Health care push (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
The pandemic has been raging throughout New York for nearly a year, killing tens of thousands of our neighbors and dramatically altering every New Yorker’s life. None of us have been untouched by this deadly virus.
Throughout this year, the critical need for access to health care has become more clear than ever. So too have the gaping inequities across our state. And, while Governor Cuomo has claimed to make confronting the pandemic his number one priority, he has cut Medicaid and other vital health services. This includes reducing or eliminating certain public health programs, specifically, reducing the reimbursement rate for general public health work to 10% in the fiscal year 2022 budget. In the current year’s budget (fiscal 2021), this matching funding for New York City was cut from 36% to 20%, which resulted in a cut of $65 million to vital public programs and services in the city. These services include family health, communicable disease control, chronic disease prevention, community health assessment, emergency preparedness, and environmental health.
Furthermore, there continues to be a Medicaid global cap that imposes automatic cuts when Medicaid spending hits a predetermined threshold. Last year, Medicaid had across-the-board cuts of 1.5%, and this year New York plans to again implement cuts of 1%.
Under Cuomo’s leadership, the state has not taken the needed measures to make affordable, high-quality health care coverage available to every New Yorker, regardless of immigration status. It’s time the State Legislature takes action to change that.
Lourdes Narvaez is a 24-year-old immigrant from Ecuador. Early in the pandemic, like many other thousands of community members in Jackson Heights, Queens, Lourdes contracted COVID-19. At the time, she did not dare go to a hospital or a clinic to receive medical attention for fear of a more severe contagion. Even if she had wanted to, the hospitals were overcapacity. And, as someone who doesn’t qualify for health insurance because of her immigration status, she didn’t have a doctor to call to discuss her health or how to treat the coronavirus. She was very afraid of the virus, but she was also afraid of seeking care and later being burdened with medical debt.
Lourdes is one of 1.1 million New Yorkers who do not have health insurance, and one of 240,000 low-income people with income below 200% of the federal poverty level who specifically lack insurance because of their immigration status. New York can and must take action to ensure that every New Yorker, regardless of immigration status or anything else, has access to health insurance and the coverage we need.
Members of both the New York State Assembly and Senate have gathered for a health-focused hearing and the solutions are clear.
First, the New York Health Act (NYHA) would ensure comprehensive coverage for every New Yorker. All New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, would be covered for primary, preventive, and specialty care; hospitalizations; mental health; reproductive health; dental, vision; and more. They would also be able to choose their medical providers, instead of being restricted by insurance companies. The NYHA would pay for all covered services, ensuring individuals can access care without unaffordable copays, deductibles, or premiums.
As we proceed toward passing the New York Health Act, New York should also take immediate action to ensure that immigrants like Lourdes have access to health care. We must in the upcoming budget due by April 1 allocate $13 million to create a temporary state-funded Essential Plan for all New Yorkers with income up to 200% of the federal poverty level, who have had COVID-19, and who are excluded from coverage because of their immigration status. New York should also dedicate a portion of new revenue to make all low-income undocumented New Yorkers eligible for a state-funded Essential Plan.
Unfortunately, instead of exploring the big, bold solutions that we need to meet the scale of this crisis, Governor Cuomo has time and again resorted to budget cuts that tear at the safety net — by cutting Medicaid, withholding payments from municipalities and community-based providers, and more. At this point, the administration has also confirmed that it knowingly withheld information on nursing home deaths, while several health department officials have left.
And in the face of loud calls across the state to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers to prevent cuts to care and instead of focusing on meeting the scale of communities’ needs, the governor has spread lies: low-balling the amount that could be raised through progressive taxation, and fear-mongering that billionaires will leave.
It’s time to stop trying to protect the rich and powerful, and instead orient New York to meet the needs of low-income and working-class New Yorkers, particularly those of color. Passing the New York Health Act — and, in the interim, creating a state-funded Essential Plan for all New Yorkers earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level — is the best way to demonstrate that commitment.
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Jessica González-Rojas is the State Assembly Member representing New York’s 34th District in Queens. Theo Oshiro is the Deputy Director, and incoming Co-Executive Director, of Make the Road New York. On Twitter: @votejgr & @TheoOshiro.
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Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)
In July 2018, a few months after New York City welcomed a new schools chancellor, The Atlantic asked, “Can Richard Carranza Integrate the Most Segregated School System in the Country?”
Now we have our answer. On Friday, Carranza announced his resignation, attributing it to the emotional toll the pandemic had taken on him. But many observers believe — and The New York Times reported — that Carranza decided to leave at least partly because it had become clear that Mayor de Blasio did not share his commitment to ending segregation in the nation’s largest school system.
So with 10 months left in office, de Blasio, who ran for mayor decrying New York’s “tale of two cities,” leaves New York public schools with two systems, divided by race, class, and resources. The question is whether the battles of the last seven years — and Carranza’s tenure — will lay the groundwork for the next mayor to end that split.
Integration advocates say Carranza’s three years have not been devoid of accomplishment. They cite his overseeing integration plans in Manhattan’’s District 3 and Brooklyn’s District 15, laying the groundwork for similar efforts in other districts, instituting an at least temporary end to screened admission to middle schools, and launching an ambitious program of anti-bias training for teachers.
Above all they commend the outgoing chancellor’s unabashed advocacy for integration.
Zakiyah Ansari, advocacy director of the Alliance for Quality Education, praised Carranza as a strong leader “who’s very clear on what his agenda is and…who didn’t have any problem speaking out when white parents came after him” and when the New York Post went after him. “He has never backed down,” she said.
“Carranza used the bully pulpit to elevate the issue in a way no previous chancellor had,” Richard Kahlenberg, director of K–12 equity at the Century Foundation and a member of the executive committee for the mayor’s School Diversity Advisory Group, said by email.
But the last three years brought resistance from a supposedly progressive mayor who lacked either the conviction or the backbone to fight for true equity. “No chancellor has ever highlighted racial justice the way that Chancellor Carranza did. The big disappointment was he was dealing with an obstructionist mayor,” said Matt Gonzales, director of the Integration and Innovation Initiative at NYU Metro Center.
The angry town hall meetings and the attacks on Carranza in The Post and elsewhere also highlighted once again how strong the resistance to equity can be and made clear that many white and Asian parents believe the system, unfair though it may be, is good for their children and should remain.
“Those citizens with the most political power in the city are often defenders of the status quo, because they perceive the status quo to directly benefit their children. For many people, the practical considerations outweigh the philosophical agreement with school diversity,” Stefan Lallinger, a fellow at the Century Foundation, wrote by email last year.
School integration never appeared at the top of de Blasio’s agenda. He boasts of being a public-school parent but both his children went to academically selective elite public schools for middle school and high school (as did mine). In an early stint on a local school board in Brooklyn, de Blasio helped devise a choice system for middle schools that hardened racial and economic divisions in the area’s middle schools — a program that, owing to community action, has since been dismantled.
Tellingly his campaign rhetoric on divides in the city did not focus on K-12 education. But school integration became a kind of elephant in the room when, a few months after de Blasio’s inauguration, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA released a report finding that New York State had the most segregated schools in the country, owing largely to educational segregation in New York City, and that the system was becoming increasingly divided.
Students began speaking out loudly and eloquently about the effect segregated schools had on their education and organizing around the issue. Some politicians echoed their calls, and the City Council passed a few measures aimed at the problem while a few members made the issue a priority.
There was “a hope, if not an expectation” that de Blasio and his first schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, would take on segregation, recalls David Bloomfield, a professor of education law at City University. But he says, “The best Carmen could come up with” was a suggestion that students have pen pals of different backgrounds and de Blasio would not even say “segregation.” Instead the mayor focused on universal pre-K and 3K, along with expanding access to advanced placement and computer sciences courses — all of which, de Blasio said, would expand opportunity for all children.
Then, in 2018, after his first choice for next schools chancellor suddenly bailed out, de Blasio appointed Carranza, the Houston school superintendent and a grandchild of Mexican immigrants. Carranza was quick to call out city schools for being deeply divided and zeroed in on schools that use grades, test scores, and other measures to admit some children — and not others — as a key driver of that segregation. “Why are we screening kids in a public-school system? That is, to me, antithetical to what I think we all want for our kids,” he said.
The move to get rid of screens was a constant of the next three years but repeatedly fell far short of Carranza’s goal.
The first round involved the test that serves as the sole basis for admission to the city’s eight academically elite Specialized High Schools. By the time Carranza arrived, de Blasio was already planning to call for junking the test in favor of a system where top students from every city middle school would be chosen. Because of a state law passed in 1971, the change required state approval — at least for the three largest and most prestigious of the schools.
It immediately ran into a buzz saw, particularly in the Asian community where many families see a high score on the admissions test as a ticket to success. De Blasio had not consulted with Asian leaders and parents beforehand, fueling sentiment that his policy was targeting Asians. Carranza reinforced that when he said, “I just don’t buy into the narrative that any one ethnic group owns admission to these schools.”
Few if any prominent politicians backed the mayor’s specialized high school admissions plan. By September 2019, de Blasio was acknowledging he had failed and that he might be open to keeping the test after all.
Lallinger of the Century Foundation said the problem with the proposal was not its substance. “The failure to enact it was entirely a political failure. There was no meaningful stakeholder engagement before it was announced, and no opportunities to tweak it to address the concerns of some constituencies before it was presented as an alternative to the status quo,” he wrote in an email last summer. The retreat on specialized schools was the first of many.
In 2019, the School Diversity Advisory Group, which the mayor named in 2017 in response to significant pressure to desegregate the city’s schools, released two sets of integration proposals. The first report, issued in February, had 67 recommendations, such as setting goals for diversity and devising a more culturally responsive curriculum. The administration embraced 62 of them.
The group’s far more sweeping report landed that summer. It looked at the system of choosing students for coveted schools and essentially called for blowing it up. Middle schools, it said, should no longer use admissions criteria such as grades, attendance, and standardized test scores. High schools should abandon lateness, attendance, and geography as criteria for admitting students and instead adopt admissions policies that would create diversity.
Perhaps most controversially the report called for a complete rethinking of the elementary school gifted and talented program, including elimination of the test that determines which children will gain the coveted seats.
The reaction was harsh and immediate. Critics charged that the proposals, if accepted, would spark middle class flight from the city. National figures weighed in with Fox television host Tucker Carlson accusing Carranza of “leading the charge” to sow “racial division in America’s largest city.”
Few New Yorkers who have seen de Blasio’s handling of tough issues, such as police reform, were surprised at what happened next. The mayor — who was running for president at the time — barely acknowledged the recommendations, didn’t meet with the group that he had appointed, and downplayed the importance of integrating schools. “All the theory about how we create a utopian world, you know how we get everything to be perfectly balanced at all, that’s not what parents are talking to me about,” he said at a press conference that September. He pledged a review of the group’s recommendations, but there’s no evidence that happened. De Blasio’s February 2020 State of the City speech did not mention school integration.
The genie, though, would not go back in the bottle.
Angry over calls to eliminate tests as an admissions criteria, a proposed integration plan in Queens, and a community school board member in Brooklyn who referred to Asians as “yellow,” activists, many of them Asian, vented their ire at Carranza. They demonstrated at his town halls, holding signs demanding he be fired, and charged that they had been barred from a March meeting at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School. De Blasio defended Carranza against charges of racism but remained largely silent on the issues.
“De Blasio allowed the equity agenda to be demonized” and be tied to Carranza, said Gonzales, who served on the School Diversity Advisory Group. “He was a brown man who spoke about racial justice and that’s what happens.”
For his part, Carranza, in announcing his resignation, seemed to acknowledge he could have done better at reaching out to various groups in the city.
On the other side, frustrated that sweeping change seemed stalled, students staged walkouts at individual schools during the first half of the school year and planned to up the ante with a citywide school walkout.
Then the pandemic hit. The shift to remote learning threw the screening metrics into disarray, as state standardized tests used for high school and middle school admissions were canceled, and the city scrapped traditional grades for grades K-8. The specialized high school test and elementary school gifted test seemed in jeopardy as some educators and politicians questioned the validity of tests when so many students’ lives were disrupted. They expressed concern about the safety of in-person testing and grumbled about spending money on them at a time when the city faced massive budget cuts.
Carranza clearly hoped to seize the moment. In April, he told the Association of Latino Superintendents and Supervisors he was “not allowing” people to talk about returning to normal because that normal was rife with inequities. “We see this as an opportunity to finally push and move and be very strategic in a very aggressive way what we know is the equity agenda for our kids,” Carranza said. “Never waste a crisis.”
Soon after came another crisis: George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis. The ensuing focus on racial injustice in America reinforced arguments that screened schools were inherently unfair and even racist. Teens Take Charge stepped up its assault on screens and released city data showing that some selective high schools with large numbers of Black and Latino applicants tended to admit more of their White and Asian applicants than their Black and Latino ones.
To the frustration of many parents, the administration repeatedly delayed deciding how it would handle admissions for next school year. But when it finally began announcing its admission policies in December, some screens, including controversial ones, remained.
At least for this year, middle schools cannot use criteria such as grades and attendance to select students but will choose them by lottery. High schools can no longer give preference to students from their Community School District, ending the policy that made schools in Manhattan’s affluent District 2 disproportionately white and privileged. High schools can, however, continue to choose students using test scores, interviews, and portfolios, and many of them are doing that.
Some critics worry the confusion about new criteria and some of the changes could make the system even more unfair.
“We are frustrated that the DOE has missed an opportunity for truly transformative change by failing to remove all academic screening for high schools, even as a temporary measure. The lack of valid metrics during the pandemic, when already-existing inequities were magnified, highlights the baselessness of screening policies in general,” Parents for Responsible, Equitable, Safe Schools said in a statement.
The city also decided to keep the Specialized High School test, citing the state law.
The biggest furor came over the gifted and talented test, which had been given one-on-one by proctors to children who would enter kindergarten through third grade the following September. Many consider this the most egregious of New York’s screens, a belief bolstered by the fact that no other school system selects children for gifted programs this way. Experts argue that testing children as young as four — before most have had many influences beyond their family — tells you more about the child’s home than the child. In New York, it tells you about race: three quarters of kindergarteners in the city’s gifted programs in 2017-18 were white or Asian, even though white and Asian students accounted for only about a third of city kindergarten students.
Success on the test puts students on track for future academic success. Children in the gifted program are likely to land in a selective middle school, which is then a path to passing the Specialized High School test.
The normally toothless Panel for Educational Policy barred the city from issuing a contract for the gifted and talented test this year, but de Blasio remained adamant about finding a way to screen children. The administration decreed that, to qualify for the program, little children would have to get recommendations from their preschool programs or be interviewed.
Even supporters of screened programs balked, the absurdity of the plan seemingly evident to everyone but the mayor, who also said he would be offering a longer-term reform plan for gifted and talented later this calendar year.
“They’ve chosen the system that has been proven to be the least effective for identifying gifted students who are of color, or low-income, or English learners…Subjective evaluations have always benefited the wealthy and middle class,” Alina Adams, an education writer and school choice advocate, told the Post.
M. Rene Islas, former executive director of the National Association for Gifted Children, which advocates for gifted programs, said he was unaware of any evidence that young children could be identified as gifted in a remote interview and that allowing evaluators to Zoom into children’s homes could introduce a whole new set of biases. “I’m really worried about that,” he said, according to Chalkbeat. “I don’t think that’s going to help with equity.”
Although Carranza and de Blasio have downplayed policy differences, the mayor’s stubborn endorsement of the gifted and talented admissions was probably too much for the chancellor. The Times reported that Carranza had drafted a resignation letter after a heated conversation with de Blasio over the future of gifted and talented classes.
There are many possible reasons as to why Carranza resigned. “Maybe we should just take him at his word that he was simply exhausted and vulnerable,” Bloomfield said. With the de Blasio administration going into its final months many officials are leaving — in fact a number at the education department already have. Others look to the atmosphere in the mayor’s office and what many see as his propensity for micro-managing.
With Carranza out the door, de Blasio’s legacy on school integration will remain one of weakness, at best, and opposition at worst. He will be seen as someone who either did not believe in equity or was too timid to take on the powerful forces supporting the status quo.
When de Blasio was elected, advocates had “thought we had someone who would be a champion,” Ansari said. Instead the mayor did not back Carranza up when he was under attack and flouted the wishes of the Panel for Educational Policy when it blocked the gifted and talented test. “The mayor’s not all in on democracy, let alone equity,” she said.
Nyah Berg of New York Appleseed, which advocates for school integration, also blames de Blasio for stalling the drive for a more equitable school system. “So much could have been done and done sooner if it were not for the lame duck de Blasio administration obstructing progress for integration at every turn. It will be hard to judge Carranza’s leadership as he was never allowed to truly lead and was micromanaged by a mayor who has shown no moral courage, leadership or intent to uphold his promise in addressing his ‘Tale of Two Cities,’” she said by email.
In resigning Carranza said that, while “it’s never been my style to look at the coulda shoulda woulda,” he would have done more to engage with communities. Gonzales hopes that incoming chancellor Meisha Ross Porter’s long experience in New York City schools and status as a lifelong New Yorker will help her do that and “move things forward” during the next ten months — or beyond if the next mayor lets her stay on.
As Porter works to fully reopen the city’s schools, integration advocates will be looking to shape the debate about education in the mayoral campaign and elect someone who will take on what de Blasio didn’t.
They will also be examining the structure of mayoral control of city schools. Ansari said that issue has been “simmering” for a while but that the chancellor's resignation was “an aha moment for me”: “We could have had big change,” she said, but the mayor blocked it.
While mayoral candidates have been asked to give a thumbs up or thumbs down on mayoral control, Gonzales said the discussion must go beyond that to creating “a vision for actual democratic governance of schools in New York City.”
Whoever becomes mayor in January, the debate about how — and maybe even whether — to achieve equity in city schools will continue. Along with coming back from the pandemic, “the number one education issue” for whoever takes office in January 2022 will be “to fulfil the promise that de Blasio broke and that’s mainly increasing diversity and desegregating schools,” Bloomfield said.
Kahlenberg agrees: “The next mayor will not be able to ignore segregation, as so many had in the past. Richard Carranza is a big reason for that.”
The question though is what, if anything, will the next mayor want to do about it? And will he or she — and their schools chancellor — succeed?
As the last years have shown, it will not be easy.
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Gail Robinson is a former editor of Gotham Gazette who writes on education and other policy issues and teaches at Baruch College. On Twitter @GailNRobinson.
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Housing underway (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
We as a city spend $3 billion annually on shelters -- including renting hotel rooms -- that fail to provide the services New Yorkers experiencing homelessness need.
These band-aid solutions don’t work. They’ve never worked. Before COVID-19, more than half of New Yorkers were paying more than 30% of their income on rent, and more than 140 New York City schools had a homeless student population of over 20%. Almost 1 in every 100 New Yorkers experienced homelessness in 2019. Despite big promises, Mayor Bill de Blasio has overseen a 23% increase in homelessness during his tenure, even as homelessness declined nationally. While the mayor’s approach expanded access to dormitory-style shelters, it didn’t come close to adequately addressing the root causes of homelessness: a citywide lack of stable, affordable housing and access to “wraparound” social services and healthcare.
The homelessness crisis has only become more potentially dire due to pandemic-related job losses, particularly among lower-income households, causing more families to fall behind on rent and putting nearly 150,000 New York City households at risk of eviction. While the state eviction moratorium and federal stimulus checks have so far prevented the worst, many of the most vulnerable New Yorkers still fall through the cracks.
With so many of our neighbors at risk of losing their homes, we need a mayor who will treat homelessness like the crisis it is. It’s time for bold, transformative solutions on housing and homelessness — it’s time to move from a shelter strategy to a housing strategy. It’s time for housing that heals.
I’m a dedicated public servant who knows how to manage a crisis. But unlike this mayor, I’m not content to just manage homelessness – I pledge to end it.
It starts with smarter leadership. Right now, 19 city agencies are “responsible” for tackling homelessness, which means nobody is in charge. When I’m mayor, for the first time homeless services, housing, and economic development will all report to the same deputy mayor, who will be held accountable for treating housing issues with one comprehensive approach.
We’ll also put more resources towards prevention, focusing on the top risk factors: job loss and health crisis. New York’s CityFHEPS rental assistance program provides temporary vouchers to at-risk households, but the voucher amounts are often too low to rent an apartment. Fully funding CityFHEPS means less homelessness in the first place.
Shift from a shelter strategy to a housing strategy also means instead of paying to rent hotel rooms we purchase suitable empty commercial spaces and convert them into 10,000 permanent supportive housing units. California’s Project Homekey used federal coronavirus relief funds to acquire 6,000 vacant hotel rooms in a matter of months, and New York City should act with similar urgency.
You get what you measure. Rather than fixating on units, we will focus on reducing the number of people who are sleeping on the street, who are rent burdened, and who are in shelters. We’ll open new drop-in centers with bathrooms and critical services, creating more opportunity for social workers to build trust and a pathway to permanent housing, and proactively engage with individuals leaving the correctional system.
Finally, we’ll address homelessness at its roots by fixing our broken housing market. Despite red-hot demand, New York builds less housing per-capita than almost any major city in America. We’ve only added housing in a few neighborhoods where zoning has encouraged it, and we’ve even lost housing stock in areas including the Upper East Side, Sunset Park, and Bayside. It’s no wonder that only 4% of New York’s essential workers can afford an apartment that fits their budget. Our housing market has become a sick game of musical chairs, leaving more and more New Yorkers without a place to call home.
My administration will fund 50,000 new affordable homes for New Yorkers making under 50% of the Area Median Income (AMI), finally targeting the city’s affordable housing plan to the greatest need. We’ll plan for citywide affordable housing growth, especially in high-resource neighborhoods with good access to jobs, transit, schools, and parks. We’ll update the zoning code and streamline the byzantine permitting process, which makes it all too easy for housing opponents to block affordable housing. And we’ll implement common-sense reforms like legalizing basement units, backyard units, and small apartment buildings citywide.
We won’t be the first city to use this approach to deliver results. In 2011, Houston, suffering from record-high homelessness, adopted The Way Home, which identified homeless residents and matched them to housing within 30 days. Houston redirected funding into building permanent supportive housing and improved coordination among service providers, nonprofits, and government. Houston’s housing supply also grew quickly, holding rents flat. Six years later, homelessness had fallen 60%, and military veteran homelessness was effectively ended. This playbook works — we just have to follow it.
It’s one thing to say that housing is a human right. It’s another thing to execute on it. With COVID-19 still putting too many New Yorkers’ housing in jeopardy, our next mayor needs to embrace proven solutions and prioritize ending homelessness. New Yorkers have had enough of excuses — it’s time for experience.
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Kathryn Garcia is a Democratic candidate for mayor of New York. On Twitter @KGforNYC.
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Free meals (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
We are fast approaching the one-year mark of an incredibly tumultuous time, a year filled with hardship and uncertainty. There is neither a geographic corner of New York nor area of industry in our state that has escaped unscathed. As our economy has gone into a tailspin, food insecurity has skyrocketed. Food banks and pantries have emptied their shelves, and farms have been unable to sell their goods as supply lines have been disrupted. One of the most effective ways we have been able to address food insecurity statewide is through the immensely successful Nourish New York program.
The Nourish New York program was launched by Governor Cuomo in 2020 in order to address two separate, yet connected, issues. Due to decreased demand, disrupted and broken supply lines, and processing plant workers contracting the virus, upstate farmers were struggling to sell their products. Because wholesale consumers such as school districts and restaurants were closed, they no longer needed fresh produce, dairy and other items. At the same time, many people, some for the first time ever, were turning to food banks and pantries for assistance.
Social service providers, governmental agencies, houses of worship and non-profits, became completely overwhelmed. Food banks, which generally rely on donations, had to quickly shift funds towards purchasing food to meet demand, as the pandemic caused a decrease in institutional donors such as catering halls and restaurants, now shuttered due to pandemic.
The Nourish New York program connects regional agricultural producers with emergency food providers. New York farmers, many of whom were struggling before the pandemic hit, have been given a lifeline, as food banks receive state funds to purchase fresh produce, dairy and meat from participating farmers at market rates, and then distribute that food to those in need.
Just as Nourish New York was a timely response to immediate need, the incredible work undertaken by organizations like Met Council, City Harvest, and the Farm Bureau cannot be understated. The coordination among hundreds of organizations and their volunteers to safely and efficiently implement the Nourish program was instrumental in its success.
The program has sustained over 4,000 farms and distributed over 17 million pounds of fresh food. With nearly 1 million New Yorkers out of work, supporting the agencies and providers that help ensure vulnerable families are fed is crucial. We not only need to continue funding this program, but we must dramatically expand its reach.
Currently funded at $25 million for the next year, this number must be doubled. Nourish New York is a win for both our farmers, who have been ravaged by the pandemic, and for New Yorkers who face daily food insecurity.
In our state, food insecurity is most prevalent in households with children. According to City Harvest, the number of children going hungry in New York City alone is 466,000 -- a nearly 50% increase over the past year. Childhood food insecurity is linked to increased risk of developmental issues, lower psychosocial function, school absence, aggression, anxiety, behavior disorders, depression, substance abuse, and difficulty concentrating. As an estimated one in four children is going hungry, parents are selflessly skipping meals so they can attempt to feed them. Adult family members are forced to make perilous choices among rent, utilities, medical care, and nourishment. The broader implications of food insecurity on adults also extends beyond nutritional deficiencies, with studies showing compounding detriments to overall mental health.
The Nourish New York program is also focused on improving food access to communities of color, which have taken the economic and physical brunt of this pandemic, by greatly increasing access to healthy foods. In the past year, we have seen local farmers’ market utilization increase by over 50% in historically underserved communities. Communities with dietary restrictions have also had a particularly difficult time finding resources, and the Nourish program has been able to secure food that meets their needs. Kosher, Halal, organic, and vegetarian options have all been added to this initiative.
Rebuilding a post-pandemic economy in New York State will require bipartisan creativity and fortitude. Nourish New York has proven to be a fiscally-responsible success in addressing food insecurity, assisting our farmers and connecting upstate and downstate economies. Many federal and state programs failed our community over the last year, preventing excluded and undocumented workers from accessing life saving services, but Nourish New York made no distinction and ensured that thousands of New Yorkers had food on the table. While we have taken steps towards addressing food insecurity during these unsettling times, the economic devastation caused by this pandemic is far from over. The Nourish New York program must be a part of the long-term planning of New York State.
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Assemblymembers Daniel Rosenthal, chair of the Assembly Task Force on Food, Farm & Nutrition Policy, and Catalina Cruz, chair of the Assembly Task Force on New Americans, represent parts of Queens. On Twitter @DanRosenthalNYC & @CatalinaCruzNY.
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Pace University (photo: Pace University)
We knew our city never was or would be dead. Vaccines are here, restaurants have re-opened for indoor dining, and commercial life is returning. Apartment sales, rental volumes, and prices are back on the upswing. And throughout the downturn, major, forward-thinking employers like Facebook and TikTok signed giant new office leases in Manhattan.
But we still need to do everything we can to bring in the next generations of New Yorkers. And that means recognizing what an economic engine New York’s colleges and universities are for our city and state. We attract the young, ambitious, and diverse talent our city needs to restart and rebuild.
There were nearly 1 million undergraduates enrolled in New York’s colleges and universities in the last academic year, according to statistics from the state Education Department. More students travel to New York for college than to any other state, according to data from the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities in New York. And these students are the people who will help rebuild New York and drive our future.
At Pace University, with campuses in Lower Manhattan and Westchester, we have a proud 115-year history of helping hard-working, ambitious young people to transform their lives through the power of a college education. Our student body of 13,600 undergraduate and graduate students—many of them the first in their families to attend college—come to Pace from 47 states and 99 countries.
New York’s private colleges and universities, Pace among them, generate $89 billion in economic impact annually, and support 415,600 jobs in the state, according to CICU. The sprawling SUNY system drives another $28.6 billion, according to a study by the Rockefeller Institute for Government. In total, that’s more than $117 billion in economic activity in our state attributable to higher education—more than one-and-a-half times the $74.6 billion output of the state’s manufacturing sector (per the National Association of Manufacturers).
In Washington, the new Biden administration is committed to supporting colleges and universities. President Biden has promised to expand the Pell grant program that provides government aid for low-income Americans. That’s an important and overdue change, as the size of those grants have not kept up with inflation. He wants to make federal loans easier for students and their families to navigate and less costly, both very welcome measures. And he has said he’ll expand student loan forgiveness for students who go into public service, which will help both students and our important public sector.
The relief package passed at the end of last year included some aid for higher education, and President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, currently being debated in Congress, promises more.
But colleges and universities are in a deep financial bind right now. Tuition revenue has fallen because of the pandemic, in some cases precipitously, and expenses for student, faculty and staff health and safety, including extensive testing protocols, have increased. Strapped state budgets aren’t able to fill the gap, and tuition increases are out of the question. We need more support from our government along with corporate partners to do our work effectively.
We’re doing our part by trimming budgets and looking for creative ways to help our dollars go further. We’re finding additional ways to reach our students and serve our communities, even through challenging times.
We play a crucial role in our regional economies. We bring in the next generation of workers, and we give them the skills they’ll need for the jobs of tomorrow. We incubate new ideas and develop new talent. We provide jobs and invest in our communities.
And now we’re turning to federal, state, and local partners for help. College and universities are key to maintaining the vibrant and ambitious economic landscape of New York. With the help of our partners, we’ll be an integral part of rebuilding it.
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Marvin Krislov is the President of Pace University. On Twitter @PaceUniversity.
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Gov. Cuomo at an economic development event (photo: governor's office)
New York State gives an estimated $4.4 billion a year to corporations to create jobs. Local governments give approximately $5.6 billion more, according to the Citizens Budget Commission. We do not know how much assistance each business gets, nor do we know how many jobs are created or retained. But we do know – as hundreds of studies have shown – that subsidizing corporations is fundamentally a waste of money that could be spent on core government services like transit or schools.
In 2018, Tim Bartik, an internationally prominent labor economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute collated 30 studies that collectively show business subsidies sway business decisions at best 25% of the time. In his recent book “Incentives to Pander,” University of Texas political scientist Nathan Jensen spells out how politicians use corporate welfare for political gain, including soliciting campaign contributions. Jensen carefully shows that fiscal incentives are useless for the public, yet benefit pandering politicians.
In testimony this week to the State Legislature, my organization, Reinvent Albany, listed six steps the state can take to end wasteful corporate welfare in New York:
1. Hold an oversight hearing on business subsidies featuring independent experts.
The Legislature should hold an oversight hearing specifically about the effectiveness of business subsidies in New York state and invite independent experts from across the country. This would help cast light on the amount being spent on the subsidies, the lack of transparency, and the poor return on public investment. There is robust independent scholarship about tax abatements, subsidies for convention centers and stadiums, and other so-called “economic development” expenditures. New York should draw on that expertise instead of hearing mainly from hired guns who are paid by industries getting billions in taxpayer funds.
2. Establish a Database of Deals.
Stunningly, how much each business gets and how many jobs they create and retain is not disclosed to the public and may not be known by the state.
Since 2015, watchdog groups have called for a Database of Deals that reveals exactly how much each business is getting and what the people of New York are getting in return. The public started asking for the Database of Deals following huge scandals that led to the conviction of high-level state economic development officials.
Two years after Governor Cuomo directed Empire State Development to create a database, there is still no database. This is basic transparency. It is 2021 – enough waiting and excuses. The Legislature should reintroduce the legislation (S2815, Comrie/A2334, Schimminger) and require the database in law.
3. Pass the Opportunity Zone Tax Break Elimination Act in the budget.
Subsidies that start small often balloon into incredible costs, and this is why the Legislature must move to repeal New York’s Opportunity Zone tax break by passing the legislation (S1195, Gianaris/Dinowitz) to do so in the budget that’s due April 1. The bill has support from 19 organizations and six unions, including 1199SEIU, Communications Workers of America District 1, and the New York State Teachers Union. Citizens Budget Commission estimated that the Opportunity Zone tax break is costing New York City and State up to $31 million and $63 million respectively each year, with these numbers expected to rise to $140 million and $284 million in 2029.
Under the program, investors receive a tax break by investing their capital gains in so-called “Opportunity Zones,” which are high-poverty or low-income areas designated by states. Investors can defer paying taxes on their capital gains for up to seven years and are excluded from paying taxes on gains from their investments if investing for ten years.
Though supposedly intended to revitalize communities, Opportunity Zones are in fact a massive giveaway to real estate and wealthy investors that will cost New York billions. Little research has been conducted on the program, but the one major study to date found that Opportunity Zones’ key beneficiary is high-end real estate, not communities. Extensive research on Opportunity Zones’ forerunner, Enterprise Zones, shows that tax breaks for private investment in high-poverty areas does little other than hurt tax revenue.
4. End $330 million a year in oil and gas subsidies.
The Legislature should pass in the budget the legislation (S4816, Krueger) that would end some state subsidies for airline fuel ($118 million), liquid petroleum gases ($57.6 million) and fracked gas infrastructure ($4 million), and more. Eliminating the subsidies could collectively save the state $330 million a year – more than the state projects to bring in by legalizing marijuana.
As we have noted, New York is currently trying to reduce fossil fuel pollution while subsidizing the very companies that contribute to global warming. It makes absolutely no sense to both tax and subsidize fossil fuels.
5. Increase funding of the Authorities Budget Office (ABO), a crucial subsidy watchdog, to over $3 million.
The Legislature must increase the ABO’s budget to $3.105 million, as we and other watchdogs requested back in 2018. The ABO oversees 585 state and local authorities that together hold $248 billion in public debt, but the office has only 11 employees as of last year. This skeleton crew is far from what was imagined when the ABO was first established.
6. Reduce the number of Industrial Development Agencies (IDAs) and Local Development Corporations (LDCs) and make them more accountable.
Public authorities such as IDAs and LDCs spend massive amounts of public funds, and there is little transparency on whether or not IDA and LDC economic development subsidies help communities. Most spending decisions take place outside of the state budget process. We view this as a major corruption risk and waste of public funds.
The Legislature should embrace the recommendations made in the State Senate Investigation and Government Operations Committee’s 2019 report, such as permitting County Comptrollers to audit IDAs and preventing projects already underway from receiving assistance. These steps would go a long way toward reducing the number of public authorities and increasing transparency.
The state cannot continue dragging its feet – New York’s subsidies have exploded over the past decade, and we are now estimated to be losing about $10 billion in tax expenditures annually. Every year we delay is another year that $10 billion for public services disappears.
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Tom Speaker is a policy analyst at Reinvent Albany. On Twitter @ReinventAlbany.
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Crystal Hudson, middle, with voters (photo: Crystal Hudson campaign)
We’re nearing the end of Black History Month — a month of celebrating and honoring the Black people who have enriched and advanced our city. From Audre Lorde to Shirley Chisolm, we have no shortage of artists, entrepreneurs, and trailblazers to celebrate.
We’re also nearing the end of another February in America. A month in which we continue to see Black people die at the hands of the police at alarming rates. A month in which we continue to face a pandemic that is killing Black people at twice the rate of other Americans. A month in which our city’s vaccine roll-out continues to leave behind Black people who have experienced a disproportionate amount of loss from this crisis.
As we close out this month, we have to ask: how is our city actually supporting and protecting Black New Yorkers?
This is a conversation for every month.
To truly uplift Black New Yorkers, we need to advance a forward-thinking, explicitly anti-racist and pro-Black vision for our city’s future. We have to acknowledge our history and take specific and intentional action to right the wrongs of the past and the disparities of the present. We need A Black Agenda for New York City.
When Black New Yorkers thrive, all New Yorkers thrive. This means a guarantee of safety, housing, access to quality jobs, and the ability to raise families without the constant surveillance of law enforcement or the child welfare system. However, all too often our inability to zero in on the specific issues impacting Black New Yorkers means our solutions to structural and institutional racism are deeply insufficient.
I’m proposing a comprehensive plan to upend the injustices facing Black New Yorkers, starting with six urgent recommendations that speak to the gravity of this moment.
First, we must put money directly in the hands of Black New Yorkers with baby bonds and a paycheck guarantee so our city can set Black families up for long-term financial stability while addressing the ills of the past. We must create a pipeline for sustainable, unionized non-law enforcement jobs for Black New Yorkers to form a reliable pathway to the middle class and promote wealth-building. We must also build Black generational wealth and prevent displacement by encouraging community homeownership.
To address the disastrous impact of gun violence on our communities, New York City must pilot a basic income program in zip codes with the highest rates of gun violence so families can secure housing, put food on the table, and reduce the anxiety associated with being unable to afford daily necessities — factors that so frequently lead to violence and cycles of trauma.
Ultimately, to move forward, we must acknowledge the harm of the past; the city must launch a citywide truth and reconciliation process focused on race and reparations and create a racial equity commission to ensure every new policy and piece of legislation is written and enacted in an anti-racist manner. From the ills of the racist and misguided War on Drugs and widely practiced policies like stop-and-frisk to the surveillance and removal of Black children from Black parents and families, our city’s own government has committed undue harm to Black New Yorkers.
As a Black queer woman and candidate for New York City Council, I look to represent a district that has had to bear the pain of gentrification and displacement of Black residents, the overwhelming burden of rapid development that was never intended for us, the destruction of a healthcare infrastructure, and the erosion of businesses that can no longer afford to stay in our neighborhoods.
But my community, where my family has lived for three generations, is also home to so much of what makes Black New York remarkable: Soul Summit in Fort Greene Park, Black-owned retail and restaurants along Fulton Street, Dance Africa at BAM, Afropunk at Commodore Barry Park, the Caribbean diaspora in full display on Utica Avenue, the West Indian Day Parade along Eastern Parkway, and so much more. I’m fighting to protect the Black New Yorkers of today — the artists and entrepreneurs, the nurses and frontline workers, the unhoused and the vulnerable. But I can’t do it alone.
It’s time for New York City to show up for us and ensure that Black New Yorkers can thrive across all five boroughs.
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Crystal Hudson is a Democratic candidate for City Council in Brooklyn’s 35th Council District. On Twitter @crystalrhudson.
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(photo: Matt Ballard)
The New York State Department of Transportation (NYS DOT) recently began installing engraved murals of New York’s Native American history on the Capital Region’s Northway. A few days later, the same NYS DOT threatened to demolish the Shinnecock Nation’s billboard monument on Sunrise Highway in eastern Long Island by issuing stop work orders, fines of $2,000 per day, and claiming it would forcibly remove the monument in 30 days.
Why is the NYS DOT creating a highway monument to honor Native American heritage in upstate New York and fighting ferociously to destroy a Native American highway monument in eastern Long Island? As the young people say: make it make sense.
Whether hoisted up or torn down, historical monuments are proxies of political power. Each carries its own negative with it: what else could/ should be here? What else was here? A highway monument honoring indigenous communities is denigrated as anathema or praised as progress depending on how it casts and shifts power; these are the tensions of our unreconciled settler history.
The billboard monument on Sunrise Highway is a source of revenue for the Shinnecock Nation, a federally-recognized Native American tribe struggling to provide for its people in the bastion of wealth that is the Hamptons. The revenue from the billboards will be used for child care services, food security, reproductive health access, dental care, and other urgent needs, and will be a foundation for future economic development projects. Beyond aesthetics, this monument furthers the Shinnecock Nation’s ability to survive and thrive on their land.
The engraved mural on the Albany highway has little economic benefit for the communities it is supposed to honor, the Stockbridge-Munsee, St. Regis Mohawk, and Delaware tribes. The native dancers are a concession, a compromise meant to smooth over the NYS DOT’s determination to build on a sacred site. The DOT promised to “include the aesthetic treatment [to] reference the Native-American heritage and culture…” after learning that the site for the proposed flyover was ancient, and sacred. The image of native dancers petrified in rock unlocks the space for thousands of cars to whizz by on a new flyover. If there are potential benefits for the indigenous communities, they lie in the realm of representation and spirit; the material benefits flow directly to the State of New York.
On Long Island, the billboard monument trumpets the Shinnecock Nation’s continued presence within the place known as the Hamptons. The violent settler narrative of the “vanishing Indian” is no match for the 20-foot billboards and the twinkling lights offering one singular message: this is indigenous land.
This unapologetic assertion of Shinnecock presence has called down controversy on the monument since construction began in 2019. For some of the neighbors in the Town
of Southampton, this vision of indigenous survival and presence was a distasteful intrusion into their highly-priced dream of rural bucolia. Vacillating between concerns about aesthetics, to potential driver distraction, to the need to preserve the ‘character’ of the Hamptons, residents of Southampton claimed that their aesthetic preferences should be valued over the Shinnecock’s economic development agenda. But NIMBY hardly works when it is not actually your backyard!
The Shinnecock Nation builds the monument on its own sovereign land without the say-so of New York State. This is as it should be: this is a federally-recognized tribe with the right to utilize their land. A New York State Supreme Court judge affirmed the Shinnecock Nation’s sovereignty and land rights in a May 2020 ruling, calling the Shinnecock’s rights to the land “undisputed” and expressing doubt that New York State would be successful in refuting the Shinnecock Nation’s claim of sovereignty.
If the Shinnecock billboard monument is a vision of future-facing indigenous sovereignty, the Albany mural’s origin story has troubling echoes of the past. The engraved dancers were a condition of the NYS DOT’s construction, but when the new flyover opened at the end of 2019 the mural was not installed; the DOT attempted to break even this modest promise about the erection and placement of these murals. After being prodded and cajoled into keeping its word, the state finally began installing the Capital Region murals in January 2021. The Northway’s monument tells an old story, a weary narrative about the slipperiness of New York State’s tongue toward indigenous communities echoes again.
How to reconcile the different reception of these two indigenous monuments, one built by New York State, the other threatened by New York State?
The Capital Region mural requires little of the state government and the non-indigenous neighbors. The engraved dancers are an aesthetic supplement furthering the priorities of the Albany government; they do not displace the status quo bequeathed by the settler past. Alternatively, the Shinnecock billboard monument is a vision of indigenous sovereignty come to life and bathed in neon light. Created and designed by the Shinnecock Nation, it directs wealth to the Shinnecock, alone. Trumpeting the vibrancy of a community rowing hard toward continued survival, the billboard monument sends an unmistakable message of permanence and power.
Now framing the highway that cut through Shinnecock territory in 1959, the billboard monument makes it clear that the indigenous future is not petrified in stone, to be gazed upon and consumed; it is dynamic, shifting, and expanding around us. This monument does not ask that we remember the Shinnecock Nation, but that we respect it, its members, and their rights, today and beyond.
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Abena Ampofoa Asare is the author of Truth Without Reconciliation: A Human Rights History of Ghana; writes, researches, and teaches about historical justice and the African Diaspora; and is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies & History at Stony Brook University.
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Rendering (photo: mayor's office)
The City Council held a hearing this week on a bill to implement comprehensive long-term planning in New York City. With the right amendments, we think this legislation has the potential to foster a more equitable and rational planning process to guide land-use changes in New York City — one that will balance local and citywide needs.
But comprehensive planning is about much more than land use. Done right, comprehensive planning touches on decisions in nearly all aspects of city life: education, transportation, public health and safety, sustainability, you name it.
One way to think about comprehensive planning is that it will finally provide a formal structure for city agencies to coordinate what they are doing and to stop the ill-informed, piecemeal decision-making that has led to unanticipated (but hardly unforeseeable) consequences.
Our organizations have seen this tragedy play out again and again. In 2003, for example, the City rezoned Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn with the inscrutable goal of creating a “canyon of housing.” The City pursued this narrow goal so myopically that it refused to seize obvious opportunities for preserving and creating affordable apartments--essentially extending and exacerbating the exclusive character of nearby Park Slope.
Over a decade-and-a-half later the community is still cleaning up the mess. The resulting influx of new, affluent residents immediately caused nearby schools to become not only severely overcrowded, but far more segregated as low-income children of color could no longer find seats there. One school had to reduce its attendance zone by half, one school had to be demolished and rebuilt with triple the former number of seats, and a third had to open anew. Although situated atop three subway lines, the tall new buildings included large underground garages belching out vehicles onto sidewalks; the pedestrian experience became intolerable. Lacking meaningful design guidelines, the resulting streetscape of blank walls and ventilation grates is some of the worst in the city.
Every one of these problems could have been anticipated and addressed through a formal process that provided meaningful opportunities for the community to engage in planning, required different city agencies to coordinate their long-term plans, and, most importantly, adhered to clear and immovable guiding principles such as racial justice, reduction of segregation in schools and neighborhoods, net creation of affordable housing, and prioritization of public transit and pedestrian safety and accessibility. This is what comprehensive planning promises.
Imagine if diverse government agencies and community members (given the proper resources) had been planning and thinking in advance — long before this rezoning process even started…
About how upgrades to public transportation and bicycle infrastructure could obviate the need for underground garages for luxury housing towers with comparatively excellent subway access?
About a plan to coordinate the creation of new market-rate and affordable housing with innovative student-assignment policies that would lead to more affordable housing in well-resourced areas of the city, racial and economic integration of the neighborhood and its schools, and more efficient use of existing school buildings?
About how to improve pedestrian safety and reduce traffic violence so parents can feel comfortable sending their children to the broad range of schools and parks within walking distance?
About the role of an individual action like the Fourth Avenue rezoning in advancing racial justice, equity, and integration across the city as a whole? And in shifting the benefits and burdens of city life, growth, and change equitably?
Is this a fantasy? Not at all. In fact, comprehensive planning is the norm for most municipalities of any size. New York City’s exceptional size, complexity, and competing needs only increase the necessity of a formal and predictable planning process.
The current legislation requires some amendments to enshrine better public transit, specifically faster buses, and integration as explicit goals; to give local communities a real opportunity to plan proactively without being allowed to override the public good of the city as a whole; and to ensure that the plan will actually guide official decision-making.
This is work worth doing. We can get this right, and the time is now to make it happen. We simply can’t tolerate any more of the status quo.
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Danny Pearlstein is the Policy and Communications Director at the Riders Alliance. David Tipson is the Executive Director of New York Appleseed. Both organizations are members of the Thriving Communities Coalition. On Twitter @RidersAlliance, @AppleseedNY & @thrivingccnyc.
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Kids back to school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
On Thursday morning, February 25, thousands of New York's middle school students scrambled for misplaced backpacks and student MetroCards, trundled out the door, and made their way to long-abandoned classrooms, ready at last to resume in-person instruction after months of remote learning. Thousands of teachers were there to greet them—many no doubt wearing nervous but enthusiastic grins behind their doubled-up facemasks.
Sadly, my daughter Karina—a seventh-grader at Brooklyn's MS 88—wasn’t among them. That's not to say she's not eager to return. Like so many of her fellow students, Karina has struggled with remote learning. Like many parents, I've struggled along with her. We are badly bruised from this fight.
But much as our family has longed for a return to normalcy, we've been down this road before. Last fall, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that schools would be reopening on Sept. 10, then the 21st, then the 29th. (Middle schoolers, who were offered a hybrid system, returned on Oct. 1.) The experiment lasted less than two months, at which point a positivity rate of more than 3 percent prompted another citywide shutdown.
Then came yet another about-face, as de Blasio abandoned the 3 percent threshold altogether. After all, the argument went, if restaurants are open, why aren't schools? Of course, that left unexamined the questionable decision to restore restaurant dining at all, given the surge in the virus. Are such judgments being driven by science, by economic pressures, or by the perpetual pissing match between Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo? No one knows for sure. What is certain, however, is that the funding necessary to allow schools to implement life-saving measures (upgraded ventilation systems; consistent, methodological and science-based testing of students and school workers; appropriate staffing of school nurses and counselors to deal with both illness and grief; and more) never materialized.
Unable to trust our elected officials, we did what seemingly every other family is doing: we read up on the latest research, talked to many friends and parents in the neighborhood, and gamed out the pros and cons for ourselves. We considered the recent CDC guidance suggesting schools could be made safe, along with the welcome decline in positivity rates. We weighed the pitfalls of remote learning (unreliable technology, Zoom fatigue, and Karina's wildly erratic grades and growing disinterest in school) against the risks posed by new strains of the virus and chaotic decision-making by elected officials.
We talked to our girls about how they felt about returning, both expressed ambivalence appropriate for their age, but also real concern about safety and a recognition that there are not enough resources for everyone. They know there are other kids and families that absolutely need in-person learning and we should focus our limited resources on making sure they are all safe. Having lost four of our family members to the virus — two in nursing homes, and two in their houses — we know thousands of other students and educators are also still navigating unprocessed grief and trauma. Given all this, we decided against sending them back to school. We opted to play it safe.
That said, as a former PTA president and member of MS 88's school leadership team, I'm well aware that not every family has the privilege to make this decision. I recently spoke to one Red Hook mom whose five children are all learning remotely, or trying to. Due to the lack of other child care options, this mom had been unable to work for months, with the expected impact on the family finances. Meanwhile, she's had to step in as impromptu technician, substitute teacher, lunch lady, and child therapist for her kids, two of whom — both with special needs — recently received "promotion in doubt" letters indicating they may be held back. It’s been agonizing to watch how frustrating remote learning has been for the kids and how far behind they have fallen. No one seems to be seriously concerned about their socio-emotional needs. For this mom, a return to classroom learning can't come soon enough, but she still views the plan as incoherent and fears for her children’s safety.
The decision is no less agonizing for teachers. Despite the outrage they have faced from frustrated parents and politicians — who often seem more interested in demonizing teachers' unions than vaccinating their members — most want to be in the classroom. But they don't want to risk their lives, or the lives of their loved ones or neighbors to do it. And many know all too well that the same lack of funding that has for years forced them to pay out of their 0wn pockets for much-needed supplies is making it impossible for administrators to keep classrooms safe. After all, hundreds of city schools have already been forced to close due to covid cases — hardly a reassuring sign.
The battles breaking out between families and teachers around the country — often in wealthier school districts — are heartbreaking, particularly when you consider the children stuck in the middle, watching in bewilderment as adults engage in a schoolyard brawl.
Instead of blaming one another for a global tragedy that none of us asked for, I'd like to see us work together to examine how the system itself has failed and to fix it. At the heart of that failure is something we all understand: money. The decades-long underfunding of our school system has always represented a crisis for residents of certain zip codes, but it was a crisis that New Yorkers of means willfully overlooked. The pandemic spread the pain around. It exposed a system held together with Elmer's glue and popsicle sticks, along with the heroic efforts of dedicated teachers, administrators, parents and kids, who do their best every day to make it work, whatever happens in Albany and in City Hall.
According to the Alliance for Quality Education, even before the pandemic swept through the state, New York was ranked 49th in the nation in terms of educational equity. The organization further notes that “8 out of 10 Black and Latinx students attend a school that has been systematically underfunded by the state.” Meanwhile, police and prisons are showered with resources, prompting tens of thousands of New Yorkers to take to the streets to demand change.
The pandemic highlighted the dire consequences of this neglect. But if you thought the crisis would be an opportunity for our elected officials to address the situation, for instance by increasing taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, you may be disappointed. In fact, the opposite is happening. Last year, when the federal government sent the state more than $700 million in relief funds to help schools absorb costs related to the pandemic, Gov. Cuomo actually shifted the same amount of money out of the state education budget. Worse, according to an analysis by Chalkbeat and the American Institutes for Research, such fiscal shenanigans left schools in high-poverty areas shouldering more of the burden. Overall, New York City's schools received $200 less per student, even with the federal help, than they would have under the approved state budget, a disappointing violation of Cuomo's bold pledge to finally "close the education gap." His recently released budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 pulls similar tricks, advancing several bait-and switch proposals that will cut an estimated $600 million more from what New York City public schools should have expected. We have every reason to believe the governor will continue to use federal funds earmarked for pandemic-related education expenses to close a budget shortfall.
The equity gap may well widen further as the state seeks to respond to its fiscal deficits not by asking the wealthy to finally shoulder their share of the burden—heaven forbid—but by instituting an austerity budget that will further gut our school system, punish school workers and short-change our kids. Meanwhile, the governor has been granted sweeping new power to make further cuts unilaterally (though the emergency authority may be revoked in light of the ongoing nursing-home scandal). Further cuts may well fall on both rich and poor districts. But as we learned following the 2008 economic meltdown, wealthier districts can always make up the difference by hiking property taxes, an option that's simply not feasible for New York City’s public school system, especially in high-poverty areas.
In the end, whether a given family opts for in-person instruction or sticks with remote learning is beside the point. For too many students, 2020 will go down as a lost year, not because their parents made the wrong choice or because teachers' unions sought to rightfully protect their members, but because New York once again balanced its budget on the backs of working people and let the wealthy off the hook. The problem, as any good teacher could tell you — whether on a screen or in person — comes down to basic arithmetic.
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Alexa Avilés, a mother and organizer in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is a candidate for the New York City Council in District 38. On Twitter @AlexaForCouncil.
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