficit and the governor’s vague comments in two public appearances last week have created a high level of anticipation and anxiety about the impending budget proposal. The leader of the State Assembly, Carl Heastie, is talking about higher taxes on the wealthy; Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has been less enthusiastic about more taxes but has not proposed an alternative.

After his January 6 speech to the Association for a Better New York in New York City, I asked the governor if he expects to raise taxes to deal with the deficit. His answer was an unequivocal “No.” He continued:

“We have equated politicians’ response, ‘well we have a problem, the answer is more money’ - no. There’s not necessarily a correlation between more money and better product...the answer isn’t always more money. It’s government’s answer...it’s a legislative answer because they don’t have executive control, so the simple answer is ‘we have to make education better, I’m spending more money’ — we’re already spending more money per pupil than any state in the United States of America, but you’re in the middle when it comes to performance, so the answer’s not always more money. And some of these situations are structurally problematic. We have a problem with Medicaid that is going up very high. A one-shot cash revenue is not the answer - fix the problem. Money tries to paper over the problem, and I’m not in the papering-over business...we’ve been able to say ‘We have reduced your taxes on the state level,’ and I want to continue to be able to say that. Money is not going to solve our Medicaid problem, the health costs have to be addressed structurally, and a one-shot dose for the system of sugar to give us a short high with revenue is not the answer.”

I couldn’t agree more! The audience cheered. But do we all mean the same thing when we talk about the need to address “structural problems”? Probably not.  

Two days after the ABNY speech the governor delivered his official State of the State Address in Albany. It contained many quintessential Cuomo elements, i.e. assertions that progressive government must be pragmatic and appeals to the can-do spirit of New Yorkers to build big. With respect to the deficit, he again made generic references to correcting “structural” problems that raised more questions than answers.

First, he was critical of the way state school aid is distributed, noting derisively that it is not progressive and that some districts spend more than $30,000 per student while others spend far less because they lack sufficient resources derived from property taxes. He repeated several times as if a mantra: “use state funds to raise those at the bottom.” The audience cheered; again, who could disagree? But how does the governor mean to rationalize school aid to make it truly progressive and save the state money? 

School aid is the second largest expenditure in the state budget, totaling $27 billion a year. It has grown 37% over the last decade. The reason it is so high is that everyone from the teachers unions to parents/voters to the State Education Department to every district’s legislative representatives wants more money for schools every year. A major issue in every budget negotiation is not how much more school aid is needed but rather, how much less than advocates demand is acceptable to the Legislature.  

Giving less — or at least no more — to the property- and income-rich districts and to those that have lost school population, and redirecting the savings to poorer districts that need state aid to have enough to provide the sound basic education promised to all students by the State Constitution would mean total school aid would need to rise by only $300 million, not the billions demanded by advocates, saving $800 million, maybe more, per year. It would be very surprising, if welcome, if this is what the governor proposes.

Second, at the very end of the State of the State Address the governor blamed the recent dramatic increase in Medicaid spending – the largest expense in the state budget, which has grown an average of 6.3% per year over the last four years – on the fact that the amount localities contribute to the program is capped and the state has borne all the increases in costs since the cap was imposed in 2015. He cited the amount this saves Erie County ($177 million), Westchester ($175 million) and New York City ($2 billion), wise-cracked “it is too easy to write a check when you don’t sign it” and stated that we need to pay for healthcare “‘intelligently and prudently.” If the local expense cap is the structural problem with Medicaid he means to fix, he is on the wrong track.

Medicaid spending is driven by state policy and health system practices, not by administrative costs at the county or New York City level. New York State has, and has been proud of, its relatively generous eligibility and benefit levels, which mean that there are a whopping 6 million New Yorkers on Medicaid — one of every three residents — and it is the state’s largest expenditure, costing $80 billion a year (half federally reimbursed), accounting for more than one of every three dollars in the state budget.

It is entirely appropriate to ask for more help from localities in curbing misuse and fraud in the program and the governor wisely announced that he will reconvene the Medicaid Redesign Task Force that was effective in achieving Medicaid savings in his first term (bring back Jason Helgerson!).

But there is no justification for pushing costs down to the localities which have even more limited sources of revenue than the state and already pay more of Medicaid costs than the rest of the localities in the country combined. Indeed, freezing the local share of Medicaid to the amount they paid in 2015 and taking full state responsibility for the operation and cost of the program is one of the most significant accomplishments of the Cuomo administration. The Legislature already rejected an effort to lift the cap on New York City’s share when the governor tried to do so in 2016.

One of the sources of the recent dramatic growth in the costs is the state’s directive to pay all home health aides and other Medicaid direct service providers a minimum wage of $15 an hour – immediately in the metro area and over time in the rest of the state — which added $1.5 billion to the budget in this fiscal year, growing to almost $2.3 billion additional in 2023. This may have been a good policy decision but it was not accompanied by commensurate systemic savings that would keep the growth in program spending manageable. Another is the fact that as the population ages, more and more people need long-term care, at home and in nursing homes. 

I know several people whose parents or relatives have transferred their resources to family members and taken other measures to qualify for Medicaid to pay for their long-term care, which is now responsible for almost half of the state’s total Medicaid costs. I am sure the same is true for some readers of this column. Indeed even presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobachar said in the debate this week that she expects her mom to go on Medicaid eventually.

Can we expect the governor to propose ways to cut down on the use of personal and long-term care or to tighten Medicaid eligibility requirements? This is no more likely than a structurally reformed school aid plan.

Why should a locality and those taxpayers who live there be financially punished because it happens to have a particularly large share of the state’s low-income population and hence its Medicaid enrollees? Is this progressive government? Why is it OK for state tax dollars to go to economic development efforts to shore up upstate economies that need it but not OK for state revenue to fund needy Medicaid recipients wherever they live in the state? That is not structural reform, but only shifting a serious and growing financial responsibility to another level of government.

So, get ready for a deficit reduction plan that includes cost shifts to New York City, to public authorities, and to capital spending, along with accounting gimmicks, optimistic savings estimates, and other tactics that avoid difficult decisions that would make some legislators and constituents unhappy. I hope I’m wrong.

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Carol Kellermann was president of Citizens Budget Commission from 2008 through 2018.

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Where Did Hudson Yards Come From? This Little-Known Report Helped Start It All


photo coach atrium view photo credit steve freihon

(photo: Hudson Yards)


Today Hudson Yards is largely described as a billionaires’ fantasy, but in fact it’s a rare instance of the city, state and federal governments partnering to create a strategy to help ensure New York City’s position as the world’s commercial capital. And it has an interesting origin story few may be aware of.

Three months to the day before planes were flown into the World Trade Center, a little-known, but important report was issued by a group convened by New York Senator Chuck Schumer and dubbed the “Group of 35.” Largely a wonky urban policy piece, the report called for the public sector to take a much more proactive role in supporting future commercial development in the city.

In spite of the robust economy that the city enjoyed in the late 1990s, the report painted a dire picture of the future of commercial development in New York. The cyclical nature of the commercial real estate market was highlighted as a series of booms and busts that challenged any strategic and comprehensive approach to new development. According to the report, if the city didn’t take action to help increase the supply of new space, “New York City will miss out on hundreds of thousands of new jobs and increased economic activity in the next 20 years.”

Ironically, in New York City the crash of the early 1990s was good for new and growing companies to find plentiful and cheap space for expansion, but by the late ‘90s there was a growing concern that there wasn’t enough space to support future employment.

Looking forward, the report anticipated that New York City would add nearly 600,000 jobs over the next 20 years, half of which would be office-based. The city would need 23 million square feet of new office space over the next 20 years and an additional 60 million square feet thereafter through 2050. Looking at the development trends of the previous decade, construction had all but stalled for new office space. The city’s development market was paralyzed.

The report concluded dramatically that the city “office market was in a space crisis by the end of 2000.” New York lagged other cities through the 1990s, and over half of new office space built in the region occurred outside the city.

Hudson County, New Jersey was seen as particularly competitive; the report noted that from 1997 to 2000, more than a dozen companies moved from New York to New Jersey to occupy 6 million square feet of space in Hudson County alone, with 30,000 jobs lost in those moves.

There were substantial barriers to new development, largely as a result of the boom and bust cycle. Both physical and financial barriers stymied new development across the city, and particularly in Manhattan. The physical constraints were predominantly around land, the lack of available sites, and the appropriate zoning to promote substantial new development.

In terms of the financial constraints, in spite of a strong real estate market, rents were still not high enough to support new development and lenders’ requirements for financing were too restrictive except for the largest and most credit-worthy tenants.

So given the historical boom and bust cycle of real estate development, coupled with the physical and financial constraints, the Group of 35 put forth a Commercial Development Strategy for New York City, primarily focused on creating new commercial business districts (CBDs) for the city to keep pace with the competition that it was facing both regionally and nationally. 

footage office

While there were a number of recommendations for relief from the high real estate taxes paid by developers and their tenants, the Group of 35’s “most ambitious component” was the creation of new and expanded CBDs. New CBDs were called for in both Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City, but the most radical idea was the creation of the new CBD in Manhattan. 

For much of its history, Manhattan business was centered in Lower Manhattan. It wasn’t until the early 20th century, with the creation of the first subway in 1904, that development, and particularly office-related uses moved to Midtown. By the mid-20th century, Midtown had largely overtaken Lower Manhattan as the premiere office district in the city. And in spite of numerous attempts to revitalize Lower Manhattan, Midtown still commanded significantly higher rents. As a result of the strength of this market, Midtown was essentially “full.” There were no available sites for significant new development in Midtown -- the Far West Side beckoned.

With the increasing office activity on Manhattan’s West Side, thanks to the redevelopment of Times Square, the Far West Side appeared as a “natural” extension to midtown. It had adjacency to regional connections at Penn Station, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Hudson River ferries, the West Side Highway, and the Lincoln Tunnel. In spite of these connections, the neighborhood was highly underutilized with surface transportation uses, vacant lots, and a low population density. There was also space to accommodate large-scale development above the MTA’s West Side Rail Yards. 

Interestingly, there was not one mention in the report of the High Line, which would eventually become one of the most significant components of the development of Hudson Yards and west Chelsea in the 2000s.

But there were significant obstacles to developing the Far West Side, including the lack of subway access and low-density zoning. An innovative strategy was put forth to extend the 7 subway line through the use of tax increment financing to help pay for the extension. 

In 2005, thanks to a massive rezoning led by the city that laid the groundwork for over 40 million square feet of new development, Hudson Yards was born. To create the necessary commercial anchor for the neighbrohood, the MTA and the City teamed up in 2007 to issue RFP’s for massive development over the MTA’s west side rail yards. The MTA also built a grand new 7 subway station that opened in 2012 with city funding in an all too rare example of intergovernmental cooperation and mutual support.

Hudson Yards has transformed a large swathe of Manhattan with a bustling new office district. According to JLL, nearly 8 million square feet of new office space has been built and occupied to date, and another 8 million more square feet of space is under construction and largely pre-sold or pre-leased. Hudson Yards is already providing nearly twice the amount of space built in the entire city in the 1990s.

Today, the city is enjoying office employment at a historic high of 1.97 million jobs versus a low of 1.65 million in January 2010. While we cannot only give credit to the Group of 35 for their vision in anticipating the need for all this space, we should appreciate and learn from their foresight in giving New York City a strategy to be proactive in the creation of new business districts to help feed the engine of economic growth in this city.

It almost seems laughable today to even consider competition from Hudson County, New Jersey, but at the turn of the last century there was a real threat to New York City’s dominance as a commercial capital from regional office markets. Before we take for granted the glittering skyscrapers, new subway, and expansive parks that now dot the skyline and streetscape of the West Side of Manhattan, we should remember the thoughtful, balanced, and proactive planning that went into making happen. 

group schumer

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Michael M. Samuelian, FAIA, AICP, is the founder of Samuelian Consulting LLC and an adjunct professor at Cooper Union. He was previously President and CEO of the Trust for Governors Island and, prior to that, a Vice President of Planning and Design with Related Companies. He will be teaching a seminar on the development of Hudson Yards at the Yale School of Architecture this semester.

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6 Keys to Reduce the Number of People Sleeping on the Streets and in the Subways


hud sec julian castro mmv

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


The city’s homelessness crisis is well-documented and deeply troubling, including far too many people sleeping on the streets and in the subways. If it seems like there are more and more people in those situations, it is because there are: the estimated number jumped 23% from 2018 to 2019, based on the one-night winter HOPE Count, to about 3,500 in total.

The city’s efforts to reduce the street population have mostly failed. Nothing emphasizes this failure more than the recent murder of four homeless men who were sleeping on the streets in Chinatown.

The mayor's response to this tragedy was to increase the number of outreach workers and urge other city workers to call 311 about people living on the streets. However the city’s own statistics show that the number of placements into housing has actually dropped, per the Mayor’s Management Report (MMR), after having risen.

In addition, reporting has shown that many of the homeless people on the streets have been told that they must be seen on numerous occasions in the same spot in order to prove that they are homeless and qualify for a caseworker. If this wasn't bad enough, the process, once it begins, can take up to nine months before someone gets a placement in supportive housing.

There is an option other than going into a dangerous shelter, which many homeless people living on the streets or in the subways fear, or staying on the streets and in the subways, which is going into a drop-in center. Unfortunately, these drop-in centers were reduced by 50% during the Bloomberg administration.

A drop-in center is an oasis for homeless individuals living on the street. They can get food, clothing, showers, medical care, and meet with a social worker. These centers do not have beds, they have chairs but there is an option for people to be transported to a shelter or local church or synagogue where volunteers will help them stay for the night.

I have been advocating in writing and on television for four years for the city to increase the number of drop-in centers and the response has been to only open one part-time center in Queens. We need more -- there are only five full-time centers and only two of them are in Manhattan, which is the epicenter of street homelessness.

The most effective method for reducing homelessness has always been supportive housing. I ran two supportive housing programs, which provide a homeless person who is disabled, usually from mental illness or substance misuse, with an apartment and a social worker. Unfortunately, once again the city has failed in this effort, with placements at a 14-year low with only 1,300 supportive housing units opened of 15,000 promised four years ago, or less than 10%. These incredibly slow building and placement rates must be accelerated immediately.

The city recently announced the expansion of outreach efforts and addition of 1,000 safe haven beds. This is a step in the right direction as safe havens have only one or two clients in a room and are considered much safer than a regular shelter. Which begs the question: why aren't the other 12,000 beds for single adult males safe?

The number one reason people on the street give for not going into shelter is fear. Many of them have had bad experiences, ranging from assault to robbery. In fact a recent exposé by The City showed that crime is rampant in the single adult shelters and the Mayor's Management Report shows a 25% increase in serious violent incidents in adult shelters. A few weeks ago, two homeless men in an Upper West Side shelter got into a fight and one stabbed the other to death.

These shelters are patrolled by Department of Homeless Services peace officers and private security guards. The peace officers do not carry guns but they have tasers available to them and they have the power to make arrests. I have advocated for the NYPD to take a greater role in shelter security and a few years ago the mayor decided that the NYPD would supervise the security operation. However, a handful of officers is not enough.

The city should institute a 90-day pilot program where NYPD officers would be stationed 24/7 in the city’s two worst men’s shelters, at 30th Street and First Avenue and the Bedford Atlantic Armory, to support the DHS officers in their duties.

This suggestion will probably be met by criticism from some advocates as criminalizing those experiencing homelessness, but the fact is that homeless people are the victims of crimes committed inside the shelters to such an extent that many would rather sleep on the streets.

In addition to this pilot, the state must stop dumping thousands of newly released former prisoners into the shelter system. They must do a better job of discharge planning and setting up halfway houses to assimilate that population into society.

As we see more homeless New Yorkers on the streets and in the subways, it is time for new action by our government officials.

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Robert Mascali is a former Deputy Commissioner at the NYC Department of Homeless Services and Vice President for Supportive Housing at Women in Need.

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Pursuing More Justice: Elder Parole is Good for Communities Across New York


prison cell bars

(photo: Andrew Bardwell/Wikimedia Commons)


When I was first elected to the New York State Assembly in November 2016, I pledged to promote safety, fairness, and justice for my community and other communities across New York. I knew that we had so much work to do to support everyday New Yorkers and their loved ones, especially those harmed by the criminal justice system—something that has impacted me and so many others in my northern Manhattan district for decades. 

While colleagues and I made important changes to New York’s pre-trial legal system in 2019, we still have so much to do for the more than 45,000 people currently incarcerated in state prisons and their families. We should start by promoting a system of hope and redemption for long-serving incarcerated older New Yorkers. 

In the last two decades of mass incarceration, our system has become smaller but increasingly more punitive. As the overall prison population in New York State decreased since its peak population of 72,000 people in 1999, the rate of people serving life sentences has ballooned. 

New Yorkers are now serving more time on longer prison sentences than ever before. Today, one in five New Yorkers in prison is serving a life sentence—more than 9,000 total people. Of this group, 1,027 people are serving life without parole and virtual life without parole (with a minimum sentence of at least 50 years) sentences.

They are effectively sentenced to die in prison without any individualized assessment, public safety review, or second chance. Many of these people are already in their fifties and sixties. Those who aren’t yet elders are destined to become older people in prison given the long sentences they have.

The large majority of people growing older in prison and serving life and death sentences are people of color. Stanley Bellamy is one of them.

In 1985, the year I was born, Stanley was a 23-year-old young person from Queens who made a terrible choice that caused devastating harm. He and several others robbed two people at gunpoint, killing one, and causing serious injury to the other. Their actions left family members of the victims forever harmed and a community shaken. Stanley was sentenced to 62.5 years to life in prison, effectively sentenced to die behind bars without any chance for redemption.

Stanley is now a 57-year-old father, grandfather, mentor, teacher, and positive force in every prison in which he has ever been confined over the last 34 years. He has founded and facilitated victim awareness, restorative justice, and other programs that allow him and his incarcerated colleagues to develop insight into the harm their crimes caused.

Stanley has earned two college degrees behind bars with honors and has accomplished more under the constraints of maximum-security confinement than most people have in the free world. While there is no doubt that Stanley caused serious harm to people, families, and an entire community, his continued confinement serves no purpose other than punishment and revenge.

I believe we are all better served with Stanley and others like him in our communities where they can continue to be positive embodiments of redemption.

Allowing Stanley and other incarcerated older people who have already spent decades in prison a chance at redemption would benefit the communities I serve and others across New York State. Upon release, Stanley and his peers could positively impact all of us in ways that so many other formerly incarcerated community leaders already do.

They’d mentor young people, prevent gang and gun violence, and steer 23-year-old ‘Stanleys’ down a different path. Stanley wouldn’t be a risk to the community but would instead enhance community safety and deter crime. 

My colleagues and I in the New York State Legislature have a great opportunity to give Stanley and others a chance, and benefit our communities, by passing the Elder Parole Act (A.9040) in 2020.

Elder Parole would allow the State Parole Board to give people in prison aged 55 and older who have served 15 or more years an individualized review and assessment. The bill doesn’t release a single person from prison. Instead, it provides hope and a chance at redemption for people who are otherwise serving death-by-incarceration sentences.

If the Parole Board decides to release even a handful of people as a result of the bill’s passage, it would save lives, reunite families and communities, and save New York taxpayers millions of dollars. 

New York is a national outlier when it comes to long and life prison sentences. Our state has the eighth highest rate of life sentences in the country—greater than Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia. Far more people have died in the last decade in New York state prisons because of long prison sentences than the total number of people who were executed in every state that still uses the death penalty. 

Death-by-incarceration is an abomination that can’t go on any longer. I refuse to have my five year-old daughter grow up in a state that condemns people who look like her to die in cages, regardless of their change and transformation over years and decades. For New York to be the truly progressive beacon that all of us want it to be, we must take steps towards unraveling this paradigm of permanent punishment. Elder Parole is one concrete way for us to get there this year.

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Assembly Member Carmen De La Rosa represents District 72, including Inwood, Washington Heights, and Marble Hill in Manhattan. She is the lead sponsor of the Elder Parole Act (A.9040). On Twitter @CnDelarosa.

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Surveillance and the City: Security Theater’s Steep Price


police basic school grad 203rd

(photo: Governor's Office)


The fear is real. Like so many Jewish New Yorkers, I felt that pang of dread and revulsion when I heard about the deadly shooting at a kosher market in Jersey City. And, as the seemingly endless list of attacks grew, so did my concern about how our community was being targeted. And then, as we prepared to welcome a new decade, this age old bigotry took terrifying new form in the Hanukkah party attack in Monsey.

Of course, after this onslaught of heartbreak, people are afraid. The fear they feel is real. But the solutions they are being offered are not.

More police, longer jail terms, reversing bail reform, and even calling out the national guard. It’s unclear what’s more absurd: the number of proposals being made or the content of what’s put forward. Friday, the list grew to include 100 new security cameras in predominantly Hasidic areas of Brooklyn courtesy of Mayor de Blasio.

Some of these come from concerned New Yorkers who don’t know where else to turn. But others come from officials who should know better, those trying to exploit our grief and fear to get their moment in the spotlight and push forward their ideological agenda.

One of the most enraging stunts is the persistent attack on last year’s hard-won bail reforms. Less than a week after these common-sense changes went into effect, largely eliminating a cash bail system that treated poverty as a public safety threat, lawmakers put forward the idea of a new bail exception for hate crimes.

Set aside the fact that none of these attacks would have been stopped by such a measure, we’re still left with the rationale of a justice system that is designed to presume some defendants guilty before their day in court.

Perhaps the most chilling suggestion came from State Senator Simcha Felder, Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein, and City Council Members Chaim Deutsch and Kalman Yeger. Not only did the four elected officials ask for high-visibility policing of Jewish neighborhoods, but they even asked Governor Cuomo to call out the national guard. Are we really going to set-up Baghdad-style checkpoints and blast walls in Bed Stuy? The absurd idea would almost be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

Let’s be clear: we make bad policies in times of fear. In the 1990s, our fear of crime propelled draconian policies that stripped a generation of New Yorkers (and other Americans) of color of their freedom. After 9/11, our rage and terror blundered us into quagmires half a world away, while propelling outright religious profiling here at home. When we are scared, when we are hurt, we ignore the costs of the security theater that we’re sold.

Like the snake oil elixirs of the 19th century, these cure-alls come at a steep price. Whether it’s the new officers or new surveillance tools, we are being asked to spend millions on measures that may not work at all. In exchange we’ll see cuts to programs that make a real difference in New Yorkers’ lives. It’s impossible to know what will bear the brunt of the ensuing offsets -- will the money comes from schools, transit, or some other vital service? But the heaviest price isn’t paid in dollars and cents, it’s the impact these policies will have on the countless New Yorkers who are wrongfully targeted and arrested as a result.

But our security culture will also take a toll on the Jewish Community. I know our families need to feel safe, but how we find that safety matters. I fear the emergence of fortress Judaism, a faith marked by fear of, and separation from, the outside world. When we isolate ourselves from our neighbors, when we view them as threats, it harms the very solidarity we need in order to overcome this moment. 

Let’s be clear: no amount of policing will end anti-Semitism. You can’t stamp out a hateful ideology with a badge and a gun. Yes, those who commit hate crimes should be prosecuted, but that is not a scalable solution. A hate crime sentencing enhancement didn’t deter the couple that opened fire in Jersey City or the mentally-ill man who attacked the party in Monsey. More importantly, longer jail terms will do nothing to dissuade the next person in mental health crisis who fixates on this twisted ideology.

This doesn’t mean we can’t act, just the contrary. It means we need an immediate response, not from Albany or City Hall, but from each and every one of us. It means that we need more of the solidarity we saw Sunday, when thousands of New Yorkers of all faiths marched across the Brooklyn Bridge against hate.

It means we need the interfaith communities that bring New Yorkers of every background together to combat bias. That is the path out of this dark moment, not by building up walls, but by linking arms and standing together as one city.

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Albert Fox Cahn is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) at the Urban Justice Center, a New York-based civil rights and privacy group, and a fellow at the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law & Policy at N.Y.U. School of Law. He writes the monthly "Surveillance and the City" column for Gotham Gazette. On Twitter @FoxCahn & @STOPspyingNY.

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What the Future of Education Looks Like


robitics mathematics

(photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)


Late last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza proudly announced “record increases” in internet bandwidth in public school buildings – an important milestone because in a digital world, every school deserves good internet access.

But, the announcement invited more questions than it answered, especially in light of the Department of Education’s other recent announcement of planning to create or redesign 40 schools “of the future.” 

What is a “school of the future”? If it’s just faster internet, new computers, and fresh branding, it’s not going to create the kind of opportunity or change the system needs. We need to think bigger if we’re serious about giving public school students a chance to compete in a digital world.  

What new skills and knowledge will graduates need to find jobs in 10 years? What new kinds of literacy will they need to make sense of the world in 20 years? What social and moral education do kids need to live in a digital society?  

If our schools can’t answer these questions, we’re making cosmetic changes to the same outdated model.

Take a recent report by Burning-Glass Technologies, a premier labor market analyst. Burning-Glass looked at millions of job postings and identified 14 “New Foundational Skills” that translate to more money and more opportunity in the digital economy. Specifically, they found that skills in data analysis, computer programming, creativity, critical thinking, and project management are now essential across most good jobs.   

Yet, our schools today are not designed to teach, develop, or assess for most of these skills. Classrooms look nothing like the modern workplace, and the basic content required to graduate high school in New York State has barely changed in 50 years (though the state is finally starting down the long road to change these requirements).  

School schedules are a good example. Right now, students learn in 45- or 60-minute lessons, “punching in and out” of subjects, often working and being graded independently. In today’s workforce, most good jobs don’t work on shift schedules and almost everyone works in teams.  

Consider testing. So much of the debate revolves around whether or how often to test – not necessarily on what to test and why. How does the English Regents exam, a graduation requirement, assess writing? It asks kids to write a literary essay – an opening, a thesis, and a five-paragraph structure interpreting a novel. Good writing is critical for long-term success. But, when was the last time most of us wrote a literary essay at work?  

As the founding principal of the Urban Assembly Charter School for Computer Science (Comp Sci High for short), we’re working to do things differently – what and how kids learn, develop in-demand skills, and generate a pipeline of tech talent in the Bronx. We’re attempting to build a school of the future, and we’re showing that schools can teach history and HTML, that we can focus on integers and internships.

We’re looking at trends in the labor market and in society and working backwards to redesign curricula. Policymakers and school designers should do the same.

First, we need to build in more flexibility. School isn’t a factory and kids aren’t identical cogs in a machine. Flexibility starts from both a curricular standpoint and a scheduling one. We must recognize that within a class of 30 high school students, kids will grasp concepts at different rates and have different interests. Consequently, learning in the classroom and course pathways in a school need to be more personalized. Why, exactly, does everyone still need to learn chemistry but not computing?  

Instead, content and curriculum can and should be personalized using technological tools and creative scheduling.

Next, we need to redesign curricula with a focus on both skills and knowledge. Understanding how to work on a team, to delegate, to work collaboratively and independently, and solve open-ended problems – these are a few of the core skills that aren’t included in most academic standards or curricula.

We also need to modernize graduation requirements to align with preparedness for the labor market. If foundational skills – human skills, digital building block skills, and business processes – are valued by employers, then we need to rethink not just what we’re teaching but what we’re testing. School isn’t only about getting a job. But, that should be part of the promise we make to kids when we tell them to stay in school and work hard. And yet, right now we have many thousands of high school and college students graduating with few career prospects and a lot of debt.   

We need a clearer relationship between what kids learn in school and what they might do afterward. That means rethinking what and how kids learn from top to bottom. Without that level of change, school really will become just an academic exercise.

***
David Noah is the Principal of Urban Assembly Charter School for Computer Science, the city’s first career and technical education charter school.

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Cuomo's Clemency and Cruelty of False Hope


coxsackie officer

(photo: Governor's Office)


In 2015, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a project to provide pro bono legal services to prisoners seeking clemency. The governor explained that this was “a critical step toward a more just, more fair, and more compassionate New York,” and that he sought to “identify those deserving of a second chance and to help ensure that clemency is a more accessible and tangible reality.”

Two years later, the governor re-emphasized his interest in clemency via a press release stating that “Family members of individuals serving prison sentences are encouraged to apply for clemency on behalf of their family member.”

This expressed interest in clemency, more specifically clemency in the form of a commutation of sentence, reverberated across New York’s patchwork of 50 state prisons. Men and women serving lengthy sentences with no chance of ever obtaining their freedom now had hope. People who spent their time wasting away in their cells began to re-engage with programs. Family visits reflected renewed promise of the possibility of unification beyond the prison walls.

In short order, CUNY Law School’s clemency project received more than 1,800 requests for help with clemency applications. 

Yet not a single person had their sentence commuted in 2019 despite an abundance of robust and meritorious applications. Then on Friday, January 3, 2020 at 6:15 p.m., an auspicious time for any gubernatorial announcement, Governor Cuomo revealed that clemency requests for commutations had been granted to two people. Two people out of thousands of applicants.

Apparently, the promise of making clemency an “accessible and tangible reality” was nothing more than a cruel, soul-crushing hoax.

Placing the governor’s reluctance to commute sentences in context, consider that last November, Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, a Republican, signed off on commutations of sentences for 527 people. Earlier in the year, Governor Gavin Newsome of California, a Democrat, commuted the sentences for 21 people. In 2017 and 2018, then-California Governor Jerry Brown issued 49 commutations. 

To be clear, the blame for the crying need for clemency -- for deserving people to get out from under massively long sentences -- lays at the feet of prosecutors and judges. Sentences like fifty, sixty, and seventy-five years to life, that foreclosed any chance of redemption, were routinely handed down in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. As a result, there are almost 9,000 people serving life terms in New York prisons. Many of those people will die before ever being eligible to see a parole board. 

The recognition that prosecutors and judges are the primary cause of death by incarceration sentences is precisely the reason that the unfettered power to grant clemency is enshrined in the state and the federal constitutions; all it takes for the governor to give someone a second chance is the stroke of his pen. 

The executive’s power to grant clemency has deep historical roots dating back to biblical times when Pontius Pilate pardoned Barabbas instead of Christ. In British tradition, the monarch had the royal prerogative to grant pardons. Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that in order to serve its humanitarian purpose, “the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as 

little as possible fettered,” and that without the power to pardon, “justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.” Hamilton argued that clemency allowed the executive to be a "dispenser of the mercy of the government." 

In present terms, clemency is the most readily available means to repair the nationally acknowledged crisis of mass incarceration that has devastated communities of color. Mass incarceration is not just about unnecessarily incarcerating masses of people, but rather unnecessarily keeping masses of people in prison for decades. Clemency is a means to address that brutal reality.

Furthermore, while clemency is usually cast as an act of mercy, we all stand to gain when clemency is granted to deserving people. They are reunited with their families. They care for aging parents. They are the true credible messengers who mentor young people who might be on the wrong path. They have jobs and contribute to the economy. And the taxpayer no longer needs to pay for the medical care required for older people in prison, among other costs. Liberal application of clemency makes us all safer and better.

Many of the men and women who submitted clemency applications based on renewed hope inspired by Governor Cuomo’s words are now saying that false hope is worse than no hope. The wife of one of those men put it best in a tweet: “My husband wrote that he, his good friends, and more than 100 others sat on the edge of their metal beds all month [of December] waiting...PLEASE recognize the strides these men have made and show them mercy and use your redeeming power as the leader of this state.” 

While clemency is typically cast as an end of year event consistent with holiday sentiments of mercy, charity, and forgiveness, surely there must be room for mercy, charity, and forgiveness more than once a year. And surely, there are more than two people among the 45,000 in New York State prisons who deserve the measure of mercy afforded by a sentence commutation.

***
Steven Zeidman is a professor of law at CUNY School of Law. On Twitter @SteveZeidman.

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Neighborhood Equity Ownership Plans: How Would They Work?


marsh ave exped

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


[This article is a follow-up to Dr. Goodman’s August op-ed: Replacing Unsuccessful ‘Community Benefits Agreements’ with Neighborhood Stock Ownership Plans]

How can neighborhoods defend themselves against displacement, gentrification, and disempowerment in an age of corporate domination? How can communities fend off rezoning, upzoning, and the usurping of neighborhood identity? Most people agree that Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) don’t work for communities facing dislocation. Historically, these agreements have been tools used by developers to attenuate neighborhood opposition to mega-projects like stadiums, shopping malls, and corporate hubs. Though they come in different forms – jobs, contributions to community nonprofits, free tickets – CBAs are all the same. They are handouts used to cool community opposition to a developer’s project. 

For decades, community groups, community boards, and public advocates have been victimized by the CBA strategy. These agreements force community leaders to jockey for ‘their’ benefits and to ignore the development of the community as a whole. But, the CBA model is ill-fitted to the contemporary development landscape of impact investors, opportunity zones, and a renewed sense of community empowerment. CBAs are unenforceable by the community, and to the developer, they are nothing more than the cost of doing business.   

I am proposing a new model for communities facing off with developers: the Neighborhood Equity Ownership Plan (NEOP), modeled on the employee stock ownership plans in the private sector where one out of every five workers owns stock or stock options in the business.

This new strategy can help communities compete with a developer’s hired guns -- lobbyists, public relations professionals, and community liaisons. As lobbyists strive for zoning variances, publicists attempt to create a development narrative and as liaisons try to co-opt indigenous leaders, neighbors can promote partnership and avoid being derided as NIMBYs.

The formula for a successful Neighborhood Equity Ownership Plan could be as follows: 51 percent of the project’s stock would be allocated to the developer; 24 percent of the stock would be held by the government; and 25 percent would be owned by those who live, work, own businesses or property in the neighborhood and by nonprofits.

The logic is simple. Developers want control and a return on their investment that is economically viable. But they need government and community partners. For developers, the government provides necessary infrastructure investments, regulatory oversight, permits, and zoning variances. For these expenditures it is entitled to an ownership slice. The host neighborhood will absorb the impact of construction marked by truck traffic, noise and air pollution. Residents and employees will suffer from the loss of public space. Businesses will likely experience a decline in foot traffic. Nonprofits will confront increased social disruption. Stock ownership will serve as a repayment for these and other disruptions to daily life.

Neighborhood equity options would be divided among residents, employees, business owners, property owners, and nonprofits. Here the distributions would allocate 5 percent of the stock to each shareholder category. Residents and employees would be entitled to purchase shares of the corporation based on the longevity of their ‘investment’ in the neighborhood. People who have lived or worked in the community for 20 years or more, for example, would be entitled to purchase twice as many shares as those who have ten years invested in the district. Business and property owners would receive shares according to their annual revenues or assessed value. And, finally, nonprofits would be ‘gifted’ 5 percent of the shares of the corporation based on the number of students, seniors, or clients served.

The proposal for a soccer stadium in the Bronx provides a great example of the benefits that could be derived for the community from a neighborhood ownership plan.

A River Avenue Stadium Corporation would be created with equity shares available as indicated above. When naming rights are sold, when broadcast fees are collected, when merchandising agreements are made, or when sponsorships and suites are sold, revenue would pour into the corporation and be distributed as dividends accordingly.

As it stands currently, the benefits of these revenue streams would bypass those most impacted by a home for a private corporation owned by the world's third wealthiest person, China, the Yankees, and Silver Lake Management, a private equity firm.

More than 30 million Americans already own part of their employer company through stock or stock options. They derive dividends, vote for directors, and profit from the business’ success. This formula, if applied to a changing neighborhood, could reinvigorate corporate-community relations. It could refocus developers towards a more expansive definition of profit. It would convert stakeholders to shareholders. With the government and the neighborhood as shareholders, the needs of the community can be safeguarded.

***
Dr. Cary Goodman holds a post-doctoral certificate in development from The United Nations and is the executive director of the 161st Street BID.

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Letter to the Editor: The City’s Pattern of Evasion on Tech Contract


roundtable br cityhall

(photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)


To the Editor:

New York City’s Chief Procurement Officer, Dan Symon, didn’t address any of the questions we’ve been raising about the $30.5 million Ivalua e-procurement contract scandal in his recent Gotham Gazette op-ed responding to my earlier piece.

As Director of the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services (MOCS), he continues to protect those responsible for this flimflam and prevent them from being held accountable. 

If the city ran an “open competitive bidding process,” as Symon states, why not release public documents that prove it? Why shield them from the public for more than a year?

Our First Amendment attorney, Dave Schulz of Ballard Spahr, has repeatedly tried to contact MOCS Assistant General Counsel and Records Officer Janet Kim, but has not even gotten the courtesy of a reply. This is after several attempts of my own, leaving us with no choice but to retain legal counsel to help Checks & Balances Project obtain records about how this lucrative contract award first came to be. 

We’ve requested records from only two former MOCS employees but have repeatedly received automated emails that put off providing us with records due to the “complexity” of our request. Again, we’re asking for emails from only two accounts. 

Last year, we waited nine months to be told MOCS had no records. So, we simplified our request. Yet MOCS is referred to in the Ivalua contract 75 times and described as “the City’s central compliance and oversight agency for procurement.” 

There are serious questions that Symon doesn’t want to answer that we are determined to pursue on behalf of New York City taxpayers: 

Why was a French technology company that had never worked with any government in the U.S. given a $30.5 million contract by the largest municipality in the nation?

Was it because they partnered with powerful KPMG lobbyists who have deep ties to the Mayor and other city officials? 

Symon claims the original 2016 contract was expanded “based on the success of early system releases and the demand from our stakeholders.” In fact, when the contract was expanded by $15 million in 2018, the design wasn’t done and “executive sponsor” KPMG had been fired, according to the limited public records produced by DoITT. Isn’t it more likely that the $15 million was given to Accenture, who replaced KPMG?

Symon tries to discredit Dallas, Texas’ $49,900 e-procurement system, built by Bonfire Interactive of Canada. But consider that if one day Ivalua, Accenture, and MOCS do finally finish an end-to-end e-procurement system for the 40 agencies as originally promised, New York City taxpayers will pay more than $1 million per agency. That’s compared to about $3,300 per agency in Dallas. Both systems can handle $15 billion-plus in annual spending by city agencies, yet why does New York City’s system cost nearly 340 times more? 

We’re not arguing that an e-procurement system for New York City is a bad thing. But it is a bad thing if city taxpayers were ripped off by some kind of insiders’ deal. Public records should tell us if that’s true. Why won’t the city give them up?

Sincerely,
Scott Peterson, executive director of Checks and Balances Project, an investigative watchdog that seeks to hold government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. On Twitter @CandBP.

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New York Lawmakers Must Consider Consequences of Banning Both Vaping Flavors and Menthol Cigarettes


laws reduce smokers num 160

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


The New York City Council recently voted to ban flavored e-cigarettes. Mayor Bill de Blasio will reportedly either sign the bill or let it pass into law. The City Council also considered a bill banning menthol-flavored traditional cigarettes but did not vote on the measure.

Still, energized by their legislative victory, anti-smoking activists continue to push for the menthol ban. Yet by banning all of these products, policymakers would both remove a legal alternative to menthol cigarettes and increase the likelihood of significant black market activity.

To be sure, smoking is terrible for you and has claimed an astounding number of lives. The motivation behind the ban proposals is thus both noble and understandable. But ban advocates have committed a fundamental error in reasoning: They assume that a ban will magically end all sales of menthols and flavored e-cigarettes. However, both economic reasoning and history suggest that bans often shift sales to an illicit market.

The reality is that people with strong consumer preferences tend to seek out certain products regardless of their legal status. And plenty of research shows that menthol smokers don’t find other cigarettes to be substitutable alternatives. Worse still, areas attempting to ban menthols — usually larger urban hubs — tend to have strong pre-existing infrastructure for illicit cigarette markets. In fact, New York is the “smuggled cigarettes capital” of the country. This suggests that if a menthol ban were imposed, a black market in menthols would spring up quickly and be difficult to eradicate.

Ban proponents respond by pointing to a survey in which 40 percent of menthol smokers indicated they would try to quit if a ban were instituted. But a study from a menthol ban in Ontario showed that while just under 30 percent attempted to quit in response to the ban, only 7 percent were successful.

The good news is that smoking rates have been trending downward for decades. And with the rising popularity of e-cigarettes, this trend could continue. Vaping products like e-cigarettes often serve as an alternative for menthol smokers looking to quit combustibles (traditional cigarettes that are burnt and smoked, not vaped). This is good for public health: Evidence suggests that these products are safer than combustible cigarettes.

Unfortunately, menthol ban advocates like those in New York often push just as strongly for bans on flavored vape products as they do for menthol bans. But in prohibiting the sale of both menthol cigarettes and flavored vaping or e-cigarette products, policymakers remove a healthier, legal alternative for menthol smokers looking to quit and thereby increase in the likelihood they will turn to the black market to obtain menthols.

Of course, there are no close substitutes for e-cigarettes either, so those consumers will likely choose illicit products as well. In a twist of tragic irony, the vaping black market is actually what has led to the recent outbreak of lung illnesses — not flavored products or even vaping itself. Former Food and Drug Administration head Scott Gottlieb acknowledged this fact when he said, “It appears that many of these acute lung injuries are being driven by illegal products that have oils in them.”

Illicit markets do more than just endanger consumers; their revenues often end up in the accounts of criminal syndicates and gangs. And to the extent any ban is effective, it will require police to stamp out illegal transactions. This puts both law enforcement and the communities they protect in tense situations, which tends to increase levels of mistrust. And neither group nor the larger society is served by a thriving black market.

Bans on vaping products and menthol cigarettes will not make communities safer. Rather than saving people from themselves, budding black markets could instead expose them to other harmful substances. Even as Governor Cuomo lists instituting and enforcing these bans as part of his 2020 agenda and as the New York City Council considers further  prohibition, both the governor and the city’s leaders should acknowledge the possibility that waving a legislative wand does not make smoking disappear. Instead, by banning both products, they would be inviting a black market that endangers smokers, vapers, the police and the communities they protect.

***
Jonathan Haggerty is a Resident Fellow of Criminal Justice and Civil Liberties Policy at the R Street Institute. Jesse Kelley is R Street’s Criminal Justice and Civil Liberties Government Affairs Manager. On Twitter @Jhaggrid & @JessDKelley.

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Taking Stock of Significant Progress in New York City Schools


announcement scores

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


The students in the New York City public schools are doing better -- so much so that the improvements offer Mayor Bill de Blasio a real opportunity for a legacy. The mayor still has two more years to go and two more budgets to invest in kids.

Mayor de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced in November that a record number of New York City students, nearly 49,000, or 62% of those entering 9th grade in 2014 (the Class of 2018), entered college or postsecondary education. There were nearly 75,000 students in entering 9th grade in the fall of 2014 and a record percentage of them -- 76% (57,000 students) -- graduated on time, meaning by August 2018.

The system also experienced its lowest dropout rate of about 7.5% (5,600 students). At the close of the fourth year, more than 11,000 students, roughly 15% of the initial class, were still in school.

The 2019 graduation results should be released very soon. Graduation outcomes under the mayor’s tenure will continue through three more years, into spring 2022.

When the state English language arts (ELA) and math exam scores were released for the grade 3-8 tests given this spring, it was also announced that New York City students had effectively matched the scores of the students in the rest of the state. City students slightly outperformed their peers in the rest of the state on the ELA tests, and slightly underperformed them on the math tests. The State Education Department changed the content of the tests (again), so the scores are only comparable to 2018, and no further back. The context of the tests has also changed (see below for more on this).

Mayor de Blasio’s signature program, universal full-day prekindergarten, also reached a milestone: the first large group of entering four-year-olds in fall 2014 took their third-grade ELA and math tests in the spring of 2019. The initial results were positive: 53% of third-graders were proficient in English and math, the highest percentages of students in the testing grades of 3-8, and the disparities for black and Hispanic students compared to white students, for those who were in the full-day pre-K, versus those who were not, narrowed significantly.

There’s hope the pre-K results will improve, because there were 53,000 students in pre-K in its first expansion year (entering fall 2014), and nearly 70,000 students in its second year. That means 17,000 more students served by full-day pre-K will be taking the third-grade tests this coming spring, in 2020, compared to 2019.

I don’t offer these numbers to ignore the many issues, problems, and concerns about the school system. Graduation rates for black and Hispanic males are 66% and 65%, respectively, significantly below the 76% system average, meaning more hard work to help them is required. There is also criticism that many high schools and middle schools screen out students with below average grades or test scores, a practice that reinforces racial segregation in the schools and limits opportunities for students of color. The practice extends far beyond the issue of the one test for the specialized high schools like Stuyvesant. The de Blasio administration has allowed diversity pilots for some schools to improve equity. A founder of the small schools movement, Clara Hemphill, along with others, wrote about how to reform these practices.

The issue of test scores in the school system has many ramifications, among them their basic limitation in measuring student ability, or their significance to helping students be successful in school. 

The State Education Department’s frequent changes in the content of the tests has made measurement of improvement over time difficult. However, use of the test scores as punitive, to label and close schools, or fire principals and teachers, has faded in the face of a public backlash against aggressive misuse of the test scores for those purposes. The fact that New York City students are matching their peers in the rest of the state in test scores stands for what it is: improvement in the city schools.

The mayor and the chancellor said 51% of the class of 2018 graduated college ready, affirmed as an improvement, but that did mean 49% were not college-ready. College-readiness is a measure of whether or not students might need to take remedial education in college before entry to college-level courses. And there is a problem: not enough city students entering college are finishing. In fact, according to the Center for an Urban Future, only 22% of CUNY’s community college students finish within three years, and only 55% of the students in the four-year colleges finish within six years. The Center, which has been studying this issue for a long time, urged the new CUNY Chancellor to make major efforts to improve student retention and graduation. 

Mayor de Blasio also initiated and funded a massive expansion of after-school programs for middle and elementary school students, nearly doubling the number of middle-school youth being served, to 71,000 in 2014. The 2019 city budget reports 100,000 middle-school youth are served by either the Department of Education or the Department of Youth and Community Development.

It would be unfair not to mention Mayor Michael Bloomberg. After all, he was mayor for 12 years, and in his first year the state Legislature transferred control of the school system to the mayor, a policy Mayor de Blasio staunchly supported. Many of Mayor Bloomberg’s school policies were deeply controversial, especially the punitive use of test scores, but there was broad support for the creation of many new small high schools to offer better environments for the more than 300,000 high school students in the city. There are now more than 400 high schools in the city. The drive to originate smaller high schools began far earlier than Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure, but his administration went all out on this policy.

In 2001, the graduation rate was 46.5%, and the dropout rate that year was 22.0%. The graduation rate was 60.7% in 2004, and the dropout rate was 13.5%. The graduation rate was 75.9% in 2018, with a dropout rate of 7.5%.

The improvements were made as the Regents and the State Education Department increased standards for graduating high school, requiring higher passing grades on English and math and other subjects in the Regents Exams. Smaller high schools could only be a part of this successful picture; sustained educational effort from pre-K through grade 12 by teachers, administrators, parents, and students is how the success was achieved.

It should also be noted that universal pre-kindergarten has its own unique history independent of Mayor de Blasio. The massive expansion to near universal full-day is his achievement. But the state government began universal half-day prekindergarten in the 1997-1998 state budget in a deal between then-Governor George Pataki, a Republican, and the Democratic Assembly led by then Speaker Sheldon Silver, who championed the concept (and later helped secure state funding for de Blasio’s expansion).

Why is the program before Mayor de Blasio significant? Because it was already immense when Bill de Blasio became mayor. There were 60,000 children in pre-K before de Blasio’s start, with about 40,000 of them getting a half-day rather than full. In the mayor’s first year he added about 33,000 full-day seats, with a large conversion of half-day programs to full-day programs, and by 2015 there were 70,000 children in full-day. 

The substantial size of universal half-day pre-K, however, goes back further in time. Even in 2004 and 2005, there were 46,000 children in pre-kindergarten in New York City, meaning many of those 2018 high school graduates had a seat in a half-day pre-K program. By 2000 there were 34,000 children in pre-K programs in the New York City public schools as universal half-day pre-K was implemented.

The healthy economy has enabled the mayor to invest heavily in the school system. From the 2014-15 budget to the one enacted for 2019-2020, the city committed nearly an extra $6 billion in funding to the schools, while the state added $2.5 billion and the federal government a paltry $470 million. These funds have increased teacher compensation, improved school facilities and built new schools, added 50,000 seats in the charter schools (mandated by the state; the charters are now about 11% of city enrollment), as well as the many programs mentioned above.  

Mayor de Blasio and his first schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, have a right to be proud of improving excellence and equity in education. The mayor and his new chancellor, Mr. Carranza, should keep up the focus on and commitment to serving children. A strong legacy awaits if they keep it up.

***
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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