Chalkbeat

NYC expands high-demand special education programs into preschool for the first time

2026-07-14T17:22:12+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

New York City officials are expanding a slew of the city’s highest-demand special education programs into preschool classrooms for the first time, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Tuesday.

The expansion this fall is meant to help address the city’s longstanding failure to provide classroom seats to every preschooler with a disability — a legal requirement — even as officials created universal preschool for typically developing 3- and 4-year-olds. Mamdani framed the effort as part of his broader push for universal childcare.

To help close the gap, Mamdani said Tuesday that the city will expand five popular programs that already serve K-12 students with autism and other disabilities as part of a $67.5 million investment included in the city budget. The expansion will add 250 total seats to the Nest, Horizon, AIMS, Path, and ACES programs in 26 schools across 14 of the city’s 32 local districts.

“Universal has to mean exactly that — it has to mean universal,” Mamdani said at a press conference at P.S. 5 Ellen Lurie in Inwood. “Having a child with a disability or a special need should not make families the exception to that rule.”

Eric Adams, Mamdani’s predecessor, promised to provide a seat to every preschool student with a disability. His administration made some progress by opening hundreds more seats. But some students still sat at home without a placement, which can be detrimental to children with disabilities early in their development. A Mamdani spokesperson did not say whether the latest expansion is enough to guarantee a seat for every child next school year.

Mamdani emphasized that the expansion will enable children to attend programs closer to where they live in classrooms that often include typically developing peers. Children have long been forced to travel outside of their neighborhoods to access appropriate special education programs. The city is also hoping to keep more students in the public school system rather than paying for private services when families can’t find appropriate placements.

City officials said many of those programs produce strong academic outcomes for students with disabilities, who tend to post much lower test scores and graduation rates than their typically developing peers.

About 97% of Nest and Horizon students, which serve children with autism, ultimately graduate high school, officials said. Students who attend are more likely to be proficient in reading and math than peers in other programs, officials have previously said. They also tend to have higher attendance rates. At the K-12 level, thousands more students could benefit from those programs than there are available seats, even as city officials have incrementally expanded them.

The announcement represents one of the few education initiatives Mamdani has advanced since taking office, and advocates praised the investment.

“This funding is urgently needed as the city works to ensure that all preschoolers with disabilities get the evaluations, services, and programs that they need,” said Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children, an organization that helps families navigate the special education system.

City officials also pledged to strengthen other support for preschool students with disabilities who often go without the services they’re entitled to even after securing a classroom seat. Only 63% of preschool students with disabilities received all of their mandated related services, including speech and occupational therapy, Education Department officials said at a March budget hearing.

The $67.5 million plan includes hiring hundreds of additional staffers, including teachers, psychologists, social workers, and therapists. Officials said the hires will help reduce wait times for special education evaluations. The Education Department is also expanding a program that places special education teachers in general education preschool classrooms, allowing more students with disabilities to access instruction alongside their typically developing peers.

Here are the 26 schools that will receive new special education programs, including which program they will operate. Education Department officials did not immediately identify specific programs for seven of the schools.

District 2: P.S. 042 Benjamin Altman, Nest
District 5: P.S. 133 Fred R. Moore, Horizon
District 6: P.S. 005 Ellen Lurie, Horizon
District 7: Academy of Exploratory Arts, Nest
District 9: P.S. 028 Mount Hope, Horizon; P.S. 058, AIMS; P.S. 070 Max Schoenfeld, Path; P.S. 063X Author’s Academy, and Lucero Elementary School
District 10: P.S. 310 Marble Hill, AIMS; PS 023 The New Children’s School, Horizon; Rose Hill Pre-K Center
District 11: P.S. 068 Bronx, Horizon; P.S. 111 Seton Falls, AIMS; P.S. 121 Throop
District 12: P.S. 006 West Farms, Horizon; Samara Community School, Nest
District 14: P.S. 147 Isaac Remsen
District 15: P.S. 015 Patrick Daly, ACES; P.S. 024, Horizon; P.S. 958, AIMS
District 20: D20 Pre-K Center
District 21: P.S. 212 Lady Deborah Moody
District 30: P.S. 152 Gwendoline N. Alleyne School, Horizon; P.S. 171 Peter G. Van Alst, AIMS
District 31: P.S. 054 Charles W. Leng, AIMS

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC families can now apply for 2-K. Here’s what you need to know.

2026-06-02T20:10:13+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Applications opened Tuesday for the inaugural year of New York City’s free childcare program for 2-year-olds.

Part of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s affordability campaign for free universal childcare, 2-K will for the first time in the city’s history offer free care for 2-year-olds regardless of their parents’ income. In 2024, parents of toddlers spent on average more than $23,000 for childcare at center-based programs, according to the city comptroller.

Families can apply on MySchools, the city Education Department’s online portal for school enrollment through June 26. Offers are expected Aug. 4.

The program kicks off in September with 2,000 seats clustered in several high-needs neighborhoods in every borough except Staten Island.

The program is set to expand to 12,000 seats next year, and Mamdani has pledged to bring it citywide by the end of his first term. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s funding commitment, however, only covers the first two years. The state is chipping in $73 million this year for 2-K and plans to spend $425 million next year.

Applications for 3-K and pre-K, which already closed, remained relatively flat compared to last year. But Mamdani is pulling out the stops to make sure families know about 2-K: He’s sponsoring a 2K for 2-K road race in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan this weekend to encourage parents to sign up. And he’s enlisted Cardi B to help judge a citywide 2-K jingle competition.

“It is not enough for [the] government to pat itself on the back and say, ‘We have a good program,’” Mamdani said at a kickoff press conference in Queens Tuesday. “People should find out about it.”

Here’s what parents need to know:

Who’s eligible?

Any child born in 2024 is eligible to apply, but, in most cases, they must be 2 years old to begin the program — meaning if the program starts Sept. 10, then kids whose birthdays fall after that date will likely have to wait to enroll. That’s different from the city’s free 3-K and pre-K programs, which allow kids to enroll before they turn 3 and 4, respectively, as long as their birthday is by Dec. 31.

Families of kids who turn 2 later this year are still encouraged to apply now, but may receive a “pending offer” to start after their child’s birthday, according to the Education Department.

Applications are open to families anywhere in the five boroughs, but kids living in one of the five districts where the initial 2,000 seats are rolling out will get priority for seats.

Families currently using a childcare voucher or receiving another form of childcare assistance are still eligible to apply to 2-K.

Where are the new seats located?

The 2,000 seats opening in September are located in five school districts:

District 6 in Manhattan, covering Washington Heights, Inwood, and Hamilton Heights
Districts 18 and 23 in Brooklyn, covering Canarsie, Brownsville, Ocean Hill, as well as parts of East Flatbush and Prospect Lefferts Gardens
District 10 in the Bronx covering Fordham, Belmont, Norwood, Morris Heights, Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvil, Van Cortlandt Village, and Kingsbridge
District 27 in Queens, covering Ozone and South Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Woodhavan, Howard Beach, and the Rockaways

The 2,000 seats are spread across a mix of 550 center- and family-based childcare providers who contract with the city.

What are the hours?

The default hours for 2-K will be 8 a.m.-6 p.m., 12 months a year. That marks a big shift from the model the city has used for 3-K and pre-K, where most seats are funded only from 8 a.m.-2:20 p.m. from September through June.

The extended day and year could save families thousands of additional dollars by erasing the costs of after-school and summer care.

Programs can still decide to offer a shorter schedule, officials have said.

Is 2-K open to students with disabilities?

Students with and without disabilities are welcome in 2-K programs, Education Department officials said.

Before the age of 3, toddlers and babies with disabilities can be identified for Early Intervention, which provides families with free services like speech and physical therapy that can take place in their preschools or at home. When students turn 3, their family can meet with a Committee on Preschool Special Education to get a recommendation for a specialized program.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

As Mamdani expands child care, lessons from a Brooklyn early childhood center

2026-02-11T00:27:30+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

When Maria Santana first started dropping off her son Anthony at FirstStepNYC, an early education center in Brownsville, Brooklyn, he would cry for hours, refusing to eat or nap until she picked him up.

Santana, who was working as a home health aid, told the center’s director that she thought she’d need to pull Anthony out. The director, Catharina Oerlemans, had a better solution: She asked Santana to come work for FirstStepNYC as a food handler.

FirstStepNYC was originally built in 2013 as a demonstration: What could early education look like if the city drew on the resources and expertise of the school system, the supports provided by a social service agency, and the principles of Head Start, to create a program that works with entire families — starting from before children are born and continuing until they go to kindergarten?

As New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani seeks to expand the city’s fractured, unwieldy, and financially stressed assortment of subsidized early childhood programs, FirstStepNYC’s founder thinks his administration should look to the program as a model again.

Mamdani has promised to create 2,000 new “2-Care” seats for 2-year-olds in the fall, with a plan to grow the program to 8,000 seats next year and make it universal in four years.

It’s a project that will involve major financial, logistical, and workforce challenges, especially as current early education teachers maintain that they are dramatically underpaid. And even if successful, it won’t solve the problems of a system that is fragmented and often reaches families too late, said Laura Ensler, a longtime coach and consultant who worked with the administration of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg to create FirstStepNYC.

“Education begins prenatally,” Ensler said. An early education plan that begins with older kids is “like starting to build the house on the fourth floor.”

Using Head Start funding, FirstStepNYC sends home visitors to spend time with pregnant parents each week. They provide education on prenatal care and early childhood development, but also work with parents on their own goals for education and employment.

If parents are interested in working in a school, the program supports them to get the training they need and, if possible, hires them.

Anthony is now 14, but Santana is still at FirstStepNYC, not only preparing meals for the kids but managing Excel reports, running the front desk, and assisting the family support team — all skills she learned on the job.

She’s far from the only one. There’s Ms. Cheryl, who began as a client of the home visiting program and now works as an assistant teacher. There’s Ms. Destiny, whose daughter was in the infant room when she started working as a classroom floater. And there’s Ms. Maritza, Ms. Lakiesha, and Ms. Julissa, the office manager.

“You have to have a two-generational approach,” Ensler said. “It’s a family affair.”

Tackling teacher turnover

FirstStepNYC’s particular set-up allows the program to evade some of the financial stress and teacher turnover that plagues many early education programs. It also offers an example of what educators can do when they are not strapped for funds.

The center — which is run by SCO Family of Services — is housed in a public school building, so it doesn’t have to use funds from its early education contracts to pay for services like janitors, security, and food. Instead, the program uses that money to pay for positions like family support staff and a dedicated disability coordinator.

The result is more support for teachers, as well as opportunities for staff members to move into different jobs, reducing the isolation and career stagnancy that often leads to burnout in the field.

In turn, reduced teacher turnover creates stability and a sense of safety for kids, Oerlemans said. That’s important for all young children, but especially for kids who regularly experience upheaval in other parts of their lives.

“No matter how many shelters you go to, or how many foster care families you are a part of, knowing there’s a place that you’re always loved, a place that you’ll be fed something, a place that’s warm, that’s the most important thing,” Oerlemans said. “That really solid attachment allows children to know that they’re in a safe space. And when they know that they’re safe, they will learn.”

Teaching toddlers, feeling supported

On a very cold Friday morning in February, attendance was low — both because of a recent snowstorm and because FirstStepNYC had scheduled a half day to accommodate a professional development session on potty training.

In the “large movement” room, a group of 1-year-olds played with rubber balls and flopped on foam mats. In a 2-year-old classroom, teachers wiped noses and checked diapers while kids built a collective project with Magna-Tiles. Classrooms were adjoined by bathrooms with tiny sinks and toilets. The wall outside a prekindergarten classroom showed pictures of kids experimenting with flashlights — part of a unit on light and shadows.

In a hallway, Annie Mayor, FirstStepNYC’s assistant director of Early Head Start, had time to peek in at her son, who’s a student in a 2-year-old classroom.

Mayor always assumed she’d work as a traditional K-12 teacher, she said. “When you go to school, you never think about toddlers. No one goes to get a master’s and thinks, ‘I’m gonna change diapers.’”

But when she came to FirstStepNYC, she found that she loved the work, and she appreciated that there was support and opportunities to grow. Mayor started as an assistant teacher, then became a toddler teacher, and then the schools disability coordinator before moving into her current role.

“We have family support, an assistant director, an education director. We get coaching, we’ve been able to get a lot of support to complete our career goals,” Mayor said. “In other centers, there really is just you and your classroom.”

When teachers and staff are supported and less stressed, Mayor added, it allows for a sense of peace and calm for everyone.

Farther down the hall, five pre-K students sat on their classroom rug, listening to a guided meditation.

“Feel your breaths,” the guide said. “Feel that this is what’s keeping you alive. Feel how amazing it is to just … breathe.”

Abigail Kramer is a reporter in New York City. Contact Abigail at akramer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC pre-K teachers want Mamdani to address their pay gap before child care expansion

2026-02-03T01:02:04+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

The 4-year-olds in Rebecca Schneider-Kaplan’s prekindergarten class are doing a science experiment designed to document the demise of a pumpkin named Jack.

Since October, Schneider-Kaplan has recorded their observations in a binder. The kids use paint and cotton balls to illustrate the mold swallowing Jack’s flesh.

In previous years, the pumpkin experiment stopped much sooner. But this class loves science, Schneider-Kaplan said, so she adapted.

Ushering a room full of pre-K students toward a learning goal requires constant improvisation. On a recent Tuesday morning at Stepping Stones Pre-School in Staten Island, Schneider-Kaplan held 11 pairs of eyes on a rotting pumpkin (seven students were missing because of the weather), while simultaneously sending a squirming child to the bathroom, keeping tabs on a boy who was more interested in pulling blocks off a shelf, and reminding multiple kids to keep their hands on their own bodies.

Rebecca Schneider-Kaplan's pre-K classroom on Jan. 26 at Stepping Stones Pre-school.

Schneider-Kaplan, who has taught for 18 years, would earn significantly more money if she did the same job at a public school down the road, rather than a private child care center contracted to run pre-K through the city’s Education Department. She would also get regular raises, health insurance, a pension, and additional pay for experience or extra training. And she’d enjoy the same perks as city teachers, with prep time, a lunch break, and summers and school holidays off.

The city has promised to fix the inequities for years, but an audit released by the city comptroller two years ago found that 90% of community-based lead teachers with master’s degrees still earned less than their early childhood counterparts who worked in public schools. In the Bronx and Brooklyn, some certified teachers start at less than $36,000 a year — close to $30,000 less than at public schools, the audit found.

Educators, who plan to hold a rally next week at City Hall, are angry that Mayor Zohran Mamdani is moving to expand care to 2-year-olds before addressing the existing inequities in the 3-year-old and 4-year-old programs.

“It’s just a complete lack of respect,” Schneider-Kaplan said. “I needed two degrees to become an early childhood educator, but I cannot afford to pay back my loans because I don’t make enough money.”

Early childhood wages are ‘impoverishing’ workers

The city’s subsidized early childhood system – which served nearly 160,000 babies and children last year – relies on a vast ecosystem of programs in public schools, neighborhood centers, and private homes.

This fall, the Mamdani administration will add 2,000 new, free spots for 2-year-olds — a first step toward meeting his campaign promise of universal subsidized child care for kids under age 5.

In a December report, Emmy Liss — who became the executive director of the mayor’s Office of Child Care just a few weeks after the report’s publication — wrote that subsidized early education programs were built in part as anti-poverty programs.

“It is somewhat ironic then that child care as a field is impoverishing its own workers, creating an entire class of working people who earn too little to provide for their families,” Liss wrote, adding that the city’s child care workers are almost entirely women of color.

“Since the time of slavery in the United States, Black women have been pushed toward caregiving roles for other children, and their work has been systematically underpaid and undervalued,” Liss continued.

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office wrote, “Mayor Mamdani has been clear — the individuals providing these critical services must be paid fairly and equitably. We are committed to continuity for our 3-K and Pre-K providers and the families they serve.”

Low pay isn’t limited to teachers. Early childhood programs directors, who sometimes have decades of teaching and leadership experience, earn a median wage of $37 per hour, most without health insurance, according to a report by the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. Assistant teachers typically earn well under $40,000 a year.

That has serious consequences for kids and parents, advocates and providers say. Programs struggle to hire staff, which results in empty classrooms and long waitlists. And when they do fill positions, teachers often leave as soon as public school jobs become available.

City funding for early childhood classrooms “doesn’t cover what the programs cost,” said Michelle Kindya, the co-director of Stepping Stones Pre-School. “Our liability insurance has doubled. Utilities go up. Everything has gone up except the budget.”

Kindya and her business partner, Marilynn Hopkins, have been running early education programs together for more than 40 years. They each have many years of teaching experience; Kindya was an early childhood professor at Brooklyn College for 11 years. And yet they earn less money than teachers with a few years of experience at public schools.

“We’re not valued,” Kindya said.

‘What would make them think we can survive?’

Like a lot of early childhood educators, Kindya and Hopkins say they stick with the job because they love what they do.

Five years ago, the city gave them a little bit of hope when a new round of contracts included a salary bump for pre-K teachers. There were no raises for directors or assistants, but Kindya and Hopkins figured they could hold out until the next contract negotiations. The system was finally moving in the right direction.

Then, at a meeting in November 2025, early childhood directors learned their contracts would be extended for two years with no funding increase — a decision made under former Mayor Eric Adams.

Meanwhile, Mamdani — who would soon take office — was promising a massive expansion of the system in which many programs were barely treading water.

“We were shocked,” Kindya said. “Before they spend the money to add 2-year-olds, shouldn’t they fix the programs they already have? What would make them think we can survive?”

The news galvanized many program directors, who decided to throw their weight behind a movement demanding pay equity for early childhood educators. They launched a letter-writing campaign to the mayor and a social media campaign to raise awareness. Much of the organizing happens over a group chat that uses a play on the acronym for New York City Early Education: “No more NYCEE.”

Early childhood classrooms will remain open during the Feb. 12 rally at City Hall, though some will rely on substitutes or alternate staffing.

“It will probably irritate people that we won’t be at work. We may lose pay, or PTO. It won’t be convenient,” one organizer wrote on a Facebook group for early educators. “THIS is our opportunity. SHOW UP PEOPLE.”

For Schneider-Kaplan, the tipping point came when she saw a series of social media posts showing Mamdani and Ms. Rachel, a YouTube star who makes videos for young children. One post was captioned, “If you’re excited for universal child care and you know it, clap your hands.”

Schneider-Kaplan responded with a post of her own, writing under the name ‘Ms. Becky’: “If you see every post about Universal Childcare as a slap in the face because you’re an underpaid and under insured teacher, clap your hands!”

Abigail Kramer is a reporter in New York City. Contact Abigail at akramer@chalkbeat.org.

Hundreds of children with disabilities (still) wait for promised preschool seats in NYC

2025-01-29T16:36:05+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

Mirdella arrived in New York City from Peru two years ago, hopeful she’d find a public school that could support her son, who has autism. The Peruvian schools offering the services he needed were private and too expensive.

The mom secured a special education learning plan from the city’s Education Department in September, guaranteeing her 4-year-old son, Matheo, a seat in a small specialized classroom and a range of therapies.

That learning plan, however, has been gathering dust.

Matheo, who is non-verbal, has spent months at the cramped Manhattan shelter where the family lives awaiting a spot in a program. He is among hundreds of children who waited this fall for a preschool seat nearly two years after Mayor Eric Adams promised one for every child with a disability — as required by law. The ongoing lack of seats is likely to raise questions at a Thursday City Council oversight hearing on special education.

“He’s not really doing anything in particular,” Mirdella said in Spanish. She requested her family be identified using their middle names for privacy reasons. “It’s basically February, and he still isn’t in school.”

Adams has taken some action on the issue, setting aside funding for salary bumps to bring special education preschool teachers who work at community organizations to be more in line with starting salaries of their public school counterparts. The city also invested $55 million this school year to open new preschool seats for children with disabilities, opening 456 new slots in September, Education Department officials said, with roughly 280 more in the works.

But 450 children are currently stranded at home without seats, department officials confirmed. Meanwhile, Adams’ preliminary budget for next school year did not renew the $55 million for new classrooms, raising fresh concerns that the number of students sitting at home could creep back up.

“Providing these classes is not optional,” Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children, an organization that helps low-income families navigate the special education system, wrote in an email. “Given the City’s legal obligation, the new preschool special education classes should have been among the first programs to get long-term funding.”

Red tape stymies families — and providers

Mirdella said she has been struggling for months to get answers from the Education Department about when Matheo could begin school.

She said she ran into bureaucratic hurdles, including requests from the city to submit the same paperwork multiple times.

Mirdella enlisted the help of Advocates for Children, which began reaching out to the Education Department in October on behalf of Matheo, said Betty Baez Melo, the organization’s early childhood education project director, who has been working with the family.

Education department officials said they identified a program in December that was ready to enroll Matheo and claimed that delays after that stemmed from the parent’s interest in weighing other programs.

But Mirdella disputes that, saying she was ready to enroll Matheo and didn’t receive a clear indication from the city that she could send him. Around that time, Baez Melo inquired with the Education Department about why the city appeared to not have a placement ready.

“The DOE hasn’t specifically said what the challenge has been,” said Baez Melo, referring to the delay in placing Matheo in a program.

In the meantime, Mirdella is doing her best to keep Matheo engaged, coaxing him to mimic words like papá and devising painting activities. It’s a struggle to keep him focused at home all day, especially as she cares for her other 11-month-old child, and Matheo sometimes has outbursts.

“He doesn’t know how to make circles or say ‘water,’” Mirdella said. “I know he can do it if he has therapies.” His learning plan calls for regular sessions with speech, occupational, and physical therapists, which he isn’t yet receiving.

As many families are still going without the programs they’re entitled to, some nonprofit organizations that form the backbone of the city’s preschool special education system say they often struggle to bring new classrooms online.

Jeanne Alter, the chief executive officer at Kennedy Children’s Center, which operates preschool special education programs for about 350 children in Manhattan and the Bronx, said she’s been waiting months to open more seats.

Students at the Kennedy Children's Center, which offers preschool programs for students with disabilities, participate in a classroom activity at the organization's Bronx site.

The organization won the green-light from the state to open three new classrooms back in September, but has been mired in red tape getting approvals from multiple city agencies, including the Fire Department and Department of Buildings. She doesn’t anticipate being able to open the classrooms until March.

“Here we are: ready, willing, and able since August, and nobody cares,” Alter said. At the Thursday City Council hearing, she plans to call on the city to create a task force to address bureaucratic hurdles providers are facing. “I have 20 kids who I know are just sitting at home waiting for these classrooms to open.”

Transportation problems create another setback

Mirdella felt a sense of renewed hope in recent weeks after receiving word from the Education Department that they were setting up transportation for her son to get to school.

But the family soon hit another snag. Mirdella is depending on a yellow bus to take Matheo to school, and city officials did not immediately assign him to a route.

In the meantime, the Education Department offered to pay for a rideshare. When Mirdella tried registering for the rideshare account this week, the code she got from the city appeared to be invalid, though an official later told her it would take 24 hours to begin working.

Rideshare, however, isn’t a sustainable solution. Matheo has mobility challenges, requiring his mom to hoist him into the car and accompany him to school with her 11-month-old in tow while her husband works, Mirdella said.

The process of getting Matheo a seat, along with transportation, has left Mirdella feeling discouraged.

“We thought this country was really inclusive — that if a child has needs or a condition or has medical needs that they would get attention,” she said. “It’s been really disheartening.”

After Chalkbeat asked the Education Department about Matheo’s case, an official reached out to Baez Melo, as Mirdella’s advocate, informing her Matheo would be eligible for yellow bus service starting Thursday.

Still, Mirdella indicated that she had not heard from the Education Department about transportation arrangements, including what time the bus would arrive.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s budget deal restores some education programs

2023-06-30T19:16:58+00:00

This story has been updated to reflect new information.

A tentative New York City budget agreement announced Thursday restores funding to a handful of initiatives that Mayor Eric Adams initially nixed, including one focused on student mental health and another that provides child care subsidies to undocumented families.

The final agreement, which is being voted on Friday, holds the education department’s budget roughly steady at $31.5 billion. That’s a significant shift from the mayor’s April budget proposal, which called for a $30.6 billion budget for the city’s schools, nearly a $1 billion cut.

Officials said the final budget reflects several sources of funding that were not accounted for in the mayor’s April proposal, including $416 million in additional money from the state and $246 million in federal stimulus money that was initially set to be spent in a subsequent year. The budget deal also added $275 million for holding initial school budgets steady even if their enrollment drops and to pay for a slew of other “new needs.”

City officials did not immediately provide a full explanation of what the funding shifts will cover and official budget documents were not yet available.

Still, officials touted a number of programs that were spared from the chopping block. After an unusually chilly “handshake” agreement Thursday, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams expressed frustration that negotiations centered on saving various initiatives.

“The council’s focus this year was to restore cuts to essential services,” she said, calling the mayor’s approach counterproductive and the result bittersweet.

The mayor downplayed the tension, saying negotiations are often contentious and the resulting budget is a “win for working-class New Yorkers.” The city’s overall spending has grown in recent years, with the latest agreement reaching about $107 billion.

Negotiators agreed to maintain funding to a few education-related programs, including one that connects students to mental health support and another that subsidizes child care for undocumented families. City officials credited higher-than-expected revenue, but cautioned that they believe tax growth may slow in the coming years.

The City Council must pass the budget by Saturday, the first day of the new fiscal year.

Here’s what to know:

Still unclear how individual school budgets will be affected

Although the education department’s overall budget is dipping, city officials pledged to keep individual school budgets steady — at least at first. Typically, funding depends on campus enrollment, which has been declining systemwide. But in recent years city officials have plugged school budget holes with federal funding.

Still, some schools’ budgets may shrink or grow, as the city takes back or adds money to campuses in the middle of the school year if their actual enrollment differs from projections. City officials have not made midyear cuts since the onset of the pandemic but have declined to say what they will do in the upcoming school year.

In response to a question Thursday, Mayor Adams said there is “no desire” to surprise school communities with midyear cuts but added, “there’s no guarantees in life.”

That uncertainty may lead some school leaders to tighten their belts if they anticipate anemic enrollment. Overall, the city is projecting a relatively small enrollment drop of 0.6%, suggesting deep cuts are unlikely on most campuses.

Funding restored to child care for undocumented families

The budget will include $16 million for Promise NYC, which covers up to $700 a week in child care for hundreds of low-income undocumented immigrant families. Adams had proposed cutting Promise NYC despite touting it in December when it launched.

The program used $10 million in six months to fully cover child care for about 600 children. Hundreds of more families are on waitlists, according to organizations running the program. Some newly arrived mothers told Chalkbeat that Promise NYC has allowed them to work and pursue education.

The $16 million included in the budget deal falls $4 million short of what immigration advocates and elected officials had sought. But it’s expected to continue covering the 600 children currently enrolled, city officials said.

Mental health support program saved at last moment

The budget includes $5 million for partnerships between schools and mental health clinics, creating a streamlined process for referring students to counseling. The money was initially left out of the mayor’s budget proposal.

The program, known as the Mental Health Continuum, includes just 50 schools. But amid growing concern about a slide in student mental health, advocates had pressed to save it and pointed out that the mayor’s own mental health plan highlighted the initiative.

The Mental Health Continuum is also meant to reduce 911 calls from school staff by training them to address students experiencing emotional crises. Those calls disproportionately affect Black students, and can result in handcuffing or unwarranted trips to the emergency room for psychiatric evaluation.

City to pilot extended hours for pre-kindergarten

The budget will include $15 million to change 1,800 to 1,900 seats for 3-year-olds so that they offer extended hours.

Many working parents need child care beyond 3 p.m. A survey by the Citizens’ Committee for Children, found one-third of more than 1,000 respondents said they were looking for child care from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. However, there were 11,000 unfilled pre-K seats that had longer hours year-round, education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer told Chalkbeat in May.

The pilot program will also extend beyond the school year, according to Speaker Adams’ office.

Caregivers “need preschool programs that align with their work days,” Mayor Adams said.

No plans to expand pre-K for 3-year-olds

The final budget reflects the mayor’s decision to halt a two-year $568 million expansion of preschool seats for 3-year-olds, instead opting to move seats to places with more demand, city officials confirmed.

Education officials have pointed to vacant seats: nearly 23,500 3-K seats are so far unfilled for next school year, according to department figures. The mayor’s decision has drawn backlash from City Council members and advocates, who say the city is not effectively recruiting families or funding early childhood education programs.

Questions remain about the mayor’s savings plan

As broad reductions to city agencies, the mayor required the education department to find hundreds of millions in cuts. It found $305 million, one of the largest savings, by recalculating spending on fringe benefits, such as health insurance for teachers. City officials have said those cuts would not reduce benefits to educators but reflected lower-than-expected growth in those costs.

But advocates worry that the city had already been using those savings to pay for other things, such as transportation, special education services, and charter school costs.

“We are concerned about where the DOE will find funding to pay for these expenses in the coming year and the impact on other programs and services that students need,” Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children, wrote in an email.

City officials did not say whether other programs will face cuts.

Looking ahead: Concerns loom as federal dollars dry up

Future budget cycles are likely to be even more contentious, as federal relief funding dries up and city officials have to make difficult decisions about whether and how to continue programs that depend on those dollars.

Perhaps the most contentious decision will be whether to slash school budgets on campuses that have seen enrollment plunge but have been kept steady by temporary relief money. Mayor Adams had previously argued that school budgets need to be incrementally reduced to be brought in line with their current enrollment, but after instituting one round of cuts he faced intense criticism and has since backed away from making further reductions — for now.

The federal money supports a slew of other efforts including hiring more social workers and psychologists; expanding summer school programs; adding preschool seats for students with disabilities, a chronic shortage area; and increasing the number of schools that host wraparound services such as food pantries and health clinics. It’s not certain how these programs will be funded after this year.

Correction (Friday, June 30): A previous version of this story said the education department’s budget would likely decline by roughly $1 billion, a cut that was included in the mayor’s budget proposal in April. A City Hall spokesperson initially indicated that there were no major changes in the final budget deal. But after this story was published, officials said the final budget includes several funding streams that were not initially accounted for in the mayor’s earlier proposal, meaning the overall education budget will hold steady rather than face a cut. The headline has also been changed to reflect that.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering NYC public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Salary disparity: Teachers, directors in NYC’s free pre-K program push for more money

2023-06-28T21:23:17+00:00

In her own words, Joanne Derwin was “not a runner.”

Then last year, as Derwin embarked on her annual quest to raise money for the preschool she oversees in Brooklyn’s Windsor Terrace neighborhood, a parent persuaded her to train for the Brooklyn Half Marathon with a large group. Since then, they’ve used the race to raise tens of thousands of dollars that are crucial, in part, for covering teacher salaries.

Derwin’s center is one of hundreds that contract with New York City for its free prekindergarten programs, expected to serve roughly 63,000 3- and 4-year-olds this fall. But these centers — which have offered seats to about 60% of the children in the city’s program — have faced a long-standing issue that is gaining renewed attention: Their city funding covers the salaries for their veteran teachers at the same rate as new teachers in city-run public schools. That makes it tough to retain staff, providers say, unless directors like Derwin find a way to close the salary gap.

“We literally have to run the Brooklyn Half Marathon to be able to have our program,” Derwin said.

Boosting wages for teachers, directors and other support staff will be a central sticking point in upcoming contract negotiations between the city and unions who represent community-based preschool staffers, with the hope that the city extends benefits to non-unionized staffers, too.

On the campaign trail, Mayor Eric Adams said he wanted to pay these teachers for their years of experience, and he promised a path to salary parity within two years of his first term.

“It’s almost humiliating what we are paying these professionals,” he said at the time.

Whether he follows through on those promises remains uncertain. Spokespeople for City Hall referred Chalkbeat to the city’s labor relations office, which did not immediately respond for comment.

The brewing battle comes four years after the city boosted teacher pay in community-based programs to match their public-school counterparts, eventually including non-unionized employees, in what was heralded as a huge achievement. Pay grew to $61,070 by 2021 for teachers with bachelor’s degrees and $68,652 for those with master’s degrees, with a one-time 2.75% raise for other staff.

That agreement, however, didn’t pay teachers according to their years of experience, nor did it address salary parity for directors or other support staff, such as assistant teachers or custodians — all issues that unions and providers plan to advocate for.

The negotiations will happen against the backdrop of a chaotic year for the city’s early childhood education system, including late payments to providers and a controversial decision by Adams to not expand preschool seats for 3-year-olds. The City Council has called for $46 million to address pay parity issues. It’s unclear if that will meet the unions’ demands, as the Day Care Council said it does not yet have cost estimates.

Preschool workers eye contract set by teachers union

Wage increases could make the difference between keeping workers or losing them in an industry that’s already burned out from the pandemic, said Nora Moran, director of policy and advocacy at United Neighborhood Houses, which represents many providers.

Community-based preschool programs, like many industries, have faced hiring shortages since COVID, leaving them scrambling to find staff, Moran said. Programs are not just struggling to hold onto teachers; directors are also leaving. Many of these employees work longer hours and throughout the summer.

Acknowledging a need for better pay, Gov. Kathy Hochul recently announced up to $3,000 in retention bonuses for 150,000 childcare workers, with unused federal stimulus dollars.

Without better pay, Moran said providers will be in a “dire situation,” ultimately impacting families who need preschool but can’t afford private programs.

“That sounds dramatic, but it’s true,” Moran said. “The compensation has become such a sticking point for folks.”

DC 37, which represents 7,900 early childhood workers, and the Day Care Council, which represents providers, are expected to begin negotiations with the city once their contract expires this fall. DC 37 also represents workers at federally funded Head Start programs, whose contract expired last January.

Separately, the city’s Council for Supervisors and Administrators, or CSA, is expected to restart their push to raise salaries for the 180 community-based preschool directors they represent. Pressure will likely mount in July, when the union begins court proceedings in a lawsuit that alleges the city is discriminating against community-based preschool directors, who are largely women of color, by not paying them at the same rate as directors of city-run sites.

Unions will be looking to the tentative contract deal reached between the city and the United Federation of Teachers, or UFT, which represents educators and other workers inside of public schools. Under that tentative agreement, starting salaries for new teachers with bachelor’s degrees will jump from $61,070 to $72,349 by November 2027.

Pay gap angers teachers and other support staff

Veteran teachers in New York City’s community-run preschool programs can make 53% of their counterparts with similar years of service in public schools, according to the Day Care Council.

To close such gaps, Derwin’s school, called One World Project, relies on multiple fundraising events, as well as income from their other programs that charge tuition, such as after school.

Derwin said she’s proud to pay her teaching staff as well as teachers who are covered by the teachers union. But that also means her teachers must receive raises annually as they gain more experience and with new contracts, leaving Derwin to close a larger gap every year without any additional help from the city.

“Every year, it’s a more precarious situation for us,” Derwin said.

About 10 miles east at the Howard Beach Judea Center Preschool in Queens, site director Lisa Pearlman-Mason said they struggle annually with enrollment, leading to tight budgets. Their two teachers each make just under $69,000 annually, or the same as a first-year teacher in public schools, as required by the 2019 agreement, even though one has about 15 years of experience and the other about 10.

They host an annual fundraiser, but the proceeds aren’t enough to cover salary bumps. (Last year, they used the money to buy an outdoor toy for their playground.)

Their teaching assistants make roughly $25,000 a year. The starting salary for the comparable title of a paraprofessional will be $34,257 by 2027, according to the tentative teachers union agreement.

“I don’t get to keep them for more than a couple of years because they realize what’s going on and they leave,” Pearlman-Mason said.

Salary disparity for directors pushes them out

Separate from teachers, the CSA is hoping to see pay boosted for about 180 directors of community-run preschools over a three-year period, for a total cost of $16.7 million, according to union officials.

Pre-K directors with master’s degrees at city-run programs make at least $133,375 with one year of experience, according to CSA. Under the expired contract for directors at private programs that are publicly funded, however, the city is only required to pay $63,287 to directors with master’s degrees.

Henry Rubio, the CSA’s president, said directors will sometimes take other jobs to make ends meet, or their centers might raise money to pay staff more. Still, the union sees directors leave their jobs “on a weekly basis” for better paying positions, including within the education department.

The union’s plea for raises traces back to at least 2019. At the time, when New York City agreed to boost teacher pay under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, officials promised to negotiate a similar “path to parity” for preschool directors, Rubio said. But since then, he said, the city has declined to do so.

Negotiations over a new contract stalled in 2021. That December, CSA filed its discrimination lawsuit, which states that community-run programs are overseen by directors who are 92% women of color, compared with the 31% at city-run sites who are Black or Latino.

“I think this is an opportunity for the mayor to really right a stark wrong here,” Rubio said. “For Black and brown women who have been dedicating their lives to the city, I think it’s an opportune time for both the City Council and the mayor to make a statement about his values.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC failed to provide full services to 9,800 preschool children with disabilities last year: report

2023-06-06T09:30:00+00:00

More than one-third of New York City’s preschool children with disabilities did not receive all of the extra support they’re entitled to in the last school year, according to a report released Tuesday morning.

The report, by advocacy organization Advocates for Children New York, analyzes the most recently available city data for the 2021-22 school year. The figure represents an increase from the 2020-21 school year, when 30% of children, or about 7,800, didn’t receive all of their required services.

The data means that a child may have received some of their required speech therapy, for example, but no required physical therapy — services that are spelled out in an individualized education program, or IEP.

Among the 9,800 children — or close to 37% — who didn’t receive all of their required services:

About 6,500 children who required speech therapy — or about a quarter of children who needed monolingual speech therapy and a third of children who required bilingual services.
Nearly 28%, or 5,300 children, who required occupational therapy.
About 2,000 children, or nearly 26%, who needed physical therapy.

The report showcases a yearslong problem with the city’s public preschool system, which serves 3- and 4-year-olds: Programs struggle to provide all children with the services they need, as they are legally required to do. Young children’s access to these services might be more crucial now, since some of these students may have missed out on necessary services as infants and toddlers early in the pandemic, like tens of thousands of kids nationally.

The greatest disparity in who received services was based on language: Sixty-nine percent of children who required only English instruction received their services, versus 53.5% of those who needed to be taught in another language.

The racial and socioeconomic disparities were smaller. While 69% of white students fully received services, the same was true for 67% of Hispanic children, 65.5% of Black children, and 62% of Asian children. Sixty-seven percent of permanently housed students received services, versus 61% of homeless children.

The city’s data might actually “significantly” underreport the problem, the report said. The education department considers a child “fully served” if they received at least one session of all of their required services, the report said.

“A child whose occupational therapist quits in November and is never replaced, or a preschooler who waits six months for mandated speech therapy to begin because the DOE is unable to find a provider, is not fully served from the perspective of their parents and teachers, but they are left out of the counts above,” the report said.

In December, Mayor Eric Adams vowed to open hundreds of additional seats for preschool children with disabilities to ensure that all children get the seats that they’re entitled to. Advocates have praised that commitment, but it already is being tested. While the city has opened 700 new seats this school year for students with more challenging disabilities, about 300 preschoolers are still waiting for a spot, the report noted.

Having access to seats is a perennial issue. Last year, just over 1,000 preschool children who required a small special education class did not have access to those seats by the end of last school year, according to the report.

“We agree with the concerns of our parents and advocates that for far too long students with disabilities were excluded from programming and services,” Nicole Brownstein, a spokesperson for the city’s education department, said in a statement. “This administration is committed to righting this wrong.”

But the city’s commitment to open more seats doesn’t address the ongoing shortage of staff who can provide extra required services for these children, one significant reason why children are missing out on services, said Betty Baez Melo, director of the Early Childhood Education Project at Advocates For Children. The city contracts with outside organizations to provide many of these services, so Advocates For Children is calling on Adams to spend another $50 million to increase pay for those service providers and hire their own staffers.

Brownstein noted that the education department has expanded its own teams who provide services to preschool children, including hiring an additional 24 speech therapists, 23 occupational itinerant therapists, and 12 physical therapists.

The $50 million request from Advocates For Children would also go toward speeding up evaluations for children, another weak area the report cited. Nearly 16% of children, or 1,974, who were eligible for preschool special education services waited more than 60 days — the legal deadline — for a meeting to determine what extra services they should receive, according to the organization. That’s a similar rate to last school year.

Over the last three years, the education department has opened 21 Preschool Regional Assessment (PRAC) teams, which provide evaluations in addition to state-approved agencies that the city contracts with. This school year, staffers on PRAC teams had the option of working overtime, allowing more students to get evaluated — something they plan to do again next school year, officials said.

Still, education department officials said there are not enough agencies to meet the evaluation needs of preschool students, as more children have been referred for services since the pandemic. They plan to work with city, state, and federal government officials to ensure there’s enough funding to link students with necessary services.

While data for this school year is not yet available, the organization reported that it’s received many calls from families who have struggled to access services for their young children. One of those calls was from Terese, a mother in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn who asked to use her first name only for privacy reasons.

Her 4-year-old son required the help of a special education itinerant teacher, or an SEIT, who helps children like hers with disabilities inside of a general education preschool class. But in February, that teacher left her son’s preschool with no replacement.

Terese spent a month emailing the main special education contact in her district about a replacement teacher with no response, even taking days off work to deal with the issue, she said. Meanwhile, her son was talking less at home.

“The teacher started reporting to me that he was not communicating in the classroom,” Terese said.

Terese’s problem was not unique. According to the report, roughly 1,300 preschoolers, or nearly one in five children did not have an SEIT all last school year, even though their IEP required one.

Eventually Terese contacted Advocates For Children, which advised her to lodge a complaint through 311. After that, a special education official with her district responded, blaming the lack of a teacher on a staffing shortage. By mid-May, her son once again had an SEIT, she said.

“I felt all alone,” Terese said. “The DOE just left me to fend for myself with my child with special needs.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

600 children would lose child care with end of free NYC program for undocumented families

2023-05-18T21:27:57+00:00

Angela and her family left their home in Colombia after her husband, a police officer, received multiple death threats amid rising violence in the South American country.

Along with thousands of asylum seekers, her family arrived in New York City in September. They made ends meet through her husband’s sporadic construction gigs, but Angela, unable to find affordable private child care, stayed home to watch her toddler son.

Then, through tips from other newly arrived Colombian mothers, Angela discovered a new city pilot program called Promise NYC, which in January began covering up to $700 a week in child care for low-income, undocumented immigrant families. In late March, Angela’s son, just shy of 2 years old, became one of about 600 children who received vouchers to enroll in subsidized day care or after-school programs that are otherwise unavailable to those without legal immigration status.

Angela has since started a part-time job cleaning, is taking courses that would allow her to work in construction, and is figuring out how to obtain legal immigration status. But that could all end on July 1, if the City Council approves Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed budget, which slashes the pilot program for next fiscal year.

“My child wouldn’t be able to share or he wouldn’t be able to learn and grow with other children in the day care that he is part of, and I would have to resort to finding alternatives that I’m not yet prepared for,” Angela said through a translator.

The move has confused program providers, advocates, and some City Council members, who described Promise NYC as successful and netting more demand than they expected. The mayor himself touted the $10 million initiative in his vision for early childhood education last year, but in recent months, advocates became worried that Adams would cut the program. Spokespeople for City Hall and the Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS, declined to explain the mayor’s decision.

”To take that away would mean, you know, possibly the family loses employment or a kid has nowhere to go during the day,” said Kimberly Warner, deputy director of legal, organizing, and advocacy services for the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, or NMIC, a nonprofit organization tapped by the city to help enroll children in Manhattan and the Bronx. “It would be very destabilizing.”

The mayor has proposed cuts across many city agencies, including about 3% of the education department’s budget, citing in part rising costs as more asylum seekers come to the city.

A group of about a dozen elected officials, including some City Council members and state lawmakers have called for the city to provide $20 million for the program next year, which would cover the same number of slots for a full year. Some are hoping for even more funding, as thousands of newcomer immigrants are expected in New York City.

In a statement, Queens Council member Tiffany Cabán, one of the lawmakers who pushed to create Promise NYC, said the program has been a “game changer.”

Without legal immigration status, undocumented immigrants have limited options for work, often turning to low-paying, under-the-table jobs. Nearly 29% of undocumented New Yorkers were living in poverty as of 2017, compared to 18% of naturalized citizens at the time, according to city estimates.

That means many likely struggle to pay for child care, but undocumented children typically don’t qualify for state or federally backed programs because they must be legal residents of the United States. HeadStart programs are an exception, but there are a limited number of seats, providers said.

Private care is pricey: In 2022, the median annual cost of toddler care in Manhattan was just over $17,800, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Three and 4-year-old children can attend many of the city’s free preschool programs, regardless of immigration status. But there are some programs within the city’s sprawling system, run through centers and by organizations outside of brick-and-mortar school buildings, that require children to be legal residents, including those that offer care past 3 p.m., advocates pointed out.

“That is the exact problem that Promise NYC was trying to resolve,” said Betty Baez Melo, director of the Early Childhood Education Project at Advocates for Children New York.

After advocacy from elected officials last year, City Hall agreed to launch the program. Adams even touted Promise NYC in his “Blueprint for Child Care & Early Childhood Education in New York City,” saying it would allow families to seek care “without compromising the confidentiality of their immigration status.”

The program was publicly announced in December 2022 and launched one month later, in mid-January. The four organizations charged with doing outreach and connecting families to child care are responsible for making sure families are eligible.

Warner, from NMIC, said she and her team were overwhelmed and “surprised” by the calls that immediately flooded in, mostly seeking care for kids ages 2 to 7 years old. They’ve enrolled 245 children across Manhattan and the Bronx and have roughly 150 people on a wait list. According to an ACS spokesperson, 600 children — the agency’s target — enrolled across all five boroughs by the end of April. Costs were fully covered for all but three children, the spokesperson said.

The Chinese-American Planning Council, which was tapped to oversee enrollment in Queens, has about 170 people on a waiting list, said Sumon Chin, the organization’s director of early childhood learning and wellness services.

Besides handling high demand, Chin’s organization also struggled to find child care options for infants and toddlers in certain pockets of Queens that are known as “child care deserts,” such as the Corona neighborhood. Along with keeping the program, Chin hopes the city will provide more funding so that each organization can hire more help, due to the demand and difficulty of the work.

Soneyllys, a mother from the Dominican Republic, enrolled her toddler son in day care through Promise NYC in February. Since then, she has noticed he’s talking and is generally more active at home. It also allowed her to work for the first time since coming to the United States two years ago, she said through a translator.

She worries that losing child care will make it difficult to get legal immigration status.

“I cannot afford day care, and I will not be able to give my child a better life because I don’t have the opportunity to find a full-time job that I can provide for my child,” she said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Better pay and more hours: NYC Council leaders push for changes to 3-K, pre-K programs

2023-05-10T00:30:12+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

Leaders of New York City Council charged Mayor Eric Adams with failing to address problems that have plagued the city’s public preschool programs, and they made several demands to improve the system.

Speaking in the playground of a Lower East Side 3-K and prekindergarten center Tuesday, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, several of her colleagues, and advocates listed several items they want. That includes higher pay for workers in programs run by community-based organizations, paying preschool providers on time, improving outreach to encourage more families to enroll, and allowing community organizations to directly enroll families.

The push comes as budget negotiations are underway between the council and the mayor, whose $106.7 billion proposed budget would cut funding for the education department by 3%, or $960 million. That slashes a plan under former Mayor Bill de Blasio to further expand preschool for 3-year-old children, with the Adams administration pointing to at least 16,000 unfilled seats.

Speaker Adams blasted the mayor’s approach, describing the city’s early childhood education system as “broken” and “in full crisis mode.”

“As my colleagues in the council and the advocates here today have pointed out repeatedly, the city needs to correct its course to address the gaps in our system so we provide stability for this very critical sector,” she told reporters outside the program run by Grand Street Settlement.

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, flanked by council members and advocates, discusses changes they’ll demand of Mayor Eric Adams in order to improve the city’s public preschool system.

Mayor Adams’ first year in office has been marked by changes and sometimes chaos in the city’s early childhood education system. In addition to the cancellation of plans to expand 3-K, many providers have reported that the city has not paid them on time, which has left some programs in financial crisis and caused others to close. Despite the city’s promise to fix the problem, multiple council members said Tuesday that they’re still hearing of issues at centers across the city.

When the education department announced a bureaucratic overhaul, including moving hundreds of early childhood workers to other offices, those workers were left in limbo without clarity about what their new jobs would entail; the department later pulled back on that plan.

At the same time, the mayor has vowed to ensure the city offers enough seats to preschool students with disabilities, an issue that his predecessor failed to solve.

In a statement, education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer credited the city’s outreach efforts, noting that applications for 3-K have increased by more than 20% compared to last year. The city, he said, has shifted 3,500 3-K and pre-K seats from “unfilled areas to areas of demand, which also includes shifting the types of seats offered to meet actual need.”

Styer added, “there is a misalignment of seats that we are tackling head on.”

Boosting worker pay at community-based organizations

For several advocacy organizations, boosting pay for teachers and other support staff is the most important issue to tackle. Better pay would mean retaining quality staff instead of losing them to programs or jobs that pay better, they argue.

Pay disparities are in part the result of the patchwork of programs that make up the city’s preschool system. Some programs are run by the education department, such as inside schools, while community-based organizations run others. Department staffers are unionized and are generally paid more than their counterparts working in community-based organizations, who tend to be women of color.

Four years ago, the city agreed to boost salaries for teachers at community organizations with a certified masters degree, to $69,000 a year by October 2021, matching the salary of a first-year teacher at the education department. The agreement didn’t include raises after that date, and it also meant a veteran teacher at a community-based organization made the same as a new education department teacher, said Gregory Brender, chief policy and innovation officer with Day Care Council.

Tara Gardner, executive director of the Day Care Council, shared an example of one disparity that still exists: An assistant teacher at a community-based organization earns 53% of their counterpart in public schools. Advocates like Gardner want pay for teachers at community-based organizations to match their years of service, as well as comparable pay for other support staff, such as paraprofessionals and custodians.

“They do the same work as staff at the DOE; the only difference is the building,” said Ayana Reefe, Head Start director for Grand Street Settlement, the community organization where Speaker Adams visited on Tuesday.

Council members will also push for $15 million to provide a longer school day and year for 1,000 3-year-olds. That funding — which would convert existing seats instead of adding more — would also include signing bonuses “to help attract and retain the necessary staff,” officials said.

Currently, many 3-K seats are only available between 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., which advocates argue don’t work for parents who work outside of those hours. In a recent survey conducted by the Citizens’ Committee for Children, one-third of more than 1,000 respondents said they were looking for child care from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Styer noted that there are 11,000 unfilled seats with longer hours that go beyond the school year.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said a survey from the Citizens Committee for Children included 160 respondents due to incorrect information. In fact, there were more than 1,000 respondents.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As NYC is expected to spend $38K per student, budget watchdog calls for prioritizing ‘critical services’

2023-04-11T04:01:00+00:00

Buoyed in recent years by billions in federal stimulus dollars, New York City is slated to spend about $38,000 per student next school year — the most in recent history — as enrollment is again expected to drop, according to a new report published Tuesday.

The report, from Citizens Budget Commission, or CBC, a budget watchdog group, comes as the education department faces 3% in cuts for next year. Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council are in the middle of budget planning for the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

Many of the CBC’s findings focus on the period from fiscal year 2016 through 2022, since the current fiscal year, 2023, isn’t over yet. Some of the report’s highlights include:

In that time period, the education department’s spending per pupil has increased by 47%, in large part due to the $7 billion in federal COVID aid the district received as enrollment has dipped. Three school years from now, in fiscal year 2026, CBC projects the city could be spending as much as $44,000 per student.
Spending grew the most in three areas: early childhood education, at 65%, covering private school tuition, such as for students with disabilities, by 79%, and for charter schools, by 84%. This was fueled by enrollment growth in these specific areas.
Spending related to schools, such as for instruction, grew by about 34%. Spending on school services, such as transportation, food, and safety, grew at a similar rate.
Spending on school support, such as special education instructional costs, grew by about 15%. And spending on central costs, including central administration, fringe benefits, pension contributions, and debt service, saw the slowest growth – by 8%.

CBC called for officials to prioritize programs and services for next year that are most effective and shed others. It also notes that the city faces financial pressures over the next several years, which the Adams administration has also emphasized as they’ve imposed stricter savings targets on city agencies. Those challenges include labor costs that will stem from new union contracts, including with the United Federation of Teachers, and a potential recession.

“We can’t do everything for everyone, so we need to start focusing on the most impactful interventions,” said Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission.

New York City spends the most per pupil among the nation’s largest school districts. That cost grew as federal dollars were poured into the school system and enrollment dropped significantly after the onset of the pandemic. Dips in enrollment are likely due to several factors, including demographic changes and the cost of living in New York, which are leading many families to find homes elsewhere.

Roughly one-third of the department’s spending growth between 2016 and 2022 was due to federal pandemic aid, which is set to run out by 2024, CBC’s report found.

Advocates and educators have decried the potential cuts to the education department — amounting up to $421 million — as students continue to struggle with a host of challenges, including mental health, chronic absenteeism, and recovering academically after remote learning. Cuts to school budgets this school year resulted in some schools losing teachers, having larger class sizes, and cutting some programming, such as art and music classes.

Research has found that more money usually leads to better schools. New York, however, is in a puzzling situation: Despite being the leading state in spending per pupil, students score in the middle of the pack on national math and reading tests.

It’s possible to make cuts through central or support costs, such as through transportation contracts, and “avoid cuts to school budgets,” the CBC report notes.

While CBC doesn’t make specific recommendations, Champeny said such cuts could mean negotiating cheaper transportation-related contracts. The department could also look for ways to reduce private school placements for children with disabilities, commonly known as “Carter Cases,” a cost that ballooned under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and continues to grow.

More immediately, however, the group called on the department to be “transparent” about the future of a slate of programs that are currently relying on federal pandemic relief, which other organizations and advocates have also pressed for. These programs include expanded summer school, new prekindergarten seats for students with disabilities, and screening for dyslexia and other literacy programs – an area that Adams is increasingly making one of his signature projects.

Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the Department of Education said, “This Administration has been open and honest about the long-term combined challenges of declining enrollment, programs funded by one-time federal stimulus dollars, and rising costs tied to unfunded mandates from the State.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As 3-K expansion pauses, NYC hires consultant to study where to move seats

2023-03-06T22:30:28+00:00

As Mayor Eric Adams has backpedaled a plan to expand free preschool for New York City’s 3-year-olds, officials have hired a consulting firm to figure out how many seats should exist in each of the city’s neighborhoods next year.

The city will pay consulting firm Accenture just over $760,000 to “map out needs and seats” because of thousands of vacancies in the program, Jacques Jiha, the city’s budget director, said during Monday’s City Council hearing on the mayor’s preliminary budget.

While Jiha said the city has about 19,000 empty seats this year, education department officials have pinned the number in recent months closer to 16,000. (Spokespeople for City Hall and the education department did not immediately clarify which number is correct.)

The study, which Jiha said has been underway for about a month, comes after Adams decided earlier this year not to expand the program for 3-year-olds as planned under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio wanted to model the program on his universal preschool for 4-year-olds, estimating the city would need about 60,000 seats.

The city currently has about 55,000 seats, thousands of which sit empty. Adams administration officials argue that the system needs a close study to determine whether seats are currently in neighborhoods that need them.

“Once that study is completed, OK, we will have more insight in terms of how to allocate those seats and in which area to allocate them,” Jiha said during the hearing. Under de Blasio, city officials estimated that providing free preschool for 3-year-olds would save families about $10,000 in child care costs.

Officials did not immediately share the duration of the Accenture contract or when the study’s findings will be complete. Jiha said they’re pushing Accenture “hard” to issue its recommendations before the start of next school year — and in time for the city to incorporate changes in the upcoming budget, which must be adopted by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

Many city lawmakers and early childhood advocates have criticized the mayor’s decision not to add more seats to the program — a plan that relied heavily on COVID stimulus funds, which are set to run out next year. Some have argued that the city is not doing more aggressive outreach in many neighborhoods with vacancies — many of which are in low-income communities — thus failing to reach families who could benefit the most from free preschool programs. Advocates have also blamed the lack of enrollment on a cumbersome application process, Politico reported.

“My district is one of the areas and we had a huge vacancy issue, and there was no real outreach done,” Councilwoman Althea Stevens, who represents part of the Bronx, said during Monday’s hearing.

Revamping the city’s 3-K system is just one thorny early childhood education issue facing the Adams administration. The city had failed to pay preschool providers on time, leading some to shutter, while a separate plan to move hundreds of early childhood workers into new positions has been paused after it initially caused confusion and chaos across the division.

At the same time, the city announced an ambitious effort to provide preschool seats for every student with a disability, an issue that former Mayor Bill de Blasio was unable to solve.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Adams creates new City Hall office for child care, early childhood education

2023-02-10T22:19:43+00:00

This story has been updated to reflect Robin Hood’s involvement.

As New York City’s early childhood sector faces upheaval, Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday the creation of a new office to oversee child care and early childhood education.

The new office, which will be housed within City Hall, was months in the making. It’s charged with overseeing strategy and planning with city agencies that touch early childhood education, including the education department and the Administration for Children’s Services, officials said.

The office’s creation comes as the education department’s own early childhood office has faced intense scrutiny over the past several months under Adams’ leadership.

The city has failed to pay preschool providers on time, leading some to shutter, while Adams has shelved plans to further expand preschool for 3-year-olds as some programs have gone unfilled while others are oversubscribed. The shift spurred City Council hearings and backlash from elected officials and education advocates who had supported the push for universal pre-K for 3-year-olds.

Additionally, Chancellor David Banks’ plan last fall to move hundreds of early childhood workers into new positions — which has so far been paused — resulted in chaos and confusion across the division.

At the same time, the city recently announced an ambitious effort to provide preschool seats for every student with a disability, an issue that former Mayor Bill de Blasio was unable to solve.

The new office is meant to help child care providers cut through so-called red tape, according to a statement from Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright.

It will be led by Michelle Paige, who was chief program and equity officer for University Settlement, which focuses on creating programs, including daycares and preschools, aimed at fighting poverty and inequality on the Lower East Side and Brooklyn. Paige has also worked for Children’s Aid and was an early childhood teacher at the start of her career, according to city officials.

Asked how many people will work under Paige, a City Hall spokesperson said officials are still developing the office’s structure.

The plan to create this new office was nestled into Adams’ “blueprint” for early childhood education published in June. At the time, officials wrote that the office would create “responsive systems that are centered on parent choice, supporting providers, and delivering high-quality options for families” with support from Robin Hood, an anti-poverty nonprofit organization.

Last April, Robin Hood provided a 21-month, $847,000 grant that is supposed to help hire staff and cover other costs for this project, according to a spokesperson with the organization.

Early childhood education organizations applauded the decision to hire Paige and create a new office to oversee the sector.

“With this new office, we hope to see the long-waited-for thoughtful and effective coordination of New York City’s child care sector, ensuring responsive access and support for the city’s families and child care programs,” said Ramon Peguero, president and CEO of The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, in a statement.

The idea to create the office is “very much needed,” according to a former staffer of the education department’s early childhood division. It’s important for city agencies to coordinate with each other to pull off successful early childhood education programs, since they intersect with multiple offices, said the ex-staffer, who requested anonymity.

Still, details remained murky.

“Obviously, all of us have read the blueprint, but I dont think it’s super clear,” the former staffer said. “What does ‘reaffirming New York City’s commitment to families’ mean? What does it mean for child care, what does it mean for universal child care?”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s pre-K program will soon have seats for all children with disabilities who want one, mayor says

2022-12-13T21:43:57+00:00

Mayor Eric Adams committed Tuesday to addressing a longstanding shortage of preschool seats for students with disabilities, with plans to open 800 more of those spots for 3- and 4-year-old children by this spring.

The mayor will boost pay for preschool special education teachers, who typically earn up to $20,000 less than their general education counterparts, officials said. The city will also increase the school day in these programs by an hour and 20 minutes, matching the hours for general education preschool programs.

Adams announced the changes at a press conference in which he sharply criticized the system under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, charging that the lack of access for hundreds of students with disabilities “was just wrong” and meant that New York City’s lauded universal preschool program was never truly universal.

“Children who need it more were receiving less,” Adams said. “That is just dysfunctional at its highest level.”

Schools Chancellor David Banks said the teacher pay disparities were a result of “what happens when you don’t think it’s a priority.”

Universal prekindergarten was regarded as de Blasio’s signature achievement. But advocates criticized his administration for failing to provide seats for hundreds of children with disabilities or adequately paying teachers in those programs. At the end of last school year, about 800 preschool-aged children with disabilities were still awaiting seats, an education department official said at a City Council meeting in September.

For students with disabilities who did get seats, disparities remained. An analysis of the 2019-20 school year found that Black and Asian American preschoolers were less likely to be identified for special education services when compared with their white peers. Black and Latino children who were identified for services were more likely to be placed in settings exclusively for students with disabilities rather than classrooms integrated with students of mixed abilities.

The new plan is expected to help providers open more classes with a mix of students with disabilities and those in general education, officials said. The process of adding 400 new seats is already underway, said Deputy Chancellor Kara Ahmed, who oversees early childhood education. Officials did not say exactly when these seats will open.

The department approved funding increases for 65 community-based organizations that provide special education programs for the city’s youngest learners. The additional money will allow those programs to open new seats, extend class hours for students with disabilities, and boost wages for teachers.

The salary bumps will mean increasing salaries from the current range of $50,000-$58,000 up to a range of $68,000-$70,000, Ahmed told reporters. And doing so will allow existing programs to keep teachers and attract new ones, Ahmed said.

The city has also committed to opening another 400 new seats by sometime this spring.

“We plan to hold the administration accountable for delivering on that promise,” said Randi Levine, policy director for Advocates for Children, a nonprofit organization that has for years pushed for more such seats, during Tuesday’s press conference. “The city has a legal obligation and a moral obligation to do so.”

The plan will cost $130 million during this fiscal year and the next one, and is being paid for using federal relief dollars, a department spokesperson said. The spokesperson declined to say how the city plans to cover funding for those seats once the temporary dollars run out in 2024. That’s a larger question for many education department programs funded by relief dollars, including thousands of new 3K seats the city has opened over the past two school years.

Gregory Brender, policy director for the Day Care Council, said the plan includes positive steps, but noted that his organization wants the Adams administration to raise wages for all early childhood educators working for community-based programs. As of October 2020, these teachers are making the same amount as new public school teachers, even with 20 years of experience, Brender said.

In an interview, Levine noted that under the city’s plan, preschool special education teachers will now be paid as much as a new teacher who works for the education department.

“But every step helps,” she said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC won’t expand prekindergarten for 3-year-olds next year

2022-11-16T23:51:43+00:00

Mayor Eric Adams is not planning to expand New York City’s free prekindergarten program for 3-year-olds next year, as city agencies are facing calls to cut back on spending, education department officials confirmed Wednesday.

City officials are planning to divert $568 million in federal COVID relief money that had been earmarked for 3-K expansion over the next two fiscal years to use elsewhere for the education department, Emma Vadehra, the school system’s chief operations officer, said during a Wednesday City Council hearing. Instead, funding for 3-K will hold steady from this year, she said, allowing the education department to meet “a very large portion” of savings goals set out by Adams, which he’s also required of other city agencies.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio had planned to use stimulus money to create 60,000 seats for the city’s 3-year-olds and make 3-K universal by September 2023. But the Adams administration has stepped back from that promise.

As of this fall, the city had planned to open 55,000 3-K seats, for a total budget of $711 million. About two thirds of that is covered by stimulus dollars, according to a City Hall spokesperson. But at the same time, about 36,500 children have enrolled.

A spokesperson for City Hall did not detail how officials plan to repurpose the money intended for 3-K, except for saying that it will go toward “central costs” at the education department.

Under de Blasio, city officials planned to use the largest pot of the education department’s $7 billion in COVID stimulus dollars on expanding preschool for 3-year-olds. But the former mayor never laid out how the city would pay for the program once those temporary dollars ran out. Neither has Adams, setting up the city for a $376 million funding shortfall for 3-K by July 2025. That sum has raised concerns among budget watchdogs, including the city and state comptrollers.

Cutting back on an expansion of 3-K could help the city avoid a fiscal cliff for that program. However, repurposing those stimulus dollars for other initiatives could still require the city to either find more money for those additional services or make cuts.

Several local lawmakers and advocates expressed anger over the city’s decision to halt 3-K expansion and said that there was still demand for seats in various pockets of the city.

Asked multiple times during Wednesday’s hearing when the city would make 3-K universal, department officials did not provide a direct answer, instead pointing out that thousands of seats have not been filled.

“The issue is making sure we have those seats as close as possible to families who need them,” said James Morgano, manager of expansion at the city’s Division of Early Childhood Education. He said the city is conducting an assessment of where those seats should be.

Brooklyn Council member Lincoln Restler questioned why he hears from so many families in Greenpoint who have been unable to find a 3-K seat. Restler blamed lack of demand on insufficient outreach to families from the education department.

“If this administration is not prepared to put the funding in, then I strongly encourage my colleagues in the council to step up and make this the priority that it needs to be,” Restler said during the hearing. “Working families and our youth depend on high-quality early childhood education, and if you all aren’t prepared to make it happen, then we need to take it into our own hands.”

Gregory Brender, public policy director for the Day Care Council, said they see “incredible demand” from parents in neighborhoods where the city has expanded 3-K.

“It would be devastating to a lot of neighborhoods to know that they’re not gonna have the opportunity to see 3-K expanded, as has been in other parts of the city,” Brender said.

In a note to superintendents on Wednesday discussing plans for 3-K, department officials wrote that the Adams administration has “emphasized the importance of continuing to work with our city, state and federal partners to develop a proposal for early childhood education resources“ for when stimulus dollars run out.

The plan to pare back on expansion is another example of how early childhood education programming is changing under Adams, who campaigned on focusing more on “birth-to-5” programming. During Adams’ tenure so far, the city has come under fire for failing to pay preschool providers. Officials have also faced pushback for plans to reassign hundreds of early childhood workers who provided extra instructional and social-emotional support to classrooms serving the city’s youngest learners.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC vows to pay pre-K providers after lengthy delays

2022-11-03T23:07:18+00:00

Facing a mounting crisis of delayed payments that have left some preschool providers hurtling toward insolvency, top education department officials vowed on Thursday to clear the backlog and pay providers on time.

In the next two weeks, officials said they are spinning up “rapid response” teams to individually work with the community organizations that operate the bulk of the city’s free preschool programs.

The goal is to swiftly clear $140 million in back payments to providers from the fiscal year that ended in June. All but $20 million of that money is connected to some 4,000 invoices that have not been submitted, officials said. The teams will meet with providers on site or virtually, a move that schools Chancellor David Banks said would help create a clear line of help.

“Underlying these challenges is a lack of infrastructure here at the DOE that failed to even give the providers the support that they needed,” Banks said at a press conference. Officials vowed to process invoices within 30 days of receiving them going forward. An education department spokesperson did not provide a total figure for outstanding payments to date.

Officials also promised to pay community organizations 75% of last year’s contracts for early childhood programs regardless of how many students showed up, an effort to protect them against lower-than-expected enrollment.

Banks framed that as a new promise that would help keep early childhood programs afloat. But current and former education department staffers with knowledge of the early childhood payment process said it wasn’t clear how different that is from the current contract with providers, which includes similar payment guarantees.

“We already do this and it was being passed off as a new policy,” said an education department staff member who works in the early childhood division and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. An education department spokesperson said the 75% minimum was previously dependent on documented expenses and enrollment, which will no longer be conditions for receiving the money.

Thursday’s announcement comes at a precarious moment for early childhood education providers, a sprawling network of city-contracted nonprofits that were key to former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s expansion of free prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds. Although payment problems have bubbled up in the past, they appear to have intensified this year.

Banks blamed the previous administration for problems with the payment system and argued de Blasio was committed to creating thousands of pre-K seats, particularly for 3-year-olds, without enough regard for demand — leaving some providers competing with each other for too few children.

“That increase was not based on any logical analysis of what our communities actually need,” Banks said. Department officials said they are deploying consultants to study the payment system and figure out where seats are needed or should be scaled back.

Josh Wallack, who oversaw the expansion of pre-K in the de Blasio administration, previously said that a new wave of contract renewals and a requirement for monthly invoices to capture real-time enrollment, could have contributed to some payment glitches.

Still, “The new team has had almost 10 months to address that,” he wrote on Twitter last month. “The payment systems worked for years. We certainly had issues in a system with hundreds of contracts, but nothing remotely close to this.”

One former early childhood staffer pointed to a wave of departures and the sidelining of several key officials in the education department’s early childhood division early in the new administration as a source of the payment delays.

“The talent that they hemorrhaged in the first months was outrageous,” said the former staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You lost specific people … who were the ones who could get in there and fix problems in the system.”

Whatever the cause of the delays, providers are struggling. Sheltering Arms, which serves about 400 children, has already announced plans to close, the New York Post first reported. Others have resorted to taking out loans or have simply not paid their own employees on time, said Gregory Brender, the chief policy and innovation officer at the Day Care Council of New York, which represents city-contracted child care providers.

Still, Brender said he is optimistic that the rapid response teams will help clear the backlog of payments. “I think this is a significant improvement and it addresses an immediate crisis that is destabilizing the system,” he said. “It’s just been a challenge for a lot of providers to figure out who is the right person to deal with.”

An education department staffer who works in the early childhood division said it could be difficult to provide intensive support for providers, as the department has struggled with an exodus of staff, low morale, and leadership turnover — including the abrupt resignation last month of a senior official responsible for overseeing payments to providers.

“Doing one-on-one engagement might be what’s necessary here, but with our drastically scaled back headcount, that’s hard,” the staffer said. City officials said they have already assembled the response team, which will include 20-25 people.

The division of early childhood education is facing other headwinds, too. The city’s teachers union is holding a vote of no confidence against Kara Ahmed, the deputy chancellor who oversees early childhood education — on the heels of a staff reorganization in that department.

Education officials previously announced plans to reassign about 400 early childhood workers, including instructional coordinators and social workers. Banks argued the move was intended to place central staff members closer to schools, but most of them already worked inside preschool classrooms and some expressed confusion about the purpose of the reorganization.

“We’re going to programs saying, ‘I got excess notices, but I’m still here because I want to do my job but I don’t know if I’ll be back tomorrow,’” said one instructional coordinator who spoke on condition of anonymity, and who submitted a vote of no confidence against Ahmed. (When staff are excessed they lose their current positions but still get paid and may apply to other positions in the department.)

For his part, Banks fiercely defended Ahmed on Thursday and said he was deeply disappointed by the no confidence vote. “The frustration is, ‘We don’t want to be close to kids,’” Banks said of those opposed to the department’s reorganization.

“For those who have decided to do a vote of no confidence,” Banks added, “you should ask them very pointedly: What does that mean when you’re not losing your job?”

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Top NYC early childhood official leaves amid crisis in preschool payment delays

2022-10-25T21:52:55+00:00

A top education department official who oversaw payments to city-funded preschools is abruptly exiting the agency right as a crisis of delayed reimbursements comes to a head.

Simone Hawkins, who served as executive director for operations in the education department’s early childhood division, left the agency Oct. 21, just two days after testifying at a City Council hearing focused on late payments to providers.

In an email bulletin last Friday, Deputy Chancellor Kara Ahmed, who oversees early childhood education, said that Hawkins’ departure had been in the works for “several weeks” and praised her “extraordinary leadership.”

But one former staffer in the early childhood division, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said employees working under Hawkins were caught off guard by the departure – and wonder what it will mean for the agency’s efforts to address a glut of delayed payments that have already forced some providers to close their doors for good.

“Her people were shocked, nobody had any idea,” the former staffer said. “We haven’t gotten a sense of whether she was a sacrificial lamb or if she legitimately did leave because she thinks it’s all gonna come crashing down.”

Education department officials said Hawkins’ departure was for “personal reasons.” Attempts to contact Hawkins were unsuccessful.

Hawkins’ exit comes at a financial crisis point for many preschool operators in the city’s prekindergarten and 3-K programs, who say they’ve been waiting months for payments and are on the brink of insolvency.

“It’s been beyond insane and frustrating,” said Sasha Maslouski, the operator of Snapdragon Place preschool in Brooklyn, who signed up to join the city’s 3-K program this year, but said she still hasn’t received payment. “I don’t want to be in the position where I can’t pay my teachers and I’m losing staff.”

Some operators have already had to close their doors because of the delays.

Sheltering Arms, which ran six preschool locations in the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan, announced late last month that it was closing all of its locations because it was short roughly $2 million in education department reimbursements, the New York Post reported.

The Day Care Council of New York, an organization that represents city-contracted child care providers, reported 42% of the nearly 160 providers they surveyed had to miss payroll or delay payments to vendors because of late reimbursements from the city’s education department.

As of the end of September, child care operators were owed a total of $469 million by the education department for work performed during fiscal year 2022, an audit from the group SeaChange Capital Partners estimated.

Education department officials have cast the blame on faulty payment systems they inherited from the past administration.

“There just were not systems that were in place … there was not infrastructure in place,” Ahmed said at Wednesday’s City Council hearing.

City-contracted child care have to submit invoices once a month to get paid, and snags in one month’s invoice can muck up subsequent payments, said Gregory Brender, the chief policy and innovation officer at the Day Care Council.

Ahmed said her team is working to make the monthly invoice process less “cumbersome” and launching a “massive outreach” to push providers with outstanding invoices to file them.

Josh Wallack, the former head of early childhood under Mayor Bill de Blasio, who oversaw the launch of universal pre-K and 3-K, said that the shift to monthly invoices was meant to better capture real-time enrollment, which was previously recorded less frequently, to ensure preschools can get additional funding for kids who sign up midway through the year.

He conceded that payment delays are not a new issue, and that a recent renewal of contracts may have created some new issues. But he said those problems should not be an “insurmountable technical obstacle,” and noted that the new administration has had ten months to work out kinks.

“I think what’s happened here is orders of magnitude more significant and different” than past payment delays, he added.

Education department spokesperson Suzan Sumer added that the agency is “working closely with individual providers on a case-by-case basis and scheduling regular meetings as needed to address and process payments.”

But Brender said that while the “DOE has worked on individual cases … the challenges are systemic and we need to address it systemically. You can’t troubleshoot 1,500 contracts.”

Financially strapped providers, meanwhile, aren’t sure how much longer they can wait.

Many child care providers are planning to participate in a “stroller brigade” across the Brooklyn Bridge to city hall Wednesday to stage a “day without child care” and call attention to the delays.

Sonja Neill-Turner, the director of Brooklyn Sandbox in Park Slope, joined the pre-K and 3-K initiatives this year and was expecting payments as early as August, but said the education department didn’t register her contract until mid-October. Neill-Turner recently got an advance for her 4-year-olds but no payment yet for the 3-year-olds.

“It’s a heart attack, waiting for all of this to come through,” she said. “To lose, from what I know, two schools already to nonpayment of a contract, it’s really tragic.”

Reema Amin contributed to this story.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

3-K is getting the bulk of NYC’s school stimulus funding. But Adams might curb its expansion.

2022-09-22T13:32:13+00:00

When New York City schools received more than $7 billion in federal stimulus money last year, city officials planned to spend more than a quarter of it on one of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature initiatives: expanding preschool for 3-year-olds.

His administration, however, never outlined how the city would pay for the program once those federal dollars ran out by the 2025-26 school year, only saying that he felt confident the economy would bounce back by then.

Now, as Mayor Eric Adams stares down a potential $10 billion budget shortfall when federal dollars dry up in three years, observers are concerned that the city may not have enough money to pay for the growing program.

City officials declined to say whether they wanted to make preschool universal for 3-year-olds as de Blasio had planned, instead saying that the education department was “committed to optimizing access to care, as based on family need and preference, for ages birth to five.”

And the mayor and his schools chief, David Banks, seem to have their own agenda that Adams campaigned on: making care for children under 3 more affordable for low-income families, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

That could leave many families who are banking on child care and early learning for their 3-year-olds without subsidized options, according to budget watchdogs and organizations that represent preschool providers.

“The concern is really, if you’re offering a service that’s gonna be expected to be recurring, you need to tie down funding for it,” said Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan budget watchdog nonprofit.

Officials did not say how they plan to pay for the popular program once federal relief dollars run out nor have they shared plans to scale back stimulus spending.

“Federal stimulus dollars will eventually sunset, and we look forward to working with our partners from all levels of government towards a sustainable path forward for investing in high-quality Early Childhood Education programs,” education department spokesperson Suzan Sumer said in a statement.

Need for affordable child care

De Blasio began opening free preschool programs for 3-year-olds in 2017, after successfully launching universal preschool for 4-year-olds. Using federal stimulus dollars, the city opened 3-K seats in every community school district last year.

Prekindergarten for 3-year-olds was the only grade where enrollment actually grew last year, more than doubling from the year before, as the city opened more seats.

Last year, the city offered more than 46,000 3-K seats, a figure that includes spots that are funded by federal dollars, and filled about 38,000 of them. The city was expected to open about 8,000 more this school year, according to the education department.

Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the education department, tweeted that there are neighborhoods where many seats go unfilled, while in others, there are not enough to meet demand. For example, this year, Southwest Brooklyn had 1,054 available 3K seats and 53 left unfilled. But in the Bronx’s High Bridge and Morrisania, just under half of the 2,400 open seats had been filled.

Rebecca Iwerks, who lives in East Harlem with her husband and three children, enrolled her 3-year-old daughter in a city-funded program near their home. Before this year, she and her husband, who both work, were paying for daycare that cost nearly as much as their rent.

Iwerks’ daughter has “been really happy,” waking up each morning asking if she’s going to school. She seems to have been talking more there, Iwerks said.

“Having a more affordable child care option for her is a huge game-changer for us,” Iwerks said.

Several studies have found that preschool is beneficial for children. A 2019 study out of South Carolina found that children who attended public preschool programs had higher test scores in grades 3-5, improving the academic environment for their peers, too. The students who attended the program were also less likely to be disciplined. Another study found that the siblings and children of students who attended preschool did better academically, had better employment outcomes, and were less likely to be involved with crime.

However, a national 2018 study challenged that narrative: It found that public preschool didn’t lead to higher test scores in fourth grade, but there were gains for children in districts with majority Black students.

3-K gets lion’s share of COVID relief money

When federal COVID dollars rolled in, city officials planned to use $2 billion of it on expanding 3-K through the 2024-25 school year. It was the single largest use of the district’s stimulus dollars over time, according to an analysis last year from the Independent Budget Office, or the IBO. De Blasio had planned to make the program universal by next school year.

The problem, budget watchdogs have warned, starts in July 2025, when federal aid will run out. By then, the city will face a $376 million shortfall for 3-K and has not pointed to a funding source to cover the whole program, according to a budget tracker by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. That’s part of the roughly $840 million budget shortfall that the education department will face in 2025 because of programs it has funded using federal stimulus funds.

While stimulus spending on pre-K is increasing each year, the city is spending less on academic recovery for K-12 schools, including for extra services for students with disabilities, as the federal money dries up. The city is also spending less of these funds overall on school budgets due to projected declining enrollment.

Of the roughly 5,000 districts tracked by Future Ed, an education thinktank out of Georgetown University, 225 districts and charters are spending stimulus dollars on preschool or early education — though none at the level of New York City, according to Phyllis Jordan, associate director of Future Ed.

School districts are allowed to use the federal relief on expanding preschool programs, said a spokesperson for the state education department, which signed off on the city’s planned use of COVID dollars. Signaling support for the city’s plan, the spokesperson said that expanding pre-K programs “addresses lost early childhood learning, socialization, and other foundational skills required for long-term success.”

The huge investment of federal dollars drew mixed feelings from Nora Moran, director of policy at United Neighborhood Houses, which represents preschool providers. The city has addressed something that “is a huge issue for working parents” and good for young children, Moran said, but her organization was concerned about using temporary dollars to prop it up.

They raised the issue with the de Blasio administration, only to be told that the economy would rebound, she said. If it doesn’t, community-based providers might have to cut back programs.

“I think it would be probably a catastrophe for a lot of providers and families if you’re seeing a loss of programs,” said Gregory Brender, policy director for the Day Care Council, which also represents preschool programs. “Families end up scrambling, you have workers losing their jobs.”

Expanding smartly

Even as policy analysts worry about the program’s future, they also want the city to focus on a program that actually works for families. Both Moran and Brender noted that most preschool classrooms run from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., which mirrors the school day but doesn’t cover families who work later. It doesn’t offer the sort of after-school programs that might be available for students in older grades. Moran noted that there are some federally funded preschool seats that go until 6 p.m., but those are in the minority and reserved for low-income families.

Iwerks, the East Harlem mother, still pays for aftercare for her daughter — albeit, at a fraction of the cost – that goes until 5:30 p.m. She feels lucky that the after-school program is located in the same church as her daughter’s 3-K.

“It’s a good question about how all this investment is happening and who’s able to benefit from it if you can’t get child care for a pre-K kid after 3 o’clock,” Iwerks said.

Brender, of the Day Care Council, said that any cuts to the program may invite intense budget fights down the road, and the city must make tough choices about what to do next.

“But we know that families are still desperate for early childhood options, and we do think it’s going to be popular enough where hopefully the city and state would work to continue it,” Brender said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s pre-K workers, programs say they’re in limbo after reorganization

2022-09-15T20:53:17+00:00

After a summer of scrambling to replace two teachers and getting her preschool classrooms ready for the fall, Joanne Derwin opened her email last week to find some news:

The extra support that programs like hers received from the education department was “being reimagined.”

That’s probably why, Derwin realized, she hadn’t heard from the instructional coordinator or social worker whose help over the years had been “transformational.” An instructional coordinator helps teachers plan lessons and teach, while social workers help families navigate various issues, such as food insecurity.

“We were given no warning, no heads up,” said Derwin, executive director of One World Project, an early childhood program in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood of Brooklyn. “Like, nothing.”

Two weeks ago, on the Friday before the first week of school, the education department announced that it was moving 1,000 central and borough office workers to district offices to be overseen by the city’s superintendents. Officials said the move would bring “staff closer to the communities, schools, students, and teachers.” Nearly 400 early childhood education staffers — most of whom already spent their days working inside preschool classrooms — were included in the move.

The lack of communication about the new plan from the education department, as well as the abrupt announcement, has sowed confusion and concern among staff and preschool providers, according to interviews with instructional coordinators, social workers, and people who run preschool programs. The workers have since held a virtual town hall airing their concerns, and a rally on the steps of the education department headquarters.

Department officials have said no one is losing work as part of the reorganization, and that instead, people will be reassigned or encouraged to apply for new jobs. The department plans to have about 200 employees continue working under the early childhood division – but with program leaders, such as Derwin, instead of with teachers, officials said. Social workers would work on creating resources for families and hosting workshops, though it’s unclear how closely they’ll work with families.

Another 200 would go to district offices and from there would be sent to schools to provide extra instructional and social-emotional help where it’s needed, from early childhood programs up to fifth grade.

One preschool provider, whose community-based organization is contracted by the city to provide universal preschool seats, is worried she’ll be stretched too thin without the extra support.

“It was just something that somebody else was helping us out with, instead of me going to five classrooms and jumping from one place to another,” said Marina Yeruslanov, educational director at Cheer-N-Grow Learning Academy in the Bronx, which contracts with the city to serve 3- and 4-year-olds. “It’s going to be hard for educational directors to maintain all of this, especially if it’s a large facility.”

Confusion and chaos

As part of the reorganization plans, 360 instructional coordinators and social workers learned two days before the start of the school year that they would be “excessed” — meaning they’d lost their position, but would continue being paid as they reapplied for other jobs in the system. Officials in the early childhood education office encouraged those employees to apply for the new roles once they were posted. The jobs were described as similar to the work they do now, according to excessed employees.

But now, a week into the school year, the new jobs have not yet been posted.

Despite being excessed, employees said they also haven’t been able to access the portal where they’re supposed to apply for new jobs within the education department. Officials plan to post the jobs in the next few days, department spokesperson Art Nevins said.

The union had initially praised the reorganization announcement, but on Thursday raised fresh concerns.

“While the UFT supports the concept of moving services as close as possible to the students who need them, the Department of Education has announced this change without any real planning for how to implement it,” Alison Gendar, a spokesperson for the union, said in a statement. “We will be working with our members — all of whom are still employed — to ensure their rights are protected as the DOE’s administrative issues are worked out.”

Instructional coordinators and social workers typically help preschool programs as needed in the week before school starts, including running professional development sessions, four excessed staffers told Chalkbeat. But in late August, they were told that they would not host those sessions, scheduled for Sept. 6 and 7, according to an email shared with Chalkbeat.

Once they were excessed on Sept. 6, supervisors informed instructional coordinators and social workers that they couldn’t go to preschool programs to help, even if program directors called, according to staffers. Meanwhile, program directors were calling and asking for help with training new teachers or setting up their classrooms.

“The thing that is the most bothersome for all of us right now, as we sit here, is telling sites that we are so sorry, we can’t come support you right now,” an instructional coordinator, who requested anonymity in fear of retaliation, told Chalkbeat last week.

Then, the message changed this week, staffers said. Some employees said they’re being pulled aside by supervisors and being asked to respond to programs, but many staffers are refusing because they don’t believe they should be doing their old jobs if those roles no longer exist.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said that instructional coaches and social workers “are to be doing their normal duties.” Asked why staffers were told not to go out to programs, Weisberg said he couldn’t say, but “certainly, if anybody’s confused about that, they can escalate that up the chain. I will guarantee you what they’ll hear is they should continue the normal job duties.”

What comes next?

Meanwhile, some program leaders are apprehensive about what the change means for their teachers and students.

In the bulletin that went out to programs, Deputy Chancellor Kara Ahmed wrote that education department staffers would reach out to help support them as the reorganization took effect. But Yeruslanov, with the Bronx program, said she still hasn’t been contacted by anyone in the department.

On her own, Yersulanov compiled education-related information and resources from previous years to get teachers prepared for the start of school, she said. She recently heard from her old social worker, who said she’s going to come in next week to help out as long as she can.

Before the reorganization, instructional coordinators and social workers worked directly with teachers and families.

For example, a typical day for one social worker involved meeting families at drop off at one of the several schools she supported. She might help teachers navigate behavioral problems with students – sometimes assisting teachers in conversations with families if the issue was persistent. She would also guide families through a constellation of social service resources, or even things like kindergarten applications.

Instructional coordinators observed teachers and helped them plan lessons or activities, ensuring they were following the best practices for educating 3- and 4-year-olds. Some days, if there was a particular issue with a child, they might shift their attention to focus on helping that teacher with that student.

Derwin, who also has not been contacted by the education department, said her program has a tight budget, so the extra support was a game-changer.

“I really can’t emphasize enough how hard things are right now on the ground,” Derwin said. “You have teachers who are struggling, we’ve had years of a global pandemic and trying to support our children in masks, trying to figure out how we do language acquisition, how we support social-emotional needs, how we support families through impossibly complicated and difficult situations — and now this one thing that was actually really helpful is being taken away.”

Weisberg, the first deputy chancellor, said he’s confident the change will help programs and disputed the idea that it would result in less support. Part of the shift is meant to give program leaders the tools to coach their own teachers, instead of having a coach or social worker “intermittently” working with a few teachers in the school whose priorities or style may be “totally inconsistent” with what the leader wants.

He noted that many community-based programs, which contract with the education department to provide universal preschool seats, have other personnel who can fill in where programs are feeling a gap.

“We’re optimistic that this is going to feel like more support, because this is going to be working directly with leaders and is going to be consistent with them,” Weisberg said, who added that they made this change in part based on feedback from preschool programs.

Yeruslanov said they’ve been managing without their instructional coordinator and social worker, but she noted that it’s only the second week of the school year. She relies heavily on the social worker because her center serves many single mothers as well as foster parents, who are navigating many responsibilities. Last year, she recalls at least ten one-on-one meetings that her social worker had with families she serves.

It’s “challenging” for Derwin to imagine taking on coaching on top of her other responsibilities, even with staffers who oversee education and operations.

“I’m not sure who they consulted with, but I know from our example, our school specifically, we feel the loss of not having our instructional coordinator and not having a social worker, especially now during these really trying times,” Derwin said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

What is going on with NYC’s public school enrollment? We explain.

2022-08-09T22:19:26+00:00

New York City’s fight over school budget cuts has dominated the news. But at the heart of that debate is declining student enrollment.

Overall, K-12 enrollment has dropped by 9.5% since the pandemic began. Officials are expecting 30,000 fewer K-12 students to be on the rolls this fall compared to last year.

In this most recent school year, three-quarters of schools saw fewer students, a Chalkbeat analysis previously found. Enrollment of Black and white students dropped by 7.5% each, while it dropped by 5% for Asian American students and 4.5% for Latino students.

Enrollment numbers have been declining steadily since the 2015-16 school year – before the steep drops during the pandemic, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office, or IBO.

But there’s also little evidence that families are fleeing traditional public schools for charters or private schools.

Student enrollment has big implications for public schools. Projected declines have already impacted school funding this year. And fewer students could mean tough decisions about school closures and mergers, which education officials have not yet discussed.

Here’s an overview of what is happening with enrollment in New York City:

How does NYC’s enrollment drop compare to the rest of the country?

Enrollment in public schools nationwide dropped by 1.2 million students, or about 2%, between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2020, according to the Return to Learn Tracker, which collects state level data. (This figure does not include prekindergarten).

That tracker shows an additional 91,000 students did not show up to public schools in the fall of 2021. That would put the total drop in enrollment at 1.27 million children nationwide since the pandemic started.

Compared to the national numbers, New York City’s declines are striking and likely have led to the state’s dubious distinction: With 6% fewer students in schools statewide since the pandemic began, New York has seen the biggest declines of any state, according to the tracker.

Enrollment is not dipping evenly across all grades.

To understand why enrollment may be dropping, it’s first important to know which grades are seeing fewer students.

In the 2020-21 school year, most grades in the city’s traditional public schools saw enrollment declines, except for eighth, 10th, 11th and 12th, according to the IBO. The most steep drop was in pre-K for 4-year-olds and kindergarten.

Then, last school year, every grade saw fewer students except the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds, which more than doubled as seats have expanded. The biggest decreases were in third grade, followed by sixth grade. First and fifth grades were next. In turn, some of the smallest declines were among pre-K for 4-year-olds, kindergarten, and high school grades except for tenth grade.

However, when comparing to pre-COVID, the largest enrollment drops last year were in pre-K for 4-year-olds, followed by second grade, then kindergarten, third grade and first grade. Nationwide, kindergarten enrollment dipped following the start of the pandemic, but districts began reporting some rebounds this past school year.

Enrollment in New York City’s pre-K and elementary grades ranged between 82% and 88.5% of what they were before the pandemic, the IBO found. Starting in seventh grade through senior year of high school, enrollment ranged between 89% to 99% of what it was pre-pandemic, with the highest levels in the high school years.

So, while enrollment has dipped across every grade since 2019, changes are more pronounced among early grades, despite the availability of free preschool in New York City.

Are students leaving the school system, or are parents choosing not to enroll their children?

The answer is probably both.

Last year, a team of researchers estimated that, after the first year of the pandemic, about a quarter of the nation’s enrollment loss was linked to schools that didn’t offer in-person learning. Remote learning policies specifically dissuaded families of younger children, while it had no significant impact on older students.

A Chalkbeat and Associated Press analysis also found that enrollment among white students dipped more in states where most students were learning virtually.

That could help explain some of the drop in New York City during the 2020-21 school year, when schools were not yet open full time.

“Parents demonstrated they didn’t want kids at that age sitting in front of a computer,” said Thomas Dee, a professor in Stanford’s Graduate School of Education who was part of the research team. He also noted that families wanted a safe in-person option. That could have meant families home-schooled or delayed enrolling their children in preschool or kindergarten.

So what accounts for another drop in enrollment this past school year, when buildings were open full time?

Parents again may have been delaying the start of school for preschool and kindergarten-age children, Dee said. Or parents may have felt more comfortable moving younger children to a new school. Some families might have moved because of the city’s rising cost of living.

City officials have previously linked enrollment declines, in part, to declining birth rates.

A Chalkbeat analysis found that the greatest drop in enrollment happened in schools with the smallest share of low-income students. But, the second biggest drop happened in schools where between three-quarters to all students were poor. Enrollment among low-income students fell nearly 7% this year, more than double that of students who are not considered low-income.

With the rise of remote work, it’s also possible that families are moving to a new place — perhaps to be closer to family or live somewhere more affordable.

Contrary to some theories, there’s no evidence that families are fleeing public schools in droves or for charters and private schools. While the city’s enrollment dropped by about 100,000 students since 2019 — not counting 3K — overall enrollment in city charter schools has grown by just over 10,000 students, or by 7.8%, since the pandemic started. And over that same time period, the city’s private schools actually saw a 3.6% drop in pre-K-12 enrollment, according to state data.

Dee said it’s also possible that more families are home-schooling, and not all of them have registered with the state. Homeschooling nearly doubled, to 14,000 students in New York City, with the largest increases in districts with higher shares of students living in poverty.

Demographic changes, Dee noted, may also play a big role. New York State had some of the largest population declines last year, particularly among school-age children, he said.

“No social behavior has only one cause, and I think as more data become available, we are starting to realize the broader trends that influence the character of enrollment decline and flight from places like New York City,” he said.

What can districts do to build up enrollment?

Mayor Eric Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks have raised alarms about the city’s enrollment numbers and have promised to entice families to choose public schools.

Asked how the administration is planning to do that, a spokesperson pointed to various initiatives the city has rolled out, including rethinking literacy instruction and programs for students with dyslexia, expanding gifted and talented programs, piloting a new Asian American and Pacific Islander curriculum and including parents in the hiring of superintendents, which had a bumpy rollout.

“Chancellor Banks, his leadership team, and every district superintendent is focused on reversing dropping enrollment in our public schools,” Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the education department, wrote in a statement. “This work is informed by listening to families and school communities as well as putting in place policies that will ensure our public schools are the destination of choice for all of our students and families.”

There are a few things that parents typically focus on when it comes to choosing schools for their children, Dee said.

First, parents are attracted to school quality. For many families, that can mean ensuring that schools have high-quality curriculum, well-trained and effective teachers, and often, smaller class sizes, which Dee noted can be a pricey endeavor.

Recent budget cuts due to declining enrollment will likely result in higher class sizes. State lawmakers passed a bill to reduce class sizes in the city’s public schools, but the Adams administration has opposed it, and Gov. Kathy Hochul has yet to sign it.

Families also care that classrooms are “welcoming, inclusive, supportive spaces” for students, Dee said.

From his research, Dee found that parents of young children wanted safe in-person instruction, so he suggested improving COVID mitigations at schools. That includes ventilation and filtration. The city has been shedding safety measures, such as universal masking and social distancing, and city officials have not yet released their safety plans for this fall.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Here are education highlights from New York’s state budget

2022-04-18T19:37:04+00:00

New York state lawmakers passed a budget over the weekend that will boost funding for New York City schools by about 4% per pupil next school year.

The city’s public schools will receive just over $12 billion in state funding. State funds represent roughly 40% of the city’s education operating budget.

School funding is usually a bitter battle among lawmakers and advocates during budget season. But lawmakers reached a deal last year to fully fund Foundation Aid, the formula that sends more dollars to high-needs schools.

As a result, even the most fervent school funding advocates shifted their attention to expanding other programs and initiatives. One of the largest pushes went toward expanding subsidized child care across New York.

The final budget deal calls for $7 billion in early child care funding over the next four years, which could pave the way for universal child care and greatly expand access for New York City families. But some advocates and lawmakers were disappointed by that level of funding and are frustrated that it still excludes children who are undocumented.

Lawmakers also passed legislation to mandate electric school buses and instituted some funding changes for private special education programs, which serve public school children with the most challenging disabilities and have been struggling to retain teachers.

Here are highlights from the state budget.

NYC schools get $56 million less than proposed

New York City schools will see about $475 million more in state funding next school year. That figure is $56 million less than what Gov. Kathy Hochul had proposed; it wasn’t immediately clear why the final budget sent less money to the city.

Unlike previous years, it was clear from the governor’s proposal in January that school districts would receive an influx of cash following commitments last year to boost Foundation Aid, which gives districts the most flexibility, including the ability to hire more teachers or create new programs.

Some advocates, however, were disappointed not to see a funding increase for career and technical education programs. The New York State Educational Conference Board, a coalition of large school organizations, including the state teachers union, had called for updating a three-decade-old formula that helps fund career and technical education. The state’s Board of Regents also asked for more funding.

“Completing high school should put every young person on a path toward success in adult life,” Charles Dedrick, executive director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, said in a statement. “Quality CTE programs have proven to be an effective option for students, including those planning to enter the workforce, to pursue further education, or both.”

Thousands more NYC families will be eligible for subsidized child care

The state’s $7 billion, four-year agreement for expanding subsidized child care would make it more affordable for families earning up to 300% of the federal poverty limit, or around $83,000 for a family of four. Previously the upper limit was around $55,500 for a family of four, or 200% of the poverty level.

While the final deal did not make care free, keeping in place co-payments that advocates had hoped would be eliminated, those payments are now capped at 10% of a family’s income.

About 74,000 more New York City children under the age of 5 will be eligible for significantly subsidized care, for a total of about 290,000 children across the five boroughs, according to an analysis of 2019 Census data conducted by United Neighborhood Houses, which represents child care providers.

Children who are undocumented will not be included, leaving an estimated 5,000 children across the state excluded from the program. Because state and federal dollars are “co-mingled” for subsidized child care, covering undocumented children would violate federal law, according to a spokesperson for Hochul’s office.

But advocates believe officials could separate out state funds and use them specifically for excluded children. It could work like the state’s excluded workers’ funds, which provided benefits to New Yorkers who lost work during the pandemic but were left out of federal relief programs, said Gregory Brender, director of public policy for the Day Care Council.

Many advocates called the investment “historic” for the industry and for families desperately in need of support. But some who had called for even more funding said the plan will fall short and cause families long waits for subsidized care — leading at least one leading lawmaker behind the universal childcare push, Sen. Jabari Brisport, to vote against the budget.

New York City in recent years has significantly expanded free child care for 3- and 4-year-olds through free preschool programs, but families with infants have struggled to find and afford care.

It remains to be seen how many families will take advantage of more affordable care and how the rollout will work. In 2019, more than 93,000 families qualified, yet only about 8,000 were enrolled in publicly supported programs, according to public data analyzed by the Citizens’ Committee for Children, or CCC, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The annual cost of care is about $18,000 to enroll in center-based programs or about $10,000 for programs that are run out of providers’ homes. Many women who left the workforce during the pandemic have not returned, with 35% of those reporting lack of childcare as the reason, according to census data analyzed by CCC.

Providers, meanwhile, have struggled since well before the pandemic. Many operate as private businesses, while those that participate in public programs say the rates they’re paid do not come close to covering costs. COVID only made things more difficult, with more expenses and plummeting enrollment. Many were forced to close.

Districts will start purchasing electric buses

The final budget requires all school districts to use zero-emission school buses that don’t use gasoline by 2035. Starting in 2027, districts can only purchase or lease green buses, or they must require the same of companies they contract with for transportation services.

This follows a law passed by New York City Council in November 2021 requiring that all school buses in use are zero-emission by 2035. Roughly 10,000 school buses service New York City, according to the New York State Association for Pupil Transportation, or NYAPT.

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had committed last April to changing 75 of 960 city-operated buses to electric by 2023, costing $30 million. The city contracts with other companies to run other school buses. An education department spokesperson said there have been no changes to de Blasio’s commitment.

Hochul had pitched the change in her budget proposal in January, earning pushback from NYAPT and other school advocates over the complicated logistics that could arise from the mandate. The groups worried about the costs that would come along with the mandate, such as building charging stations.

To meet the mandate, a district without any electric buses would have to convert close to 8% of its fleet on average annually in order to meet the new requirements by 2035.

NYAPT estimated the new mandate will cost at least $1 billion a year across the state, assuming about 4,000 new zero-emission buses are purchased annually. That organization had called for allowing districts to convert 5% of their fleets annually beginning in 2029, or pushing the start date of the mandate out to 2035, while letting districts choose a fleet of all-electric school buses or “a diversified fleet of school buses is more appropriate when considering the safety, environmental, and economic factors of their school district.”

A spokesperson for the association did not immediately share its response to the final budget.

The budget dedicates $500 million for zero-emission school buses in the state’s environmental bond act, a borrowing plan that must still be approved by voters this November. It also allows districts to apply for a two-year extension to meet the requirements of transitioning their fleets.

Dedrick, from the state’s superintendents group, said the $500 million allocation “will be a significant help to school districts.”

Private special education funding

Advocates and education policymakers had hoped for changes in how New York funds state-approved, privately run special education programs that serve thousands of school-age and preschool children with severe disabilities.

But those requests didn’t make it into the final budget.

Advocates welcomed a commitment from Hochul to boost funding for these programs by $240 million. But there was no final deal to freeze a complicated policy called “reconciliation,” which they argue could make the funding increase moot.

Under reconciliation, not only must programs return state funding they don’t use in a given school year, they also lose that funding in the following year. That means, for example, that if a teacher quits, and the school is unable to hire a replacement, then the school will not get the money for that position in the following year, said Chris Treiber, associate executive director for children’s services at InterAgency Council of Developmental Disabilities Agencies, Inc., which represents these programs.

“Our schools are so understaffed, they’re unable to recruit teachers, teacher assistants and clinicians,” Treiber said. “If they had to spend all this money in one fiscal year, they never would be able to.”

Last school year, 853 schools which serve school-age children had a teacher vacancy rate of 29%, while preschool programs had a vacancy rate of 33%, according to figures from Treiber’s organization.

The final budget allows these programs to retain a certain portion of unspent funding. Over the next three years, schools can hold on to up to 11% of surplus funding. That percentage would decrease to 8% in the 2025-2026 school year, to 5% the following year, and then 2% by 2027-2028 and annually after that. Treiber said his organization is still working to understand how exactly this would impact their programs.

Stagnant state funding has contributed to the closure of these programs and a shortage of seats for 3- and 4-year-olds with disabilities.

More than 22,000 New York City children are enrolled in these programs. Rate increases for the preschool special education programs stalled after the 2008 recession. Since 2015-16, the state has approved a 2% annual rate increase, which trails what public schools and programs for older children have received.

Hochul vetoed a bill in December that would have provided preschool special education programs with the same annual rate increase that school districts receive.

On Monday, State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said she’s concerned about these programs closing due to funding issues, leaving children with the most severe disabilities with fewer options. Her team also requested just over $1 million to begin reviewing the tuition rate-setting methodology, but that, too, was left out of the final budget.

“While we are still looking at this issue, we do believe the tuition rate setting methodology is one that has to be addressed,” Rosa said. “We are hopeful we can continue the dialogue because there has to be a full understanding of the long-term implication this has.”

More mental health and tuition help

A total of $100 million in state grant matching funds will be available over the next two years to match what school districts are spending to address the fallout from the pandemic, including for student mental health and academic recovery. Hochul pitched this in her budget proposal in hopes of helping school districts address a youth mental health crisis spreading across the nation.

That funding will match what school districts are spending, including on extended day and after school programs and hiring mental health professionals.

The state will also spend $150 million toward New York’s Tuition Assistance Program in order to help cover tuition for 75,000 more part-time college students.

Christina Veiga contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Correction: This story previously stated the state has expanded free child care. In fact, more families will now qualify for subsidized care, but families will still be required to contribute a co-payment capped at 10% of their income.

New York’s $7 billion deal could pave the way for universal child care

2022-04-18T19:35:51+00:00

Gov. Kathy Hochul is pledging a historic $7 billion in child care funding for New York families as part of this year’s state budget deal announced Thursday.

Lawmakers must still vote to approve the budget deal that Hochul said she’s reached with leaders of the state Assembly and Senate. If passed, the multi-billion-dollar investment would be spread over the next four years, paving the way for universal child care and helping to stabilize an industry shaken by COVID.

Hochul said the deal would double how much the state currently spends on subsidized child care and expand the number of eligible families.

It’s unclear how the state will roll out the ambitious expansion, which would dramatically increase which families qualify for reduced-cost care and steer more money toward providers.

“What we’re seeing in New York could propel us to the national forefront,” said Steven Morales, New York policy director for All Our Kin, a national nonprofit organization that supports child care providers who work out of their own homes.

Hochul did not share more specifics about the deal, and her office did not immediately respond to questions. Two sources familiar with budget negotiations said they are expecting subsidies for free care to include families earning up to 300% of the federal poverty limits by August, up from the current 200%. That means that a family of four earning around $83,000 would qualify for subsidized child care. Previously the limit was around $55,500 for a family of four. (The final deal did not make care free, keeping in place co-payments that advocates had hoped would be eliminated.)

Some advocates were disheartened by the deal. Alliance for Quality Education, which had pushed for a $5 billion investment next year alone, believes the plan falls short and will lead to a “slow roll out” that may force parents to remain on wait lists for years or “continue to be forced to pay high costs” for child care.

“The issue with all of this is that they are doing a lot more in terms of including more families with the 300% eligibility, but they’re not adding a lot more money, so it’s almost like this illusion that more families will get access to child care when they actually know the counties will run out of money quickly,” said Jasmine Gripper, executive director of Alliance for Quality Education.

In a significant loss for advocates, children who are undocumented will not be eligible for subsidized care, leaving out an estimated 5,000 children across the state who are excluded from more affordable programs because of immigration status, according to an estimate from Empire State Campaign for Child Care.

Children who are citizens but whose parents immigrated without papers could still qualify for care, but advocates worried that work requirements would be a barrier for those families, especially those who “work under the books and get paid in cash,” Gripper said. It is unclear what work requirements would look like for the program or if any changes are being considered.

For providers, sources said they expect the budget will include just over $340 million in stabilization grants to help cover the costs of operating through the pandemic. The sources also expect the state will change the way it calculates reimbursement rates and help centers stay financially viable over the longer term by paying providers more than they currently receive to care for young children.

Many of these investments have been on the wish lists of early childhood education advocates for years. Jessica Sager, All Our Kin CEO and co-founder, said the pandemic finally made the need for child care more obvious than ever as parents struggled to teach their children from home or had to leave the workforce altogether.

“We have been forced, as a society, to deal with the consequences of this broken system,” Sager said.

New York City has significantly expanded child care for 3- and 4-year-olds through free preschool programs in recent years, but families with infants have struggled to find and afford care.

In 2019, there were more than 200,000 infants living in New York City and more than 93,000 whose families qualified for subsidized care because of their income. Yet only about 8,000 were enrolled in publicly supported programs, according to public data analyzed by the Citizens’ Committee for Children, or CCC, a nonprofit advocacy group.

It costs almost $19,000 to enroll in center-based programs or more than $10,000 for programs that are run out of providers’ homes, putting care out of reach for many families. Many women who have left the workforce during the pandemic have not returned, with 35% of those reporting lack of child care as the reason, according to census data analyzed by CCC.

Providers, meanwhile, have struggled to make ends meet since well before the pandemic. Many operate as private businesses, while those that participate in public programs say the rates they’re paid do not come close to covering costs. COVID made things more difficult, with more expenses and plummeting enrollment. Many were forced to close their doors.

Jennifer March, executive director of CCC, said the proposals from the state Senate and Assembly, which called for investing at least $3 billion, had the potential for “real impact on the workforce, real impact on parents and their ability to work and access affordable care, and real impacts on children,” March said.

Gregory Brender, director of public policy for the Day Care Council, said his organization is still hoping to push lawmakers to make care eligible for more families even after the budget is finalized, including those with varying immigration statuses.

“Child care has been treated differently than public education, where it’s been based on income requirements and work requirements and other requirements,” Brender said. “We really need to move to a system where early childhood education is a right.”

Christina Veiga is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on school diversity and preschool. Contact Christina at cveiga@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Correction: This story previously stated the state budget deal would expand free childcare. In fact, the deal expands which families qualify for dramatically subsidized care, but co-payments will still be required.

Non-English speaking parents turn to WhatsApp, community groups when COVID translations fall short

2022-02-01T16:11:19+00:00

When New York City school officials introduced a new COVID policy during winter break, panic spread among many Bangladeshi parents in parts of central Brooklyn.

In a letter to families, officials said students could now stay in school if exposed to COVID, as long as they tested negative on at-home tests. The letter also said officials “strongly encourage” children to get a test before returning to school — which, in the Bangla version, read like a mandate to families, said Tazin Azad, a member of District 22’s Community Education Council who speaks Bangla and monitors multiple WhatsApp groups for Bangladeshi parents.

“Our WhatsApp was blowing up: ‘I can’t find my site for testing,’ [and] ‘How am I gonna send my kids to school?’” Azad said. At the time, ballooning COVID cases in the city had created long lines for tests and delays in returning results. Some parents kept their children home from school because they didn’t have test results before the first day, she said.

“We had to go down the chat and say, ‘No, you do not require a test to return to school.’”

Evolving COVID rules have been confusing enough for native English speakers. Parents who speak limited or no English have found it difficult to understand and get answers about the protocols, say educators and advocates who work with immigrant families. That communication gap is often filled by parent leaders and community groups when families can’t get assistance from their schools or are waiting for translated versions of guidance from the education department.

“It’s us parent advocates who are filling in these gaps and making [sure] folks [are] really understanding what’s totally necessary and keeping them from burning out,” Azad said.

Suzan Sumer, a spokesperson for the education department, said translated COVID guidelines can be accessed through “family letters, over-the-phone translation services, and online services.” They can also call (718) 935-2013 for translation help or email Hello@schools.nyc.gov, and parents can choose from a dropdown menu of languages to translate the education department’s website.

But advocates have long said that many families are not aware of those options, don’t know how to navigate the internet, or can’t get the help they need quickly.

Clearing up confusion

Many of the misunderstandings stem from English words that don’t cleanly translate into other languages.

Many Spanish-speaking families also thought that they had to get their children tested before returning to school, said Vanessa Luna, co-founder of ImmSchools, a nonprofit that holds family workshops and professional development for educators on supporting undocumented students. Families “are aiming to follow what the school is telling us, so a term like ‘strongly encourage’ — even if you translate that in Spanish, it sounds like it is a mandate,” she said.

Parents may also want to be extra cautious: If they’re not sure about whether something is a requirement, they may do it anyway to ensure their children can be in school and they can go to work, she said. Less than a month after the city announced its “test-to-stay” policy, officials announced they would shorten the quarantine period to five days if sick children meet certain criteria first. The announcement of that policy, which went into effect Monday, has caused a new wave of questions from parents, according to teachers and advocates.

Undocumented parents are also asking about how required paperwork, such as permission slips for in-school COVID testing, will be used because those families often fear that sharing personal information will negatively impact their immigration status, Luna said.

She’s heard of some schools calling parents to ensure they understand the guidance. But both she and Azad think schools should hold more meetings for parents to ask questions that may not be clear from reviewing the letters that go home to families.

“My argument and my push would be, can we create spaces where families can engage in dialogue and conversations?” Luna said.

Earlier this month at Brooklyn’s P.S. 194, where about 11% of the students are English language learners, some children who needed to take at-home tests told teachers that their parents couldn’t figure out the instructions, said teacher Kathryn Malara.

One family sent two of their children to the school with their positive at-home tests in their backpacks, which teachers discovered later that day. Malara believes that the parents, who do not speak English at home, were simply unsure about what the results meant and what to do next.

When a child is exposed to COVID, the school has emailed guidance to families with attachments in Spanish, Urdu, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Haitian Creole and Bangla, made available by the education department. But some families don’t have computers at home and use their phones, so the attachments might not show up well on the screen, Malara said.

Sometimes parents have come to the school for help with COVID guidance. Malara said the school will use Google translate to communicate with families or ask a parent for help with Urdu and Arabic, because they don’t have staffers who “speak every language that is spoken at home.”

Parent leaders and community groups step in

When schools were first charged with distributing at-home test kits to children, Azad heard from school leaders who were concerned about the lack of translated instructions for certain brands. So, in the first week of January, Azad created Bangla and Urdu versions of instructions for the FlowFlex brand of COVID tests, which District 22 leaders later distributed to schools, she said. (The education department declined to confirm that.)

One of the city’s Internationals Network high schools, which serve new immigrants, made their own video tutorials in Spanish, French, and Arabic when they discovered their iHealth at-home test kits did not come with written, translated instructions, according to a teacher there who asked to remain anonymous because she feared retribution.

The videos, reviewed by Chalkbeat, are a compilation of photos, videos, text and cartoons to explain how to properly swab your nose and test the sample. Staffers made and emailed out the videos soon after kits were distributed to schools, and some teachers also called parents to ensure they understood the instructions, the teacher said.

The education department posted links to various translated instructions for iHealth and FlowFlex on Jan. 12 — 10 days after winter break ended — though no translations are posted for brands BinaxNow and Carestart, and some of the brands don’t have all of the city’s ten most commonly spoken languages.

A department spokesperson said New York City schools are legally not permitted to translate documents made by third parties, and the translated instructions on their site are compiled from other sources. Interestingly, one set of translated instructions was created by Boston Public Schools.

COVID guidance distributed to families have links to the department’s COVID web page, but not a direct link to the translations they’ve made available.

“Do they consider the steps parents have to go through to even find it?” wondered the Internationals school teacher, adding that could be particularly difficult for families who are not used to navigating the internet.

Luna’s organization has been creating slide decks that go through testing requirements for schools.

They’re also hosting in-person meetings for families next month around COVID protocols so parents can ask follow-up questions instead of relying on written guidance.

Turning to WhatsApp

Parents are also turning to their group chats for support, as many families did when COVID first hit. In a WhatsApp group monitored by Luna’s organization, she’s seen parents help each other parse through COVID rules, figure out how to take the at-home COVID tests, and dispel vaccine misinformation, she said.

“It’s families really informing each other,” she said. “I think for us, the WhatsApp group has become a virtual hub of resources.”

Azad, the District 22 parent, said her WhatsApp groups explode any time new guidance drops. She and others are constantly clarifying new COVID rules. It’s especially hectic if new guidance becomes public on the evening news or on a Friday night but isn’t yet available in Bangla, Azad said.

The confusion about COVID rules and protocols has persisted through January. One parent recently told Azad that her child’s prekindergarten center was requiring a negative test before her child returned to school, following a COVID infection and 10 days of quarantine. Azad informed the parent that is not city policy, she said.

“When non-English speakers are faced with varying types of guidances, they can’t push back and demand the way English speakers do,” Azad said. “People who don’t speak English wait for us on the ground who are translators, who are supporters and advocates to give them legit information, translate it and give it back.”

NYC to open new school for students with dyslexia, Banks says

2022-01-26T22:51:21+00:00

New York City officials are planning to open a new school focused on serving students with dyslexia, Chancellor David Banks said Wednesday.

Banks made the announcement during a virtual, education-focused state budget hearing, after Bronx Assemblyman Michael Benedetto asked for Banks’ thoughts on screening young children for learning disabilities.

“I’ve met with many other advocates around the city. We’ve worked very closely around the creation of a school, specifically a public school that will be dedicated specifically for kids with dyslexia — be the first time that we’ve had it in New York City,” Banks said. “And so you’ll hear in the coming weeks more about that new school.”

Banks added that Mayor Eric Adams wants such a school “in every borough.”

An education department spokesperson declined to offer more details, including where the school would be located, what grades it would serve, and how students would be admitted. If the new school comes to fruition, it would be the first district-operated school and the second public school in New York City to focus specifically on students with dyslexia. The first, Bridge Preparatory Charter School, opened in 2019.

The chancellor’s comments suggest that addressing gaps in the city’s approach to reading instruction may be one of the administration’s early priorities. Advocates and experts have argued for years that the city has no systematic approach to reading instruction, leading to scattershot approaches at individual schools that often fail to properly serve students who struggle to master the relationships between sounds and letters, one of the hallmarks of dyslexia.

At the same time, an increasing number of students with disabilities, including those with dyslexia, have left the public school system entirely, winning hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tuition reimbursements from the city. That process tends to favor families with time and resources. (In 2019, 16% of the city’s students with disabilities were proficient in reading in grades 3 to 8, compared with 56% of general education students, according to state tests.)

Frustrated with the city’s approach, some parents have been working to launch a public school specifically designed to adopt best practices in teaching students with dyslexia. A group of parents applied to launch such a school in 2019 as part of a flashy effort to open 20 new schools, though that program appears to have stalled during the pandemic and none of those schools have been publicly announced.

Parents Jeannine Kiely, Ruth Genn, Emily Hellstrom, Akeela Azcuy (left to right) submitted an application to open a school dedicated to serving students with dyslexia.

Naomi Peña, the parent council president in Manhattan’s District 1 and part of the parent group working to launch a school geared toward students with dyslexia, said the parents met with Banks in October, before Adams officially won election. “We presented our model, we presented our idea, and he liked it and even had some more feedback,” she said. It was not immediately clear if the new school Banks mentioned on Wednesday is the same as the one outlined in the parent group’s proposal; a department spokesperson declined to comment.

“If they do tap us, we are ready,” said Emily Hellstrom, another parent involved in the project. The group has been in continuous talks with the education department and has been working to line up partners to help provide teacher training, even though the city has not formally greenlit their proposal. “It is so refreshing and exciting to hear the chancellor speak in these terms.”

On the campaign trail, Adams repeatedly mentioned struggling with a learning disability of his own and said he supported universal screening for dyslexia. Some state and city lawmakers have long pushed for more screening, including during Wednesday’s hearing.

Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, officials set plans to screen about 200,000 students in kindergarten to second grade to see if they were struggling readers. While the screens don’t test for dyslexia, literacy experts said they can identify gaps that are associated with dyslexia, Chalkbeat previously reported. That plan was part of the city’s $635 million plan for pandemic-related academic recovery, almost entirely funded by a portion of the $7 billion federal COVID relief dollars for New York City’s school system.

Banks previously indicated that opening new schools will be a component of his administration’s approach as a way to replicate models that are doing good work. The chancellor recently visited The Windward School, a private program that specializes in reaching children with reading challenges, as part of a tour with Brooklyn Assemblyman Robert Carroll, who has advocated for universal dyslexia screening.

“I’m looking in as many places as I can for innovative and dynamic solutions to the pressing issues facing our children and school system,” he said in a statement at the time.

Hochul proposes $2.1 billion increase for NY schools, extension of NYC mayoral control

2022-01-18T23:09:30+00:00

Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a $2.1 billion increase for the state’s public schools and called for a four-year extension of New York City’s mayoral control of schools in her first budget address Tuesday.

Hochul’s proposal builds on her State of the State address earlier this month, which outlined plans to recruit and retain more teachers, boost mental health resources for schools, and get more New Yorkers to college.

Her plan to increase school aid was no surprise, as it solidifies commitments made last year to fully fund Foundation Aid — the formula that sends more dollars to higher-need districts and is the base for New York’s school budget.

Her proposal to extend mayoral control is yet another sign that she and Mayor Eric Adams are, so far, seeing eye to eye. While the system is expected to stay intact, lawmakers may attempt to tweak the city’s school governance structure.

Here are highlights of Hochul’s budget presentation:

School aid

Hochul wants to spend $31.3 billion on school districts next fiscal year — about $2.1 billion more than what they currently receive from the state. That’s largely driven by a $1.6 billion increase in Foundation Aid, which districts can use most flexibly, including to hire more teachers or create new student programs. That increase is what New York’s Board of Regents sought in December.

New York City would receive $12.3 billion, which is $531 million more than they currently get, representing a 4.5% increase in funding per pupil, according to figures released Tuesday night. Charter schools in New York City would receive a 4.7% increase in per-pupil funding under Hochul’s proposal.

Hochul’s funding proposal has been long expected. It stems from a commitment by state lawmakers and the Hochul administration to Foundation Aid and to increase spending by $4 billion by 2023, thanks to an increase in tax revenue and federal COVID stimulus dollars last year.

Her administration’s plan is a departure from the Cuomo era, which resisted fully funding Foundation Aid until last year. Cuomo had, however, increased school spending during his tenure, solidifying New York’s status as the highest spender per pupil in the country.

Mayoral control

New York City’s mayor controls the nation’s largest school district with a board that includes a majority of mayoral appointees instead of an elected school board. The state law that created the structure expires once again this June, nearly six months into Adams’ tenure; an extension requires approval from state lawmakers. It was last extended in 2019 under former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

In a statement, Chancellor David Banks applauded Hochul’s proposal and said mayoral control allows schools to “reach their highest potential.” The proposal, if passed, would cover Adams’ first term in office.

The system was created under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg to replace a fractured and often corrupt collection of school boards across the city. But parents and advocates have long criticized the system for not including their voices in major decisions that have shaped the district in the past two decades — a feeling that appeared to grow during the coronavirus pandemic and the disruption of in-person learning.

In a statement, city teachers union president Michael Mulgrew said the current system “does not work for students and parents.” He said the union has recommended modifications “that would help restore checks and balances to the system,” but did not elaborate on what those were.

Lawmakers, who will likely hold hearings on mayoral control this spring, are expected to renew mayoral control. However, Queens Democratic State Sen. John Liu, who oversees the state senate’s New York City education committee, previously told Chalkbeat that he’s considering proposing tweaks to the system, but declined to elaborate.

Special education programs

Hochul wants an 11% increase in tuition rates for state-approved, privately run special education programs that serve thousands of children with more intensive needs, according to the budget proposal. That mounts to an annual increase of more than $240 million. The state would continue to reimburse 60% of those costs, which are fronted by districts such as New York City.

Stagnant state funding has contributed to the closure of such programs and a shortage of seats for 3- and 4-year-olds with disabilities. More than 22,000 New York City children are enrolled in these programs. Rate increases for the preschool special education programs temporarily stalled after the 2008 recession. Since 2015-16, the state has approved a 2% annual rate increase, which trails what public schools and programs for older children have received.

Hochul vetoed a bill in December that would have provided preschool special education programs with the same annual rate increase that school districts receive.

Teacher pipeline, tuition assistance, and mental health

In her State of the State address, Hochul described multiple proposals to recruit more teachers to combat a shortage, including speeding up the certification process, creating a new teacher residency program, and temporarily increasing how much retired educators can make while still earning their pensions.

Her budget briefing, however, did not detail exactly how much would go toward those proposals. State Budget Director Robert Mujica said it would involve an unspecified portion of $350 million that’s dedicated toward boosting various workforces across the state.

One of Hochul’s goals is to get more New Yorkers through college. She’s proposed spending $150 million toward the state’s Tuition Assistance Program, or TAP, to offer financial assistance to part-time students. That investment is expected to reach 75,000 more students, according to the governor’s proposal.

Hochul also has proposed spending $100 million over two years for a new program that would match funds that high-need school districts spend on expanding programs for summer, afterschool, extended-day, and extended-year learning, as well as for hiring mental health professionals and creating school-based mental health services. The fund would match federal COVID relief dollars that districts spend on those specific types of programs and services.

The state will hold virtual hearings over the budget, including one focused on K-12 education on Jan. 26 at 9:30 a.m.

NY Regents call for $2.1 billion increase in state spending on schools next year

2021-12-13T23:10:38+00:00

New York’s education policymakers want legislators to boost spending for the state’s schools by $2.1 billion.

Unlike in past fiscal years, their wish will likely be granted.

The Board of Regents unveiled a $31 billion budget proposal Monday that reflected a promise made by state lawmakers earlier this year: to fully fund the Foundation Aid formula by the 2024 fiscal year, which starts in April 2023. That formula provides the funding base for school districts and sends more money to those with higher needs.

Because of that promise, coupled with a separate legal agreement to pay school districts what they’re owed, state lawmakers will likely meet the Board of Regents’ budget demands on behalf of districts for the fiscal year starting on April 1, 2022.

The board’s request this year “doubles down on our efforts to create a more equitable and inclusive education system to better support New York’s diverse student population,” Chancellor Lester Young Jr. said in a statement.

On top of boosting Foundation Aid, state officials want more funding for several initiatives focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, including more than $6 million toward improving education for children in the juvenile justice system, $200,000 for their work rethinking graduation requirements, and $250,000 to compile a set of culturally responsive resources for schools.

The budget climate is vastly different than it was at this time last year, when schools were threatened with potential cuts if federal COVID relief did not come through. In the end, federal stimulus dollars brought an influx of cash to the state, including $7 billion for New York City schools alone. Separately, with the help of tax increases, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo agreed to give schools what they were owed under Foundation Aid over the next two years. After long resisting to fully fund the formula, he reversed course around the time he faced allegations of sexual harassment that eventually led to his resignation.

Though Cuomo increased funding for schools during most of his time in office, earning New York the nation’s top spot for per pupil spending, he refused to heed calls from the Regents and other education advocates to fully fund Foundation Aid, arguing that the state wasn’t obligated to do so.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has already struck a different tone than Cuomo on school funding. Just two months after taking office, Hochul announced an agreement to settle a lawsuit that charged New York with underfunding Foundation Aid. The agreement requires New York to fully fund that formula by the 2024 fiscal year — essentially solidifying the promise made in this year’s budget – or risk reopening the lawsuit.

About 70% of the Regents’ proposed increase for schools is for Foundation Aid, which is money that districts can use flexibly. It helps pay for the individual school budgets in New York City.

The Regents are also calling for increases to specific programs or resources, such as money for instructional materials and building and transportation aid. This year, they’re calling for a $65 million boost in funding that districts receive for occupation and business education classes, such as career and technical education, or CTE. They want to double the $3,900 per student enrolled in CTE programs over the next three years, with a third of that increase coming in by next fiscal year. The current rate, officials said, has not been updated since the 1990s.

State officials believe that a lack of funding has made it challenging for districts, including New York City, to expand CTE options. Such a proposal may find a booster in Mayor-elect Eric Adams, who voiced support for career and technical education on the campaign trail.

Separate from aid for school districts, officials are also asking for more money to hire more staffers for the state education department itself. State officials say that the department has lost 700 full-time staffers over the past 13 years, and argue that the department’s responsibilities “have grown exponentially.”

Examples include a $1.85 million ask to pay for more staff who oversee and monitor the money that districts receive, and just over $905,000 for staff to help with grants, student mental health, and programs that serve high-need student populations.

Much of the state’s priorities matched those made recently by the New York State Educational Conference Board, a coalition of influential organizations, including the state teachers union.

Advocacy organization Alliance for Quality Education largely lauded the Regents’ proposal, but they did not think the Regents’ call for a $7 million increase for universal pre-K was enough, noting in a statement that “many districts outside of New York City still do not provide Universal Pre-K.”

State officials and budget hawks will now look for Hochul’s budget proposal, which comes from the governor’s office in January. From there, both the state Assembly and the senate will craft their own proposals and will negotiate a final budget plan with the Hochul administration. Lawmakers must pass a plan by April 1.

After nixing gifted and talented test, New York City awards seats to 4-year-olds based on educator nominations

2021-07-13T22:08:40+00:00

Roughly one out of every five 4-year-olds who applied for kindergarten seats in New York City’s gifted and talented program received a spot, according to preliminary data the education department released Tuesday.

The charged debate over these sought-after classes came to a head this year as officials were forced to abandon the test typically given to preschoolers for entry. Instead, this year’s incoming kindergartners were offered seats through a nomination and lottery process.

The G&T test, widely criticized for being given to such young children, is often seen as driving segregation in the program. Last school year, gifted classes enrolled just 14% of Black and Latino students, even though they make up nearly 60% of all kindergartners. At the same time, nearly 80% of seats went to Asian and white students, despite those children making up about 40% of last year’s kindergartners.

But it remained unknown whether the new — albeit temporary — admissions method resulted in more offers to Black and Latino children. The education department said they could not yet release racial and demographic information because many of these incoming students are not yet enrolled in city schools.

This year, parents and guardians nominated 11,600 rising kindergarteners. Of those, roughly 10,000 children were deemed eligible by pre-K teachers or the city’s Office of Early Childhood Education to enter a lottery, resulting in offers for nearly 2,400 seats.

Families who received offers on Tuesday have until July 30 to accept. After this year, the city plans to collect feedback from families on what admissions should look like in the future. But a new system could be up to Eric Adams, who is expected to win the general election for mayor after recently winning the Democratic primary. The next mayor will take office in January 2022.

This year’s interest fell short of the 15,000 rising kindergartners who typically take the gifted and talented test, which is offered one-on-one with a verbal section and a spatial reasoning portion.

The dip may have resulted from fewer families being aware of the change or not knowing how to navigate the application process. It could also point to the general drop in kindergarten admissions: Overall applications fell 12% for the upcoming school year compared to the year before.

Officials warned against comparing this year’s data to previous years, since the admissions method has changed. But they did highlight that this year’s application process resulted in a 42% increase in offers in the 19 districts with the largest shares of students from low-income families. Those are districts where the percentage of students who are economically disadvantaged exceed the city average of 73%.

Also, for the first time since at least 1990, when the city began keeping records related to gifted and talented, every program is filling its seats. In past years, some seats went unfilled because of “eligibility and demand,” officials said.

Manhattan’s District 2, spanning some of the city’s most affluent ZIP codes, typically has the most applicants and offers. The district, which includes well-heeled neighborhoods such as TriBeCa and the Upper East Side, continued that trend, with more than 1,200 applicants and more than 300 offers.

That came as little surprise to critics of the G&T test, who believe that well-resourced families are more likely to apply and be in a position to navigate the admissions process.

In response to those long-standing concerns, the city’s Panel for Educational Policy — which approves school system contracts or major policy decisions — voted down this year’s contract for the annual gifted and talented test. It was a stunning move from the panel typically seen as a rubber stamp for City Hall’s policies and priorities.

After forcing Mayor Bill de Blasio to rethink gifted and talented admissions this year, the city decided to let parents nominate their children for spots. For those enrolled at a city pre-K program, a teacher from the school was charged with deciding whether that child should be eligible for the program based on questions about students’ “curiosity, approaches to learning and play, relationships and interactions,” according to an education department official. For children not enrolled in pre-K, the city’s Office of Early Childhood Education completed a short remote interview with the family before deciding eligibility.

Advocates for reforming the gifted and talented process still critiqued this revamped process, citing potential biases of the evaluators deciding who should be eligible for the lottery, as well as concerns about how under-resourced families would navigate the new process.

Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the think tank The Century Foundation and a supporter of reforming the city’s gifted and talented system, said the offer data showed “marginally better outcomes in terms of equity” compared to the old system and also appeared to be more geographically representative.

But this year’s “tweaks” to the admission system still didn’t go far enough to create a more equitable system, she said.

She believes the city should stop separating children deemed as gifted from their peers — a practice shared by fewer than 10% of other American districts, she said. Instead, schools could provide extra services for gifted children in their classroom or by sending them to a higher grade for a specific subject they excel in. Schools could also adopt a schoolwide enrichment model, where every student has access to more challenging, project-based work.

“There are a variety of different ways you could do that that don’t have the same segregating effects [as] the current system,” Potter said.

NYC mayoral race: Where do the candidates stand on pre-K, child care, and after school?

2021-06-10T12:00:00+00:00

When New York City last had an empty seat in the mayor’s office, the winning candidate rose to popularity in part on a signature education policy proposal: extending public pre-kindergarten to all children.

During this raucous mayoral campaign, the landscape looks incredibly different from when Bill de Blasio first took office, following a life-changing pandemic and four years under President Donald Trump.

But the needs of the city’s youngest learners are still at the forefront of many voters’ minds, as the pandemic illustrated how the stress put on the nation’s patchwork child care system hobbled working families. Women, especially, have been set back since the coronavirus gripped the country: a jobs report from December found that women made up all of the losses that month. Women of color have suffered disproportionately from the economic fallout.

Chalkbeat spoke to six of the frontrunners for the Democratic primary, a race that could decide the election in heavily Democratic New York City. We interviewed Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, former NYC Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, former vice chair of Citigroup Ray McGuire, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, and civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley. We asked about their views on early childhood education as well as the crucial topic of youth services, which includes programs like paid summer internships for teens.

Below is a voter guide, where you will find the main takeaways from each interview, as well as links to full videos for those who want to explore deeper. Early voting begins June 12 and runs through June 20, and Primary Day is on June 22. We also rounded up the candidate’s platforms on a host of other education issues. You can read up on their positions here.

(Top row, left to right) Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, and former NYC Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia. (Bottom row, left to right) Former vice chair of Citigroup Ray McGuire, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, and civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley.

Democratic mayoral candidates Andrew Yang and Dianne Morales turned down invitations to participate.

Jump to the topics we covered: Child care access, child care affordability, early childhood education workforce, after-school and youth programs

Child care access

While New York City has made dramatic strides in expanding access to preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, challenges remain for many working families.

It can still be a struggle to find quality care for younger children. New York City has an estimated 15 slots for infant and toddler care per 100 children. Capacity went down in middle-income communities between 2011 to 2017, according to the advocacy group Raising NY.

And even those with children in the city’s free pre-K programs may face a child care crunch after the traditional school day ends around 2 p.m. and during summer break. City-subsidized preschool programs have pushed for more seats in centers that provide longer hours and care year-round.

Eric Adams

Adams called himself a “big believer” in opening up school buildings beyond the regular day, pointing to his efforts as Brooklyn Borough president to give free space on school campuses to organizations that provide after-school programming. But he did not have specific plans for providing extended hours for child care.

He proposes expanding access to child care by making it more affordable for centers to open. He wants to tap into the city’s own inventory of building space and give incentives to developers who dedicate free or low-cost space to child care providers. Adams also proposes to drop permit costs for programs and help centers bring on new staff more quickly by speeding up the background check process. The background check backlog has hampered many child care and after-school programs.

Shaun Donovan

Donovan said it’s “absolutely the right goal” to make extended-day and full-year care available for all children, but he suggested that such an expansion — and the timeline for accomplishing it — would depend on federal funding.

His campaign’s centerpiece vision — “15-minute neighborhoods” — would make everything from public transportation to healthy food to quality child care available within a 15-minute walk from every New Yorker’s home.

To help accomplish that, he would focus on the business side of running a child care facility, with centralized support for providers, many of whom are small business owners who come from the communities they serve.

“To be very specific, the bookkeeping, the applying for assistance, the payroll, and accounting — all of those things need to be things that we help many of these centers with so that they can focus on our kids,” he said.

Kathryn Garcia

Garcia said that extended child care hours should be available to “anyone who needs it to support them being able to go to work.” However, she stopped short of saying it should be universal.

She wants to expand free child care for low-income families and said building out the system should “accommodate what parents’ choices are going to be.” In New York City and across the country, child care is provided through a patchwork of home-based programs and center-based programs.

“So it is a plan that is multipronged and needs to move forward in a way that ensures that we are working with families to get them what they need,” she said.

Ray McGuire

McGuire wants to offer operating funds, grants, and capacity-building support to early childhood care providers so that they can open more centers. It’s unclear how much he’d like to spend on this initiative, which would focus on areas currently facing the greatest unmet need for child care slots.

McGuire also said he’d provide training support for educators to ensure that programs are high quality and pledged to work with institutions such as CUNY to make that happen.

He added that he’d like to see the school year and school day extended, and not just for pre-K students, saying those costs will pay off in the long run if children are cared for in safe, engaging programs rather than being free to get into “mischief.”

“We need to invest now or pay later. I’d rather invest today,” McGuire said.

Scott Stringer

Stringer has proposed one of the most detailed child care plans, which he unveiled well before announcing his current run for mayor. As the city’s comptroller, he partnered with state legislators to call for a new payroll tax that would be used, in part, to cover $500 million in capital investments to create more space to open child care centers. Stringer’s plan prioritizes 10 communities most lacking in child care options, including Tottenville on Staten Island, Bushwick in Brooklyn, and Sunnyside in Queens.

“We can’t reopen the same way we closed. Part of the reason why we need child care is so people — mostly women, mostly women of color — can get back into the workforce,” he said.

Stringer’s plan acknowledges the need for more convenient child care hours for working families, but it’s unclear if he would support a universal expansion of the school day and year.

Maya Wiley

Wiley proposes to invest $500 million into “community care” centers, as well as stipends to families to pay for child care. The centers would be intergenerational hubs that provide a range of services, from free child care to senior care and job training. She proposes paying for this model by diverting money from police department hiring and tapping unspent federal funds.

Wiley calls for centers in each borough that can serve up to 300,000 people in the first year — and up to 1 million at full capacity. She wants to survey residents to determine what services to offer, and invest money through a proposed $10 billion capital plan for the city, opening up centers in schools, existing community centers, and new sites.

She called for “more access to longer hours” at city child care programs.

Wiley also noted that many child care providers are privately run small businesses, and a large number of them have been devastated by enrollment drops and closures related to COVID. She said helping small businesses in the wake of the pandemic will be “a really important part of our economic recovery.”

Jump to top

An early childhood educator reads to her young students at Phyl’s Academy in Brooklyn.

Child care affordability

The expansion of universal pre-K for 4-year-olds saves New York City families an estimated $10,000 a year, according to the de Blasio administration. More and more students are also enrolling in free preschool for 3-year-olds, as the city expands its 3-K program to every school district next year. De Blasio is relying on one-time federal stimulus for the latest expansion, which still leaves the city about 20,000 seats short of reaching every 3-year-old.

Still, care for younger children remains one of the most expensive line items in families’ budgets, accounting for 31% of median household income for those with young children. In some Bronx neighborhoods, the cost can consume 65% of a household’s income.

Meanwhile, a Byzantine approval process and bureaucratic backlog in getting families approved for subsidized care leave many waiting for vouchers to help pay for child care — even while seats in centers go empty.

Eric Adams

Adams hopes that providing free or low-cost space for child care programs will result in cost savings that get passed on to families. But he also wants to expand the city’s earned income tax credit, though he does not say by how much. Adams also proposes to expand the voucher program, but his plan doesn’t say by how many slots or whether eligibility might change.

As for the city’s current voucher landscape, Adams said the city needs to do a better job communicating with families about availability. He suggested tapping into the city’s census outreach teams, which hosted teach-ins and conducted phone- and text-banks to help spread the word in ways that resonate across languages and cultures.

“We should be using these teams year-round to continually push out information,” he said.

Shaun Donovan

Donovan said he supports making 3-K universal. He did not provide details for how he would pay for such an expansion or how quickly it might happen.

On vouchers, Donovan said the city needs to partner more effectively with social service organizations to help families know which programs they’re eligible for. Those kinds of groups “can be the best partners to reach families and make sure that we are signing them up quickly, overcoming language and trust barriers that often stand in the way of families even applying in the first place, to make sure that we have a robust pipeline of applicants,” he said.

Kathryn Garcia

Garcia proposes to offer free care for children from birth to age 3 to any family making under $70,000. She did not outline how the city would pay for those services but said strong early childhood care is “critical” to ensure students are ready for school and that families can work. The state legislature recently proposed a similar plan.

To help make sure more families can get the care they need, she said the city needs to streamline the voucher process “so that we’re not spending our time filling out forms, but spending our time making sure a kid is in that early childhood placement.” For example, she questioned why parents are repeatedly asked to go through an onerous process to verify their income levels when applying for different types of assistance.

“This is just government bureaucracy run amok,” she said.

Ray McGuire

McGuire said he would “guarantee every parent access to quality early child care and education,” serving children starting from birth to 4 years old, but he provided few specifics. He said that families would pay for care on a sliding scale based on their income level. Those on the lowest end could enroll their children for free, but McGuire did not say what the income threshold would be or how much families could expect to spend.

He suggested his program could run like existing voucher programs but said that he would ”cut bureaucracy” to address backlogs in the current system, without providing specifics on how he’d tackle that issue.

Scott Stringer

Stringer acknowledged the city needs to “manage the voucher system well” but also pointed to onerous federal regulations around that system. A better solution, he said: “A massive expansion of child care is how we, I think, satisfy the demand.”

He has called on the city to extend free child care for the lowest-income families. Others would pay on a sliding scale, up to 12% of household income for those earning around $100,000 for a family of four. In all, he estimates the city could serve 34,000 more children. Like his plan to open more centers, this would be funded by a tax on businesses with payrolls of more than $2.5 million.

Maya Wiley

Wiley proposes to give $5,000 in grants to 100,000 of New York City’s neediest families. She calls this “care income.” The money would be distributed based on a yet-to-be-determined formula and could be used to pay for informal care that so many parents rely on — including from a neighbor or extended family members. Parents who decide to stay home to care for their children could also use the money to offset expenses. Undocumented immigrants would also be eligible “because every last resident in the city deserves quality care for their family members,” she said.

The idea is to compensate caregivers — usually women — for vital work that often goes unpaid, Wiley said.

When it comes to addressing issues in the voucher system, Wiley said that it is riddled with “so many hurdles” that “it becomes next to impossible” for families to navigate the process. She hopes her proposed care centers could remove some of those barriers by locating community organizations and government agencies within them.

“It’s a big resource to have a one-stop-shop center that starts to streamline how that’s done and makes it easier for families,” she said.

Jump to top

Early Childhood Education workforce

Some preschool teachers who work in the city’s privately run, publicly subsidized pre-K programs are paid dramatically less than their counterparts in public schools, which can cause retention and recruitment challenges for programs. New York City has taken steps to address these gaps by boosting some teachers’ salaries by as much as $20,000 after educators threatened a strike.

But large disparities remain. Teachers who work for community-run pre-K sites don’t get the same pay bumps for longevity as public school teachers, and many work longer hours and throughout the summer. And the latest pay deals did not include teachers in certain special education pre-K programs, making those who work with some of the most vulnerable students among the lowest-paid teachers.

Eric Adams

Adams said he supports the push for pay parity, and that includes equal benefits for teachers. He said he wants to compensate teachers for their years of experience and provide financial incentives for them to get credentialed but didn’t provide specifics about how to do that.

“It’s almost humiliating what we are paying these professionals,” he said.

He said the city should direct an influx of state and federal money to pay for the increases. If elected, Adams said there should be a clear path towards parity within one to two years of his term as mayor.

Shaun Donovan

Donovan said he’d like to see equal pay in his very first year in office for pre-K teachers in different settings. The former Obama White House official said he’d tap into his “deep relationships” in the federal government to try to secure more investments in the early childhood workforce.

He also wants to replicate existing programs that offer tuition assistance, removing a financial barrier that can stand in the way of many child care workers from earning their degrees, and with them, higher pay.

“To do it, I think it’s not just going to take the resources; it’s going to take the partnerships as well,” Donovan said.

Kathryn Garcia

Garcia said that more equitable pay for early childhood educators also helps ensure that high-quality teachers staff centers. “I’m a big believer in making sure that we are creating a more equitable environment for everyone so that everyone can thrive,” Garcia said.

Any pay boosts, she said, would have to be a part of union negotiations and what’s known as pattern bargaining — when pay provisions negotiated by one union also apply to others.

But that didn’t happen when the city agreed to raise substantially certain pre-K teacher salaries in 2019. At that time, officials went around the normal contract negotiation process after teachers threatened to strike.

Ray McGuire

McGuire said that raising salaries goes hand-in-hand with his plans to expand access to child care because better-paying jobs mean that providers can grow. His timeline is “immediate,” McGuire said, but he did not provide more specifics.

Scott Stringer

Stringer said one of his top priorities as mayor would be “to implement a massive pay parity plan to get the workers the resources they need.” He said he would propose funding increases for just that in his very first budget. He said teacher pay is crucial when it comes to program quality — and his expansion plans.

“It’s not an afterthought. You can’t go forward unless you do it,” he said of raising salaries.

Pointing to an influx of resources coming to the city, Stringer said, “We have buckets of money.”

“I’m less concerned about how to pay for it as I am about how to implement it,” he said, adding that he would work with community-based providers and others on the ground.

Maya Wiley

Wiley said she’d like to see pay parity achieved within the first two years of her administration — if not sooner. She said there is a “real opportunity now” with the Biden administration to boost pay in programs such as the federal HeadStart program. In his American Families Plan, Biden has proposed to hike pay to at least $15 an hour for early childhood educators across the country.

She also said that centers should have equal access to other resources that support quality care, noting that the city’s deeply segregated programs can also result in uneven quality.

Jump to top

Students from P.S. 11 l in Chelsea participate in outdoor learning on Manhattan’s High Line park.

After-school and youth programs

Nonprofits that provide after-school and summer youth programs typically have to fight each year for their funding to be included in the city’s budget. Those programs have also been the target of cuts: When the pandemic first struck, the city slashed some 40,000 slots from the summer youth employment program, which provides paid internships to teens and young adults. The mayor’s proposed budget would restore funding for this summer.

Advocates have called for more stable funding for these programs to be built into the city’s budgets, so they and families can plan ahead. Many would also like to see summer youth employment expanded to become universal for any teen who wants a job, and for after-school care to be open to any student who needs it.

Eric Adams

As borough president, Adams said he allocated $2 million towards a pilot program to provide community organizations space in school buildings. He wants to expand that program, which will allow nonprofits to provide after-school opportunities like sports, especially in underserved areas. “Because when you really think about the cost, rental of space, use of a space — that is really some of the largest parts of actually having an overhead,” he said.

Adams has also called for schools to be open year-round with services for students and families. In addition, he would like to see a universal tutoring program but didn’t say how he would make it happen.

Shaun Donovan

Donovan has called for growing the summer youth employment program to include 150,000 slots. (According to advocate estimates, that would be enough to serve every youth who wants one.) He wants every high schooler to have at least one paid internship, apprenticeship, or other summer job before they graduate. He says those opportunities must provide exposure to “meaningful” careers. To make sure those opportunities are available, Donovan proposes to partner with organizations that already offer training and mentoring to high school students.

Kathryn Garcia

Garcia said she would expand after-school and other youth programs by tapping the American Rescue Plan, which earmarks billions of federal dollars intended to help students catch up from more than a year of interrupted learning due to COVID. She said nonprofits will be crucial partners in doing so and said she’d like to replicate models that incorporate work experience into their academic programs.

She said paid internships should be “available to anyone who wants it.” But she added that they should be “thoughtful opportunities” for youth “so that kids really have an idea about what the work world will look like.”

Ray McGuire

McGuire, a former corporate executive, promised to “leverage my relationships, both big and small,” to build a robust summer jobs program for any high schooler who wants a position. He would also like to see after-school and summer school programs significantly expanded to help students fill in gaps after two academic years interrupted by COVID. To do that, he said he’d like to funnel money to nonprofits to expand opportunities in theater, coding, academic recovery, and other areas.

Scott Stringer

Stringer proposes opening youth employment programs to any student who wants to participate. He has also proposed spending $200 million to make sure every child in K-8 has access to an after-school program.

“To do anything less is just a disservice, and I think creates an unequal education,” he said, adding that he’d like to build multiple years of funding into the city’s budget so that families and providers can be sure they’ll be able to operate in the longer term.

Stringer said that such a significant expansion of after-school programs would likely strain providers and that the city will need to find creative ways to alleviate that strain.

“There’s a pressure point because they can’t expand because of finances and their own capacity. And we need to leverage different relationships we have in the city, through procurement, through other means, to get them to a place where they can serve more people,” he said.

Maya Wiley

As part of a platform to reduce shootings, Wiley has called for doubling the number of summer youth employment programs to serve young people at the highest risk of gun violence. That would mean dedicating 10,000 slots to those young people. She said that communities with the highest unemployment rates also tend to suffer disproportionately from gun violence.

“We must make it easier to get a job than a gun in our communities,” she said.

She also supports more after-school programs “for all our youth” and wants to see school buildings used for programming “all year long.” She said she’d like to see longer-term funding assured for providers, “to ensure that we’re building and growing them appropriately and in ways that are meeting the needs of our kids.”

Jump to top

This work was made possible with support from the Campaign for Children (C4C).

Applications to NYC’s free pre-K programs dropped 7% this year

2021-05-28T19:11:01+00:00

The number of students who were offered seats in New York City’s free preschool programs slipped, falling nearly 7% since last year, according to figures released Friday.

At the same time, the admissions process became slightly less competitive, with a record 91% of families admitted to one of their top three choices for the 2021-2022 school year.

Admission offers to the city’s prekindergarten programs, which are available to all 4-year-olds and have expanded significantly to include many 3-year-olds, have fallen in recent years. Just over 57,500 students received an offer this cycle, a nearly 12% drop since 2019.

Overall enrollment in the city’s traditional public schools has also trended downward, but plummeted 4% amid the pandemic, a loss of more students than the previous 14 years combined. In line with national trends, the largest declines came in the earliest grades — with an 8% drop in preschool programs for 3-year-olds and 13% at programs for 4-year-olds — as some families decided against enrolling in preschool in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Officials also pointed to declining birth rates as a contributing factor.

Still, families may still apply after the deadline and it’s unclear if falling coronavirus positivity rates, which have now dipped below 1%, could make parents more likely to send their children this year.

“Access to child care and early education services is a critical component of getting families back to work and putting New York City on the path to recovery from the pandemic,” Deputy Chancellor Josh Wallack said in a statement. Families who missed the deadline are still able to apply and join waitlists by visiting MySchools.nyc or by contacting programs directly. For more information, families can call 718-935-2009.

The decline in offers comes as the city is expanding access to programs for 3-year-olds, also known as 3-K, which is expanding this fall thanks to coronavirus relief funding. City officials hope to make the program universal by September 2023.

Free pre-K for all has arguably been Mayor Bill de Blasio’s most significant education accomplishment, though students with disabilities are not fully included. The city is often short hundreds or thousands of seats in specialized classrooms for students who need smaller settings or additional services, leaving some sitting at home.

“As the City continues expanding 3-K and Pre-K, the City must also ensure there are enough seats for children with disabilities who need preschool special education classes this coming year,” Randi Levine, the policy director at Advocates for Children, wrote in an email.

City officials also said that 42 preschool programs were part of an admissions program designed to enroll a more diverse group of students, up from 38 last year. The city’s schools are among the most segregated in the country and previous research has found that pre-K classrooms are less representative of the city than those in kindergarten.

Election watch: Getting NYC’s mayoral candidates on the record about their plans for preschool, youth services

2021-05-03T15:06:56+00:00

Where do New York City’s mayoral candidates stand on early childhood education and youth services? Chalkbeat wants to find out.

Between now and the June 22 primary, Chalkbeat — in partnership with the Campaign for Children — will dig into these topics and push the leading Democratic candidates to spell out their visions for educating the city’s youngest learners.

First up, our reporter Christina Veiga will moderate on May 5 the Campaign for Children 2021 Community Speak Out, which will focus on mayoral hopefuls’ views on universal access to childcare, youth services, and early childhood education.

Additionally, Veiga is conducting one-on-one interviews with the mayoral candidates on these issues. These interviews will be posted on our platforms in the coming weeks, and will inform a voter guide we plan to create specifically on the next mayor’s vision for early childhood education and youth services.

It’s a pivotal moment for these sectors. With more federal attention and resources being dedicated to early childhood education and care, the mayor will have power to prioritize using more funds to build and strengthen services in New York City.

Yet, there’s a lot of work to be done. While the city has made strides expanding pre-K, affordable infant and toddler child care options are still hard to come by. The annual cost of many child care programs for these youngsters consumes about 31% of median household income for all families with young children in NYC but can be as high as 65% in communities where median incomes are lower. And the system, in some ways, is broken: There is a backlog of families waiting to receive vouchers to help pay for care, even while seats in centers go empty.

The early childhood workforce also needs more attention. Child care work is predominantly staffed by women of color. They are among the lowest paid workers in the city. While there has been headway on salary parity between entry level early childhood educators in community-based organizations and in schools, seniority, longevity, and teachers in settings serving children with disabilities have yet to be addressed.

As Chalkbeat presses the city’s top mayoral contenders on their plans to address all these issues and more, please stay in touch by writing to us at ny.tips@chalkbeat.org. You can also sign up for Starting Line, our early childhood education newsletter, to stay on top of the latest developments in the sector across the country.

To help NYC students catch up, de Blasio’s budget would earmark $500M for testing and tutoring

2021-04-27T00:05:18+00:00

Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to spend half a billion dollars to help students catch up academically after a year of pandemic-related disruptions.

That infusion of cash, to be spent next school year, would cover tutoring, “universal academic assessments” to gauge children’s skills, and extra planning time for teachers, according to the executive budget de Blasio presented Monday.

De Blasio’s proposed budget — the last of his mayoralty — would boost spending for the education department by $2.3 billion, or by nearly 8%, compared to what the department is expected to spend this fiscal year, budget documents show.

Details remained scarce, with the mayor promising more information in the next couple of weeks. A spokesperson for the education department added that schools would choose which assessments to use and that high-needs students will receive “targeted services.”

“It’s going to take a lot more direct work with kids, it’s going to take bringing more personnel in to do that,” de Blasio told reporters of his plans to catch up students, “and that’s what that type of spending is going to allow us to do.”

The mayor’s $500 million plan for “intensive academic recovery” — funded entirely by federal pandemic relief for schools — is one of several education-related proposals that de Blasio will push for over the next two months, as his administration negotiates with the New York City Council on a final budget for next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

For schools, this budget could be one of the most consequential during de Blasio’s tenure. City officials are grappling with how to meet the vast academic and mental health needs of students across the city, following two school years upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Federal relief dollars would fund many of the proposals de Blasio presented on Monday.

The proposal comes at a pivotal moment for the nation’s largest school system, where many questions remain unanswered: Will a critical mass of students learning from home come back to classrooms in the fall? (Roughly 60% remain fully remote.) Will the city continue to lose students after this year’s 4% drop in enrollment? Will the promise of more funding bolster confidence in a return to classrooms?

The mayor initially predicted a pessimistic budget outlook. But the city is now flush with cash, following a state funding boost and federal coronavirus relief packages. State aid will add $1.3 billion to city school coffers, on top of $6.9 billion in additional federal dollars, which can be used over the next three school years. The city plans to use about $3 billion in the next fiscal year, according to the education department.

It’s unclear what sort of testing schools will choose, though some schools labeled as struggling are already required to give their students exams to assess their progress. The city’s broad framework for how it plans to help students in the upcoming year, released in December, hinted at using personalized learning that tailors lessons based on a student’s progress, an approach that achieved mixed results across the country.

City officials already announced some other ways they plan to spend the additional education dollars: to expand 3-K to every school district, to fund schools fully using the city’s funding formula, at $600 million annually, and to hold schools harmless for this year’s enrollment declines, costing the city $130 million this year.

As City Council and some advocates requested, the budget restores funding that the mayor had previously proposed cutting, including for community schools and summer programs.

But City Council and City Hall may have a lot to iron out in the coming months. The mayor’s budget plan falls short of many priorities the City Council laid out, including $190 million to add 400 schools to the community school program. The mayor has proposed sending a little more than $10 million to expand the program this year and $51 million next year, which provides wraparound services for students and families. The city previously announced it planned to add 27 more community schools next year. On Monday, officials said the goal was to expand the program from 266 to 406 schools, but the timeline wasn’t immediately clear.

The Council has also called for spending $250 million on 2,500 additional teachers to reduce class sizes and another $110 million to place at least one full-time social worker and guidance counselor in each school.

Here are some other notable highlights in de Blasio’s budget proposal:

Universal 3-K, with more seats earmarked for preschoolers with disabilities

Last month the mayor said the city would expand preschool for 3-year-olds to reach every school district. On Monday, he announced that the program would further increase its reach. De Blasio proposes spending $377 million next fiscal year to make 3-K available to all 3-year-olds by September 2023.

Four years ago, the mayor had promised to make 3-K universal by 2021, but the pandemic pushed that timeline. Now, the city plans to fund this expansion primarily with new federal relief money, according to budget documents. In response to questions about whether funding investments with federal dollars will mean a financial burden for the next mayor, de Blasio said, “you have to spend money to make money.” That means he expects these proposals will help the economy rebound enough to generate future revenue to sustain these programs. But the budget watchdog Citizens Budget Commission criticized the plan’s reliance on federal funds without specifying how the city will cover future expenses.

Free, universal pre-K is arguably de Blasio’s biggest education achievement, though the program has left out thousands of students with disabilities who have not enjoyed equal access to early education seats. Many of them often sit at home without access to required instruction.

The mayor’s proposed budget earmarks $22 million to “expand early childhood special education.” In a technical briefing after the mayor’s press conference, city officials said this would “largely” meet the demand for seats at both city-run and community-based preschool classes for 3- and 4-year-old children with disabilities; an education department spokesperson later said it would fulfill the “projected need.”

Makeup services for students with special needs

The proposed budget would also invest $236 million next fiscal year in compensatory services for students with special needs who have not received all of their mandated services, in addition to counseling, physical therapy, and speech therapy.

Students with disabilities have struggled during the pandemic, and about one in four weren’t receiving all of the services they were entitled to during the first half of the school year. The city also faces a federal class-action lawsuit from Advocates for Children, which argues that thousands of students are owed makeup services and that the special education complaint process is too overwhelmed to handle those claims.

It was not immediately clear how city officials plan to identify which students need extra help and how the services would be distributed.

Scrapping plans to hire more school safety agents

De Blasio had considered adding 475 new school safety agents to patrol city schools, but officials said Monday the city would not move forward with the new hires, estimated to cost nearly $20 million.

The about-face comes after a senior education department official revealed, and then criticized, the planned hires at a City Council hearing, a rare public display of dissatisfaction with the mayor’s priorities. Student activists who pushed for reducing police presence in schools opposed hiring new school safety agents, currently overseen by the police department.

Still, big questions remain about the future of school policing, as the mayor has vowed to shift oversight of the force to the education department but has offered few details about what that would accomplish or how it would work. The move is not scheduled to take effect until well after de Blasio leaves office, leaving the implementation up to his successor.

Using federal relief money, the mayor’s budget proposal also restores the following:

$22 million for overtime pay for teachers, typically used to cover after-school activities or other services
$31 million for training for schools staff
$54 million for the mayor’s “Equity and Excellence” initiatives, the umbrella under which programs such as universal pre-K and College Access for All were created. City officials did not immediately say which programs would benefit.
$6 million in cuts to existing community schools, which partner with outside organizations to provide wraparound services for their students
$5.7 million for youth summer programs, known as Summer’s Out New York City.

De Blasio’s administration and the City Council must reach a budget agreement and pass a final plan by July 1.

Correction: Due to incorrect information in a city-issued press release, a previous version of this story incorrectly said the mayor was proposing to spend an additional $10 million next fiscal year on expanding community schools. The city is proposing to increase spending by $10 million for the current fiscal year and $51 million in the following year.

Flush with federal cash, NYC promises preschool for 3-year-olds in every school district

2021-03-24T12:42:51+00:00

New York City will tap a massive infusion of federal pandemic recovery funds to make free preschool for 3-year-olds available in every school district, officials announced Wednesday.

With an expected $4.5 billion in stimulus money headed for the nation’s largest school district, Mayor Bill de Blasio can now build on what has been the most popular and arguably most successful policy of his administration: universal pre-K. The city plans to add up to 16,500 seats for 3-year-olds in the 2021-22 school year, bringing enrollment up to 40,000 by this fall.

“This is to me unquestionably one of the highest priorities we can have in this city and certainly one of the highest priorities within education. If you get early childhood education right, everything else works,” de Blasio said at a press conference.

The latest expansion builds on what de Blasio started in 2014 with universal pre-K for 4-year-olds, quickly ramping up to enroll more than 60,000 just two years into his tenure. In 2017, he took a more gradual approach in launching 3-K for even younger students, promising to make space for all of the city’s 3-year-olds by 2021.

That goal was derailed by COVID-19, which wiped out more than $700 million from the city’s education budget and put the build-out of 3-K on hold. The price tag to reach universal preschool for 3-year-olds was originally projected to run nearly $400 million in city funds, with an additional $700 million from state and federal coffers.

Officials did not immediately say how much this fall’s expansion would cost, and what portion of the funds would come from city, state, or federal sources.

“This is a game changer for families,” Chancellor Meisha Porter said at a press conference. Families who enroll in the program are expected to save $10,000 in child care costs, she noted.

Preschool for 3-year-olds is already available in 12 of the city’s 32 school districts, and the city planned to add four districts this year using $1 billion in coronavirus reimbursement funds previously promised by the Biden administration. Unlike the city’s massive program for 4-year-olds, the expanded 3-K program will still not be “universal.” To serve every 3-year-old, the city estimates it would need around 60,000 slots.

“This is an important and good use of federal stimulus funds, and a recognition that childcare is an essential part of recovery,” said Gregory Brender, director of public policy at the Day Care Council of New York, which represents providers.

Leaning on one-time federal funds for such a massive expansion raises questions about how — and whether — the city will be able to sustain the program. But de Blasio seems to be counting on its popularity with parents to bet that future elected officials will find a way to continue paying for it. Bi-partisan support for early childhood education has only grown in recent years. President Joe Biden is reportedly eyeing another spending package that calls for universal pre-K.

The mayor is deciding to expand 3-K over many other pressing and competing needs.

Advocates for children with disabilities have been quick to point out that those students have consistently been left behind the mayor’s promises to make preschool universal. The city has regularly fallen short by hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of seats in special education pre-K classrooms, forcing students to go without instruction and legally required services such as speech or physical therapy. Part of the shortfall is due to stagnant funding from the state, resulting in the closure of many programs serving children with disabilities.

“We have heard from families desperate for help because their children with autism or other complex disabilities were going without appropriate services because there were no available seats in the type of class they needed,” the nonprofit Advocates for Children noted in a statement. “Yet, the mayor’s announcement today will do nothing to help these children.”

Providers of these special education pre-K programs also say it’s difficult to recruit and keep teachers because they make far less than their counterparts in programs serving general education students. Those teachers have been left out of deals struck to raise pay for other educations in privately run but publicly funded programs — which make up the bulk of the city’s free seats.

“We want to reach every child in every way but that will take some time to put the pieces together,” de Blasio said about the gap for preschoolers with disabilities. “There’s lots of choices to make, always, within a budget.”

For some in the early childhood sector, the decision to double-down on universal pre-K raises questions about whether the expansion will come at the expense of seats for infants and toddlers in the city. Programs for the youngest children are the most expensive to run, and without enrollment of older students to offset costs, seats for babies can become unaffordable for programs to maintain. Others believe the city would be better off funding extended care in existing preschool programs, beyond the school day and year, for needy families.

Lack of childcare has become a major burden for families while the health crisis drags on, forcing many women out of the workforce. Having toddlers doing school on screens — whether families opted for fully remote or hybrid schedules —and the uncertainty for in-person learning because of frequent coronavirus-related building closures have also hurt working families. Pre-K enrollment was down more than other grades this year, with 13% fewer students, according to city data.

In a note to providers announcing the 3-K expansion, city officials acknowledged the need to get more children in classrooms to help working families.

“Access to the essential child care and early education services you provide is a critical component of getting families back to work and putting New York City on the path to recovery from the pandemic,” the notice said.

NYC elementary school students can head back to buildings Dec. 7, as de Blasio shifts reopening strategy

2020-11-29T19:39:36+00:00

New York City’s youngest students will return to school buildings on Dec. 7, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday in an announcement that also signaled a shift in his approach to school reopening.

After facing intense pushback over his decision to close school buildings more than a week ago, de Blasio’s new reopening plan will welcome back students in 3-K, pre-K, and K-5 on Dec. 7. (Only grades K-5 will return in buildings that serve up to eighth or 12th grade.) Buildings will reopen on Dec. 10 for all grades of District 75, which serves students with the most significant disabilities. The mayor offered no timeline to bring back middle and high school students. He said the city is “just not able to do that yet,” citing the need to scale up COVID-19 testing and keep the focus on the city’s youngest and also most vulnerable students for now.

In a major shift for the nation’s largest public school system, de Blasio said the city will no longer use a percentage positivity rate to shutter buildings across the five boroughs, as it did Nov. 19 when the city hit a 3% coronavirus positivity rate over seven days. Instead, 20% of students and staff will be tested in schools on a weekly basis, as opposed to the monthly testing program at schools citywide. The city will continue targeted school closures.

“It’s a new approach because we have so much proof of how safe schools can be and this has come from real life experience in the biggest school system in America right there in New York City,” de Blasio said. “We feel confident that we can keep schools safe.”

De Blasio also said he wants to bring students back five days a week at schools where there is enough space and staffing. Only students who were already participating in blended learning or chose that option when the city offered families one final chance to get some in-person learning would be eligible for this, the mayor said. Such a plan would still follow social distancing and require a reshuffling of students and teachers, but would allow those schools to have just two types of students: fully remote and fully in-person as opposed to hybrid students who are learning both remotely and in-person during the week.

It will be up to individual school leaders to decide if this is an option for them, and the city did not provide an estimate of how many schools might pursue this option.

“It’s still a herculean task for our principals and communities,” Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said.

In a statement, principals union president Mark Cannizzarro said the education department “must provide clear direction and adequate resources in schools where it is possible” to phase out blended learning, “and afford school leaders flexibility and discretion where it is not.”

Individual schools or classrooms will close under existing protocols: one positive case would cause that student or staffer’s class to quarantine, while two or more cases can cause the whole building to close. That means there will likely continue to be instability in terms of school building and classroom closures over the coming weeks and months. If school buildings hadn’t been closed citywide, 173 buildings — or roughly 11% of all schools — would still have been shuttered either for 24 hours or two weeks based on positive cases among members of their community, according to public data.

Since only students who have already signed up for in-person learning will be allowed to return to buildings, the mayor estimated that 190,000 children could return — and their families must sign consent forms for COVID-19 testing to do so. Students will not be allowed to return to buildings without consent forms.

Even if middle and high schools reopen, about two thirds of children will remain fully remote, according to city data, with higher rates of students of color choosing to learn remotely full-time.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the city teachers union, signaled support for the plan.

The union had put intense pressure on de Blasio and Carranza this summer over implementing stringent testing and safety protocols before reopening buildings. While it had backed the city’s 3% positivity rate trigger for closing schools, Mulgrew indicated a shift in approach, saying the union wanted the city to reopen schools in neighborhoods where the positivity rate had dropped and focus instead of closing buildings in hot spots instead of systemwide closures.

“We are supportive of a phased reopening of schools in other neighborhoods as long as stringent testing is in place,” Mulgrew said in a statement. “This strategy — properly implemented — will allow us to offer safe in-person instruction to the maximum number of students until we beat the pandemic.”

Some elected officials also signaled support for the plan, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who is running for mayor, said he was pleased that de Blasio listened to parents who pushed for buildings to reopen, but now the city must “make in-person education an option for the older students who are being left behind by the failed implementation of remote learning.”

Others believed there should be more support for the city’s most vulnerable students. In a tweet, Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander said the city should target in-person learning for “homeless students, kids with special needs.”

The move comes at a time when coronavirus cases are rising in the city, with the positivity rate over a seven-day average reaching 3.9%, according to the most recent city data. But many public health experts believe that schools are not contributing to higher rates of spreading the virus, and many other countries have prioritized keeping schools open while shuttering other businesses and institutions.

The number of school-based tests that have come back positive in schools has risen. As of last week, .28% of results were positive of the nearly 160,000 in-person students and staff who were tested. Overall, more than 3,000 students and staff have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to city data as of Nov. 24.

Schools that are in state-imposed orange zones will reopen in accordance with rules set by Cuomo. Orange zone areas have reached a 3% positivity rate based on state data of seven-day averages, which are calculated differently than the city’s average.

As of Saturday, parts of Staten Island remained in orange zones.

All students and staff must first test negative before reentering the building, which is not a requirement for other schools. These schools must also test 25% of students each week, with a different set of students tested each week.

Correction: This story incorrectly stated that schools in state-imposed orange zones must test 20% of its students each week. In fact, the testing requirement is 25%.

NYC preschools remain open, raising questions about safety and equity among staff

2020-11-19T23:01:14+00:00

Four-year-olds attending the city-funded pre-K program at Kuei Luck Early Childhood Center still went to school on Thursday. Four-year-olds enrolled at the pre-K program in the public school at P.S. 175, just a few blocks away in Rego Park, Queens, had to stay home.

As the city has now crossed Mayor Bill de Blasio’s school closure threshold, a 3% coronavirus positivity rate over a seven-day average, preschools find themselves in a tough spot. Those that operate in community-based centers operated by nonprofits or private businesses can remain open. Their counterparts in education department-run buildings must shut, raising complicated questions of safety and equity for staffers and families.

“If it’s not safe enough for teachers in [Department of Education] buildings, then it’s not safe enough for the teachers in my building,” said Alice Mulligan, who runs Our Savior’s Lutheran Preschool in Brooklyn, which is contracted by the city to provide free pre-K. “We want to stay open, but honestly my stomach absolutely turns at the thought of somebody on my staff getting sick.”

The city relies on programs run by nonprofits or small businesses to serve the majority of students enrolled in its universal, free pre-K initiative. The rest attend programs in public schools.

Providers are well aware that families depend on them for child care, and some centers also need to stay open to survive financially.

There are also equity issues at play. Teachers and staff who work in community-run preschools are more likely to be people of color, and they already are paid less than their public school counterparts. Some are calling for incentive pay for being asked to work while the rest of the school system’s employees stay home.

Overlapping authority between the city and state has created confusion over public school opening and closings. The same is true for these independently run preschools, which have been deemed essential businesses by the city and state, but are licensed by the city’s Department of Health and contracted through the city’s education department.

“We have rigorous health and safety practices in place to support these programs, and we are also closely monitoring the citywide test positivity average and will continue to update our guidance as the public health situation changes,” said education department spokesperson Sarah Casasnovas.

Programs can apply for a waiver to offer remote-only instruction. So far, only about 30 out of hundreds of providers have done so, the education department said.

Confusing and conflicting guidance

But the conflicting guidance given to community organizations and public schools makes it hard to make informed decisions about whether to stay open, said David Nocenti, executive director of Union Settlement, a nonprofit that serves more than 800 infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in East Harlem.

“Nonprofit community-based organizations like Union Settlement — as well as the families we serve — are struggling to prepare for the potential public school closure, largely because the city has not provided a defensible public health rationale for the decisions being made,” he wrote in an email.

It is a particularly confusing tangle of guidance given that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has set a less conservative threshold for keeping campuses open. The state permits schools to serve students until 9% of a community’s coronavirus tests come back positive over a seven-day average. The state has also allowed bars and restaurants to continue serving customers.

The mayor, on the other hand, set the city’s stricter threshold for shutting down schools this summer, when teachers, worried about the safety of their school buildings, threatened to strike. The influence of the United Federation of Teachers, the union that represents public school teachers, played a role in the city’s more stringent threshold, and that’s another long standing sticking point for the community-run pre-K centers.

Most community-run child care centers, often referred to as Community Based Organizations or CBOS, either do not have unionized staff, or their employees are represented by a different union, District Council 37. These workers are also paid less than their UFT counterparts in public school pre-K programs, though the city recently agreed to significant salary increases.

“I think it’s outrageous that they’re closing the schools and not closing the CBOs,” said Henry Garrido, executive director of DC 37. “It’s not as if COVID stops at the door of a CBO and doesn’t enter there.”

Gregory Brender, who works on youth policy issues at the nonprofit United Neighborhood Houses, said program leaders would like to see their staff compensated for continuing to work even as coronavirus cases rise.

“They’re already being paid less than the teachers in the department of education, while having to come into work during the school shutdown,” Brender said.

Financial and logistical strain

Other cities have prioritized early education during the pandemic. In Denver, only students in preschool through second grade have been attending school in person — though officials there decided this week to close down classrooms after Thanksgiving. In Michigan, the governor this week closed high schools and colleges, but elementary and middle schools can keep their doors open. Some elected officials have called on New York City to take a similar approach.

“Children not being in school, that causes a certain level of harm versus the statistics of the coronavirus itself,” said Kevin Kung, executive director of Kuei Luck Early Childhood center in Rego Park, Queens.

Yet, only about half of the center’s students are attending, Kung said. His center has private paying students that help subsidize publicly funded seats. Enrollment in his private program is down to just 14 though he has space for 60 children. That has created a financial incentive to stay open.

Kung hasn’t been able to pay his rent in full since this summer, after running out of the federal payroll protection loans. He is still waiting on state assistance, which was earmarked to help child care businesses reopen after the height of the health crisis forced New York City to shut down.

Meanwhile, his operating costs continue to spike. To bolster safety, Kung has upgraded the air filtration systems at his school and contracted with a company to provide on-site COVID testing.

He said he’ll keep an eye on the city’s infection rates and keep communicating with families and teachers to gauge whether they feel safe coming to school. For now, he plans to stay open as long as some students keep coming.

“We get messages, ‘Please try to stay open,’” he said. “We’ll have to take it day-by-day.”

It has already been difficult figuring out the logistics of having enough teachers for two versions of preschool — in person and remote. But many teachers have children in public schools and face child care challenges of their own, said Vaughn Toney, the executive director of Friends of Crown Heights, one of the largest child care providers in the city.

Still, Toney plans to keep the doors open at the 19 centers he oversees. While many students have chosen to learn online, others have parents who work in hospitals or as other essential workers and need in-person care.

Toney knows the challenges and risks of operating during a pandemic: Just this week, he had to close one center after two people there tested positive.

“Everyone has to do their part,” he said. “Our part is to serve the children of families, of those serving on the front line.”

The question is whether families will continue to feel safe bringing their children to community-based preschools if the rest of the public school system is closed. While the pandemic crested in New York City, Toney opened three emergency child care centers but attendance was low as families made other arrangements.

“No one showed up,” he said. “A lot of our parents, they chose to stay home.”

NYC preschools can reopen. Expect teachers in masks and fewer teddy bears.

2020-07-07T21:59:49+00:00

Privately run child care centers in New York City can reopen as early as Monday, about three months after the coronavirus forced 3,000 programs to shut their doors.

Program leaders had been lobbying to reopen their businesses, arguing that child care is essential to getting the economy humming again.

Allowing programs to reopen means they may now benefit from state grants to help pay for the costs of rebooting child care centers, such as acquiring more space to comply with social distancing requirements.

Still, the sudden announcement on Tuesday sent operators scrambling to comply with new safety measures with little guidance from the city health department. And it’s unclear how many will be able to reopen quickly after extended closures wreaked financial havoc on centers, which mostly rely on privately paid tuition to get by. Some have already permanently closed.

“I’m just about to lose my mind right now, I have to say,” said Fela Barclift, who won’t be able to reopen any time soon because she already started construction over the summer to install more hand-washing stations in her child care center, Little Sun People in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “We don’t have support for reopening.”

Child care providers overseen by the state, such as those based in private homes, have been allowed to remain open throughout the pandemic. But the rest of the child care centers, including Barclift’s, which are overseen by the city’s health department, were ordered to shut down on April 6. Only some 125 centers contracted to serve the families of front-line workers continued operating, and the city officials have said they have not tracked any outbreaks linked to those programs.

On Tuesday, the city’s Board of Health voted to allow centers to reopen. Officials said that transmission of the coronavirus had been sufficiently curbed and that parents need safe child care options as the city steadily begins to reopen.

City programs will have to follow state guidelines, which call for limiting groups of children to 15, requiring staffers to cover their face, and staggering schedules for families to drop off and pick up their children. Programs are required to regularly disinfect surfaces, and to limit the use of toys that aren’t easily cleaned, such as plush toys or dress up clothes. Families and employees will have complete daily health screens, which ask whether they or anyone they are in close contact with have COVID-19 symptoms.

Face coverings are not required in the classroom for children younger than kindergarten age, and they are “encouraged but not required” for older children, according to the state’s regulations.

Beyond that, however, providers said they’ve been given little guidance for reopening — and no runway to plan. They’ll have to make sense of a maze of new and constantly changing requirements.

Before she can reopen her Park Slope child care center, Honeydew Drop director Fabiola Santos-Gaerlan said she’ll have to change some fundamental aspects of her program and figure out how to create new classroom spaces.

Typically, children of mixed ages play and learn together in a large, open room, she said. Now, she’ll have to break them up by ages, and divide an 800-square-foot space into various rooms. The temporary space dividers that she has priced out cost more than $1,500 each.

“We’re going to be so stressed trying to meet the guidelines,” said Santos-Gaerlan. “These are all things that we need to save for and plan for.”

She said she is applying for a state grant to help pay for the dividers, but isn’t sure when the money would come through. When the state first announced the grants, which are funded through federal stimulus money, it was unclear whether New York City programs would be eligible for the funds. That’s because the state requires programs to reopen by the end of July — but it was still unclear whether the city would allow programs to begin operating by then.

For other early childhood centers, the all-clear for reopening has come too late. At the Maple Street School in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, director Wendy Jo Cole has decided to continue to operate only virtually over the summer. There is too much that needs to be done to reopen safely, she said.

In the meantime, she has taken advantage of safety webinars offered by the state, has scheduled trainings with the school nurse for her staff, and is working on a plan to offer class mostly outdoors come September. But she wishes the department of health were more proactive in helping providers figure out the complicated logistics of reopening. Cole said requests for virtual meetings have gone unanswered.

“While we appreciate the permission to open, we need the support. Running a preschool in a pandemic is way different than running a preschool regularly,” Cole said.

Families will need child care to reopen NYC, but preschools fear they won’t survive the coronavirus shutdown

2020-05-21T22:00:36+00:00

Whenever New York City is ready to begin reopening its economy after months of sheltering in place, child care will be essential for families returning to work. But independent preschools like Andre Farrell’s warn they might not be able to hold on that long.

Just three weeks after preschools and daycares were ordered to close as the coronavirus pandemic engulfed New York City, Farrell hit a financial wall. The director and owner of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Katmint Learning Initiative had no choice but to permanently shut down two of his three schools.

Katmint quickly shifted to online classes, but many families had logged off. The program is serving fewer than half the typical enrollment and Farrell has slashed tuition.

Child care in New York is a $4.2 billion industry, just over a third of which is supported by public dollars. While fundraising campaigns for restaurant workers and other sectors have grabbed attention, preschool programs say their struggles as small business owners has gone under the radar.

Many pre-K centers feel like they’ve been left to fend for themselves to keep their staff paid and, for those who manage to stay afloat, figure out what it might look like to finally reopen. They are turning to each other for help: The leaders of about 50 centers and schools have banded together to create the Brooklyn Coalition of Early Childhood Programs, a new advocacy group that is fighting for public support and recognition they say they have so far lacked.

“We feel totally alone,” Farrell said. “Do people even care? Do people even understand what we do for every neighborhood — not just in New York, but in every neighborhood in America?”

In New York City, roughly 40 preschools and daycares contracted with the education department are currently open to serve the children of front line workers. The rest were ordered to close on April 6. Schools that participate in public programs like universal pre-K have continued to receive their full payments, but independent centers like Farrell’s say they are in dire financial straits.

Farrell opened his first preschool about seven years ago in Bed-Stuy, where he grew up and is raising his own family now. Many parents felt like they had to leave the neighborhood to find a quality program, Farrell said, so he decided to create one himself — hand-picking teachers, building a curriculum that celebrates the culture of the surrounding historically black neighborhood, and offering extended hours to better serve the area’s working families.

After the coronavirus shuttered the centers, Farrell’s teachers tossed their “no screen time” rule and switched quickly to virtual learning, offering art classes and Spanish. Still, with parents now at home with their children, and many losing their jobs, enrollment plummeted from about 100 students to 40. Their staff of about 15 fell to just eight teachers.

Running a preschool or daycare is rarely a money-maker, even without a pandemic to contend with. Summers, especially, can be difficult to staff as families often sign up for care at the last minute. This summer will be the hardest yet, with in-person programs seemingly out of the question as the health crisis drags on.

Honeybirds Playschool, serving over a dozen children in a Bedford-Stuyvesant home, was already staring down a budget gap this year. Construction on the backyard play area set the program back $7,000. Then came the order to shut down.

“I really question how we’re going to pay our teachers, and how we’re going to be able to prepare for reopening — if and when that comes,” said Juliana Pinto McKeen, director of the school. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, frankly.”

Both Farrell and Pinto McKeen will be able to hold on for a little while longer thanks to the federal Paycheck Protection Program. Intended to help small businesses continue to pay their employees, both received a chunk of the $660 billion stimulus.

Though the loans can be forgivable, a national survey found that many child care providers are worried that taking the money could be risky when it comes to navigating the fine print and parsing out the rules attached.

Most independent operators are responsible for both instruction and running their businesses — everything from changing diapers to balancing the business ledger. They often lack the kind of back-office support that would help them make sense of a byzantine government program rolled out in a hurry.

Farrell was an accountant before getting into the business of early childhood education, and he still has had trouble understanding the terms of the program. And for all the headache of figuring it out, the financial boost is short-lived, covering about eight weeks.

“What happens to July, August, September, if we’re still not allowed to open?” he asked.

Besides the forgivable loans, the federal stimulus package called the CARES Act earmarked $3.5 billion specifically for the nation’s child care sector — a small fraction of more than $2 trillion in stimulus spending. New York was awarded nearly $164 million, and is using it to subsidize child care costs for low-income frontline workers, as well as to help centers pay for cleaning supplies and protective gear.

Lawmakers are negotiating the next round of federal spending. So far, $7 billion is expected for child care and preschools. That amount would only keep the country’s child care sector afloat for less than a month, said Rebecca Ullrich, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, and anti-poverty advocacy group.

Public money will be crucial to helping preschools and daycares reopen their doors because families are already tapped dry, Ullrich said. New York has among the highest childcare costs in the nation: Sending an infant to daycare can cost more than public college tuition. Now, with the economy shut down, one in three parents of young children in the state say they are skipping or reducing their meals.

“If we leave child care behind as a system now, we will be paying for it, in terms of our recovery, for years ahead,” Ullrich said. “If child care does not survive the crisis, there will be no going back to work… because people need child care to go to work.”

Compounding the financial pressure, city preschools and daycares feel like they have been left alone to try and figure out what a return to class might look like, without much guidance or communication from the Department of Health, which regulates child care facilities.

A Maple Street School student makes art.

Pre-pandemic, the relationship with providers and the health department could often be fraught. Recently, centers faced shortages of critical staff members because of a months-long wait in getting background checks cleared for teachers, therapists, and others. The backlog could make it a nightmare to rehire staff to make up for any layoffs, center directors fear.

Then there are countless other unknowns about welcoming students back to school. Will they need to change pick up and drop off routines? Who needs to wear masks, and when? What happens if someone at a preschool tests positive for the virus?

“We need guidance and support and from our licensing agencies — and from our city and from our country,” said Wendy Jo Cole, director of the Maple Street School in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

It is almost certain that reopening will not mark a return to normal, which will only add to financial pressures, with centers potentially operating at a fraction of regular capacity.

Cole had to cancel two of the school’s main fundraisers this year, which typically bring in more than $100,000 for scholarships for families, in an effort to make sure enrollment reflects the borough’s rich diversity. She is now thinking creatively about how to shore up her school’s budget, including developing online subscription packages, while anxiously awaiting the day they can reopen.

Even buying cleaning supplies will add to the bottom line — if providers can manage to secure them.

“Getting paper towels and bleach right now is not easy. Preschools are full of sneezes,” Cole said. “I love our school and it saddens me so deeply that we are in this place that we don’t know how, when, and if we can open.”

As fewer families applied to NYC’s free pre-K programs, more got their top choices

2020-05-13T21:40:38+00:00

It was perhaps a little less competitive to get into the city’s free pre-K programs this year: As the number of families applying dipped, the percentage who got into their top choice for the 2020-21 school year increased, according to education department data released Wednesday.

A record 77% of families received an offer for their first-choice Pre-K for All program, the city touted. However, the number of applications has tumbled recently: fewer than 62,000 families submitted applications, down by more than 3,000 from last year.

Most families — 90% — received an offer for one of their top three choices this year.

“Pre-K for All remains a bedrock of this city,” said Josh Wallack, a deputy chancellor at the city’s education department. “I’m so grateful to our dedicated teachers, staff, and providers who continue to make free, full-day, high-quality pre-K a reality.”

The education department gave two reasons for the decrease in applicants: a lower birth rate in 2016, and COVD-19. Uncertainty around the coronavirus was growing across New York City in the final two weeks that applications were due, which is typically when the education department sees a surge in submissions. The deadline was initially on the same day that school buildings closed in response to the crisis.

Parents who missed the application window can still add themselves to waitlists and, depending on availability, could begin to receive offers the same day. To sign up, or for assistance, families can visit myschools.nyc or call 718-935-2009.

Plans to extend pre-K to all 3-year-olds are on pause because of the pandemic. With the city expecting to lose billions, the expansion of 3-K for All into four new districts next year was cancelled.

Even though Mayor Bill de Blasio has made pre-K a pillar of his administration, advocates were quick to point out that thousands of children with disabilities consistently lack access. Year after year, the city has faced a shortage of seats for preschoolers who require services such as smaller class sizes, speech therapy, or accessible buildings.

“We are gravely concerned about preschoolers with disabilities who have a legal right to a preschool special education class but do not have one,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, said in an emailed statement. “Hundreds of preschoolers with disabilities were sitting at home prior to the pandemic and may have nowhere to go to school when buildings reopen.”

Pre-K for students with special needs is primarily funded by the state, but families and advocates point out that the city has promised a seat to every 4-year-old in the city who wants one.

The education department also announced that 38 programs this year changed their admissions process in the hopes of enrolling a more diverse student body. New York City schools are among the most segregated in the country, and pre-K classrooms have been found to be even less representative of the city than those in kindergarten.

At national summit, Fariña says she will keep ‘stress factor’ out of pre-K

2014-08-05T22:15:14+00:00

Working toward an ambitious pre-K expansion, the city has already found space for new pre-K seats, started an intense recruitment push, and come to some conclusions about teacher pay.

Now, with only one month until an estimated 50,000-plus four-year-olds breathe life into the pre-K classrooms, Chancellor Carmen Fariña said the administration is figuring out the right ways to evaluate its programs.

“We don’t want to make pre-K the new K,” Fariña said at a national pre-K summit on Tuesday. “We don’t want to bring down so much assessment to pre-K that we bring the stress factor one year less.”

A more important measure of success for pre-K is student attendance, Fariña said, which the city will monitor to gauge parents’ investment in their children’s programs. During her time as an elementary school principal, she instituted a policy where preschool students who arrived to school late had to be walked to class by a monitor instead of their parents.

“Every child made sure their parents got them to school on time,” she said.

Another marker of success for Fariña will be teacher satisfaction. She hopes that pre-K teachers will come to be thought of as some of the best teachers in the building and that they will choose to continue teaching pre-K, she said.

Since the city first announced its pre-K expansion plan, it has promised to send teacher coaches to visit programs and help students who are learning English. Officials have also said the city is adding staff members to monitor the programs and Fariña said Tuesday that some pre-K classrooms will serve as models.

While pre-K is heavily focused on social-emotional learning (Fariña said she is a “total advocate” of housekeeping corners), the chancellor thinks pre-K will show academic payoffs down the road, giving city students a leg up so they’ll be able to read at grade level by the end of second grade.

“You don’t get results overnight,” she cautioned.

Fariña was a panelist at the first annual Preschool Nation Summit, hosted at Scholastic’s Manhattan headquarters and organized by LAUP, a nonprofit that provides pre-K programming to over 11,000 Los Angeles students per year.

Mayor Bill de Blasio was the event’s keynote speaker, an indication of his growing role as a national pre-K figurehead.

Steven Hicks, a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education, said the city is in the “unique position” of having both a governor and a mayor who support universal pre-K, which could make it “a real example for others around the country.”

Cities like Los Angeles are now looking to New York to see how its pre-K expansion plays out, LAUP CEO Celia Ayala said.

“If they could do it over there,” Ayala said of New York City, “We certainly could learn and then we could challenge our people back home.”

De Blasio did not shy away from the broader implications of his focus on pre-K.

“You see now the outline of a truly national movement,” he said. “We’ve got to say that full-day, high quality pre-K is going to be the national standard.”