Workers (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
For the past 18 months, essential workers have heroically worked in hospitals, driven buses and subways, and kept grocery stores stocked as the deadly pandemic ebbed and flowed.
It is not an overstatement to say that our city and state could not have functioned without these heroes. The toll on these men and women and their families was devastating, with thousands of frontline workers dying from COVID-19 or losing their jobs while many others were able to stay home and work safely.
Unsurprisingly, Black, Latino, and immigrant workers were hit the hardest, once again revealing long-standing inequalities in our society.
While the city rightfully lauded essential workers as heroes, with nightly applause and a parade, words don’t save lives or jobs. As we reflect on Labor Day this year, we must remember that it takes real action on both the federal and state level to prevent significant, deadly disparities between workers.
The pandemic highlighted the importance of strong federal worker safety rules -- and what can go wrong when the government falls down on the job. All across the country there were cases of big corporations putting their employees in incredibly dangerous situations that led to unnecessary deaths, such as at meatpacking plants, where work often continued even on the deadliest days.
These are the exact types of issues that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created to address, but during the Trump years it was gutted and underfunded, with record low levels of inspectors. The agency also failed to issue any robust guidelines to protect workers during the pandemic.
But even with an expanded OSHA under the Biden administration, we cannot rely solely on the federal government to step in and protect New Yorkers. We must have strong state laws backed by an open and accessible civil justice system.
The New York HERO Act, which was signed into law but is still awaiting full implementation, mandates safety protocols in workplaces in response to the pandemic, including PPE and social distancing measures. These types of rules set a clear standard that other states, and the federal government, can follow.
Beyond pandemic protections, New York’s scaffold safety law is another example of how New York supports workers. This law makes those who control a construction site liable for fall-related injuries that occur when they fail to provide the proper safety equipment. This ensures that men and women who work in construction can hold their employers accountable if they fail to maintain a safe worksite.
The civil justice system offers a powerful way to hold negligent actors accountable. The threat of financial and legal penalties often forces change when employers refuse to do the right thing.
The Legislature has passed other important laws that strengthen the civil justice system, such as a bill that would make it easier to bring cases against companies that harm New Yorkers, even if the wrongdoing happens outside the state. That bill will be sent to the Governor at some point later this year to be signed into law.
These laws are essential to providing a civil justice system that is open and accessible – no matter your age, income, or background. We must continue to examine similar legislation that closes the loopholes that prevent New Yorkers from having their day in court.
In the wake of the pandemic’s destruction, we need to make sure we are passing laws that protect working men and women as well as the civil justice system that allows them to hold powerful employers accountable.
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Halina Radchenko is president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association. Charlene Obernauer is executive director of New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.
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Nonprofit New York at work (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
In an effort to increase and enhance social responsibility worldwide, the United Nations General Assembly marked September 5 as the International Day of Charity. This day serves to encourage community members everywhere to show support for charitable causes including the efforts of local nonprofit organizations.
From climate change and systemic racism to poverty and homelessness, nonprofits are tasked with some of the most difficult and ingrained challenges of our time. Yet nonprofits in the human services sector are historically underfunded and undervalued. On this International Day of Charity, Westhab — the nonprofit I’m honored to lead as president and CEO — calls for a future where communities support and value nonprofits as an equitable partner to government and the business community. It is essential that organizations such as ours are shown the support that is commensurate with the critical impact we are making.
The devaluation of the nonprofit sector isn’t the work of any one unit of government or really a deliberate strategy at all. Westhab is fortunate to have strong partnerships with the County of Westchester, New York City, New York State, and many local governments and businesses that see great value in public-private partnerships to meet pressing needs. Unfortunately, in our society, the nonprofit sector is not valued in line with its importance.
Charitable giving provides an opportunity for society to alleviate the pain and suffering of humanitarian crises such as homelessness. Through charitable giving, nonprofits across the country can work towards making a difference in marginalized and underprivileged communities every day. If people take today to recognize the difference even one small action can make, and how that action can be compounded by others, we can make a real difference in creating a more inclusive, resilient, and healthy society.
Intertwined in the nonprofit sector’s history of being undervalued are issues of race and gender equity. The nonprofit sector is dominated by women and people of color, because much of the work we tackle came out of settlement houses, orphanages, and other charitable work—admirable things for women to do, often as volunteers, at a time when men were the sole breadwinners. Women are the backbone of the social work profession, often women of color who themselves have faced economic exclusion and systemic obstacles to success. By undervaluing the importance of the nonprofit human services sector, we also do a disservice to the essential contributions of historically marginalized groups.
Westhab’s staff on the front lines, such as our security professionals and our janitorial staff, form the essential team that admirably staffed homeless shelters and supportive housing residences in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even so, they are often ascribed the label of “unskilled” and valued as such. However, I see the work that these people do every day. It takes incredible skill, in addition to fortitude and passion, to deliver on Westhab’s promise.
The systemic austerity of the sector has been recently dubbed the “nonprofit starvation cycle.” Public and private funders of nonprofits provide insufficient administrative support to operate organizations. Nonprofits often undercut each other with lowball budgets to win the precious few grants and contracts that are available. Our sector has often taken great pride in “doing more with less.” However, this is not the way forward. We are at a place where we need more.
The results of the starvation cycle include overtasked employees, lower wages, and high employee turnover, none of which exemplify the values of our sector or help organizations (or governments) achieve their mission. It is also incredibly inefficient, and we spend far too much time scrambling to fill gaps when we should be building systems and infrastructure. It is past time to create a new and more equitable sector.
Fortunately, there is reason for hope. Westhab is a member of the Human Services Council, which has fought admirably and successfully for New York City to increase indirect cost rates to nonprofits to account for the true cost of operations. Westhab is also a member of Nonprofit Westchester, which is working on the same path and building great momentum around nonprofit employee wages. Overall, our government partners and private funders have been supportive and understand the need for change.
I am extremely proud of Westhab, which has grown and evolved in recent years to meet the community’s urgent needs and widen the pathway from homelessness to permanent housing. However, I long for the day when every member of our team is paid a living wage and is valued at the true level of their contributions to our community. I know this is possible. Our sector does incredible things with less. Imagine what we could do with more.
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Richard Nightingale is President and CEO of Westhab, Inc. On Twitter @RichWesthab.
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NYC Census efforts (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
Despite concerns that the 2020 Census count in New York City would reflect a major minority undercount and leave out people who left because of the pandemic, we came out on top.
The results of the Census were outstanding for the region. After decades of alleged Census undercounts, the New York City saw its population grow by 7.7% since 2010.
And it’s even more remarkable given unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic and the Trump administration. Census counting was delayed by several months. Then-President Donald Trump also tried numerous times to subvert the Census count by trying to add a citizenship question, later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court after the administration failed to follow standard government procedures, though concerns over such a question led many immigrants to shun the Census over fear of arrest or deportation. Trump also cut short the Census counting period by several weeks and attempted to adjust the final state population counts for partisan purposes.
How did New York City do it? By coming together to get out the count.
Mayor de Blasio and the City Council committed $40 million to Census outreach efforts. Groups including the Association for a Better New York and the New York Counts 2020 coalition invested time and energy to grassroots outreach.
Also critical to the city’s Census “success” was the ability of the New York City Department of City Planning to add 265,000 housing units missing from the Census Bureau’s address lists so that every household would receive a Census form in the mail. This effort alone may have resulted in counting half a million city residents who might otherwise have been missed.
Every single one of these New Yorkers mattered. We cannot forget that the state lost two or three districts after each of the last three censuses, with one district lost this time because we came up short 89 people in the state population totals.
There are critical lessons that we must learn from how New York City was able to beat the odds and deliver a strong Census count, thanks to the heroics of grassroots organizers and city leadership.
The Census has now been politicized like never before, with the Trump administration openly attempting to sabotage the count. New York must keep the infrastructure we have developed in place for the next time, and add to it, especially at the state level.
Early planning and investment is critical, and we cannot wait until the year before the 2030 Census to get ready. Our governor, mayors, legislators, and other elected officials must invest in ongoing demographic studies to gauge population shifts. State and local complete count committees need to be organized several years in advance and must receive adequate funding.
It’s mind-boggling to think of how much better a Census count New York might have had if well-funded efforts ramped up much earlier. California invested over $90 million for Census efforts and helped stave off the loss of several congressional districts. Minnesota’s well-organized private-sector efforts helped prevent the loss of one congressional district by 26 people.
For the next Census, New York should be able to keep all of its congressional seats.
Right now, New Yorkers should turn their attention to the state’s new Independent Redistricting Commission, a body created by a 2014 state constitutional amendment that took the initial district line-drawing responsibility from the Legislature to make the process more transparent and participatory.
The commission, appointed largely by the state’s legislative leaders, recently completed a “listening tour” round of public hearings via the Internet to hear from New Yorkers on the kind of districts they want to see in place for the 2022 elections and through the 2031 elections. The commission asked for New Yorkers’ ideas on how to draw districts using “communities of interest,” basing districts on shared economic, social, religious, social, and other neighborhood factors. Other factors that must be considered include population equality and fairness to minority voters, compactness, contiguity, and partisan fairness. The criteria also suggest consideration of the cores of current districts.
The commission is targeting mid-September to release its draft congressional and state legislative maps. Another series of statewide public hearings will follow in October. New Yorkers should let the commission know what they think of the draft maps at those hearings before final maps are sent to the Legislature for approval or modification at the end of the year.
While we won’t know how the final lines will be drawn, for the first time in a long time, we know that the state’s population is more diverse and still growing at a time when it is most needed.
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Jeffrey M. Wice is an Adjunct Professor at New York Law School and Senior Fellow at the school's Census and Redistricting Institute. On Twitter @JeffWice.
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Engaged youth, New York City (photo: Paige Polk/Mayoral Photography Office)
As CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City (BBBS of NYC), the nation’s first youth mentoring organization, I hear from young people nearly every day. I’m consistently impressed by their thoughtfulness, bravery and solutions-driven creativity. Each of our Littles has a unique perspective, but I’ve heard one consistent gripe over this last year: They want us to listen to them!
It’s remarkably disheartening to continuously see the city’s leaders not heed the voices of our youth. But, there is an important opportunity for change.
We need the next New York City government administration, due to take office in January, to prioritize the ideas of New York’s youth, and implementing a city-wide youth council is a wise place to begin.
Rather than the multiple Youth Leadership Councils currently in operation, this single body could be endorsed and sponsored by the next mayor and give the youth of our city a chance to meaningfully influence policy ideas.
Nearly 1 million New Yorkers voted in this year’s primaries, the highest participation in a local election since 2013. This came after New York City officials sought to double the turnout of registered voters aged 18 to 29. It’s clear more New York City youth want to vote and have their say in government. It’s less clear that New York City politicians and public officials are listening to them.
Resources to public schools ranks among the biggest issues for young New York City voters, yet mayoral candidates Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa -- the Democratic and Republican nominees, respectively -- have talked more about across the board budget cuts. The next mayor of New York City needs to go the extra mile and create a platform for youth to ensure their voices are heard and their suggestions are heeded.
BBBS of NYC has its own youth council to function in a similar fashion. In fact, it was created at the suggestion of the youth themselves. They’ve pushed our organization to make impactful changes, including advancing LGBTQ inclusion throughout the organization. I envision a citywide youth council operating in a similar fashion.
If we are serious about getting youth more engaged, we would be foolish not to listen to them. By incorporating youth voices alongside our city’s leaders, we fill an important gap in our policymaking process.
All levels of city government and planning too often take young people’s voices for granted. I’m both a parent and a youth mentoring executive who is still dumbfounded that youth were excluded in planning the 2022-2021 school year. Why wouldn’t we consider the voices of the people most impacted by these decisions? Let’s make certain that the 2021-2022 school year is shaped differently through the viewpoints and informed experiences of its students. A city-wide youth council representative of the extraordinary diversity of New York City gives an important yet long ignored constituency a voice and seat at the table.
This isn’t just my idea. Youth across New York have made it known they want to have a say in the city’s future. A recent survey from Citizens’ Committee for Children found that 40% of respondents ages 14 to 24 believe they have a say in how our government runs. These are youth who want and believe they have the power to influence change. I’ve seen this same passion and optimism from the participants in BBBS of NYC’s youth council.
Consider Jena, a young Korean woman on our youth council. Over the last year she has struggled to adapt to remote learning, frustrated over being tested on lessons she felt she was never taught. At the same time, she dealt with the anxiety associated with being an Asian woman amid increasing xenophobia and violence. A city-wide youth council offers Jena a chance to speak directly to the next administration about what concrete steps are needed to protect the Asian American Pacific Islander community. With youth unemployment hovering around 12%, higher than the overall rate, it also gives Jena and her peers a chance to advocate for opportunities beyond programs like the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP).
Mayor de Blasio has said young New Yorkers are poised to play a “pivotal role” in the city’s recovery from the pandemic. I couldn’t agree more. I challenge the new administration to do more to fulfill that promise and finally give New York City’s youth the chance to have a real say in their future.
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Alicia Guevara is the Chief Executive Officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City. On Twitter @BBBSNYC.
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New York State Senate (photo: NY Senate Media Services)
The United States Census released the nation’s population data by congressional and state legislative district on August 12, setting underway the re-districting of legislative seats, controlled by each individual state. The process will now unfold in New York and around the nation, with control of the House of Representatives and state legislatures on the line.
Having served in the New York State Legislature for 32 years, I went through three redistrictings, in 1992, 2002, and 2012.
Major internal population shifts within New York State have profound implications for redistricting. New York gained about 823,000 people, an increase of 4.25%, between 2010 and 2020. All of the growth was downstate, as discussed in an outstanding summary of New York’s changes by John Bacheller, and shown in brief here:
This significant population increase downstate compared to Upstate likely means a decline in the power of the Republican Party in New York. Its power base has been Upstate, and,until recently, Long Island, and this redistricting cycle marks the end of GOP control of the lines of State Senate districts, which it held through most of the twentieth century, and for 2002 and 2012.
Additionally, since 2012, the year new district lines were put in place in New York based on the 2010 U.S. Census, New York’s redistricting structure has changed. A 2014 Constitutional Amendment created an Independent Districting Commission. New York is now one of 13 states across the nation that have such a commission. It will have the initial authority to draw the district lines for New York’s House seats and the seats in the Assembly and Senate.
The commission has already held public hearings and, in fact, commission staff confirmed to me that the first preliminary maps from the new body will be made public on September 15, 2021. The commission, whose members consist of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, along with several members jointly selected, is designed to draw fair districts and avoid partisan gerrymandering. It must produce maps no later than January 15, 2022.
If the commission fails to produce maps, or if two-thirds of both houses of the State Legislature reject the commission’s maps pursuant to a schedule over this coming winter, the Legislature has the power to draw new lines that must be signed by the Governor.
Since the 2014 constitutional amendment that was approved by voters and created the commission, Democrats gained a two-thirds majority in the State Senate, and kept the one they already had in the Assembly. Those majorities will await commission action, or inaction. Whatever changes they make to lines drawn by the commission are, of course, subject to court challenges.
Another constitutional amendment changing elements of the redistricting process is on the ballot in the November general election this year. It would speed up the timetable for approval and alter the threshold for the Legislature to reject the plans and draw its own lines, a change that is currently moot since in the intervening time the Democrats secured the double two-thirds majority.
During the 2012 redistricting, Republican and Democratic majorities controlled the redistricting process for the respective legislative houses where each held a majority of seats. The Democrats have controlled the New York State Assembly since they won the majority in 1974, and have had two-thirds majorities going back 30 years. The former Republican majority in the State Senate, however, had been under major threat for decades, and by the election of 2010 it held a razor-thin, 32-30 majority, to draw the 2012 district lines.
To preserve power, the 2011-12 Republican majority decided to create a 63rd State Senate district (an action permitted under the state constitution) in Upstate New York. The Senate Republicans’ goals necessitated putting smaller populations in the Upstate Senate districts than in the rest of the state. The drawing of state legislative districts is unlike congressional districts, for which nearly identical one-person one-vote populations per district are generally required. The rules for drawing of state legislative districts have allowed fairly wide population deviations from a strict one-person one-vote standard.
In New York in 2012, the one-person one-vote population norm for each of the 63 Senate districts would have been about 307,589 persons. To squeeze out the extra Upstate district, Republicans brought down the Upstate district populations as low as just under 292,000 (see table below). By contrast, they created New York City districts that reached as large as 330,000 persons. By stretching the population deviations as much as they could legally, they took away a Senate district in New York City to create the 63rd district Upstate.
The table below shows district populations in the New York State Senate in 2012 and in 2020. On the left are 24 districts in Upstate New York, starting with the 40th district, most of which is north of Westchester County, all the way to the 63rd district in Western New York.
In the middle are 26 New York City districts, including two in the Bronx that extend into Westchester County. On the right are the 9 Long Island districts, as well as several districts in Westchester, Rockland, and Orange Counties.
At the bottom of the columns are the population sums for the various areas of the state, as well as the population averages for the districts in the separated areas, for both 2012 and 2020.
It’s always important to keep in mind the one-person one-vote standard that would create districts with even population totals. For 2012 that would be 307,589 New Yorkers per Senate district, and the new 2020 standard is 320,655.
Despite the effort of the Republican majority in 2012 to preserve power by dropping the Upstate district populations below the standard, the plan didn’t work. The Democrats won a 33-30 split. However, a faction of the Democratic majority, known as the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), then aligned with the Republicans and helped them preserve power all the way into 2018, when they finally realigned with the Democrats. Six of the 8 IDC members were defeated in Democratic primaries that same year, and another has since left the Legislature. After the general election in 2018, Democrats had won 41 of the 63 seats in the Senate, and via the 2020 elections, 43 of 63, reaching a two-thirds majority.
The new districting commission’s mandate is to produce fair districts, and having every district virtually identical in population, a pure one-person one-vote, is as fair as can be. Given 2020 Census numbers the new norm is now a little over 320,000 persons per district, up from over 307,000 based on the 2010 Census. The populations of the Upstate Senate districts now have an average of 295,500, about 25,000 persons below the one-person one-vote norm of 320,655, or a sum of 600,000 persons, nearly two Senate districts. New York City districts have a surplus above the 320,655 standard of about 538,000, about one and two-thirds Senate districts. The Metro suburbs have the remainder. Effectively Upstate New York must lose two Senate districts.
In the New York Metro area there are only five Senate districts still represented by Republicans, four on Long Island and one on Staten Island. The other 15 are among the 24 that lie mostly north of Westchester and Rockland Counties. As Bacheller pointed out, the population losses even within Upstate New York are concentrated in the rural areas; urban metro areas gained 1.2% in population, rural areas lost -3.6 % of their population. That is reflected in some of the Upstate Senate districts with losses; six districts are now below even 290,000 in population, some even below 280,000. Five of these six districts with the lowest populations are represented by Republicans.
Some analysts predict the equal representation of Republicans and Democrats on the districting commission will result in the failure of the commission to have a majority vote in favor of a districting plan, thus defaulting to the Legislature (which could reject even a plan that had been voted upon). I served with two of the Republicans on the commission, Charles Nesbitt, who had been the Assembly minority leader, and Willis Stephens, a lawyer from Dutchess County who is a sharp debater.
Nesbitt was, and I am sure still is, a decent and gracious man. But will he and Stephens vote to wipe out two of the last remaining 20 Republican Senate districts in the state, or vote for any plan likely to eliminate even one? I don’t know the answer to those questions but the Republicans have tougher choices ahead than the Democrats. Even if the districts were drawn neutrally and fairly, the Republicans are likely to be the inevitable losers. If the Legislature draws the lines, the Democrats in the Senate might be motivated to avenge many a redistricting wrong from decades past, or just address the population problems to shore up their Upstate incumbents while consolidating the Republicans into fewer rural districts.
The population shifts will also add at least one more Assembly district in New York City, whether the lines are drawn by the commission or the Legislature. In the suburbs the increasing presence of diverse populations could also strengthen Democrats. Most of what the Assembly Democrats have to worry about is where to put their surplus districts and members.
The result of redistricting internally in New York will be to consolidate urban and suburban power; House of Representatives seats for Congress are more likely to be the scene of bitter conflict over the future of the Democratic majority in the House in the national midterms in 2022.
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Jim Brennan was a member of the New York State Assembly for 32 years, where he chaired four committees. On Twitter @JimBrennanNY.
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Mayor de Blasio at a school food site (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
In just a few weeks, more than 1 million New York City kids will head back to their school buildings — most of them for the first time since March 2020.
But the imminent return to a new normal in the classroom shouldn’t mean a return to the status quo when it comes to one of the biggest challenges our young people continue to face: hunger.
Before the pandemic, one in five New York City children struggled with hunger, meaning their families lacked the resources to consistently provide enough food. During the pandemic, that figure soared to one in four.
With so many kids at risk, the return to classrooms is both a challenge and an opportunity to do better. We can’t forget: the whole reason we’re climbing this mountain to reopen schools is to get our kids back on track and to be the best they can be.
But no child can reach their full potential in school while they’re facing hunger.
Many students are already facing a steep learning loss due to their time out of the classroom. Black, Latino and low-income students saw the steepest learning loss of all. As kids head back to school, the availability of free, nutritious meals will be critical to closing that gap and making sure all kids are fueled for success this school year.
So how do we achieve that?
First, we have to hold on to what works.
No Kid Hungry has spent years fighting for more alternative models for school meals that feed more kids — and we can’t let go of those wins now. Universal free school breakfast and lunch, breakfast in the classroom and “breakfast after the bell” all helped overcome barriers like social stigma and arcane bus schedules. Expanded vegan, Halal, and Kosher offerings ensured our diverse student body always had something nutritious to eat.
Now isn’t the time to walk away from what works. Let’s keep all of these programs running at full strength and adapt them as needed for social distancing and other safety measures.
Second, we need to make permanent the new programs that helped kids through the pandemic.
One of New York City’s biggest successes was the recognition that meals need to be readily available regardless of where kids are learning or where in the city a family lives. The hundreds of free meal hubs across the five boroughs where kids and families could pick up a meal at no cost all year-round were a game changer in the battle against hunger we’ve waged throughout this pandemic.
Even though New York City public schools are expected to return to full in-person learning this year, many families will still face inevitable closures or periods of quarantine as kids face exposure to the virus—and feeding those kids when they’re sent home has to be a priority. Continuing a flexible meal program — widely promoted in schools and communities – will help ensure all kids get nutritious food through the ups and downs this school year promises. And this same approach should continue to be a model for future summer meal programs as well.
Finally, we have to use this moment to break out of old thinking, and find new ways to reach more kids in need — because the hunger crisis caused by the pandemic will be with us for a long time.
One of the bright spots over the past year has been all the support from government: increased SNAP benefits for groceries, a larger Child Tax Credit, and Pandemic EBT. But we have yet to see a big push in New York City to enroll New Yorkers in programs they might be newly eligible for or to let them know what’s coming.
Here’s a simple solution — everyone who walks in the door of a public school, an ACS center, a homeless shelter, or any other office that provides social services should be automatically screened and enrolled in the most important food aid and child support programs. That will ensure every family has access to the hundreds—and in some cases thousands — of dollars now flowing through expanded federal aid that can help them put food on the table.
If we get this right, hundreds of thousands of kids across our city will have enough food both at school and at home, and we could see fewer kids facing hunger in our city than at any time on record.
But if we get this wrong, we’ll be failing to equip our children with one of the very most basic school supplies: the food they need to learn and reach their full potential.
The pre-pandemic status quo won’t be good enough. Let’s go above and beyond to make this the least hungry — and most successful — year in the history of New York City public schools.
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Rachel Sabella is Director of No Kid Hungry New York. On Twitter @RachelS23 & @nokidhungry.
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Mayor de Blasio makes an SYEP announcement (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
On August 21, the New York City Summer Youth Employment Program concluded its 59th year of operation after placing 74,884 New Yorkers into paid opportunities for six weeks. This was a record number of participants served (at a record 14,465 worksites), receiving life-changing paid career exploration and work experiences, with benefits extending well beyond the youth themselves.
As part of New York City’s Recovery for All, SYEP this summer launched innovative and timely new components such as the CUNY Recovery Corps, which served more than 4,000 CUNY students supporting small businesses, nonprofits, and other groups involved with our comeback from covid. The Clean-up Corps, another new program model this year, focused on neighborhood beautification. In keeping with ongoing public health concerns, SYEP opportunities this summer were available in-person, fully remote, or a hybrid of the two.
These successes also put an exclamation mark on eight years of extraordinary growth and evolution for SYEP under the de Blasio administration.
In 2013, the last year of the Bloomberg administration, SYEP served 35,997 participants. This was roughly in line with the average over the previous decade: the size of SYEP grew and shrank by the year under Mayor Bloomberg, subject to the outcome of his annual budget battles with City Council. Program services themselves were largely undifferentiated between different groups of youth: participants applied and were selected through a series of lotteries, and placed into jobs developed by neighborhood providers.
All this changed under Mayor de Blasio, who steadily grew SYEP between 2014 and 2019 until it was more than twice the size of the last Bloomberg-era cohort. This growth was driven by New York City’s direct investment in the program, which skyrocketed from around $21 million in 2013 to $134 million six years later. The funding increase covered the expansion of the program, the boost to New York State’s minimum wage up to $15 per hour, and the development of new service options within SYEP.
Crucially, city budgets invested in the system infrastructure necessary to operate a great summer jobs program. The mayor empowered and invested in the Department of Youth and Community Development, which administers SYEP. He also created the Center for Youth Employment, which works to support the full ecosystem of career readiness by aligning K-12 schooling, higher education, and youth workforce programs such as SYEP.
Maybe most important, Mayor de Blasio and the City Council agreed to baseline SYEP into the annual budget in June of 2016, removing it as a political football and setting the stage for significant gains in program quality.
These improvements to SYEP—making the program not just bigger, but tangibly better—are a proud legacy for this administration. They include:
-Greater targeting of high-need youth, by reallocating a number of slots from the lottery to defined eligibility programs such as Emerging Leaders (serving youth in the foster care, homelessness, and juvenile justice systems) and program options for NYCHA residents.
-Creation of CareerReady SYEP, a defined-eligibility school-based program option that links summer work experience to year-round learning for high schools serving student populations with significant economic need.
-More intentional sequencing of the program by implementing a project-based learning model for “Younger Youth” ages 14-15.
-Financial empowerment for young people resulting in more youth signing up for direct deposit (from 7% in 2014 to 59% in 2020).
-Significant growth in the number of private sector job placements over the course of this administration.
As with so much else in New York City, the administration’s support for SYEP was severely tested when COVID-19 struck in 2020. The public health crisis and ensuing recession rendered the traditional program model impossible to run. The Department of Youth and Community Development and Center for Youth Employment worked closely with the provider community and grassroots advocates to quickly develop a remote program. Thanks to their efforts, and with generous support from private funders and participating employers, SYEP Summer Bridge ultimately served more than 35,000 participants with career exploration and project-based learning.
Then, like so much else in New York City, SYEP bounced back this year, with nearly 75,000 participants.
SYEP shows the power of the public sector to improve people’s lives in both the immediate and long-term. The new administration set to take office on January 1 will inherit a precious asset in SYEP—one that we have made great efforts to grow and nourish. Supported well, it will offer a robust return on investment, not only in wages earned and taxes paid, but in an even more important measure: helping youth fulfill their highest aspirations.
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Bill Chong is the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development. David Fischer is the Executive Director of the NYC Center for Youth Employment. On Twitter @NYCYouth & @cyenyc.
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(photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
Luz is a home care worker in New York City who routinely logged 24-hour shifts caring for patients in their homes during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Luz is a pseudonym to protect her privacy.)
As a frontline worker, she was especially susceptible to the virus, yet she was forced to purchase her own gloves, masks, and other PPE because her employer refused to provide them. Despite the grueling hours, unsafe working conditions, and persistent wage violations, Luz could not leave her job because her family depends on her steady paycheck. But through New York City’s Low-Wage Worker Initiative (LWWI), Luz and her colleagues bravely came forward to file a lawsuit in federal court against their employer, a home health agency, for unpaid wages.
The lawsuit and other cases like it offer an opportunity for these essential workers to improve the jobs on which our city relies. They also require a substantial amount of attorney time and case management resources, as well as multi-year, sustainable, and reliable funding from the city for the LWWI to see it through. But right now, the program remains under-funded. New York City must adequately and reliably fund the LWWI expansion, by allocating $4 million in the current fiscal year (FY22) and ensuring multi-year funding moving forward.
For many low-wage workers like Luz and her colleagues, obtaining private counsel is prohibitively expensive. Often, the worker’s damages from a case are less than the actual cost for a private attorney to bring the case forward. Created in 2019, LWWI is the only dedicated city-funded program that provides free, individually-tailored, employment civil legal services and case management support to workers in New York City’s low-wage industries. These services enable workers to seek redress from wage theft, discrimination, harassment, unsafe working conditions, and other workplace violations. Each year, LWWI helps thousands of low-wage workers -- the overwhelming majority of whom are from Black, Latino, Asian, and immigrant communities -- access justice so they can enforce their legal rights.
Despite LWWI’s proven track record of recouping millions of dollars annually in unpaid wages through judgements and settlements for essential workers, the program’s funding has not kept pace with demand for its services. New York City has chosen to fund the program on a year-by-year basis rather than providing multi-year funding. The resulting uncertainty makes it difficult for LWWI service providers -- community-based organizations, grassroots worker centers, and advocacy groups -- to know if they can continue serving clients like Luz when they do not know if LWWI funding will be renewed in the coming year. A lack of expanded and multi-year funding for LWWI hurts low-wage workers’ chances of achieving economic justice, and could significantly reduce or eliminate the resources we need to help them obtain assistance and enforce their rights.
To more effectively address this issue, the Citywide Immigrant Legal Empowerment Collaborative (CILEC), has been zealously advocating for LWWI funding to be expanded and reliably funded. Having exhausted all other options, CILEC is now calling upon New York City’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and City Hall to increase funding for LWWI to $4 million in Fiscal Year 2022 and re-assess multi-year funding for it moving forward. This is critical to keep pace with the demand for services, which has increased exponentially due to the COVID-19 workplace violations and health and safety concerns that essential low-wage and immigrant workers have been grappling with.
Luz’s story is unfortunately representative of many essential workers struggling to survive this pandemic, while victimized by wage theft, discrimination, harassment, anti-union threats, safety violations, trafficking, and other forms of workplace mistreatment. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the exploitation and abuse that have always been pervasive in low-wage industries have continued.
Instead of “staying at home” or “sheltering in place,” essential low-wage and immigrant workers were forced to risk their lives for substandard pay and with inadequate safeguards, and to benefit those staying safe at home. They were delivering food from restaurants and grocery stores, tending to the sick and elderly as home-care attendants, providing childcare as domestic workers, cleaning homes and hospitals, working in laundromats, and packaging supplies in cramped warehouses. They are heroes of this pandemic, but have been faced with a cruel choice: survival depends on an ability to continue working, yet exposure to a deadly virus and exploitative working conditions pose grave risks.
The situation is even worse for workers who lack immigration status. Their labor made it possible for others to stay home, but their employers continue to exploit them by skimping on wages and safety measures. A recent report from the Center for Migration Studies of New York highlights America’s reliance on immigrant workers during this crisis, finding that 74% of undocumented workers are employed in “essential” infrastructure industries.
In the coming weeks and months, New York City workplaces will continue to reopen and will rely more than ever on essential workers to support the city’s economic recovery. While we cannot fully control the course of the pandemic, we can modify our systems, resources, and infrastructure now to better protect our essential workforce through employment-related civil legal services. This requires support from the city.
Now is the time when workers in New York City’s low-wage industries, like Luz and her colleagues, most need reliable “Know Your Rights” community trainings and information sessions about their workplace rights, and zealous legal representation and case management support when these rights are violated.
City government should lead the way in ensuring an equitable and just economic recovery for New Yorkers, and demonstrate its support by adequately and reliably funding LWWI. Our city’s workers, and ability to weather new waves of infections, depend on it.
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Thomas Power is a Senior Staff Attorney at Catholic Migration Services. Sarah Leberstein is a Supervising Attorney at Make the Road NY. Katisha Andrew is the CILEC Coordinator at TakeRoot Justice. All three organizations are member organizations of the Citywide Immigrant Legal Empowerment Collaborative, a consortium of nonprofit legal services providers and community-based organizations. On Twitter @MaketheRoadNY, @CMSBQ & @TakerootNYC
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(photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)
Six years ago, I filed a complaint with the New York City Department of Education (DOE) alongside 51 others because there are dozens of ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Yeshivas in our city that do not provide their students with an adequate secular education, as required by law.
As a result of the complaint, the city announced an investigation on July 28, 2015. Yet now more than six years later, despite findings from the investigation that backed up our complaint, no concrete actions have been taken. The lack of action by the city means that approximately 40,000 students today continue to experience educational neglect.
I signed on to the complaint because of my own experience in a Hasidic Yeshiva. I attended a Yeshiva in Brooklyn from the mid-1980s to the late-1990s, and the secular education I received was abysmal. The “English” part of my day started around 4 p.m., the end of a long day that began at 7:30 a.m. It lasted for about 90 minutes, four days a week. That small amount of time is not enough to prepare students for their futures, but the quality of instruction in that hour and a half was also laughable.
I remember learning fractions, but I never learned algebra or anything more advanced. There was very basic English grammar, but I never wrote an essay or book report. We had no science and very limited history, and there was no physical education (gym). Once we took a test and all of the answers were written on the board in Yiddish—an example that embodies how we and the faculty thought about our secular studies. It was a joke.
My mother spoke English at home, so I spoke English better than even some of my secular teachers, despite the fact that it was one of the only qualifications for the job. These 90 minutes were a free-for-all. The control, focus, and discipline of the other parts of the day were gone. The grades barely mattered, and there were weeks when we would get no secular instruction at all.
Too often efforts to improve secular education in these schools are framed as an attack on the Hasidic lifestyle and community. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. There is no reason why Hasidic students can’t attend Hasidic yeshiva and get both a robust secular education and Judaic education. I know it is possible because my own children attend a school that offers both. It is through their education that I have seen exactly what was lacking from my own.
Deprivation of a basic secular education leads to hardship in adulthood with limited higher education and job opportunities. The fact that I speak English well was a life-saver for me in many ways. Many of my peers who attended similar schools, right here in New York City, do not have that luxury.
The DOE investigation into our complaint didn’t conclude until December 2019, when then-DOE Chancellor Richard Carranza issued a letter to the New York State Education Department (NYSED) outlining the troubling findings. Now, six years after the initial complaint, nothing has been done.
Why has the de Blasio administration not remediated any of these schools? Why haven’t they released a final report of the investigation? There is clear evidence of educational neglect, and officials choose to ignore the impact that this poor education will have on 40,000 current students and many more to come - unless they act.
Mayor de Blasio and the Department of Education continue to sit on the report while punting the issue to the state, which has led to further inaction. Before Mayor de Blasio leaves office, his administration must finish what it started and release the full findings of the investigation. It’s time for action, so ultra-Orthodox children can receive the education they deserve.
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Yonah Kohn is a former Yeshiva student. He lives in Brooklyn.
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(photo: @CMFarahLouis)
Whether we like it or not, COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the ways we work and gather. While there is no substitute for being in the same room as family, friends, and colleagues, for the past 18 months, this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic has taught us how to come together virtually and get things done.
Most of us had never even heard of Zoom before offices started closing, but it and other platforms like Webex and Microsoft Teams have become part of our daily lives as we adjusted to this new virtual world. Most of us probably know the feeling of “zoom fatigue,” a whole new way to be tired!
This past spring and early summer, as COVID-19 positivity rates declined and more and more of us got vaccinated, New Yorkers became more comfortable returning to our pre-pandemic rituals. We are now eating inside at restaurants, attending indoor events, and more recently, hosting in-person meetings to conduct important business before the City of New York.
When we adopted the new city budget at the end of June, we were able to meet inside City Council chambers with our colleagues for the vote. It was the first time in over a year that we finally gathered in person, and it was a relief to celebrate together the passage of a budget that restored pandemic cuts and made meaningful investments in our communities to help boost and focus the recovery.
Unfortunately, we may be done with the virus, but the virus is not done with us. Driven by the recent, rapid spread of the Delta variant, New York City’s COVID-19 positivity rate is hovering near 4%, all five New York City boroughs (counties) are experiencing high community transmission rates per the CDC, and hospitalizations are on the rise. In the current context, we are concerned about the safety of city government officials, civic leaders, and the general public attending in-person meetings.
Since the Governor lifted the emergency Executive Order, New York State law requires that all meetings of public bodies, including Stated meetings of the full New York City Council and committee meetings, must be held in person and remote meetings are no longer allowed. This will affect a high number of volunteer civic institutions that reconvene annually in September, including borough boards, community boards, precinct community councils, and others. Given the severity of the Delta variant, we strongly recommend providing a remote option for these public meetings.
It would be irresponsible to force community members, volunteers, and public servants alike to provide their input, which we need to govern effectively, in person, without a remote option. Indeed, a lack of remote meeting options will also present a special, inequitable, and frankly unacceptable barrier to immunocompromised New Yorkers.
Over the past 18 months, remote meetings not only allowed us to continue our work at the horrific heights of the pandemic, but they opened the door for more civic participation. This was a most welcome side effect of the new virtual reality that we could not have predicted. Indeed, in the time of COVID-19, we have seen a marked increase in public participation and enthusiasm for legislative and budgetary matters affecting the lives of all New Yorkers. To build on this passion, and to prioritize safety, we must fully integrate remote options like Zoom into city government meetings moving forward even after COVID-19 is finally vanquished.
With fall fast approaching, New York State must take swift action to ensure safe maximum participation at public meetings. We may be growing tired of virtual meetings, but they have become an essential lifeline for us to continue our work while keeping ourselves, our families, and our communities safe. Let’s take the lessons learned over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and preserve this crucial option.
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City Council Member Adrienne Adams represents District 28 in Queens. City Council Member Justin Brannan represents District 43 in Brooklyn. On Twitter @AdrienneEAdams1 & @JustinBrannan.
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