Chalkbeat

How a Queens school transformed a local playground — and its students’ lives

2026-08-11T14:54:17+00:00

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How do you make high school feel less like, well, school? And how do you get kids to show up, especially those at greatest risk of dropping out?

A class devoted to community service projects at Voyages Prep in Elmhurst, Queens might offer some clues.

The school, which serves older students who transferred in after falling behind at other schools, partners on the elective course created with Hire Cause, a career education company that focuses on building skills through hands-on projects aimed at improving communities. Two years ago, the students decided they’d focus on renovating Playground Ninety, a run-down basketball court in Jackson Heights where some of them played after school.

The students got to work. They collaborated with artists to design the space. They learned how to fundraise — organizing bake sales, a basketball tournament, and a carnival — and netted about $2,100.

Then they decided to shoot for something bigger, submitting a video to the “Every Court Has a Story” contest, a worldwide initiative led by Project Backboard, a nonprofit that funds renovations of public basketball courts. They won $50,000, beating out scores of submissions from around the globe and marking the first time a student-led entry won the contest.

Voyages Prep student Ashely Marquez painting the court at Playground Ninety in June.

“Too often, many students can’t see how the classroom connects to the broader community,” said David Dvorkin, CEO of Hire Cause, which worked with 28 public schools and 1,450 students across the city this past school year. “That’s part of the gap that we’re collectively working to close here.”

Playground Ninety’s renovation wrapped up last month with a repaired basketball court and a mural painted on the ground with flowers representing the diversity of Jackson Heights and wavy lines symbolizing New York City’s rivers. The kids at P.S. 90 have been especially delighted: The elementary school exclusively uses the space during the school day.

With its intensive focus on job skills, Voyages’ Hire Cause class fits into the city’s larger effort embracing career readiness. Nearly 180 high schools across the five boroughs are part of the Education Department’s FutureReadyNYC program, providing students with hands-on classes and career training. About 105 career and technical education programs offer certifications for a range of post-graduation careers. But the Voyages class differs in its emphasis on social impact and its student-led approach. Students pick a cause they care about and have to raise money to see their project through.

It gives them something bigger to be part of, educators involved in the project said. And they get to see the fruits of their effort.

It gives them a reason to show up, students said.

By the time Kamrin Jones took the class, the project had already begun. Initially, it was just an assignment to him. But when he saw the excitement of the elementary school kids, his perspective shifted: “It started off as an obligation, but then became a passion.”

It felt dramatically different from his previous school where he would travel about 1.5 hours to just “sit around,” the 19-year-old said.

“Not only do I have a reason to be here, but like it’s proof that I can do more with myself than I thought I could,” he said. “Like it’s proof that I’m more than just sitting in class and just waiting, twiddling my fingers. It’s proof that when I do actually put myself to the task, I can meet expectations.”

Jones believes his path might have been different had he not landed at Voyages and dove into the playground project. After graduating from Voyages in June, Jones is spending this summer learning about economics and marketing through investment banking firm Centerview (that he is getting paid for). He is planning to go to a trade school in the fall.

A drone photo of the new basketball court at Playground Ninety.

A lesson in joy, leadership, and local change

As a transfer school, where students come and go, graduating at different times as they accumulate enough credits, Voyages had about 60 students in all working on the project at some point, with about 35 of those students more intensely involved. Ten, including Jones, devoted after-school hours ensuring Playground Ninety got done.

Jones became the project manager, making sure everyone stayed on track. He would spend his lunchtime organizing things, sharing reminders to his peers in morning announcements he made over the loudspeaker.

“It’s easy for us students to get distracted,” Jones said. “I made sure we stayed on task.”

Some students who were struggling with attendance, “turned a corner” after getting involved in the course, said Anthony Drzal, one of the co-teachers of the course. A student who was chronically late, knew that missing the second period class would have significant consequences, not just for her.

“It wasn’t like another class where maybe she just missed the worksheet and she would deal with it later,” Drzal said. “If she had a responsibility, she had to take care of it.”

He believes that led to a different type of engagement than in more traditional classrooms.

The sense of community and connection created by the class is something the school overall works hard to achieve. It has a high-needs population — nearly 90% are from low-income households, nearly 30% have disabilities, more than 70% are overage and undercredited. It also struggles with outcomes: Just 17% graduated from high school and enrolled in a post-secondary program within six months.

People play basketball on the new court at Playground Ninety on June 12.

Even though the course is rooted in social change and social justice, that was never explicitly part of the conversation, said Traci Molloy, one of two artists who worked on the playground project alongside the course’s co-teachers.

The goal was to make something beautiful.

“In doing that, you’re transforming the park, you’re transforming a neighborhood,” she said. “The way it was framed was always: We have to have fun. We have to have joy, and then that joy becomes a change.”

The Voyages students will move on this school year to a new project of their choice, but those like Jones, who are graduating, are taking many skills they learned from the project, Molloy said.

As she told Jones: “This isn’t the last thing you’ve done. This is the first best thing you’ve done.”

Correction: Aug. 11, 2026: This article initially stated that Hire Cause is a nonprofit. It is a for-profit company that partners with many nonprofits.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC reading scores sink, with third grade proficiency falling 14 points

2026-08-07T20:42:44+00:00

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Reading scores sank in New York City last school year, with a nearly 14 percentage point decline among third graders, according to preliminary data released Friday.

Among students in grades 3-8, about half were proficient in reading, a decline of 6 percentage points. That nearly erases a 7 percentage point spike the year before. Math scores were flat, with 57% of students considered proficient.

The declines in reading proficiency were most pronounced in grades 3-5. In addition to the dramatic decline in third grade, fourth grade scores fell nearly 6 percentage points, and fifth grade scores fell by 13 points. (You can find your school’s test results at the bottom of this story.)

The unusually steep drop in reading proficiency comes as the city is heading into its fourth year of a major shakeup in literacy instruction. All elementary schools are required to use approved curriculums that officials contend line up with the science of reading, a longstanding body of evidence about how children learn to read. A growing number of middle schools are in the process of adopting new reading curriculums, too.

City officials vowed to conduct an analysis of the sharp fluctuations in reading scores.

“School leaders across New York City are seeing dramatic swings in literacy proficiency reflected in this year’s state assessment results,” schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in a statement. “These results raise important questions and deserve careful, rigorous analysis so we can ensure we’re measuring what students are learning.”

City officials noted that the state test scores diverged from the city’s own periodic assessments, which generally showed improvements in reading.

The city’s teachers union has supported the elementary reading curriculum changes, but criticized the Education Department’s approach in response to the latest scores.

“We have to refocus on what we know works in literacy — a clear plan, a tailored science of reading curriculum, and meaningful professional development for educators,” Mary Vaccaro, the union’s vice president for education, said in a statement.

She said the Education Department “abandoned that approach” last year and “piled on additional programs, assessments, consultant’s recommendations and curriculum in the hopes that ‘more’ would equal better, and we lost ground.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has vowed to double down on the literacy and math curriculum overhauls launched by his predecessor. In May, he announced plans to expand the math curriculum mandate into elementary schools, a move the union also criticized.

Test scores alone can’t prove whether a policy is working because many factors influence them. But city officials pointed to the dramatic 7 percentage point spike last year as evidence the new reading programs are paying dividends.

The reading proficiency declines mirror a similar 5 percentage point drop across the state. Some testing experts told Chalkbeat this week that whipsawing scores are unusual and raise questions about whether there are irregularities in the exams.

Andrew Ho, a Harvard professor who serves on a panel of experts who are paid to advise New York on its state assessment system, said the state exams are carefully constructed.

“It’s uncommon but not unprecedented” to see test scores significantly shift up and down, Ho said.

Observers should consider them in the context of other data, including the city’s own assessments and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, widely considered the gold standard assessment. A new round of results on that federal exam, including for New York City, are expected next year.

Others worried that there was an unidentified problem with the tests. Emily Oster, a professor of economics at Brown University who has studied patterns in state assessment results, said the swings were reminiscent of COVID-era disruptions but without an obvious cause.

“It’s just so implausible that there would be these kind of swings, and that they would be concentrated in some grades and some subjects and not others,” she said. “It just feels like there’s a mistake.”

EdTrust-New York, an advocacy group, called for an independent audit of the last three years of state testing data. “NYSED never adequately investigated or explained last year’s dramatic gains, making this year’s reversal difficult to interpret,” the group said in a statement earlier this week.

A spokesperson for the state’s Education Department said that the state conducts two independent audits of its assessments each year and those reviews have not flagged any problems.

As in prior years, the test results show deep disparities between student groups.

Asian American students saw the largest declines in reading scores last year among racial groups, with proficiency rates dropping to about 67%, down nearly 8 percentage points. A similar share of white students were considered proficient in reading.

Meanwhile, nearly 42% of Black students were proficient, a decline of 5 percentage points. About 37% of Latino students were marked proficient, 6 percentage points lower than the prior year. Just under 22% of students with disabilities were proficient readers.

Students who are currently learning English, or were in the past, saw the largest reading dips. Their proficiency rates dipped nearly 10 percentage points to 62.1%.

Math scores were more stable. Almost 44% of Black and Latino students were proficient in the subject, up less than 1 percentage point respectively. White and Asian American students’ scores dipped by about a percentage point each, to 74% and nearly 80%, respectively.

Curious about school-level test results? Here is a searchable breakdown of math and English scores across all of the city’s public schools (charters are not included).

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

New campaign aims to dispel cannabis myths for NY teens after legalization

2026-07-13T21:10:53+00:00

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In the five years since New York legalized cannabis, educators across the city have seen an uptick in student marijuana use spilling into the school day and grappled with how to respond.

As smoke shops proliferated, teens had more access to potent products, and some used cannabis to self-medicate mental health challenges that spiked in the wake of the pandemic, educators previously told Chalkbeat. Many educators said they felt ill-equipped to respond to students using cannabis during school or showing up high to class.

Now, a new set of educational resources developed by the state’s Office of Cannabis Management could help fill that gap.

“What we heard when we brought together everyone from school nurses to superintendents to assistant superintendents, to principals, to teachers … everyone asked for resources,” said Lyla Hunt, the director of public health and education at the state’s cannabis management office. They wanted to understand the cannabis landscape post-legalization, saying, “‘We need that information in order to better serve the people we serve.’”

The education program, called Cannabis Honestly, is geared toward young people and trusted adults in their lives trying to navigate a murky cannabis landscape. The resources, released on Monday, are based on 23 listening sessions with roughly 450 young people and caregivers throughout the state who shared their experience with cannabis and what kind of information they wanted.

Researchers found that many teens were still confused about some basic facts, with roughly a third incorrectly guessing the legal age of cannabis consumption in New York. (It’s 21.) Both young people and adults also expressed confusion about how to distinguish between sanctioned cannabis products and illicit ones. The materials point out that legal shops will have a QR code near the door to verify the store is licensed and will have the state logo on product packaging.

When asked why young people were turning to cannabis, youth participants overwhelmingly pointed to mental health challenges, with 85% of the young people surveyed raising it as an issue. Roughly 60% said they believed cannabis served a medicinal purpose, the listening sessions found.

More than half of the teens who participated also said they wanted a clearer understanding of how cannabis affects the brain and body. And they were clear in telling researchers that an education campaign that came across as too-heavy handed or moralizing would fall flat.

The educational materials include sections directly aimed at youth through a mix of comic-style graphics with frequently asked questions and blurbs, along with short videos. A section called “Weed 101” explains that using products with a higher concentration of THC can raise the risk of “greening out,” or getting so high that it triggers intense anxiety and physical side effects.

Other sections address the myths that people can’t get addicted to cannabis and that most teens are using the drug. In fact, roughly 17 of 20 teens across the state say they’re not using weed, according to the guidance.

The materials also include a choose-your-own-adventure-style interactive guide for how to have a conversation with a teenager about cannabis and resources designed specifically for parents who use the drug themselves.

The resources are available in English and Spanish and are available in print versions for free at the state’s cannabis education library. Hunt said these are exactly the types of materials that school counselors can have on hand when they have to call a parent about student cannabis use.

“When the parent goes home, they can continue to have the conversation,” Hunt said. “But also to support [the counselor] as they’re having that conversation as well.”

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

Samuels turns to local communities for advice on making NYC schools safe, rigorous, and integrated

2026-06-17T20:47:28+00:00

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Since taking office in January, schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels has repeated a refrain that he wants the nation’s largest school system to be safe, academically rigorous, and integrated.

But he has revealed little about his tangible policy goals in each of those areas. Now, he’s signaling that some of those ideas may come from local communities rather than top-down from the Education Department or City Hall.

On Wednesday, education officials announced that five of the city’s 45 superintendents will convene working groups with parents, teachers, principals, and community organizations that will “address structural and instructional inequities in their district,” according to a press release. They are expected to meet monthly.

The groups represent “local solutions for systemic problems,” Samuels said Wednesday morning during a discussion with author Heather McGhee who has written about how racism has broader effects beyond people of color. Officials said all districts will have similar groups within three years.

Samuels suggested that the groups, which will be led by local superintendents, could begin to tackle some of the system’s biggest policy challenges. His conversation with McGhee touched on declining enrollment and the growing number of underenrolled schools; a state mandate to lower class sizes; and segregation of students by race, ability, socioeconomic status, and language.

Officials did not share who was selected by superintendents to serve on each working group, or commit to release each group’s recommendations publicly.

Previous administrations have also set up working groups to tackle thorny policy problems.

Under pressure from parents and advocates to address deep racial segregation in the city’s schools, former Mayor Bill de Blasio created a working group to recommend solutions. Some advocates were frustrated that the city did not embrace some of the group’s most sweeping suggestions. Still, some local districts have taken action to integrate local schools absent a broader citywide mandate, though others have sputtered. (Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that he would adopt some of the recommendations from de Blasio’s diversity advisory group that were not implemented, but he has yet to do so.)

On the campaign trail, Mamdani committed to getting rid of mayoral control — which gives the mayor largely unfettered power to set the school system’s policy direction — in favor of a more democratic system. He reversed his position just before taking office and recently won a two-year extension for it from state lawmakers.

But he has consistently vowed to give families and educators more of a say in policymaking and Samuels signaled the working groups were an effort to make good on that promise.

“When people ask me … ‘You have mayoral control, and are you going to really listen to parents, and are you going to listen to communities?’” Samuels said, “this is one of our main initial first steps.”

The first five districts that will participate are: Manhattan District 3 (Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, and parts of Harlem); Bronx District 7 (Mott Haven and Port Morris); Brooklyn District 13 (Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill); Brooklyn’s District 16 (much of Bedford-Stuyvesant); and Queens District 25 (College Point, Whitestone, Hillcrest). Samuels previously led District 3 and 13.

The Wednesday morning event was livestreamed but the Education Department did not invite reporters to attend. Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said members of the working groups were invited and there wasn’t additional room due to the fire code.

The five working groups are expected to share their recommendations with the Education Department by the end of next school year, Brownstein said.

She indicated those reports could take multiple forms and officials plan to wait to release broader policy ideas until they review the recommendations. No funding has been earmarked for the working groups, officials said.

“We have to figure out what is the thing that we are going to do on behalf of our most marginalized young people, oftentimes, but on behalf of every single child in your district,” Samuels said.

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

Left Behind: How school buses disadvantage NYC students with disabilities

2026-06-04T10:04:00+00:00

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Constant delays. No-shows. Missed class.

Roughly 145,000 New York City students, 43% of whom have disabilities, rely on yellow bus service to get to school each day. It’s a sprawling system with 9,000 routes operated by more than 50 different companies at a cost of more than $2 billion a year.

But sometimes, the buses don’t arrive at all. Parents are often unable to track buses or contact busing companies, forcing many families to pay out of pocket for cabs or keep their kids home from school.

P.S. Weekly producers Noa Salas Adam, a junior at Stuyvesant High School, and Katelyn Melville, a rising sophomore at City College, explore the challenges faced by students with disabilities who rely on busing, including academic setbacks, missed time with friends, and lack of access to OMNY cards to commute to jobs or after-school programs.

Lucas Healy, a senior with autism at Brooklyn’s High School of Telecommunication Arts & Technology, opens up about missing class because of unreliable busing and the emotional toll it’s taken, which still affects him today. His mother, Paullette Ha-Healy, shares her experiences navigating limited options when the bus didn’t arrive, and her frustrations with the Office of Pupil Transportation overseeing the Education Department’s massive transportation system.

“I didn’t like it when I was left out,” Lucas said of missing class because of busing. “And because of that, I felt lonely because I wasn’t there, and it’s definitely not fair.”

The Education Department has said some fixes are on the horizon: The city is promising upgraded software by September that will create shorter and more efficient routes. Officials pledged to release bus vendor “scorecards” in June, rating bus companies on various metrics, including driver safety and bus breakdowns.

P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell. It’s available on major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Reach us at PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org. New episodes drop on Thursdays.

P.S. Weekly is made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation.

Transcript

Noa: It’s five AM and you’re waiting in the street. It’s cold, it’s dark, and you’re growing impatient. Impatient because the yellow school bus just isn’t coming. Maybe the bus will come in forty-five minutes or an hour or two, but there’s no way to know. There’s a number to call, but you know it will ring forever.

MUSIC

This is PS Weekly, the sound of the New York City school system. I’m Noah Salas Adam, a junior at Stuyvesant High School.

Katelyn: And I’m Katelyn Melville, a recent alum of the Brooklyn Institute for Liberal Arts and finishing up my first year at City College. But back to you, Noa. Waiting for a school bus at 5:00 AM?

Noa: Though not always this early, thousands of New York City public school students rely on school buses to get to class each day, 145,000 to be exact, and these buses are unreliable. That means they don’t show up on time, take inconvenient routes, and sometimes don’t even come at all.

In just the first weeks of the 2025 to 2026 school year, there were 4,476 no-shows and 8,068 reported bus delays and breakdowns.

Katelyn: Wow, I guess I didn’t realize just how many students in the city take school buses. I’d always assumed the majority just took public transportation, but now it’s really worrying that kids are relying on buses that are so unpredictable.

Noa: That’s right, and in most cases, they actually don’t have many options. According to Chalkbeat, 43% of students who take the bus have disabilities. Many of these students have individualized education programs, or IEPs, that are meant to guarantee them busing to get to schools that meet their needs.

Katelyn: This must be a major headache for a lot of families

Noa: Absolutely. Parents lose work because of their children’s busing problems. I also learned that students who are eligible for busing don’t get OMNY cards, which raised equity concerns for me. The same students who might be eligible for busing in their younger years might be ready to travel independently later. Having an OMNY card opens up the chance to get to a job or participate in afterschool programs.

Katelyn: Yeah and those 3$ fares really add up! This makes me wanna hear a perspective from a student who had to go through it.

Noa: Me too. I spoke to Lucas Healy, a senior in high school with autism, and his mom, Paullette Ha-Healy. Lucas is a student attending the High School of Telecommunication, Arts, and Technology in a District 75 program.

Katelyn: Where is District 75?

Noa: District 75 isn’t a geographical district like District 2, where I go to school. Instead, it has programs in schools all over the city for students who need highly specialized instruction. And because D75 isn’t a physical district, students with disabilities often have to go to school outside of their neighborhoods to get their needs met. this is where the school buses come in

Katelyn: So there’s a whole school district to accommodate students with disabilities, and there are still busing issues going on in these schools? I mean, like, forgive me if I sound shocked, but how do you expect to give a student specialized instruction if you can’t even get them there in the first place?

Noa: Exactly, and missing days of this instruction adds up, and it really impacts these students’ education. .

But that’s enough from us. Lucas and Paullette had to live it.

MUSIC

Noa: Lucas, we’ll start with you. Um, could you just say your name, how old you are, and what school you go to?

Lucas: Yeah. Well- I’m Lucas Healy, and I’m a D75 student. I went to, High School of Telecommunications, but this year I’m graduating to Kingsborough Community College.

Noa: Congratulations. And Paullette, could you share your name, your occupation, anything, like, relating to your advocacy or anything else that you’d like to share?

Paullette: Sure My name is Paullette Ha-Healy. Uh, I’m a disability advocate. I’m actually a, coordinator for the borough of Brooklyn for the Civic Engagement Commission, so I, I’m a civil servant.

but my lifelong, um, love and purpose in life is to advocate for the disability community. Uh, I’m a woman with a disability myself, and I’m raising two children in the public school system who have learning disabilities as well, and that’s what brought me here to you.

Noa: What inspired your advocacy in a larger sense?

Paullette: Well, when I became a mother for the first time and, I didn’t really have any peers or siblings to tell me, like, what raising a child would be like, and I was so extremely happy when Lucas came into my life, that I wasn’t aware that there was anything different about him.

And when we went for his pediatric milestone, appointments, uh, our pediatrician told us he wasn’t hitting certain milestones and suggested we have him assessed, and that’s when we discovered that he was on the autistic spectrum. And, knowing that he was different, and realizing that the public school system is not really geared for children who are neurodiverse as he is, that I was gonna have, uh, quite the fight in front of me.

Noa: So I know from speaking to both of you earlier that Lucas, you took, um, a bus to your early intervention program when you were around, is it three?

Lucas: That’s correct.

Paullette: So Paullette, what’s an early intervention program?

So an early intervention program is a, um, a program that is available for people with disabilities as early as birth to help provide supportive services depending on what their challenges happen to be. So, um, we were eligible for the services. Unfortunately, where we were living at the time, which was Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn, um, there was no, spots available in the early intervention, programs within our neighborhood.

So we were able to get accepted into a program in Bushwick, and that entailed a three-hour bus ride, uh, back and forth every day. So at three years old, Lucas was up at 5:00 in the morning, was on a bus at 5:15 every morning, and then arrived at his early intervention program, um, in Bushwick at 8:00 AM, and then would leave the program at 3:00 PM and arrive home at 6:00 PM, at the end of the day, which is a, an incredibly long day for a three-year-old.

Lucas: I didn’t mention to you that there were sometimes the bus never came

Paullette: Yeah, there were unfortunately some times where the bus didn’t show up, and we would be sitting outside in the dark at 5:00 AM waiting for the bus to show up, and there was no communication.

We would try calling the bus company, but unfortunately no one would pick up. Um, and we would call the school, and of course, there’s nobody there. And it, it really left very little recourse for families who were dependent on this particular service.

the first year was rough. It was a, it was a major adjustment. Um, Lucas presented with a lot of behavioral, challenges, as rightfully so, considering he was sleep-deprived, and, you know, a child, you know, at that age is supposed to have more, nap times and play times and, you know, things of that nature.

And, that just wasn’t afforded to him because he spent six hours every day, five days a week just traveling to this program.

Noa: Did things get better after early intervention?

Paulette: Elementary school was pretty much, like, the most chaotic and inconsistent time when it came to school busing for Lucas.

Um, during, the kindergarten year when he started,, all of the bus drivers actually went on strike because of the contract negotiations that were happening with the mayor. And, um, because of that strike, we were not able to get Lucas to school for almost three months

until the strike was over. And, when you’re in kindergarten and you’re learning, like, fundamental, skills in terms of, like, language and behavior and comprehension- Three months is a lifetime for a kindergartner, and again, we weren’t able to really make up those services.

and then when, um, there wasn’t a strike, , we would still experience a lot of inconsistent disruptions in service. And when he was in third grade, he missed 56 days of school due to the bus not showing up. There was one time a bus showed up at noon at our house to pick him up, and at that point, I had already taken a cab to get him to school.

Katelyn: And not everyone has access to other options.

Noa: Yeah, it’s a privilege to be able to drive to school or pay for a car if the bus doesn’t come, and also to be able to advocate for your child in these situations.

The unpredictability of Lucas’s bus caused Paullette to quit her job.

Paullette: There was so much disruption, and I lost a lot of days of work, and my job was just like, “we need someone who’s, dependable.” and as, as hardworking as I was, I could not promise them that th- that school bus was gonna show up the next day. And this is a citywide,travesty because there’s, thousands of families that are affected when their school bus doesn’t arrive, and tons of families who end up losing employment, because of disruptions and, putting out thousands of dollars for cab fares and bus fares and, you know, alternate transportation options, um, when- The DOE is paying millions of dollars to these bus contractors to provide us this service. And Lucas, thankfully was able to bounce back from all of those absences. And, traditionally, you know, you have 20 absences, you’re already like And then Lucas himself as a child, like, he loved school. He, he made friends there. So, like, on those days when the bus didn’t show up, he was angry. you know- Yeah ... and-

Lucas: I, like, I felt kinda, like, left out because of stupid busing.

Noa: Yeah. Lucas, could you tell me about that feeling of being left out when your friends are at school, but you couldn’t be there because of the unreliable busing?

Lucas: Mm-hmm Well, let’s just say I just, I didn’t like it when I was left out. And because of that, I felt, well, lonely because I wasn’t there, and it’s, it’s definitely not fair. It’s literally, like, not fair to be left out. I mean, what the heck?

Paullette: It still hurts you now. Mm-hmm. You’re, you’re 18. Yeah. And it was 10 years ago. So it’s like these are, these are the kind of scars that nobody sees on the outside, and, you know, sometimes I don’t even realize, like,, how raw it still is for him, you know, until I hear the anger in his voice just like I did just now and- Hearing him say, “I felt lonely,” like, no mom ever wants to hear that, you know, from their kid, and not being able to fix it, so...

Lucas: Yeah, that’s what’s going on with my life with busing, busing problems and stuff. I just really wish I was there, back then.

Paullette: Yeah, and I know, I know that also makes you more empathetic to your friends, too.

Like, when, when you’re, you, you come home and you tell me that,one of your other friends, wasn’t able to get to school ‘cause the bus didn’t show up. Like, I know that you know how that feels, and you worry about them, and you worry about how they’re feeling.

And yeah it hurts, no matter how old you are. Whether you’re in third grade, in middle school, in high school, it, it just sucks not being able to, to be part of, you know, everything that’s going on, especially, like, this being your last year of school, too.

Lucas: Yeah. Well, I won’t let that repeat the same way when I graduate, like, at community college. I just won’t repeat the same way from, like, 10 years ago.

Paullette: Yeah. I think you’ve got more skills now to cope than you did back then.

Lucas: Yeah.

Noa: Lucas, you mentioned that you now travel independently. I was wondering when that decision was made and what it’s like now, your commute.

Lucas: I’ve learned how to travel independently, well, the day the pandemic, well, passed out. My mom taught me how to, like, travel independently and how, how long will it take to get there.

Paullette: Yeah, I, I will say, like, you know, in addition to that, the pandemic really was, like, a game changer for a lot of us, you know, for all different kinds of reasons.

But, as the schools were pivoting to remote learning and District 75 was trying to figure out how to support students that were neurodiverse with multiple, , cognitive challenges, with remote learning, Lucas was one of the few that thrived, um, during COVID. ... He jumped up three reading levels,, you know, utilizing the assistive technology that was available, in order to comprehend the, the content that they were giving him.Um, but, uh, but he was definitely, , one of the students that, like, given the right tools, you know, in that, remote environment, he, he jumped forward. He was, he progressed.

And, um, thankfully we were able to get him into a program that was relatively close to the house. It still re- requires some public transportation, but, um, he felt confident that he didn’t need the school bus anymore. So, um, once, some of the restrictions during COVID were lifted and we were able to use the trains and the buses, you know, more frequently

we spent the entire summer, um, travel training. And, um, D75 actually has a incredible travel training program that they utilize for their students. However, during the pandemic, there was a lot of, um, staffing turnover and the demand for that program was incredibly immense, so, there was a ton of students that were wait-listed for the travel training program.

And again, you know, time waits for no one, so we took it upon ourselves to, um, to train Lucas. Um, and not just about, like, you know, how to get on the train, what stop to get off, but also, like, you know, what happens if a train station is closed? What happens if a bus route gets rerouted? Uh, what happens if you get stranded because of, uh, climate, you know, um, uh, challenges and things of that nature?

What tools do you use in order to get home?

Paullette: You know, if you’re lost, you, you need to have a Lucas in your life. he’s, you know, he’s helped other students. You know, like, when he sees them, um, struggling, uh, trying to, like, figure out where they’re going, he’s always trying to lend a hand. So I think that it was, um, it was a huge, huge, uh, turning point when it came to, Lucas just being able to immerse himself into, like, his school environment. He had the freedom of being able to get home by himself if he wanted to go to an after-school program or, uh, audition for the school play and, or, participate in a talent show or, or, you know, take advantage of the tutoring services that were available at the school. He wouldn’t have been able to do that if he was still strapped to, um, a bus.

Noa: I wanted to ask, about, like, the Omni cards because I know that when you’re taking a school bus, you don’t have access to an Omni card, right? So you have to, like, rush or you’re not able to participate in after-school activities.

Paulette: I mean, the whole reason, you know, um, a lot of, um, travel advocates and students, advocated at the DOE to provide OMNY cards to all high school students was because our high school students have other obligations outside of school. They have jobs, they have after-school programming, some are going to night school, you know, to make up for credits that they can’t, um, do because their attendance just isn’t where it should be and, you know, there are students who are overage and under-credited who really, you know, need to be able to have some flexibility with their education.

Um, it just expands the world for them. It allows them to participate in after-school programming, it allows them more freedom, um, to be able to travel more independently. Um, and, you know, for, for some families it’s a, you know, transportation’s a hardship. You know, paying that $3, you know, for that train ride, it, it taps into whatever money they’re bringing home for food and rent. And if there’s some way that we can lighten that load because the DOE happens to have a cadre of these OMNY cards, um, we should extend it.

Noa: Did you feel also left behind academically, or how, how do you think that it impacted your school?

Lucas: Ugh, it made me feel like a failure, to be honest. I, most of the times when I tried to catch up on some stuff, but couldn’t even figure out what the questions make sense, that made me felt like a failure, and it’s just not fair for me. I just wish I wasn’t feeling like that way, but I still am, every time.

Paullette: Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s a testament to, like, how important it is, you know, um, to be present when you’re at school. ‘Cause especially when you get into, like, the, you know, the higher education, when it, middle school and high school, and there’s so much emphasis on, on testing and, and assessments, you miss one day and that, you miss, like, an entire unit, you know? And, um, and then you’re just playing catch-up the, the, the whole time.

Noa: I wanna talk a bit about the, Office of Pupil Transportation, and Brad Lander’s audit- Mm-hmm ... um, from last year. I’m gonna read this to you. the 2023 to 2024 school year alone, OPT received more than 16,000 complaints related to special education transportation, over 15,000 calls about late pickups or late arrivals, more than 14,000 no-show pickup complaints, and more than 5,000 reports of disconnected calls. You mentioned that you’ve made calls, but could you tell me a bit more about that experience, and then we can get to your thoughts on OPT in general?

Paullette: Sure. Um, well, I mean, I’ve had experiences prior to the $9.5 million investment that they put into OPT to build out their call center, and even then there were still, what, 15,000 dropped calls? Yeah, I still... I, I would like to know what they spent their $9.5 [m]illion on, to be perfectly honest, because even when I talk to parents in schools now, they can’t- they still can’t get through to OPT.

Um, or they get the runaround where it’s like they finally get someone, and they’re like, “Oh, what’s your school?” And they re-route them back to the school. Um, so that does not seem like a good use of, uh, funding f- to me at all. Uh, but, uh, prior to the $9.5 million investment into the call center, I would spend as long as two hours on hold trying to get through to a human being at OPT.

I had someone on the bus who was, like, talking to somebody and was like, “Yeah, the bus didn’t show up again.” And I literally, like, opened up my phone and gave them the number to OPT, and I said, “I will stay with you and see how long it takes for them to, like, pick up the phone with you.”

And this was literally, like, what was it? Two months ago. And no joke, like, the reader on her phone, like, she hung up after 45 minutes When no one was picking up the phone.

Noa: Wow.

Paullette: ‘Cause I, I don’t know, like, you know, even where to look for this number, and I was like, “Well, save it. You’re gonna need it.” So um, yeah. I would say, I mean, if I had it my way, and I’m so grateful to have had, uh, the controller, um, push through this audit before he termed out because this was something that we were working on with the previous controller and we couldn’t get it released, and we knew that we needed this kind of audit th- you know, and, and to build this momentum in order to make some change to, uh, the existing, you know, um, pupil transportation program.

Noa: Absolutely. Um, just to wrap up, Lucas, I wanted to ask you, if there’s one thing that you could tell someone who doesn’t understand how important this issue of fair busing is, what would you tell them?

Paullette: So if someone doesn’t understand why busing is important, it’s important because...

Lucas: Because of timing.

Paullette: Yeah, because that kid can never get that time back, right?

Yeah.

Lucas: Mm-hmm. Because that kid can never get that time back, and he could

probably going through a lot of challenges, like catching up with some work, making up with some friends, and trying to catch up on something you’ve felt left out. And I don’t want that for them. Not ever. I don’t want them to go through the same way I had many years ago.

Noa: Yeah. Thank you.Yeah. Thank you so much for coming and for talking with me today. I’m really excited, um, for the episode and to share it with you both.

Paullette: Thank, thank you so much for the opportunity- Yeah ... to really bring more awareness around this.

MUSIC

Noa: Chalkbeat reported on the city’s recent promises to improve the bus system, including new routing software coming in September to bring shorter and more efficient routes.

In response to Chalkbeat’s questions about the changes, an Education Department spokesperson said, “Over the years, we have made significant progress, and enhancing our students’ transportation experience remains one of our top priorities.” She added: “New York City Public Schools continues to evaluate and improve our bus operations for families, ensuring our services remain reliable.”

Noa: In three years, contracts between the city and busing companies will be up. Either the same system of constant delays and lack of communication will continue–

Katelyn: Or we’ll reach something better. I’m curious, what happens next?

Noa: Well, Paullette did tell me about some possible solutions she and other advocates are exploring. She spoke about the expansion of the NYC School Bus Umbrella Services or NICE BUS , a non-profit that currently manages about 800 routes. It has also started working with electric buses, Including working GPS systems would also help hold bus companies accountable and give parents real-time updates on their kids’ commutes. All of these solutions envision a system where the city has more control over bus routes and timing – so students with disabilities can get to their programs on time every day.

Katelyn: And every day really matters. Hearing Lucas talk about his own experiences really shows how impactful missing school because of busing delays is.

Noa: Lucas has grown up a lot since he was that little boy on the bus. He travels independently now. He loves to cook, and he’s headed to community college in the fall. But you can hear in his voice that he’s still really upset about how the system failed him so many years ago. He missed his friends and felt like a failure in school.

He’s angry that other kids will have to go through what he went through.

Katelyn: That feeling of being left out or forgotten is something so many people can relate to.

Noa: It also makes me think of how involved Paullette is. She’s become an expert in busing, and was able to really fight for Lucas and so many other students with disabilities across the city. But what about all the kids without that support? It’s hard even under the best circumstances

Katelyn: That’s all for today on PS Weekly.

Noa: PS Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat, made possible by generous support from the Pinkerton Foundation.

Producers for this episode were me, Noa Salas Adam-

Katelyn: And me, Katelyn Melville.

Noa: our senior producer for the show is Maria Robins-Somerville, and our technical director is Jake Loomis.

Katelyn: Our executive editors are Amy Zimmer and Taylor McGraw.

Noa: Additional production and reporting support was provided by Mira Gordon, Sabrina Duquesnay, Zana Halili, and our friends at Chalkbeat.

Katelyn: Music is from APM, and the jingle you heard at the beginning of the episode was created by the one and only Erica Huang.

We make transcripts available for our episodes as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.

Albany budget deal gives Mamdani 2-year mayoral control extension, boosts funding for needy students

2026-05-20T20:04:12+00:00

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani will maintain control of the nation’s largest school system for the next two years under state legislation unveiled on Wednesday.

And the state will boost funding for homeless students, those in foster care, and English language learners, sending $143 million more to New York City’s public schools.

Those measures are part of the state budget, which is seven weeks late. The agreement, reached between Gov. Kathy Hochul and the leaders of the state Senate and Assembly, is expected to win approval from state lawmakers.

Here’s what we know so far about the budget deal.

Extending mayoral control, no strings attached

Mamdani will retain control of New York City’s public schools through June 2028, less than the four-year extension the mayor and Hochul pushed for. The governance system gives the mayor power to pick the majority of the school board, appoint the school system’s leader, and set the policy direction of the district.

The extension did not come with any tweaks to the city’s school board to shift the balance of power away from the mayor — a break from prior budget deals. Previously, state lawmakers added board members who represent parents and limited the mayor’s power to remove his own appointees, among other changes. (The mayor still appoints a majority of the board.)

Extending the status quo is notable because Mamdani campaigned on overhauling mayoral control to give families and educators more power, but he backtracked just before taking office and has since lobbied state lawmakers to keep the system in place.

Mayoral control is often treated as a bargaining chip in negotiations between the mayor and Albany, and the two-year extension means Mamdani will have to persuade state lawmakers to extend his power halfway through his first term. That will give lawmakers an opportunity to examine the mayor’s education agenda, which has yet to come into focus.

“We did not really hear anything on the campaign, and we’re still not hearing anything now” on the mayor’s K-12 education priorities, said NeQuan McLean, the president of the Community Education Council in Brooklyn District 16.

McLean said he hoped for changes to mayoral control, including giving local education councils more of a say in school mergers, closures, and decisions to open new campuses. “This has been one of the most disappointing sessions that I’ve seen,” he said.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the city teachers union and mayoral control critic, hopes the state makes changes to the system in the future.

“Over the next two years, we will continue to work with Mayor Mamdani and the members of the state legislature to try to find ways to bring more parent and educator voices into policy decisions,” he said in a statement.

More money for high-need students

Updates to how the state doles out public school funding will mean more money for districts that enroll children with higher needs. Officials are adding new weights to Foundation Aid, the state’s main school funding formula, that will increase funding based on the number of students who live in temporary housing and are in foster care. It is also boosting an existing weight for English learners.

That is expected to generate the $143 million in additional state funding for New York City public schools, where more than 154,000 children do not have permanent housing and about 1 in 6 are learning English as a new language.

Overall, the state is planning to send New York City nearly $11 billion through the Foundation Aid formula, an increase of 5% or nearly $538 million.

“We appreciate that the education budget includes long overdue updates to the State’s education funding formula, which has remained largely unchanged for almost two decades,” said Maria Odom, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, which pushed for more funding for students with greater needs.

Still, the budget deal does not include another change advocates hoped for: an update in how state officials calculate costs in New York City, which has not been changed in decades. Tweaks in last year’s budget deal resulted in the city’s public schools receiving $314 million less from the state than it might have, though the city still received more funding overall.

Budget deal includes other education measures

State officials will soon start nudging school districts to adopt “best practices” in elementary school math instruction that will be determined by the state’s education commissioner. By September 2027, school districts will have to verify that their approaches to K-5 math instruction meet those practices and are part of an “aligned plan designed to improve student mathematics outcomes.”

New York City’s Education Department is already in the process of revamping middle school math instruction and has standardized its Algebra 1 high school curriculum, but has yet to make significant changes to elementary school math coursework.

State lawmakers also extended the deadline for a state mandate to transition to electric school buses.

Changes to class size law up in the air

State officials have been considering a delay to a major state mandate that requires New York City to cap class sizes to between 20 to 25 students depending on the grade level.

Mamdani has banked on the timeline change to help save hundreds of millions of dollars in the short term as the city faced a multi-billion dollar budget gap. State officials have yet to formally approve any changes to the class size law, which was passed in 2022 and must be fully phased in over the next two years.

“Negotiations continue and may result in legislation in the next couple of weeks,” state Sen. John Liu, an architect of the class size law, said in a Wednesday press release.

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

NYC promises new scorecards and more efficient routes for dysfunctional school bus system

2026-05-18T21:10:54+00:00

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New York City’s sprawling school bus system, notorious for no-show buses and hourslong routes, may soon get a software overhaul that has been in the works for years to make routes more efficient.

“We’re pressure testing it to release this September,” Kevin Moran, the deputy chancellor for school operations, told families of children with disabilities at a town hall meeting last month.

And beginning in June, the city plans to release “vendor scorecards” that rate bus companies on a slew of metrics, including driver safety and staffing levels.

Officials say they are finally following through on promises to modernize the bus system, which includes some 9,000 routes operated by about 52 different companies at a cost of more than $2 billion a year — nearly $13,800 per rider.

Any improvements would help some of the city’s most vulnerable students. Of the 145,000 students reliant on yellow bus service, roughly 43% are children with disabilities. When the system falters, students often miss out on instruction and may become chronically absent.

Even as some families are cautiously optimistic that the new administration is taking school bus problems seriously, they are also wary after years of promises that have yet to fully materialize.

“Do I believe this is moving somewhere different than what we’ve seen before? Yes,” said Christi Angel, president of the parent council for District 75, a network of public schools that serve students with more complex disabilities. On the other hand, she is skeptical changes will happen quickly. They are “a day late, a dollar short,” she said.

City officials are also considering a broader overhaul of school bus contracts, many of which have been in place for 46 years, which could help reshape the system. But rebidding the contracts is a complex process that will likely require approval from lawmakers in Albany.

Vendor scorecards could bring more accountability

The new scorecards will include data on crashes, school bus ages, driver staffing levels, breakdowns, and contract violations, such as drivers not logging onto an app that allows families to track the bus location. They will also have a separate safety score based on GPS data.

The scorecards will “actually hold our vendors accountable,” Moran said.

But the list provided by the Education Department does not mention one important metric: how often the buses drop students off at school on time.

NYCSBUS, a nonprofit school bus operator overseen by the city, publishes on-time performance data on its own website, raising questions about why that information won’t be disclosed for all bus companies.

The city already releases some statistics about school bus delays, but they are self-reported by the companies rather than tracked automatically with GPS systems. As a result, official figures may mask the extent of delays, a Gothamist investigation found.

On-time performance figures drawn from GPS data are in the works, officials said. They did not indicate when that would be available.

Carolyn Daly, a spokesperson for several bus companies, said they welcome the scorecards.

“Our contracts require accountability, and accountability is a good thing,” she said.

Sara Catalinotto, the executive director of the advocacy group Parents for Improving School Transportation, believes families will appreciate the data, but she wondered what happens next. Would the city shift more routes to companies that perform better or take action against others at the bottom?

“What are the consequences?” asked Catalinotto.

There are good reasons to wonder how aggressively the Education Department will act based on the scorecards’ information. An audit last year from former Comptroller Brad Lander found the city does not adequately oversee school bus vendors and has failed to collect tens of millions in possible fines when bus drivers did not log into the system that allows families to track their child’s bus.

“The Department of Education has not proactively or systematically used the data that’s available to hold school bus vendors accountable,” said Brooklyn City Council member Lincoln Restler, who recently introduced legislation to require the city to release more information about school bus service. “That needs to change.”

Education Department spokesperson Onika Richards argued the city has always held its bus vendors accountable, including issuing fines for various violations and issuing “corrective action plans” for companies that don’t measure up. That information, Richards indicated, will be included on the scorecard.

After delays, new routing software could finally be coming

The city currently uses two pieces of software to devise routes, one of which launched in 1994 and has not been supported by regular tech upgrades in more than a decade, the comptroller’s office found.

Now, city officials say they are planning to roll out long-delayed routing software from a company called Via Transportation, which has won about $50 million in contracts with the Education Department in recent years to help modernize the bus system’s technology. Officials said the routes should be shorter and more efficient. The comptroller’s report indicated that it should also be able to adapt in real time to traffic conditions.

Still, the city has promised new routing software through Via for years, only to face repeated delays.

Officials first said it would be implemented in 2021 and later rescheduled it for September 2025 citing the pandemic and other setbacks. Last year, the city put out a request for proposals for new vendors to provide the same technology but wound up sticking with Via.

“Since DOE did not hold Via Transportation accountable for implementing technology it was contracted and paid to do, DOE continues to rely on outdated and inefficient routing technology,” the comptroller found.

A spokesperson for the company did not respond to questions.The Education Department did not comment on why the routing software has not yet been implemented.

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

Advocates call for $3 million fix for school transportation hurdles faced by students in foster care

2026-04-30T19:23:57+00:00

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It took years of advocacy to secure guaranteed school bus service for New York City students in foster care.

But now, advocates say it can take weeks or more to get that bus service up and running, leaving kids who are already among the most vulnerable in the city with few good options to get to school while they wait.

That’s why they’re calling on city officials to invest $3 million in this year’s budget to come up with a better system to transport kids in foster care while they await bus service.

“At this challenging time in their lives, students should be able to rely on continuous, consistent access to school as a critical source of stability,” the nonprofit Advocates for Children, along with 24 other groups who work with foster youth, wrote in a Tuesday letter to Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Students in foster care see some of the worst educational outcomes of any student group, with a graduation rate of just 41% last year, and 55% marked chronically absent.

Students in foster care have a legal right to transportation so that they can remain in their school if they move to another part of the city. But for years, the city Education Department used a combination of school bus service and MetroCards to meet that obligation, spurring protests from foster care agencies who said they couldn’t send students to school alone on public transit. A policy of reimbursing agencies for rideshare services posed a similar problem, since students often need chaperones.

The situation improved in recent years after the Education Department launched a dedicated office to oversee education for foster youth. That office helps ensure students are matched to a bus route as quickly as possible and troubleshoots problems.

Even with those improvements, advocates say it can take “weeks or even months” for bus service to start. In the meantime, students can use a rideshare service and request reimbursement. After 10 days, they become eligible for a rideshare program prepaid by the Education Department.

Both those options still require foster parents to accompany kids to school, “a task that is often impossible for foster parents with jobs or other children in the home who attend schools in different communities,” advocates said.

They’re instead proposing alternatives that would allow kids to get to school safely on their own for free. One idea is using vehicles owned by the Administration for Children’s Services, the city’s child welfare agency. Another is contracting with a car service that vets drivers — like Kid Car, which already operates in New York City, or HopSkipDrive, which works with Los Angeles public schools — so that kids don’t need to be accompanied by a chaperone. The city could also hire aides to travel with students, or launch a new transportation service, advocates suggested.

If all else fails, officials could reimburse travel costs for chaperones (whose expenses aren’t covered currently) and raise the cap on daily reimbursements, the letter suggests.

Education Department spokesperson Dominique Ellison pointed to the new office overseeing education for foster youth, and said the agency is trying to “continuously improve our processes.”

“We thank our advocate partners for their ongoing advocacy and attention to students in foster care and we look forward to reviewing their recommendations,” she added.

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

NYC public school suspensions dropped 8% in the first half of the school year

2026-04-08T12:00:00+00:00

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Suspensions across New York City’s public schools plunged in the first half of this school year, according to new city data released this month.

From July to December 2025, schools handed out nearly 9,200 suspensions, 8% fewer than the same period in 2024. The decline included a nearly 22% drop in long-term superintendent suspensions, which run six days or more and are served at outside suspension sites.

Principal suspensions, which last five days or fewer and are typically completed in school, fell about 5% to nearly 7,600.

Suspensions were already on the decline in the runup to the pandemic and cratered when school buildings shut down. They came roaring back after school buildings reopened, and educators raised fears that student behavior was deteriorating.

But the punishments have since steadily declined over the past two school years, falling below pre-pandemic levels. Schools handed out 27% fewer suspensions in the first half of this school year compared with the same period the year before the pandemic forced buildings to shutter. Enrollment in the city’s K-12 schools has declined about 15% over that period (the data do not include charter schools).

It’s unclear what is driving the significant drop in suspensions even as concerns about student mental health grew in the wake of the pandemic. There have not been any major changes to school discipline policies in recent years under former Mayor Eric Adams, though lengthy suspensions have drawn scrutiny. A Chalkbeat investigation found schools have routinely suspended students with disabilities for longer than legally allowed.

The decline could reflect changes in student behavior and broader social trends. (Violent crimes, including murders, shootings, and robberies, have dropped sharply.) Chronic absenteeism remains elevated, meaning students are in school fewer days on average.

Advocates who represent families in suspension proceedings contend that investments in mental health support and restorative justice, which can include peer mediation and other approaches to resolving conflict, are bearing fruit.

“The efforts to introduce alternatives to suspensions and to use restorative practices to help lift the social-emotional well being in schools — that is taking greater root,” said Nelson Mar, an attorney at Bronx Legal Services. Still, he said “it’s really hard to say” whether there has been more subtle pressure on principals to reduce suspensions. (Multiple school leaders said they were unaware of any new districtwide efforts to clamp down on suspensions.)

Some observers feared that a new ban on cellphones in schools, which took effect last fall, could lead to a spike in disciplinary incidents. It does not appear to have caused an uptick in suspensions, at least for now.

Chyann Tull, an Education Department spokesperson echoed that the decline in suspensions reflect that “schools are increasingly using restorative practices, peer mediation, in-school counseling, and referrals to external mental health providers to respond to student needs, helping keep students engaged in their learning while maintaining safe school communities.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not include funding for some of those initiatives in his preliminary budget. He did not extend $6 million in city funding for restorative justice programs. And his budget does not include $5 million to provide access to mental health clinics and other support at 50 high-need schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn, an initiative known as the Mental Health Continuum. In prior years, advocates and local lawmakers have pushed for those programs to be restored in the final city budget that is due by July 1.

Advocates are watching closely, as Mamdani has said little about how his administration intends to approach school discipline policy.

Under Adams, “they had not emphasized these programs but didn’t go out of their way to cut them,” said Mar. “It may be the same song and dance.”

Advocates have also long raised concerns about stark disparities in suspension rates; Black students and those with disabilities remain disproportionately removed from their classrooms even as suspensions have dropped. The mid-year suspension data does not include demographic breakdowns; those statistics should be available when full-year suspension statistics are published in October.

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

NYC’s homeless students struggle to get to school. Advocates want more funding, coordination.

2026-04-06T10:00:01+00:00

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It’s been six months since Dorainy Santos and her two sons moved from Pennsylvania to a homeless shelter in the Bronx, and her kindergartner still hasn’t started school.

Santos first visited her neighborhood public school, where officials told her they couldn’t accommodate the 5-year-old, who has autism and requires a smaller class. They referred her to the city’s District 75 programs for students with complex disabilities.

Santos then spent months waiting, finally getting a spot after contacting the nonprofit Advocates for Children for help. But the school is 35 minutes away from her shelter, and Santos is now waiting on the school bus service the city promised.

“Because my son isn’t going to school, I can’t start my job search” and begin earning income to rent her own apartment, Santos, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, said in Spanish. “And it has limited my son too … I need a professional who can educate him on an academic level.”

Cases like Santos’ — where children in the city’s overburdened shelter system struggle to enroll in or regularly attend school — remain all too common, advocates say.

Last school year, 63% of the roughly 65,000 students who lived in homeless shelters were marked chronically absent — meaning they missed at least 1 in 10 school days. That’s more than double the rate of students with permanent housing, according to newly released data from Advocates for Children.

Many students in shelters routinely face long commutes, transportation delays, and frequent moves during the school year, pushing them further behind academically, families and advocates say.

In response, some advocates are pushing both the state and city governments to step up funding and coordination of services for homeless students.

At the state level, both the Assembly and Senate included in their budget proposals changes to the state funding formula that would drive additional money to districts with large shares of homeless students. Those proposals would bring anywhere between $93 million and $486 million additional dollars to New York City, where roughly 1 in 7 students was homeless last year, according to estimates. Advocates are pushing Gov Kathy Hochul, who did not include the funding shift in her proposed budget, to adopt it.

In city government, advocates say there’s far too little coordination between the various agencies — including the Education and Social Services departments — that have a role in overseeing homeless students, creating unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles for families.

“Only bold leadership from City Hall can bring the urgency and coordination needed to ensure students who are homeless can get to school every day and access the educational support they need to thrive,” said Jennifer Pringle, director of Advocates for Children’s Learners in Temporary Housing Project.

“Far too often, our students in temporary housing are left behind without the resources and supports they need to succeed,” schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in a statement. “Under this administration, we will work to tackle those longstanding issues head on.”

Samuels said he supports the increase in state aid and that the city has a “robust network of interagency partnerships” to help address chronic absenteeism and educational outcomes for homeless students.

Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, added that the administration is “expanding outreach programs we know work” and improving coordination between the Education Department and other city agencies.

Transportation barriers drive down school attendance

The barriers keeping homeless students from regular school attendance aren’t new. Many families wind up in shelters far from their kids’ schools, forcing them to endure long commutes or transfer schools midway through the year, upending relationships and academic progress. And despite their legal entitlement to school bus transportation, families in shelters often end up waiting weeks or more for yellow bus service to start, advocates say.

Roughly 1 in 5 families in shelters were living in a different borough than their youngest child’s school last year, according to city data. A spokesperson for the Department of Social Services, which oversees family shelters, noted that figure has ticked down in recent years and said the agency reaches out to families with long commutes whenever a shelter placement closer to their school opens up.

Still, roughly 20% of children living in shelters switched schools at least once last year, more than four times the rate of students in permanent housing, according to data from Advocates for Children.

Some of those challenges have compounded in recent years as the city’s shelter system saw an influx of tens of thousands of new migrant families. The city erected dozens of emergency shelters and introduced policies meant to limit families’ shelter stays, which may have increased the churn for families and schools.

Over the past year, as the city’s shelter population has declined, officials have closed some of those emergency shelters.

All of that disruption and dislocation can be detrimental to students’ academic progress, advocates say. Just 33% of homeless students in grades 3-8 scored proficient on state reading tests last year, compared to 60% of students in permanent housing, according to the data.

City officials have made some efforts to boost support for homeless students in recent years, including extending pandemic emergency funding for Education Department staffers who work in shelters and launching a program that pairs homeless students with adult mentors to improve attendance.

But kids like Santos’ continue to slip through the cracks.

She urged the city to focus on hiring staffers with the skills and empathy to quickly help families in shelters with challenges like finding special education spots and arranging bus transportation. That way, she said, kids like her son won’t “fall behind so much waiting at home.”

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

Next phase of NYC reading overhaul? Schools chief wants to help struggling middle, high school students

2026-03-19T18:39:41+00:00

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In recent years, New York City’s public school system has made improving elementary school literacy rates the top priority.

That focus, experts have warned, doesn’t address an equally pressing challenge: Many middle and high school students are far below grade level, and their schools are not always equipped to help them catch up.

Now, Chancellor Kamar Samuels is vowing to shift the Education Department’s agenda. Addressing that gap will be the “next stage” of NYC Reads, the city’s plan to improve reading instruction, Samuels said at a recent literacy conference convened by Columbia University’s Center for Public Research and Leadership.

Middle and high school teachers “love books, they are wonderful at comparing themes, they’re wonderful at getting most of our kids … excited about reading,” Samuels said. “But what they’re not necessarily good at is teaching our kids to read.”

He added: “We have to ensure that when our kids are off track at sixth grade, that there are research-based interventions that can help to get them on track.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Samuels have vowed to continue the previous administration’s focus on literacy, including a requirement that elementary schools remove discredited curriculums from their classrooms and adopt city-approved programs. Samuels has indicated that one of his top priorities will be getting older students who did not receive adequate reading instruction back on track.

The stakes of that effort are high. More than 40% of New York City middle school students were not considered proficient readers on last year’s state tests, and just under half of high school freshmen arrived on campus reading below grade level.

Officials have previously acknowledged the city’s approach to catching up students has been scattershot. For the first time this school year, all campuses — including middle and high schools — are required to use city-approved intervention programs for struggling readers. Officials are also requiring all middle schools transition to city-approved reading and math curriculums by fall 2027. Both of those efforts launched under Mayor Eric Adams.

Literacy experts welcomed Samuels’ focus on older students.

“I appreciate his acknowledgement that middle and high school students and teachers haven’t been a priority in this conversation around the shift to evidence-based instruction,” said Katie Pace Miles, a Brooklyn College professor and literacy expert.

The city should roll out training for middle and high school teachers on the latest evidence about how students learn to read, she said, and consider intensive tutoring programs for students who are behind.

The Education Department plans to share more detailed plans in the coming months, said agency spokesperson Onika Richards. She emphasized that schools are focused on using assessment data to identify students who need more help and ensuring dedicated time in the school day to provide extra help. (Officials did not say whether high schools will be required to use city-approved reading curriculums, as middle and elementary schools have.)

When it comes to supporting older students, making the interventions schools deploy more coherent would be a welcome change, some observers said. Teachers have sometimes relied on elementary school reading materials for those who are behind, which can be embarrassing for middle or high school students, said Evan Stone, the CEO of Educators for Excellence, a teacher advocacy group.

A challenge will be finding time during the school day to offer interventions without pulling students out of their regular English language arts classes.

“You don’t want them to miss the ELA block to get their support because then they never catch up,” Stone said. The materials teachers use for students who are behind should be aligned with their school’s regular reading curriculum, he added.

Stephanie Vazquez, a literacy coach at M.S. 101 in the Bronx, said teacher training will be a crucial element of any effort to improve reading outcomes. Her students arrive with a wide range of reading abilities; some are capable of high school level work while others are far behind.

“As a teacher, you’re trying to figure out, ‘How do I help my student gain access and fully comprehend this text without completely modifying the text?’” Vazquez said, noting the city could create more opportunities for teachers from different schools to share best practices.

Vazquez said teachers in upper grades could also use more exposure to a longstanding body of research on how children learn to read, known as the science of reading.

“Oftentimes, when you’re a teacher in middle and high school, your certification program may not have taught you about the science of reading,” she said. “We don’t always feel well-equipped because we don’t walk in with that foundation.”

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

NYC 2025 graduation rate dips, fueled by declines among students with disabilities and English learners

2026-03-09T19:58:25+00:00

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Graduation rates dipped last year across New York City by just over 2 percentage points to 81.2% — the largest year-over-year decline in more than two decades — as officials have reinstated requirements that were loosened during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the graduation rate across the state fell by just under 1 percentage point to 85.5%.

The drops in students graduating on time were most pronounced for some of the city’s most vulnerable children. Just 59% of students with disabilities graduated in four years, a drop of 5.5 percentage points. Nearly 52% of English language learners graduated in four years, down by about 3 percentage points.

The data, which state officials posted quietly online without the customary public announcement or press briefing, reveals the graduation rates for the Class of 2025. Those students began ninth grade in September 2021, the first time all students were required to attend school in person after the pandemic hit.

“They entered high school in a weird place,” said Sarah Part, a senior policy analyst at Advocates for Children, a group that provides support and legal help to low-income families. “It is possible that some students started ninth grade not as prepared as they otherwise would have been.”

Still, the city and state’s overall graduation rate remains higher than before the pandemic, when about 77% of city students graduated in four years and 83% of students statewide did.

City officials contend that last year’s dip was largely driven by resuming graduation standards that had been relaxed during the pandemic to account for disruptions to instruction. Some students received waivers from Regents exams or were allowed to appeal low scores.

Nearly 14% of city students relied on a Regents exam waiver to graduate in the Class of 2025, down from a whopping 53% in the Class of 2024, city officials said. (Nearly 53% of students successfully appealed low scores, a similar number as the year before.)

It is difficult to determine to what extent the graduation policy changes have affected the graduation rate because some students may have still graduated even without the more lenient standards.

Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who has studied school performance, said it is possible the policy shifts are having a meaningful effect but it’s important to look at longer-term trends. “My perennial claim is don’t make too much of a one-year change,” he said.

Pallas said other factors could be playing a role. Rates of chronic absenteeism remain elevated, for instance, likely affecting students’ academic performance.

Grad rates drop significantly for students with disabilities and English learners

Andrew Wilder, an English as a second language teacher at Brooklyn’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School, said he was unsurprised that graduation rates for English learners dropped after soaring during the pandemic.

“The fact that students did not have to pass the English Regents — that led to a pretty substantial bump in the graduation rate,” he said. “It’s an English language test more than it is a test of a student’s high school ability.”

Even accounting for this year’s decline, however, graduation rates for that group are up about 11 percentage points since the pandemic hit.

Yet, dropout rates for English learners spiked to 18%, up 4 percentage points, city data show.

The city’s overall dropout rate increased slightly to 5.2%.

One group that bucked the trend: The dropout rate for students with disabilities fell slightly, to 6.7%. That could suggest some students who remain in school but didn’t graduate on time will still eventually earn a diploma.

“It’s possible students are just needing a little bit more time in high school,” said Part, from Advocates for Children.

The data reveal continued disparities in graduation rates between different racial groups. Nearly 92% of Asian American students graduated on time along with 87% of white students. About 77% of Black and Latino students graduated in four years. (Every racial group saw a decline.)

Education Department spokesperson Isla Gething wrote in a statement that the city remains “committed to high-quality instruction and strengthening targeted supports so that every student, especially students with disabilities and English language learners, has equitable access to rigorous instruction and clear pathways to graduation.”

Phasing out Regents offers opportunity to rethink graduation standards

The graduation rate fluctuations during and after the pandemic could hold important lessons for policymakers as they rethink what it should take to earn a diploma.

State officials are in the process of phasing out Regents exams — which have been in place since the mid-1800s — as a graduation requirement. Instead, New York students will need to meet a broader set of criteria demonstrating critical thinking, communication, and other skills known as the “portrait of a graduate.” State officials, however, have not unveiled the specific graduation standards students will be required to meet in the coming years.

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, the executive director of EdTrust-New York, said the fluctuations for students with disabilities and English learners should prompt a broader conversation about how state officials can set appropriate standards for different groups.

It’s a “real opportunity to think about these two subgroups particularly, because this data really shows us how much they’re impacted by whatever the graduation measures are,” she said. “Having a disability shouldn’t be a reason that you are not able to graduate from high school.”

Still, she noted that officials must be careful to ensure that graduation standards remain rigorous and signify that students are ready for life after high school, including college or the workforce.

Wilder, the English as a second language teacher, was eager for more details and looks forward to spending less time teaching to the Regents exam. The test, he said, is often too far above his students’ level of English proficiency to be a useful measure of their learning.

“They come to believe that their inability to pass the English Regents is somehow a function of them as a student,” he said.

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

NYC reverses Upper West Side middle school closure after mom’s viral racist remark sparks outcry

2026-03-03T12:56:25+00:00

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New York City education officials have reversed plans to close an Upper West Side middle school after a mom’s racist comment during a public meeting thrust the school into the national spotlight.

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels wrote in a letter to families Monday night that the city will not begin phasing out the Community Action School, known as CAS, as originally planned next school year.

The move comes after a mom’s comment, which was made on a hot mic on Zoom while a Black student was speaking during a public meeting, went viral. “They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” the mom said. Samuels said he and the local superintendent visited the school to meet with students and school leadership and ultimately were persuaded to scrap the plan.

“First, the CAS community is continuing to process and recover from the racist and unacceptable remarks directed toward a CAS student at a [community education council] meeting in February,” Samuels wrote in the letter obtained by Chalkbeat. “And second, members of the school community shared a strong desire for stability as they move forward.”

Samuels, who recently visited the campus and met with students, added: “What the CAS community needs right now is meaningful and comprehensive support — and that would be difficult to provide authentically in the context of a phase-out proposal.”

The decision represents a remarkable about-face. Samuels helped launch the closure plan in his previous role as the superintendent of District 3, a diverse chunk of Manhattan that spans from the Upper West Side to part of Harlem. The controversy represented an early test for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has vowed to listen to feedback from school communities in decisions that affect their schools.

City officials previously argued CAS was too small to sustain, enrolling just over 170 students this year. They also pointed to standardized test scores that are below the city average. Families and educators pushed back against the plans, noting the school added about 40 students this year and predominantly serves Black and Latino children from low-income families. Some parents said the school is an unusually supportive environment with strong social emotional programming.

But the closure proposal earned more intense scrutiny after a Feb. 10 public meeting in which Allyson Friedman, a mom from The Center School, a more affluent and majority-white school, was caught on a hot mic apparently insulting the intelligence of a Black student from CAS. (Friedman — whose school is part of a separate relocation plan — participated in the meeting on Zoom while the student was in person; multiple people in attendance said the student likely did not immediately hear the comment.)

After making the comment about “dumb” students, Friedman then appeared to misattribute and misquote Black historian Carter G. Woodson. “Apparently Martin Luther King said it: If you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back. You don’t have to tell them anymore,” Friedman said.

The District 3 interim acting superintendent had quoted from Woodson earlier in the meeting in his remarks on Black History Month.

In the 1933 book, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” Woodson described how racism in schools can perpetuate inequities. “If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door,” Woodson wrote.

A recording of Friedman’s comments captured international headlines and drew rebukes from Mamdani and Black parent leaders and elected officials. In the aftermath, Hunter College placed Friedman on leave.

In an earlier email to Chalkbeat, Friedman wrote that she inadvertently unmuted herself during the meeting. “As a parent, I was trying to explain the concept of systemic racism by referencing a historical example,” she said. “My remarks were not directed at the student speaker, and they do not reflect my beliefs or values.”

Samuels previously announced that the Education Department would take action in response to the incident, offering support to the CAS community, expanding access across the system to the city’s Black Studies curriculum, launching training for families focused on combating prejudice, and devising a citywide plan to combat anti-Black racism.

The chancellor’s letter to families did not indicate whether two other middle school closure proposals under consideration in District 3 will move forward. One of those schools, the Manhattan School for Children, shares a building with CAS.

The other proposal would close the middle school program at P.S./I.S. 191, which is majority Black and Latino. Meanwhile, The Center School, where Friedman’s child attends, would move into the P.S./I.S. 191 building.

Families at both campuses have raised concerns about the proposal. The parent association at The Center School previously distanced themselves from Friedman’s comments.

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

NYC mom’s racist remark spurs schools chief’s push to expand Black Studies, parent training

2026-02-26T20:14:03+00:00

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Amid uproar over a Manhattan mom’s racist comments during a community meeting, New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels vowed to roll out new parent training and grow the number of schools that use the city’s Black Studies curriculum.

“We need to equip our staff to have courageous conversations focused on shifting attitudes and interrupting prejudice, addressing controversial issues, and coalition-building,” Samuels said during Wednesday night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting.

He promised to launch training next month to provide “our parents with the tools to combat racism” and said the city’s Black Studies curriculum “should be expanded throughout the city in more districts and schools.”

Samuels also said the Education Department is working on a “broader, system-wide plan because we know that this is not an issue that is localized in District 3,” referring to the commenter’s district, a diverse swath of Manhattan that spans from the Upper West Side to part of Harlem.

Samuels’ comments come in response to a District 3 education council meeting earlier this month. On a hot mic, a mom appeared to insult the intelligence of a Black student who was testifying against a plan to close the child’s school, which mostly serves Black and Latino students, before going on to comment about Black people’s place in society.

The schools chief said the episode “has exposed what many in the Black community believe to be ever-present and simmering anti-Blackness in our city.” Samuels’ promises came one day after Black parent leaders and elected officials urged the city to take more decisive action in response to the incident, which has drawn national and international headlines.

The parent’s offensive remarks came during a Feb. 10 District 3 Community Education Council meeting that included discussion of city proposals to close three of the area’s middle school programs. At the hybrid meeting, with people speaking in person and virtually, a Black student at the Community Action School was testifying in person against the plan to close the school when Allyson Friedman, a parent at another local public school, could be heard on a hot mic on Zoom.

“They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” said Friedman, a professor at Hunter College.

She then appeared to misattribute and misquote Black historian Carter G. Woodson. “Apparently Martin Luther King said it: If you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back. You don’t have to tell them anymore,” Friedman said. (The District 3 interim acting superintendent had quoted from Woodson earlier in the meeting in his remarks on Black History Month.)

Friedman has since been placed on leave from Hunter College, the Daily News reported.

Friedman previously said in an email that she inadvertently unmuted herself on Zoom and did not intend to share her comments publicly. “As a parent, I was trying to explain the concept of systemic racism by referencing a historical example,” she wrote. “My remarks were not directed at the student speaker, and they do not reflect my beliefs or values. Regardless of context, my words were wrong and caused real harm.”

Parent leaders push for more sweeping changes

Education Department officials did not indicate whether schools would be required to use the Black Studies curriculum, which is currently optional. The federal government has taken a hostile stance toward diversity, equity, and inclusion programming and has investigated some school districts for policies that are specifically geared toward Black students.

Nicole Brownstein, an Education Department spokesperson, said the city does not track how many schools use the Black Studies curriculum, but said it is available to all schools. She said more details about the city’s plans would be released soon.

Multiple parent leaders told Chalkbeat that they were glad that Samuels delivered a more forceful statement on Wednesday that specifically called out anti-Blackness, compared with his initial response on social media days earlier.

“I was very elated with the chancellor’s remark last night,” said NeQuan McLean, the president of the local parent council in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “He understands this work.”

McLean noted that Samuels is Black and worked on integration efforts during his previous roles as superintendent in Brooklyn’s District 13 and Manhattan’s District 3. City officials emphasized that Samuels worked to scale up the Black Studies curriculum in District 3, where it is taught in dozens of classrooms.

But McLean and other parent leaders also want the city to go further to equip schools with resources and give community education councils tools for handling racist comments.

Tanesha Grant, the executive director of Parents Supporting Parents NY, which organized a press conference earlier this week calling for broader changes, said the city should require schools to use the Black Studies curriculum. She said she has raised concerns that the city’s most popular elementary school reading curriculum is not culturally responsive.

“We need something in place that says that it is mandatory for every public school to offer Black Studies,” Grant said.

Grant said it was frustrating that Samuels’ more forceful response came after parents began pressuring the city. (Samuels said he regretted not speaking out sooner.)

“If it hadn’t been for the parents getting together and organizing,” Grant said, “I don’t think his response [on Wednesday evening] would have been like that.”

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

Racist comment at NYC parent meeting ignites fury as Black leaders call for accountability

2026-02-25T01:13:38+00:00

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After an Upper West Side parent’s racist comments were caught on a hot mic at a public meeting, Black parent leaders and elected officials say they want to see accountability for her actions and a broader reckoning from the nation’s largest school system.

A student from the Community Action School was testifying in person against a plan to close the middle school at a Feb. 10 local education council meeting when Allyson Friedman, a parent at another local public school, began speaking on Zoom.

“They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” said Friedman, who is a professor at Hunter College.

District 3 Interim Acting Superintendent Reginald Higgins cited Woodson earlier in the meeting as part of his reflections on Black History Month. In the 1933 book, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” Woodson described how racism in schools can perpetuate inequities. “If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door,” Woodson wrote.

Friedman’s comments exploded into public view after a recording was posted online and drew rebukes from an array of elected officials and parent leaders. Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday called the remarks “reprehensible” and “indicative of the exact kind of language that makes students feel as if they don’t belong in our public school system.” A City Hall spokesperson said officials are discussing the incident with CUNY, which oversees Hunter College.

Several Black parent leaders held a press conference Tuesday to condemn Friedman and call on education officials to take action to address inequities in the system. They urged the city’s Education Department to better promote its Black Studies curriculum, deploy the materials more widely, and offer more support for parent leaders grappling with anti-Black racism.

“We are still fighting to be seen as human,” said Tanesha Grant, the executive director of Parents Supporting Parents NY, which organized the press conference. “Our children are still fighting to be seen as human and we will not allow or tolerate anti-Blackness in our school communities.”

Several parents and elected officials said Friedman, a professor in the biological sciences department at Hunter College, should be fired. A Hunter spokesperson said the school is reviewing whether Friedman’s comments violate their policies.

Friedman said in an email that she inadvertently unmuted herself on Zoom and did not intend to share her comments publicly. “As a parent, I was trying to explain the concept of systemic racism by referencing a historical example,” she wrote. “My remarks were not directed at the student speaker, and they do not reflect my beliefs or values. Regardless of context, my words were wrong and caused real harm.”

Comments come at a tricky time for new chancellor

The episode comes at a delicate moment for schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, who was most recently superintendent of District 3. He built a reputation for listening to parent feedback and for his focus on integrating schools in one of the nation’s most segregated systems.

Samuels helped launch the process of closing three middle school programs in the district, including Community Action School, partly due to anemic enrollment. District officials are considering moving The Center School, where Friedman is a parent, to a new building more than a mile away.

The Center School, which is majority white, would share a building with P.S. 191, which is largely Black and Latino and would lose its middle school grades. Separately, the Community Action School, which predominantly enrolls students of color from low-income families, would be closed entirely.

Those proposals have all generated considerable pushback, and Friedman’s comments reopened longstanding questions about equity and access in a stratified school district.

Parent leaders at the Center School distanced themselves from the incident. “We want to be absolutely clear: this parent’s statement does not represent the values of the Center School community,” the school’s PTA wrote in a statement posted to its website. “Yet their words remind us that racism is not distant – it exists in our broader community, and it is our collective responsibility to confront it.”

For his part, Samuels vowed to support students who were affected. “I know that district quite intimately, and we will be really leaning in and working with the school communities to make sure that we repair any harm that was done to our students,” Samuels told reporters Tuesday.

Education Department spokesperson Dominique Ellison did not elaborate on what actions the city plans to take but noted that Friedman is not a department employee or parent council member.

Community Action School parent Nicki Holtzman said the school has done an “incredible job” responding to the incident. “To my understanding, the kids were not told, and they’ve been protected,” she said. (The student who Friedman interrupted may not have heard the comment because they were testifying in person and Friedman was on Zoom.) Still, Holtzman worries the episode will distract from the school community’s push to keep its doors open.

Several parent leaders indicated Tuesday that their frustration is much broader than Friedman’s comments. They pointed to repeated instances of systemic racism and anti-Black attitudes, including from other parent leaders.

“I’ve watched people employ every archaic, toxic, stereotypical red herring they can to try to slow us down and to try to justify why it is okay to underserve a Black child,” said Erika Kendall, the Community Education Council president in Brooklyn’s District 17. “But also why it is okay to ignore and dismiss the concerns of a Black parent.”

NeQuan McLean, the president of the Community Education Council in Bedford-Stuyvesant, proposed one idea for giving parent leaders considerably more power. He said local councils should have the power to sign off on mergers and closures, which usually affect schools that are struggling with enrollment and tend to have a higher proportion of Black and Latino children.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani vowed to end mayoral control of schools — which gives City Hall much of the power over those decisions — but later backtracked.

The councils “are community school boards that have been stripped of their power, and we need that power back,” McLean said.

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

Judge rejects bid to raise burden of proof in NYC school suspension hearings

2026-02-03T19:01:34+00:00

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A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit this week that sought to force New York City to use a higher standard of proof before issuing longer-term suspensions.

When students are removed from school for more than five days, families have the right to a hearing where a hearing officer weighs the evidence and makes a discipline recommendation.

In a lawsuit filed in May, Legal Services NYC argued that the standard of proof at those hearings — “substantial and competent” evidence — requires less than a 50% chance a student did what they were accused of and violates their due process rights. The suit pushed for a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, which would require slightly more than 50% certainty.

In his decision dismissing the lawsuit on Monday, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken wrote that the “substantial and competent” evidence standard is constitutionally sufficient. He noted that the lawsuit cites no cases in which a court required the higher standard for student suspensions and contended that the current system already has some safeguards, such as giving families the chance to present evidence and cross-examine witnesses during suspension hearings.

He also raised concerns that the higher standard would “burden the school discipline process with stricter procedures and a more onerous standard of proof.”

Advocates have long raised concerns that schools can suspend students based on flimsy evidence. They also note that Black students and those with disabilities are disproportionately removed from their classrooms.

In response to the ruling, Legal Services NYC attorney Michaela Shuchman said that suspensions can knock students off track and deprive them of school meals, health services provided on many campuses, and special education support. The organization provides free legal help for families going through suspension proceedings.

“We are disappointed by this decision,” Shuchman wrote. “The least New York City can do is ensure that students have constitutionally adequate protections before facing these harms.” She said the organization is considering whether to appeal.

A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department said it is reviewing the decision and declined further comment.

Oetken noted that students who are removed from school for more than five days still have the right to instruction, and that the students involved in the lawsuit all faced suspensions of 17 days or fewer.

“Some experts legitimately point to the serious negative effects of suspensions, while others argue that ‘zero tolerance’ policies are necessary to maintain discipline in schools,” Oetken wrote. “But the Due Process Clause is a blunt instrument, not well suited to such difficult policy choices.”

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

Trump administration launches investigation into NYC schools over trans sports policies

2026-01-14T22:14:29+00:00

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Federal officials launched an investigation Wednesday into New York City’s Education Department, targeting a policy that allows transgender students to play on sports teams in line with their gender identity.

The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights contends that the city’s rules violate Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at educational entities that receive federal funding.

The Trump administration launched investigations into 18 educational institutions on Wednesday that all have similar policies on trangender students’ participation in sports, including 14 school districts, three colleges, and Hawaii’s state education department.

“Time and again, the Trump Administration has made its position clear: violations of women’s rights, dignity, and fairness are unacceptable,” Kimberly Richey, assistant secretary for civil rights, wrote in a statement.

Federal officials did not respond to a question about whether their investigation was motivated by any specific examples of how New York City’s policy is being applied. A spokesperson said the investigation is in response to city policies that allow transgender girls to play on girls’ sports teams. They are also investigating transgender students’ access to other facilities.

The city’s Education Department did not immediately return a request for comment.

This is not the first time the Trump administration has invoked its contested interpretation of federal civil rights laws to target the nation’s largest school system.

Last year, federal officials announced plans to withhold tens of millions in grant funding for several New York City magnet school programs because of city policies allowing transgender students to play on sports teams and use bathrooms in accordance with their gender identity. Former Mayor Eric Adams indicated he was open to changing the policies, though he had little power to do so and the city ultimately sued to block the cuts. That case has not been resolved.

The Trump administration announced the investigations the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two lawsuits seeking to overturn state-level bans on transgender athletes participating in girls’ sports. The court’s conservative majority is expected to uphold those bans — but not to rule on whether allowing such participation violates Title IX.

National editor Erica Meltzer contributed.

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

NYC students in juvenile detention often denied the education support they need, report finds

2025-11-17T11:00:01+00:00

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New York City students in juvenile detention often show up with deep learning challenges and frequently don’t get the support they need to catch up, according to a new analysis of city data.

Court-involved youth held in juvenile detention facilities and group homes managed by the Administration for Children’s Services, the city’s child welfare agency, are entitled to schooling through an Education Department program called Passages Academy.

Those programs tend to receive little public scrutiny, though they serve some of the city’s most vulnerable students. In 2023, City Council passed a law requiring officials to release a trove of data about the program. A report released Monday by Advocates for Children, a group that helps families navigate the school system, includes the first detailed analysis.

“Too often these young people continue to struggle to access the educational services and supports that could help them succeed, both while in detention or placement and after returning home,” the report says.

Here are five takeaways from the report:

Black boys are overrepresented, and so are students with emotional disabilities

Over the past two school years, 1,850 students enrolled in Passages Academy. More than 60% were Black, more than 92% were boys, and virtually all were from low-income families, according to an enrollment snapshots from October 2023 and 2024. (About a quarter of all children in middle and high school are Black and 78% come from low-income families.)

Nearly half of all students in Passages had a disability, more than twice the rate across the school system.

Students in juvenile detention were also far more likely to be classified with an emotional disability: 18% of students enrolled at Passages received that classification compared with just 1% for students in middle and high schools across the system, according to the report.

Students arrive with significant learning challenges

When students arrive in juvenile detention, they are often far behind their peers in reading and math. On average, students at Passages who were assessed in reading scored in the 10th percentile in 2023-24 and the 18th percentile the following school year. Math scores were similarly low.

Education Department officials said they’ve expanded efforts to identify students with reading challenges, such as dyslexia. Teachers across the program are receiving additional training to catch students up.

They don’t always get the extra help they’re entitled to

Students with disabilities are entitled to new learning plans that spell out what services they will receive while within 30 days of arriving at a Passages program. But officials failed to provide the plans on time for nearly 17% of eligible students, according to figures for the last two school years.

The Education Department did not provide statistics on what percentage of required special education services were actually delivered, even though that data was required to be released under the City Council law. Officials said it is difficult to collect those figures because students move in and out of the program frequently.

English learners, a group that represents about 12% of Passages students, also struggled to access the support they need. Nearly a quarter of those students received no English as a new language instruction while they were in custody during the past two years, the report found.

The report suggests that some students in secure detention facilities are not always given access to instruction. In 2023, Gothamist reported that some classrooms were sometimes used as cells or for sleeping accommodations.

“If they’re not actually getting to Passages then they’re not getting an education — period,” said Rohini Singh, director of the school justice project at Advocates for Children and a co-author of the report.

Education Department officials acknowledged there are gaps in services and said they are launching afterschool and Saturday programs that include speech therapy and small-group reading instruction at two Passages sites beginning next month.

“We appreciate the advocacy from our partners with Advocates for Children, and we take these concerns extremely seriously,” Education Department spokesperson Onika Richards wrote in an email.

A spokesperson for the Administration for Children’s Services said the agency helps coordinate tutoring. They also help students earn high school equivalency diplomas or complete college coursework, as some people in secure detention are 18 or over and not legally required to attend school.

Once released, students often struggle to reconnect with school

The report details multiple examples of families receiving little or inadequate support enrolling in school once their child was released from detention.

After one 14-year-old student was discharged, his mother visited a nearby school in the Bronx to enroll him. But because her son was not physically with her, the school refused. The teen was not allowed to leave their home at the time under the terms of his release.

“The failure to connect [the student] and his mother with any resources that could assist with the transition back to school upon his release placed them in an impossible situation,” according to the report.

Even when students do enroll in traditional schools once they’re released, their attendance rates are often abysmal. More than half of students discharged over the last two years were absent on at least half of all school days in the two months after they returned to a traditional school. (Those figures only include students who transitioned to city public schools and stayed for at least 10 days.)

Richards said the Education Department is working “to ensure court-involved youth receive the comprehensive transition support they deserve.”

Beefing up support could help make a dent, advocates say

Advocates urged the Education Department to take several steps to prevent students from getting tangled up in the court system in the first place, including expanded mental health and special education support.

And they called on the city to beef up transition services to help families enroll in schools once their children are released from detention. Singh noted that many students might be good candidates for transfer schools, which generally enroll students who are older and behind in credits, though it can be challenging for families to navigate that enrollment process.

More broadly, she said the city must expand access to services for students while they are enrolled at Passages, especially among students with disabilities.

“Our hope,” Singh added, “is the administration will take a closer look at these students and make sure they receive interventions while they’re in custody.”

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

Advocates call for pause on NYC class size mandate to give Mamdani time to address equity concerns

2025-11-13T19:00:12+00:00

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Just two days before the deadline, a group of education advocates on Thursday urged city officials to request a pause to state law that requires New York City to sharply reduce class sizes.

They contend a pause could allow incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani to address a central inequity: The city’s highest-need schools stand to benefit the least from mandatory class size caps.

All of the city’s public schools must cap class sizes at 20-25 students, depending on grade level, by 2028. City officials expected 60% of classrooms across the city would meet the caps this year, as required by law, largely by hiring more teachers.

Next year’s 80% benchmark will be a much bigger challenge. Many campuses don’t have space for smaller classes without capping enrollment, a nonstarter with many families. And building new classrooms is expensive and time-consuming. The city is allowed to request school-level exemptions to the law, though they must be approved by union officials.

A provision of the law gives city officials an opportunity to “recommend a pause of the class size reduction plan” — a request that must be made as part of a financial impact statement due Nov. 15. State officials can withhold funding if the city Education Department fails to comply with the law.

“The bottom line is that this well-intentioned mandate will transfer resources — money, teachers, and buildings — from the schools that need them the most to the schools that need them the least,” said Richard Buery, the CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation and a former deputy under Mayor Bill de Blasio. He was joined at a Thursday press conference by advocates from EdTrust-New York and Educators for Excellence.

Buery said it is the “wrong time” to focus on system-wide class size reductions given threats from the Trump administration to slash federal funding and as city officials are receiving less money from the state than expected.

Others stressed that a pause would allow Mamdani to negotiate a plan with the state legislature to implement the law more equitably. It would not prevent him from continuing to lower class sizes, they added.

“He could also make the decision to use some of this money to reduce class size in a few communities or a few grade levels, and use other resources to support his other ambitious goals around early childhood,” said Evan Stone, CEO of Educators for Excellence, a teacher advocacy group.

It’s unclear whether Mamdani would support such a move, and a spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The mayor-elect has repeatedly said he supports the class size law and campaigned on a plan to ramp up teacher hiring to comply with it.

Tension over benefits and tradeoffs of class size law

Smaller classes are popular among many educators and families. The city’s teachers union, which endorsed Mamdani, lobbied fiercely for the law, arguing small classes are essential to learning and can help attract educators to the profession. Studies suggest that students learn more in small classes and that those from low-income families tend to benefit the most.

But in practice, the class size mandate has significant tradeoffs. Because the city’s highest-poverty schools generally have smaller classes, they are least likely to benefit from the new cap, a Chalkbeat analysis found. That will require the city to spend resources on campuses that are relatively more affluent and may divert funding that school leaders could have used for other programs.

Union officials counter that the majority of students who will experience smaller classes come from low-income families, as they are the vast majority of students in city schools. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew criticized the push to delay implementing the law.

“They claim to work on behalf of students and families in poverty, yet they seek to derail an initiative that prioritizes high-need schools,” Mulgrew said in a statement. “There is no reason to pause. This initiative is working.”

Even as union officials noted the city is required to prioritize high-need schools first, the law mandates that the class size caps apply to all schools by 2028 regardless of student poverty levels.

Advocates also warned that the teacher hiring spree could exacerbate turnover at higher-poverty schools. A chunk of the new educators required to staff smaller classes are likely to be drawn from needy schools, an analysis from the Urban Institute think tank found. Better-off schools will have to ramp up hiring and often are perceived as more desirable teaching assignments.

City mum on whether to request a pause

The city’s Education Department declined to say whether it will ask for a pause as part of a broader class size financial impact statement due Saturday. A spokesperson said only they will have more to share soon.

As part of the report, city officials are expected to reveal what percentage of classes are in compliance with the law. Last school year, nearly 47% of classes complied with the new caps, above the 40% required.

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has previously criticized the class size law, arguing that state officials did not commit to sending the city funding to cover it. The annual cost of hiring more than 10,000 new teachers that are expected to staff smaller classes is between $1.3 billion and $1.9 billion, according to the Education Department and Independent Budget Office (not including additional school construction costs which could cost tens of billions more in the long run).

After failing to block the law, Adams has vowed to comply with it.

If the Education Department does request a pause, advocates said it will fall to state education Commissioner Betty Rosa to sign off. (A spokesperson for Rosa did not confirm that power will fall to her and the law does not explicitly say.) Rosa has previously expressed her own concerns about the class size law, noting it will not benefit all schools equally.

“You’re gonna have to take it from Peter to give it to Paul,” she previously said.

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

NYC school suspensions fall to lowest level since the pandemic, but stark disparities remain

2025-11-11T20:38:45+00:00

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New York City schools handed out fewer suspensions last year, the lowest rate since the pandemic forced school buildings to shutter, according to new Education Department statistics.

Overall, schools issued 27,143 suspensions during the 2024-25 school year, down 2.1% from the year before.

The decline was driven by a big drop in superintendent suspensions, which run six days or more and are served at outside suspension sites. Students received those lengthier punishments nearly 5,600 times last school year, down from about 6,200 the year before — a 10% decline.

Principal suspensions, which last for five days or fewer and are typically served in school, were issued more than 21,500 times, only slightly higher than the year before. (The figures do not include charter schools.)

Lengthy suspensions have recently drawn increased scrutiny. Legal Services NYC, a public interest group, filed a lawsuit in May alleging the city uses an inappropriately low standard of proof in suspension hearings, violating the U.S. Constitution. (City officials have moved to dismiss the case.) Schools have also routinely suspended students with disabilities for longer than legally allowed by federal law, a Chalkbeat investigation found.

It’s unclear what drove the decrease in lengthy punishments last school year. Schools typically must get approval from a central office administrator to issue a superintendent suspension.

“There haven’t been any clear policy changes,” said Rohini Singh, the director of the school justice project at Advocates for Children, which helps families to navigate the suspension process. “Certainly, we’re happy to see that the overall number of suspensions is decreasing.”

Still, Singh noted that troubling disparities persist.

About 39% of all suspensions were issued to Black students and a similar share went to students with disabilities, even as only 19% of the city’s public school students are Black and 22% have a disability. Latino students, who represent 42% of the student body, were suspended roughly in line with their share of the population. White and Asian American students were far less likely to be suspended compared to their share of the population.

Children living in foster care were at least four times as likely to be suspended as their peers, an uptick from last year, according to an analysis from the group Advocates for Children, which has pushed for reforms to school discipline policies.

An Education Department spokesperson celebrated the decline, though did not directly address the disparities.

“We are proud that over the past year, we have decreased overall suspensions,” department spokesperson Jenna Lyle wrote in an email. “We are continuously working towards encouraging schools to address any issues in a positive, supportive, and less punitive manner where possible.”

Many — though not all — studies suggest that suspensions hurt the suspended students academically. One study based on New York City found that removing students from their classrooms contributed to students passing fewer classes and increased their risk of dropping out.

After the pandemic, some observers feared suspensions might spike as concerns about student mental health and behavior grew. Others worried that Mayor Eric Adams’ tough-on-crime posture toward public safety could ripple into schools, though there have not been any major policy changes to the city’s discipline code under his watch.

His predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, overhauled the code to reduce suspensions for minor infractions and cap most suspensions at 20 days. (Suspensions can still run for months or even an entire school year in some cases.)

Groups that oppose suspensions have successfully pushed the city in recent years to invest in alternatives such as restorative justice, which can include peer mediation and other methods of talking through conflicts. Some educators have countered that suspensions are an important tool for maintaining a safe learning environment and the city has not done enough to support alternative approaches.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has said little about how he would approach school discipline, though his campaign platform emphasized mental health support for students. Some advocates called on the incoming administration to boost funding for those programs and ensure long-term support for other mental health initiatives that have had to fight to maintain funding each year.

“We’re encouraged by a lot of what we’ve heard, but it still remains to be seen what’s going to happen,” Singh said.

Ananya Chetia contributed data analysis.

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

Where to find free food in NYC and Newark as the future of SNAP remains in limbo

2025-10-31T17:13:23+00:00

Two federal judges ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration will be required to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program through the government shutdown.

The rulings came before Nov. 1, the day SNAP benefits were to be delayed for the first time in the program’s 60-year-history.

More than 42 million people relied on SNAP benefits January through August during fiscal year 2025, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture.

Prior to Friday’s rulings, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city is adding $15 million in emergency funding to the Community Food Connection Program to help the roughly 1.8 million NYC residents who will be losing SNAP benefits as a result of a government shutdown. This came after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul committed $30 million in state funds earlier this week to cover about 16 million meals at food pantries.

New York City schools were also scrambling to help families who were at risk of losing federal food stamps.

Meanwhile, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced Thursday that the state would be expediting $42.5 million in grants to support local food banks across the state in anticipation of the Trump administration’s failure to fund SNAP. But the administration has yet to comment on Friday’s rulings and the future of SNAP.

The loss of the food safety net benefits could affect more than 800,000 people in New Jersey, almost half of whom are children, according to a statement from Murphy’s office.

Below is a list of food pantries and other places offering free food and meals to students and families in New York City and Newark, New Jersey. Each location also has a phone number listed if you would like to contact them about donations or volunteering.

Where to get free food in NYC

Ascension Outreach, Inc.

12 W. 11th St.

New York, NY 10011

212-254-8620

Open the first and third Saturdays of the month 8:30 a.m.-9 a.m.

The first time you come there will be a registration process to sign up to receive food.

African Services Committee

429 W. 127th St.

New York, NY 10027

212-222-3882

Monday–Thursday

10 a.m–4 p.m.

All first-time visitors must have a referral from a social services agency, community center, or church.

Another Choice Youth and Family Outreach, Inc

1765 Madison Ave.

New York, NY 10029

212-369-6643

Fridays

10 a.m.–11 a.m.

Antioch Outreach Ministries

41 W. 124th St.

New York, NY 10027

917-974-8261

Saturdays

7:30 a.m.–11 a.m.

Lines can be long so it is recommended that people show up as early as they can.

Beth Hark Christian Counseling Center

26 E. 120th St.

New York, NY 10035

212-860-6765

The food pantry program is operated using a cellphone app called Plentiful. In the app, people can check for service times, reserve their spot in line, and receive updates. For information on how to download the app to your cellphone, email info@plentifulapp.com or visit their website.

Stacey’s Pantry at Bethany Lutheran Church/St. Jacobus

4808 91st Place

Elmhurst, NY 11373

917-533-1679

Saturdays

8 a.m.–10 a.m.

Broadway Community

601 W. 114th St.

New York, NY 10025

212-864-6100 ext. 120

Thursdays (by appointment only)

2 p.m.–4 p.m.

The food pantry operates on a first-come, first-served basis. Visit their website for instructions on how to schedule an appointment, which is required to receive food.

Catholic Charities - Central Harlem - Kennedy Center

34 W. 134th St., 1st Floor

New York, NY 10037

212-862-4601

Wednesdays

10 a.m.–1 p.m.

Saturdays

10 a.m.-noon

Community League of the Heights

508 W.159th St.

New York, NY 10032

212-795-4779

Registration to receive food from the pantry takes place on Tuesdays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. People must provide a valid New York state picture ID and proof of address. Registration is done in-person at 511 West 157th St.

Crossroads Community Services

325 Park Ave.

New York, NY 10022

212-378-0229

Food pantry

Thursdays (by appointment)

9:30 a.m.–12:45 p.m.

To make an appointment, please call 212-378-0234 or email Crossroads Community Services at pantry@crossroadsnyc.org. They are also on the Plentiful app. People should bring current identification and proof of address for all household members on the first day.

To-go meals

Meals are served at 108 E. 51st St. between Park and Lexington Avenues on a carry-out basis.

Breakfast

Sunday, Monday, Wednesday

7:45 a.m.–8:45 a.m.

Brunch

Saturdays

10 a.m.–11 a.m.

Dinner

Daily

5:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m.

Cabrini Immigrant Services

630 Isham St.

New York, NY 10034

212-791-4590

Saturdays

7 a.m.–9 a.m.

People are registered as members on their first visit. Registration happens during pantry hours.

Chambers Memorial Baptist Church

219 E. 123rd St.

New York, NY 10035

347-600-9820

Wednesdays

10 a.m.

Registration for the food pantry is from noon to 1 p.m. on Tuesdays. People need to bring valid identification.

Christ and St. Stephen’s Church/Brown Bag Program

120 W. 69th St.

New York, NY 10023

212-787-2755 ext. 5

Monday–Friday

9:30 a.m.–10:30 a.m.

The grab-and-go lunch program requires no documentation.

Fraternite Notre Dame Food Pantry

2290 First Ave.

New York, NY 10035

212-876-5855

Fridays

2 p.m.–4 p.m.

A referral is not required.

Community Impact at Columbia University/Ford Hall Food Pantry

616 W. 114th St. (between Broadway and Riverside Drive)

New York, NY 10025

212-854-6310

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday

11 a.m.–2 p.m.

The food pantry is closed on major holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

BOOM! Health

Monday-Friday

Various locations and times can be found here

718-295-5605

To learn more or enroll in a program, call their central office at the phone number listed above or email them at info@boomhealth.org.

Bronx Bethany Community Corporation

964 E. 227th St.

Bronx, NY 10466

718-231-5276

Wednesdays

9 a.m.–11 a.m.

Thursdays

3 p.m.–6 p.m.

Everyone is allowed two visits per month. They will be closed the following dates in 2025: November 26, 27, December 24, 25, and 31. This organization also uses the Plentiful app for updates.

BronxWorks/Carolyn McLaughlin Community Center

1130 Grand Concourse

Bronx, NY 10456

646-596-1316

Saturdays

9 a.m.–3 p.m.

Appointments are given in 20-minute intervals and only 180 appointments are given weekly. To schedule an appointment, people can call the phone number listed from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every Wednesday. Distribution is subject to change.

BronxWorks/Twin Parks West

355 E. 183rd St.

Bronx, NY 10458

347-862-9538

Every second and fourth Thursday

10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Anyone interested in using the pantry must call the listed phone number and speak to assistant program director Dominique Jackson to schedule an appointment. While appointments are preferred, they do accept walk-ins. Distribution takes place inside the Twin Parks West Community Center, which is located behind 365 Ford St.

Trinity Commons/Trinity Church

89 Broadway

New York, NY 10006

917-594-6300

Grab-and-go meals are served in front of the church on the following days and times.

Breakfast

Monday–Friday

9 a.m.–10 a.m.

Lunch

Daily

Noon–1 p.m.

Dinner

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday

4:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m.

Groceries

Trinity Commons (enter at 109 Greenwich St.)

Tuesdays

9 a.m.–11:30 a.m.

Thursdays

9:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

People can schedule their grocery visit using the Plentiful app. Walk-ins are welcome while supplies last.

Can’t find what you need on this list? Visit the Food Pantries Food Connect Map, the Food Bank for NYC’s map, the city’s Food Help map or this list of food pantries and community kitchens to find free food and meals near you in New York City and the surrounding areas.

Where to get free food in Newark, New Jersey

Salvation Army/Ironbound

11 Providence St.

Newark, NJ 07105

973-344-2698

Food pantry

Tuesday and Thursday

9 a.m.–2 p.m.

Office hours/emergency food assistance

Monday and Wednesday

9 a.m.–2 p.m.

MEND Network Food Pantries

Please call these food pantries in advance to ensure the location is open.

The Apostles’ House

24 Grant St.

Newark, NJ 07104

973-482-0625

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

10 a.m.–3 p.m.

Blessed Sacrament Church

19 Van Ness Place

Newark, NJ 07108

973-824-6549

Every third and fourth Wednesday

11 a.m.–1 p.m.

Every third and fourth Saturday

8 a.m.–10 a.m.

Elizabeth Ave. Presbyterian Church

761 Elizabeth Ave.

Newark, NJ 07112

973-923-5655

Every second and fourth Thursday

10 a.m.–noon

First Hopewell Baptist Church

525 Orange St.

Newark, NJ 07107

973-485-1165

Every second, third, and fourth Wednesday

8 a.m.–11:30 a.m.

Please register for the food pantry by 11:20 a.m.

Franciscan Charities’ soup kitchen

242 South 8th St.

Newark, NJ 07103

908-403-6252

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday

11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Newark

298 South Orange Ave.

Newark, NJ 07103

973-624-3330 ext. 103

Wednesday

10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

Pierre Toussaint food pantry/St. Mary’s Church

528 Dr. MLK Jr Blvd.

Newark, NJ 07102

973-792-5790

Saturdays

9 a.m.–11 a.m.

Roseville Presbyterian Church

36 Roseville Ave.

Newark, NJ 07107

973-483-3361

Every second Monday

10 a.m.–noon

St. James Social Service Corp food pantry

604 Dr. MLK Jr. Blvd.

Newark, NJ 07102

973-624-4007

Monday–Friday

1 p.m.-3 p.m.

Urban League of Essex County

513 Central Ave.

Newark, NJ 07107

973-624-9535

Thursday

Noon–2 p.m.

Mobile markets giving away fresh produce

West Side High School

403 S Orange Ave.

Newark, NJ 07103

November 14 and December 22

4 p.m.–6 p.m. or until supplies last

Essentially Yours From the Heart at The Urban League

513 Central Ave.

Newark, NJ 07107

November 22 and December 20

11 a.m.–1 p.m. or until supplies last

Essex Pantry/New Community Corp. Family Comfort

220 Bruce St.

Newark, NJ 07103

973-623-6114

Food pantry distribution

Monday–Friday

10 a.m.– 2 p.m., or until supplies last

The food pantry requires a valid New Jersey ID and/or proof of residency, proof of income, and a birth certificate for each child younger than 18 years old.

Community food distribution

Every first Tuesday

10 a.m.– 2 p.m., or until supplies last

For the community food distribution, recipients just need to sign for the items received. To participate in all food distributions, people should bring their own bags or carts.

Grace Church food ministry

950 Broad St.

Newark, NJ 07102

973-623-1733

Saturdays

11 a.m.–1 p.m.

Food is distributed through the Broad Street doors.

Can’t find what you need on this list? Find more food pantries and resources in this spreadsheet from the MEND network, this search tool from the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, or on NJ 211’s food assistance resources page.

Susan Gonzalez is Chalkbeat’s editor for social media and platforms. If you know of any food resources or news tips that might be helpful to students and families in New York City or Newark, send her an email at sgonzalez@chalkbeat.org.

As SNAP cuts loom, NYC schools scramble to stockpile food for families in need

2025-10-29T18:48:13+00:00

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With nearly 2 million New York City residents soon to lose federal food stamps, schools across the five boroughs are scrambling to create plans to quickly get extra food to hungry families.

Officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have said they will stop funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, starting Nov. 1 if the federal government, which has been shut down for nearly a month, doesn’t reopen.

That would cut off benefits for roughly 1.8 million city residents who received $5 billion worth of food assistance in 2025, according to the Independent Budget Office. That count includes about 500,000 children.

It’s not clear exactly how many city students receive SNAP, but more than three-quarters of district and charter school students — roughly 806,000 — qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, or government benefits including SNAP, last year, according to city data.

School leaders say the abrupt loss of food benefits would be devastating and could set off a cascade of other challenges for kids that would show up in the classroom.

“I’m worried it’s going to be a crisis,” said Ben Geballe, principal of M.S. 131 in Chinatown, where nearly 90% of students live in poverty. “If you’re on SNAP, you’re living on the edge already. You give people a little push, and it can be very challenging.”

Schools like Geballe’s are now scrambling to set up their own ad hoc food distribution systems, tapping into their budgets, raising outside funds, and leveraging their relationships with parents and community partners to help ensure families don’t have to rely only on outside food banks that will be facing a crush of new demand.

Geballe’s school is restarting a school food pantry where families who are homeless or otherwise food insecure get a bag of groceries every two weeks. He’s asked a private donor who contributed money to help cover field trips to repurpose those funds for food. And the school is brainstorming ways to get kids involved as helpers, including by allowing them to donate prizes they earn for good behavior to the school’s food bank.

The school partners with a community based organization on an after-school program, and they are working together to expand meal service for those who stay later, so kids can count on three free hot meals — a breakfast before school, lunch, and a hot “supper” around 3:30 p.m.. All students get free breakfast and lunch in city schools.

State leaders pledge to help plug some gaps

State leaders have promised to step in to fill some of the federal funding gap. Gov. Kathy Hochul committed $30 million in state funds earlier this week to cover about 16 million meals at food pantries. State Attorney General Letitia James also joined a multistate lawsuit that seeks to force the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, to tap into billions of dollars in emergency reserves to continue funding SNAP.

So far, the city Education Department hasn’t launched any systemwide efforts to get extra food to families losing SNAP benefits.

“We are aware of potential SNAP disruptions that may affect our school community,” said Isla Gething, a department spokesperson, “and our students can continue to count on their school meals.”

Hochul has said she’s exploring the idea of using schools to send home additional food with families but hasn’t released any concrete plans.

In the meantime, city schools are continuing to devise their own food distribution plans.

At M.S. 50 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Principal Ben Honoroff said the school has spent years building systems to help families facing food insecurity. It now expects a big uptick in demand.

The school is planning to tap its federal Title I funds for students in temporary housing to give families vouchers they can redeem at local restaurants and subsidize orders on the online grocery site Fresh Direct. Families living in shelters, he noted, don’t have access to kitchens and need meals that don’t require much preparation.

Other schools are turning outwards to collect extra money.

Sally Schwab, an assistant principal at University Prep Charter High School in the South Bronx said roughly 85% of her students’ families receive SNAP. She launched a GoFundMe page Tuesday with the goal of raising $5,000, and had already surpassed that goal by Wednesday morning. The school plans to use the funds to buy grocery store gift cards and stock up on basics that they’ll distribute through a school food pantry.

At the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in downtown Brooklyn, administrators sent home a letter to families and staff earlier this week warning about the looming SNAP cuts and asking for donations to the school’s food and clothing pantry.

The school’s principal, Kiri Soares, said she’s trying to stockpile food that fits her families’ cultural backgrounds as well as other supplies like diapers and menstrual products that families use SNAP benefits to purchase.

Several school leaders said that if the SNAP shutdown drags on, they hope the city and state will launch a more comprehensive effort to tap public schools as a way of distributing food. During the COVID pandemic, schools became community food distribution centers, handing out millions of free meals to both students and families and other community members.

“The infrastructure is there,” said Soares. “It would be an easy switch to flip.”

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

Chalkbeat asked: Mamdani pledges to boost special education, focus on vulnerable kids

2025-10-20T22:27:59+00:00

Zohran Mamdani indicated that improving special education, an often neglected part of the school system, would be a priority if elected.

“One of the biggest challenges currently facing the school system is the need to strengthen support for students with disabilities,” the Mamdani campaign wrote in response to a Chalkbeat questionnaire.

Mamdani singled out preschool children who often languish at home without seats and do not receive all the services to which they’re entitled. He suggested too many children with disabilities are attending private schools at the city’s expense.

And he also said the city should redouble its support for the city’s 154,000 homeless students, pointing to a program that pairs homeless students with adult mentors.

The Democratic nominee has not laid out a clear vision for improving the nation’s largest school system, aside from a desire to cede some of his power over it. He recently unveiled a plan to recruit more teachers and said he would phase out gifted programs for the city’s youngest students.

But his campaign’s responses indicate that his education agenda may focus on some of the system’s most vulnerable children, who are often far behind their peers in reading and math, experience elevated rates of chronic absenteeism, and are much less likely to graduate on time.

“It is encouraging that he acknowledges that one of the biggest challenges of the system is around supporting kids with [individualized education programs],” said Lori Podvesker, director of disability and education policy at IncludeNYC, which helps families navigate the special education system.

To improve support for students with disabilities, Mamdani pledged to recruit more special education teachers, a longstanding shortage area. He also vowed to reduce the number of students with disabilities who get private school tuition reimbursed by the city because the Education Department cannot offer an adequate placement.

Those payments were expected to balloon to roughly $1.3 billion last school year — a more than fourfold increase compared with a decade ago — according to figures from the city’s Independent Budget Office. (That includes legal, consultant, and transportation costs in addition to tuition payments.) Previous administrations have also expressed alarm with the growing cost but have failed to address it.

Still, Podvesker said she wished the responses fleshed out what concrete steps Mamdani would take to improve the special education system and how he would approach making schools more inclusive for students with disabilities.

In response to the questionnaire, Mamdani also did not outline any new strategies for improving the city’s lowest performing schools. Instead, he vowed to support a group of more than 400 community schools that provide wraparound services including mental health clinics and may offer additional learning time. The city’s teachers union, which endorsed Mamdani, backs that approach, which has shown some promise.

Mamdani left the door open to experimenting with expanding teacher training and other ideas that are “proving effective.”

You can find the Mamdani campaign’s full responses below.

Chalkbeat posed the same questions to all three candidates on Oct. 1. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa did not respond to multiple requests. Early voting starts on Oct. 25. Election Day is Nov. 4.

What is your assessment of the school system’s strengths and weaknesses? Do you think a dramatic overhaul is needed or smaller adjustments?

The strength of New York City’s public school system lies in our dedicated teachers, administrators, counselors, paraprofessionals, and custodial staff who work tirelessly to educate and care for our students. One of the bright spots is Every Child and Family is Known, a pilot in the Bronx to support students experiencing homelessness. One in eight students are experiencing homelessness. By pairing Caring Adults to provide hands-on support to students and their families, Every Child and Family is Known exemplifies the ways that schools can serve as true hubs of our communities by meeting the needs of students inside and outside of the classroom. The pilot has proven to be very successful, resulting in reduced chronic absenteeism and improving students’ sense of belonging and well-being. I am heartened to see the Chancellor’s recent announcement of a $2.8 million expansion of the program. I intend to expand it even further, doubling the number of students and families served, with an ultimate goal to make it a citywide program that can serve every student in the shelter system so that anyone experiencing homelessness in the NYC public school system can access services to meet their basic needs.

One of the biggest challenges currently facing the school system is the need to strengthen support for students with disabilities. More than one-fifth of our students have disabilities and in the 2021-2022 school year, 37% of preschoolers with disabilities went the whole year without receiving at least one of the services the New York City Department of Education (DOE) was legally required to provide. I will improve special education for New York City’s students by increasing special education services for preschool age kids, reducing Carter cases, recruiting special education teachers and equipping them with resources to succeed, increasing evidence-based instructional approaches for students with disabilities, and improving language access for families. These improvements will make general education classrooms more inclusive so that students with special needs are no longer marginalized and can be well-served.

Mayor Bill de Blasio spent nearly $800 million on trying to turn around the city’s lowest performing schools, and eventually pulled the plug after it achieved a mixed record of success. There are few slam dunk methods for improving struggling schools at scale.

How would you approach school improvement? Do you have any ideas or strategies that haven’t been tried before?

While the research on large-scale school improvement initiatives is limited, it is critical to implement strategies that are grounded in data. A 2020 Rand study found that schools participating in the NYC Communities Schools initiative showed significant positive results, including better attendance and graduation rates, student achievement, and family engagement at schools–and less disciplinary incidents. I am a big supporter of the current network of 421 community schools that provide students with critical access to medical care, mental health services, tutoring and academic support, summer and afterschool programs, opportunities for experiential learning, and social services. I will also do a review of curricula based on the science of how children learn, including NYC Reads, and invest in efforts to scale strategies that are proving effective, including investing in teacher training.

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

154,000 NYC students were homeless last school year, another record high

2025-10-20T10:00:00+00:00

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More than 150,000 New York City students experienced homelessness last year, setting yet another record high according to new data obtained by the nonprofit Advocates for Children.

The staggering total, which includes students who lived in shelters along with those doubled up with family or friends, is larger than the entire Dallas school system. During the 2023-2024 school year, roughly 146,000 city students were homeless.

“Every year for the past decade, more than 100,000 students in our public schools have been homeless,” said Jennifer Pringle, Director of Advocates for Children’s Learners in Temporary Housing Project.

“This year alone, we’ve worked with families whose children already missed an entire month of school because of the lack of coordination between the shelter and school systems,” she added.

The ongoing rise in the number of homeless students, now more than double what it was in 2010 even as the overall student population has shrunk, is a reflection of both the city’s acute housing shortage and the surge of migrant families who have filled homeless shelters in recent years.

Since the influx of asylum seekers began in summer 2022, the city’s public schools have absorbed an estimated 50,000 new students in temporary housing.

Last year, roughly 65,000 students spent time in another shelter, while another 82,000 were doubled up, according to the data.

After President Donald Trump began his second term in January, immigration slowed dramatically, and the rate of new families entering city shelters slowed to a trickle. The city’s shelter population has dwindled since its peak in winter 2023 as the city shuttered many of its emergency shelters.

Student homelessness is most acute in the Bronx, where 17% of students — almost 1 in 5 — went without permanent housing. In Staten Island, the figure was 6%.

Homeless students continued to fare worse on almost every educational metric than their peers in permanent housing. Two-thirds of students in shelters were marked chronically absent last year, compared to less than a third of students in permanent housing.

And while the chronic absenteeism rate went down slightly citywide last school year, it ticked up for students in shelters. Longstanding challenges including insufficient transportation for kids placed in shelters far from their schools continue to hamper attendance, advocates said. And many immigrant families in the city’s largest shelters kept their kids home out of fear in the wake of Trump’s inauguration.

Advocates praised some of the city’s efforts in recent years to support homeless students, including hiring dozens of Education Department staffers who work in shelters to help families sort through educational challenges. But advocates are pushing for larger structural changes, including revamping school bus contracts to improve service for students in shelters and amending the state’s school funding formula to direct extra money to districts with higher proportions of homeless students.

Advocates also encouraged the next mayor to push city agencies to work together to place students in shelters in the same borough as their school.

Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunner in the mayoral race, has said the high rate of student homelessness is one of the biggest challenges for the education system. He’s pledged to expand a pilot program called Every Child and Family is Known that matches homeless students with adult mentors in their schools.

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

Lengthy suspensions often violate NYC students’ constitutional rights, lawsuit claims

2025-05-23T18:11:22+00:00

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When her daughter was suspended last spring for having vape pens, including one with marijuana, Brooklyn mom Rubi F. thought the family had a good reason to fight the case: She claimed a classmate slipped them into her bag.

At a hearing to determine if the allegation was true, the school didn’t present concrete evidence about the pens’ contents, according to a legal filing. But the hearing officer still sided with the school, finding the eighth grader had “liquid THC in a vape pen” and was “in possession of drug paraphernalia.”

“They just go by what [the school staff] said,” Rubi said in Spanish through an interpreter. “It’s very unfair.” (Rubi asked that her last name be withheld to protect her family’s privacy.)

A lawsuit filed this week on behalf of Rubi and two other families contends that New York City schools often suspend students without solid evidence, in violation of their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit could have significant implications for thousands of students every year. If the suit is successful, it would become harder for schools to remove children from class for long stretches.

“All the school has to do is show some piece of evidence that makes the hearing officer feel like this could have happened,” said Michaela Shuchman, a lawyer at Legal Services NYC, an organization that represents families in suspension proceedings and which filed the lawsuit. “It really demoralizes [families].”

When children are removed from school for six days or more, known as a superintendent suspension, families are entitled to a hearing where they can present evidence, call witnesses, and challenge the school’s version of events. A hearing officer determines which facts are true and makes a discipline recommendation.

But the standard of proof at those hearings — “substantial and competent evidence” — requires less than a 50% chance that a student did what they are accused of, legal experts said.

The suit, filed in federal district court, argues that the city should use a standard known as “preponderance of the evidence,” which would require slightly more than 50% certainty. At least 19 states use the preponderance standard, according to Shuchman, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.

Lengthy suspensions can seriously deprive students, suit claims

Some school staff have noted that longer punishments are typically reserved for serious misconduct and making it harder to remove students can lead to more chaotic classrooms. But the lawsuit’s backers contend that a higher burden of proof is appropriate given evolving research on the impact of lengthy suspensions.

One study focused on New York City found that suspensions can lead students to pass fewer classes, increase their risk of dropping out, and make it less likely they will graduate. Other research generally shows suspensions are linked to worse academic outcomes. Though students who are removed from class are entitled to instruction at alternate learning centers, attendance is often spotty and teaching can be disconnected from what students were previously learning at their home school.

The punishments can also contribute to students getting entangled in the criminal justice system and limit access to free meals and health care, as schools have increasingly become hubs of social services, the suit claims.

Rubi’s daughter, who has a disability, did not receive all of her special education counseling services when she was assigned to an alternate learning center. She was sometimes sent home with worksheets immediately after arriving, according to the suit.

“The impact was so huge on her” after the suspension, Rubi said. “She was a totally different person. She became very angry all the time.” The mom now has to drive her daughter to school because she will otherwise refuse to go.

The principal of I.S. 96 Seth Low, the school that suspended Rubi’s daughter, did not reply to an email seeking comment. (Schools are allowed to discipline students for merely possessing a vape, although they should not typically be suspended unless drugs are involved, according to the city’s discipline code.)

The impact of lengthy suspensions is unevenly distributed. Nearly 45% of the 6,231 long-term suspensions last year involved Black students, and a similar proportion were issued to students with disabilities. Only about 20% of the city’s students are Black, while just 22% have a disability.

Chalkbeat reported this week that the city has failed for years to follow rules designed to protect students with disabilities from long-term punishments if the behavior in question is related to their disability.

An Education Department spokesperson referred questions about the lawsuit to the city’s Law Department, which declined to comment.

Advocates who represent students in suspension hearings have long raised concerns about the standard of proof used in those proceedings. In a 2019 Chalkbeat essay, one advocate cited a case where his client was suspended for punching another student. The suspension was upheld based on an account from a school dean — even though the student who was hit testified that someone else was responsible.

Multiple legal experts said the serious consequences of long-term suspensions merit a higher standard of proof.

Under the current standard, “they’re giving a lot of deference” to schools, said Cara McClellan, an associate practice professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. Using the preponderance standard would be “a step toward making it a fair and equal adversarial process,” she said.

Other legal experts said the lawsuit may be a longshot. Under current U.S. Supreme Court precedent, students have a right to notice of a suspension and a hearing, but the court did not articulate a specific standard of proof.

Using the higher preponderance standard is a “commonsense argument,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. But he said that might not be enough to convince a judge that the current standard is unconstitutional.

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

NYC schools fail to protect students with disabilities from lengthy suspensions

2025-05-21T20:05:14+00:00

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After trading taunts with a classmate one morning in March 2023, Tristan threw a punch that busted the other student’s lip. A teacher who intervened wound up with a bloody nose and swollen lip in the ensuing scuffle.

Then a ninth grader at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, Tristan later took responsibility for starting the fight. “I hit him first — that’s where I was wrong,” said the teen, who requested his last name be withheld for privacy reasons.

School officials suspended Tristan for more than three weeks, among the longest punishments typically allowed under city guidelines. But while the case seemed open and shut, an impartial hearing officer later ruled that the lengthy suspension violated the teen’s rights.

Tristan, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, received special education services to address impulse control and anger management. But the school failed to provide numerous counseling sessions that were supposed to help him learn to regulate his emotions, the hearing officer found.

During a legally required meeting to assess whether Tristan’s disability played a role in the fight, school staff did not consider his special education records, behavioral plan, or history of similar outbursts.

“There is no evidence that the [school’s review team] discussed any relevant documents,” wrote hearing officer Patricia Le Goff, who noted the school did not follow the required step-by-step process and Tristan’s mother was not allowed to offer her perspective. The hearing officer found that Tristan’s behavior stemmed from his disability and the school’s failure to provide counseling sessions.

Le Goff concluded that Tristan should not have received a lengthy punishment. But it was too late. Tristan had served his suspension.

New York City’s public schools routinely flout federal rules designed to prevent schools from removing children from class for long periods due to behavior related to their disabilities, a Chalkbeat investigation has found.

To examine the discipline process, Chalkbeat obtained hundreds of pages of special education records and rulings from impartial hearing officers who reviewed appeals from families whose children with disabilities received lengthy punishments. Those records — as well as interviews with more than a dozen parents, advocates, and school officials — reveal a pattern of schools failing to properly consider a student’s disability during the suspension process.

As a result, some students are serving longer punishments than legally allowed, a problem that disproportionately affects Black students. The removals can compound academic struggles among students who are often far behind their peers.

The problem stretches back years. Independent monitors who looked at nearly 1,400 suspensions between 2015 and 2018 found systemic flaws with the review process, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of findings that have not previously been made public.

“There are students who are being suspended weeks and weeks more than they should be,” said Andrew Gerst, an attorney who handled Tristan’s appeal while working at Mobilization for Justice, an organization that represents low-income families. “They should not be kept out of school one minute longer than they have to be.”

Students with disabilities are far more likely to be suspended compared with their nondisabled peers. As a group, they were removed from class 14,000 times last school year, about 39% of all removals and suspensions, despite representing 22% of the student body.

For long-term suspensions, which are less common and typically issued for significant misconduct, federal law requires an extra level of review. Schools must consider whether the behavior in question was related to a student’s disability or a failure to provide special education services guaranteed in their learning plan.

Trisha Clayton, Tristan’s mother, said the suspension review process left her feeling like the school wasn’t interested in supporting her son, and the lengthy punishment knocked him further off track. A different hearing officer later ordered the Education Department to pay for 900 hours of one-on-one tutoring in addition to other therapies to make up for inadequate special education support.

“He missed out on a lot of instructional hours,” Clayton said. “If you have a child with a learning disability or anger issues, they just don’t want to deal with those kinds of kids.”

Education Department officials said they could not comment on specific student cases, and the principal at Medgar Evers did not respond to questions.

Medgar Ever College Preparatory School suspended Tristan for nearly a month. A hearing officer later found it was improper.

School staffers on other campuses who have participated in suspension reviews said there are often good reasons to issue longer punishments, as they can help maintain a safe learning environment for other students and possibly deter future misconduct.

“Holding your teacher against the wall, or punching someone in the face, that’s not necessarily a manifestation of their disability most of the time,” said Anna Nelson, a former Bronx assistant principal who has participated in suspension reviews. “If a kid’s never been suspended before, it’s a message that really sticks with them.”

But advocates and parents say that schools often reflexively dismiss the possibility that a student’s disability played a role in their misconduct.

City education officials acknowledged in an interview with Chalkbeat that implementation of the suspension reviews can be uneven.

Over 600 Education Department staffers have been trained to make the reviews more collaborative, according to a department spokesperson, and officials have revised letters sent to families to better explain the process.

Stephanie Jemilo, a special projects director at the Education Department who oversees the training, said her team works with specific schools when they receive complaints from families. The goal is to make the meetings feel less punitive.

“It really is the process to say, ‘Hey, something‘s not working here, and let’s all come together and figure out what’s not working,’” she said.

Schools have long failed to account for students’ disabilities in the suspension process

All public schools are required to educate students with disabilities alongside their nondisabled peers to the greatest extent possible, a cornerstone of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The law is designed to prevent schools from using the discipline process to exclude those students.

When a student is suspended for more than 10 days, or if there’s a pattern of short-term removals, school staff must determine if the behavior in question was “caused by or had a direct and substantial relationship” to the student’s disability or the school’s failure to provide mandated services.

If the answer to either is yes, the student is supposed to return to class immediately, and the school is required to conduct a behavior assessment. (There are some exceptions for extreme violence, drugs, or weapons possession.)

To make that decision, school officials must hold a meeting called a “manifestation determination review” within 10 days of the student’s removal from class. Schools must include parents and at least one staff member who knows the student, including a school psychologist or guidance counselor. Families are entitled to request others to join, such as a teacher who works with their child, and they can bring an advocate.

In theory, the process should be collaborative. But the final decision rests with the student’s school, an arrangement that families and advocates say is far from objective.

“It’s like somebody gets arrested and you go to the police station and ask them to have a hearing about whether they think that they were right to arrest the person,” Gerst said. “They have every incentive to stand by their decision.”

Problems with the city’s discipline process aren’t new, according to a Chalkbeat review of legal records and city data that has not previously been made public. A 2002 class action lawsuit filed by the nonprofit group Advocates for Children claimed schools routinely used discipline to exclude students without properly considering their disability.

After a protracted legal battle, the city settled the case in 2015 and agreed to some reforms. They beefed up training and created a mandatory checklist that spells out each step of the process schools must follow.

The city was also required to check whether schools were following the rules, sending independent monitors into nearly 1,400 suspension review meetings, a sample of the meetings held between 2015 and 2018. The monitors found glaring and systemic problems, according to reports obtained by Gerst through a public records request and shared with Chalkbeat.

For example, only 44% of suspension review meetings included “effective” discussion of the incident that led to the suspension and whether it was connected to disability-related behaviors, the monitors found during the 2017-18 school year. In 20% of cases that year, there was limited or no discussion of a student’s special education learning plan, raising questions about how the review team determined whether a student’s behavior was related to a lack of services.

Nicole Tuchinda, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law who has written about the suspension review process, called those figures “disturbing” because they reveal schools frequently did not comply with key components of the law.

“It just shows it’s a sham,” Tuchinda said.

Failing to protect students with disabilities from longer punishments could further set back a group that is already disproportionately removed from their classrooms, are far behind their peers academically, and less likely to graduate on time.

One study focusing on New York City found suspensions led to students passing fewer classes, increasing their risk of dropping out, and lowering the odds of graduating. Other research also generally suggests that suspensions are linked to worse academic outcomes. Students who are suspended for more than five days are typically sent to alternate learning centers away from their school, an environment students say is often dull or chaotic.

Problems with the suspension review process are also more likely to affect students of color, mirroring broader trends in school discipline. Between September 2021 and December 2022, more than half of the 1,825 suspension reviews involved Black students, even though only a quarter of students with disabilities are Black, city data show.

Schools were more likely to find that white students’ behavior was related to their disability compared with their Black or Latino peers, according to figures obtained by Gerst.

Education Department officials declined to provide more recent figures and there is no federal data on the suspension review process.

The responsibility for ensuring the city is complying with federal special education laws falls to the state’s Education Department. State officials found some problems with the city’s suspension review process in 2023 that required “corrective action,” according to spokesperson JP O’Hare. He did not specify the nature of the problem or what specific action was required. The state Education Department has “not received any specific ongoing concerns” about the process, O’Hare added.

It is difficult to know how widespread problems with the review process are today: The Education Department stopped sending independent monitors to the meetings after they were no longer legally required.

Melinda Andra, a longtime advocate at the Legal Aid Society who has represented families in the suspension process, said there were some signs of improvement when the monitors were in place.

Now, she said, “Things have kind of backtracked.”

‘Everybody was just on the attack’: One family felt alienated by suspension review

Danet Ferguson’s son, Malachi, faced a monthlong suspension for fighting another student in January, striking two teachers who tried to break them up. She was confident the school would conclude the 13-year-old’s ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder contributed to the incident. The school found such a link in a previous suspension this school year.

In the aftermath of the fight, Malachi was removed from class at I.S. 181 in the Bronx. Ferguson, who runs a day care, was forced to drive him to a suspension center more than an hour away. “I’m stressed out and frustrated,” Ferguson said at the time. “His grades have dropped. … I’m missing work.”

A little over a week after Malachi was removed from class, his school held a suspension review meeting to assess if his disability played a role in the fight. Ferguson and Michaela Shuchman, her legal advocate, pointed to Malachi’s history of aggression and impulsivity, which are well documented in his special education records.

Michaela Shuchman, a lawyer at Bronx Legal Services, is pushing for reforms to the suspension review process.

But school staff countered that Malachi’s behavior was premeditated. They said they could not let the incident slide without significant punishment, according to Shuchman, a lawyer at Bronx Legal Services.

“Everybody was just on the attack,” said Ferguson. “There was no one trying to listen.”

The school ruled Malachi’s disability wasn’t a major factor, allowing his suspension to continue. With Shuchman’s help, Ferguson appealed the case. A hearing officer found several procedural flaws with the school’s suspension review process.

Ferguson wanted Malachi’s counselor and one-on-one paraprofessional to attend the meeting, two people who could have helped interpret his behavior that day. But the school dismissed the request, arguing it came too late to ensure the staff could be there and wasn’t worth postponing the meeting, according to the hearing officer’s ruling.

Hearing officer Tanya White blasted the school for that decision, noting that Ferguson “had a right to designate attendees.” She added: “The two people that [Ferguson] requested would have provided a unique insight into the ultimate determination.”

It was also unclear whether the school was following Malachi’s special education learning plan, an issue that was not sufficiently discussed during the suspension review process, according to White’s ruling.

Malachi is supposed to have a full-time behavioral support aide, who had helped keep his behavior in check in the past, the hearing officer wrote. School staff claimed there was a different aide with Malachi at the time of the incident, though the hearing officer noted the aide’s presence was not included in the official incident report, nor did that person offer a witness statement or attend the suspension review meeting.

“The only two people who placed the covering paraprofessional at the scene are DOE staff members with a vested interest in the answer as to whether the Student’s [learning plan] was being implemented,” White wrote.

White was also troubled that the school had removed references to physical outbursts in Malachi’s behavior plan. Altering the behavior plan “undermines the DOE’s assertion that it arrived at the correct conclusion,” she wrote.

The principal of I.S. 181 did not respond to a request for comment. An Education Department spokesperson declined to comment on specific student cases and did not answer a question about whether the school’s staff have received training on the suspension process.

White ruled in Malachi’s favor, ordering the Education Department to pay for about 126 hours of one-on-one tutoring to make up for the disruption to his education. Malachi still served the monthlong suspension, which would have been nearly three weeks shorter if the school had found the fight was related to his disability at the initial review meeting.

Shuchman said overturning a suspension on appeal after the student has already served it is common, as that process often takes around 40 days to play out and most suspensions are capped at 20 days.

“It’s really justice delayed,” she said.

City officials resist calls for reform

Over the past year, advocates have pushed the Education Department to reform the discipline process but have struggled to gain traction.

A group of attorneys lobbied the Education Department to directly connect families to advocates before the suspension review meetings, as parents often don’t know their rights or how the process works. A handful of public interest legal groups offered to supply pro-bono advocates.

“Just having somebody in the room, just having your back … is really important to families,” said Gerst, one of the lawyers who supported the effort. “When we do advocate, we often find so many other special education issues.”

Some advocates and parents also suggested that school staff don’t review their own school’s suspension decision. The idea has some precedent: At charter schools, the suspension reviews are typically overseen by Education Department staff who don’t work for the school.

So far, the city has rejected the proposal to provide legal representation for families during the process, a decision Education Department officials declined to explain.

But they expressed some openness to taking the process out of the hands of the school that disciplined the student.

“It’s something that we are talking about,” said Jemilo, the Education Department official, “and exploring what an alternative could be.”

If the city made that change “that could be big,” Shuchman said, because the current process creates “a real conflict of interest.”

It is unclear how seriously city officials are considering it, however. An Education Department spokesperson declined to answer questions about who would conduct the reviews or a timeline for making that change.

Trisha Clayton and her son, Tristan, pose for a portrait at their home in 2024 in Brooklyn, New York.

In the meantime, advocates said the process is still stacked against families.

For Clayton, Tristan’s mother, the process was so overwhelming that she pulled him out of the city’s school system.

Even though Tristan won hundreds of hours of one-on-one tutoring, Clayton struggled to coax him to attend. The teen’s experience at school had reached a breaking point, and Tristan wound up getting suspended again, she said.

That was the final straw. “I was like, ‘I’m going to spend half the time at a suspension hearing,’” Clayton said.

So last September, Tristan moved in with his aunt upstate. His mother said he’s doing better in school, landed a job at a local bakery, and plans to go to trade school for plumbing.

The guidance counselor from Tristan’s old school recently called to ask after the teen.

Clayton was thrilled to offer an update.

“He’s really thriving,” she said. “I’m in disbelief.”

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

Cellphone bans, school funding, and child care vouchers: How NY’s budget will affect NYC families

2025-04-14T19:56:46+00:00

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Several education issues with big implications for New York City families remain in limbo as Albany officials have blown past the April 1 state budget deadline.

At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars for New York City public schools, the future of child care subsidies for thousands of low-income families, and a proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul to ban cellphones in classrooms.

“None of them are put to bed yet,” state Sen. John Liu, who helms the senate’s NYC education committee, told Chalkbeat.

Officials have repeatedly extended current spending levels since the April 1 deadline, with the latest extension set to expire Tuesday. Legislative leaders are still hammering out agreements with Hochul over a range of contentious policies that have been lumped into the budget process, including rollbacks to discovery reform and restrictions on wearing face masks in public.

As negotiations drag on, here are three issues to watch that affect New York City public schools and families.

A ‘bell-to-bell’ cellphone ban

Hochul’s most prominent education proposal is a ban on cellphones from “bell to bell” — requiring every school to collect phones or use lockable pouches to prevent students from accessing their phones during the school day.

The Hochul administration is optimistic about securing the ban, though the specifics remain uncertain. The state Senate’s proposal includes an exemption during “non-instructional time” and calls for a prohibition on suspending students who violate the policy. Some parents and the New York Civil Liberties Union have also pushed back against a full phone ban.

“There seems to be broad agreement on the cellphone ban,” Liu said. “But the devil — meaning the details — are more elusive.”

Roughly half of New York City public schools already have cellphone restrictions in place. Still, schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos testified at a budget hearing earlier this year that the state should set aside more funding to help schools pay for devices to store phones. The governor budgeted $13.5 million for districts across the state.

The future of the state’s school funding formula

Nearly everyone agrees the state’s two-decade-old school funding formula, known as Foundation Aid, needs an overhaul. There is less consensus about how to accomplish that — and hundreds of millions of dollars for New York City public schools hang in the balance.

Under Hochul’s proposal, New York City public schools would receive about $350 million less than under the current formula, which sent about $9.5 billion to city schools this year. The governor’s proposal replaces a 2000 Census poverty weight with a more recent Census measure, but it does not account for differences in local costs of living.

The Senate and Assembly both proposed versions that incorporate regional differences in cost of living. The Senate proposal would restore about $288 million relative to the governor’s changes and the Assembly’s version calls for including about $200 million, according to a report from the Alliance for Quality Education, an advocacy group that pushes for more school funding.

A coalition of more than 100 organizations that represent parents and advocates have called for other changes that would drive more funding to high-need districts, including additional weights for students living in temporary housing and children with disabilities.

Several advocates argue that solid funding from the state is even more essential given rising costs from tariffs and threats from the federal government to withhold funding from districts that run afoul of the Trump administration’s priorities.

Child care vouchers for needy families

Thousands of low-income New York City families could lose child care vouchers without a nearly $1 billion funding increase.

The Child Care Assistance Program supports about 80,000 families and has grown substantially in recent years due to a mix of pandemic federal relief funding (which is drying up), changes that expanded eligibility for the program, and a boost in the voucher’s value to about $300 a week on average.

Without $823 million to $907 million in additional funding over the next year and a half, up to 7,000 families a month will begin to lose the subsidies, one analysis found, a major blow for families grappling with hefty child care costs.

Hochul’s budget proposal includes no additional funding for the program, though a spokesperson for the governor noted that state funding for child care subsidies have grown significantly in recent years while the city’s share has barely budged. The Senate’s plan adds about $50 million to the program while the Assembly proposed $213 million, New York Focus reported.

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

$2 billion in federal funding for NYC schools at risk amid Trump administration’s DEI threats

2025-04-03T22:29:26+00:00

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New York’s state and city education officials aren’t planning to shy away from diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools despite Thursday’s threats from the Trump administration to strip away billions in federal funding.

In the latest of a series of attacks on DEI, the U.S. Department of Education is giving state education agencies 10 days to prove their schools are eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts the Trump administration deems unlawful.

States must certify their schools comply with the administration’s controversial interpretation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, according to a letter federal Education Department officials sent Thursday.

Those failing to comply appear to risk losing all federal funding, though the letter specifically calls out Title I funds that support high poverty schools.

“We are reviewing the letter now and will respond in due course,” New York State Education Department spokesperson JP O’Hare said in a statement. “The Board of Regents and State Education Department continue to work with New York’s schools to increase equity, access, and opportunities in education for all New York State students.”

At stake in New York City: more than $2 billion, or roughly 5% of the Education Department’s overall budget, which covers a range of programs targeting students from low-income households, those living in shelters, or students with disabilities, for example. The largest pot of federal funding goes to schools serving low income families through the Title I program. The federal government sends roughly $679 million in Title I funds each year to New York City, where nearly 1,300 of 1,600 schools qualify for the program.

Many legal experts believe the administration’s interpretation of the Supreme Court decision is incorrect and would not hold up in court.

Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos on Thursday defended the diversity of the nation’s largest school system in response to questions about the Trump administration directive.

“Diversity is a superpower here in New York City, we are always going to honor that,” she said at an unrelated event. “We are always going to make sure that we are serving every child and family in New York City.”

The chancellor emphasized that her agency receives far more money from sources outside the federal government. About 57% of local school funding comes from the city and 37% comes from the state.

Aviles-Ramos has been pushing Albany lawmakers to increase the amount of money the city would receive under the state’s Foundation Aid funding formula. Under a proposal to tweak the formula from Gov. Kathy Hochul, the city stands to receive $350 million less than it would have otherwise gotten.

“That’s where we’re putting our focus,” Aviles-Ramos said of her Albany visits.

At a City Council hearing last month, Education Department officials acknowledged that they have not made detailed contingency plans in the event of significant federal funding cuts.

“We’re having internal conversations around all the possibilities, but we cannot enact on a plan with certainty when there are so many moving pieces,” Aviles-Ramos said.

New York City education leaders said cuts to federal dollars, including Title I money, could force cuts from special education to career and technical programs.

Lorenzo Chambers, the principal of P.S. 279 in Brooklyn, said cutting funding for high-need public schools “has long-term potential to set the country back.”

The school uses federal funding to pay for after-school programs, hygiene products and uniforms for students living in temporary housing, books, and other supplies. Most of the school’s students are Black or Caribbean-American and come from low-income families.

The money does not represent a substantial proportion of the school’s budget, though it would be challenging to replace, Chambers said. Cutting those dollars in an effort to stamp out diversity and equity efforts “is steeped in white supremacy,” he added. “Those are the undertones.”

David Adams, the CEO of Urban Assembly, which directly supports a network of 22 New York City public schools, said about 8-10% of funding for schools in the network comes from the federal government.

“Title I funding is the difference between an extra counselor or not,” Adams said. “Title I funding is the difference between enrichment activities like dance, art, and music.”

“We’re gonna pay for this one way or another,” Adams added. “We can pay for it in developing young people who are already able to contribute to our society, or we can pay for it incarcerating people.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

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

NYC school funding fight: Hochul’s budget plan faces pushback over $350 million shortfall

2025-03-28T21:15:26+00:00

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Ahead of an April 1 budget deadline, state lawmakers are pushing back on a proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul that would result in New York City’s school system receiving $350 million less than expected.

Hochul proposed tweaking the state’s nearly two-decade-old school funding formula, known as Foundation Aid, to update how student poverty is measured. There has been widespread agreement that the formula needs to change, but some want to see a more significant revamp than the governor’s plan — with additional adjustments that would help high-need districts like New York City.

And many advocates want to see the state step up at a time when the Trump administration has been gutting the U.S. Department of Education’s staff and taking steps to dismantle the agency.

“It’s important that we recognize that a budget is a moral document, and what you put in a budget shows us what you are concerned about,” NeQuan McLean, a parent leader from Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn and president of the Education Council Consortium, said at a rally in Albany this week.

Foundation Aid takes student need into account, providing additional funding to districts that serve higher populations of students in poverty, among other factors. Needs are typically high across the five boroughs, where more than 70% of students live in poverty. New York City schools are seeing additional strains, many advocates say, after welcoming an estimated 48,000 migrant students since summer 2022, many of whom need dedicated English language instruction as well as other social support. More than 16% of students citywide are learning English as a new language.

State Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, pledged to keep the pressure on Hochul. “In these last rounds of budget negotiations, we’re going to fight to make sure New York City is not shortchanged,” he said.

A spokesperson from Hochul’s office said the governor has delivered more funding to public schools than any previous New York governor and noted that her proposed total education plan of $14 billion for fiscal year 2026 represents a $703 million increase from the previous year.

How much money does NYC get through Foundation Aid?

When it comes to school funding, New York City gets seven times more money from the state than the federal government.

Of this year’s roughly $40 billion New York City Education Department budget, about 37% — or $15 billion — came from the state. More than $9.5 billion of that money came through the state’s Foundation Aid formula.

When was the Foundation Aid formula created?

The formula traces its origins back to a landmark court case the Campaign for Fiscal Equity filed more than 30 years ago against the state, alleging that its school funding system violated the constitutional rights of New York City students to a “sound basic education.”

After a prolonged legal battle, the state’s highest court agreed, paving the way for Foundation Aid. But the fight didn’t end there. After the formula was implemented in 2007, it took more than a decade before it was fully funded.

By the time Hochul and the state legislature agreed to fully fund Foundation Aid in 2023, however, the formula was outdated.

What is Hochul proposing for Foundation Aid?

Hochul’s proposed tweaks would update the poverty weight, replacing the 2000 Census poverty rate with the most recent Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates. But advocates complain that this data relies on inadequate federal poverty guidelines with no adjustments for local cost of living, which in turn would result in New York City getting $350 million less than it would under the current formula.

The current federal poverty threshold for a family of four is roughly $32,150 a year. Making ends meet on that amount of money in New York City likely looks very different than in other parts of the state, advocates point out.

(Hochul also proposed the formula stop using federal free- and reduced-price lunch eligibility as a basis for measuring student need, instead switching to broader “economically disadvantaged” student counts — a change could benefit the city.)

What did the Senate and the Assembly propose for the formula?

In their one-house budgets, both the Senate and Assembly proposed updating the formula’s Regional Cost Index, which aims to address variations for cost of living expenses in different parts of the state. This hasn’t been updated since 2006, and New York City’s living expenses have greatly increased over the past 20 years.

The New York Board of Regents as well as a report from the Rockefeller Institute called for updating this metric. The governor, however, did not include an update to the Regional Cost Index, though she proposed updating the outmoded poverty data.

The proposed updates from the Senate and Assembly would help offset the shortfall from the governor’s changes. The Senate proposed restoring about $288 million, while the Assembly’s proposal called for including about $200 million, according to a report released Friday by the Alliance for Quality Education, which has long fought to fully fund the Foundation Aid formula.

The Assembly also proposed increasing the formula’s weight for students learning English as a new language, which would direct about $152 million to New York City. Schools have seen a significant increase in the number of English language learners enrolled over the past few years, and many schools are still struggling to meet their instructional needs.

What else are advocates calling for?

In addition to updating the Regional Cost Index, a coalition of more than 100 organizations want the formula to include additional weights for students in temporary housing, those in foster care, and students with disabilities.

They want more funding for students in the city’s free preschool programs for 3- and 4-year-olds. And they want more resources to help New York City implement the state’s mandate to limit class sizes.

Many advocates are urging the state to ensure schools are adequately funded as possible federal funding cuts could hurt programs that provide school meals and support students from low-income households and students with disabilities.

“The consequences will be severe: more children going hungry, more families without the support they need, and even wider educational disparities,” the Alliance for Quality Education report said, “especially for Black, brown, immigrant, and lower-income students.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Top NYC schools officials warn Trump’s Education Department cuts could harm most vulnerable students

2025-03-13T22:00:14+00:00

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As the Trump administration runs a chainsaw through the U.S. Department of Education, New York City public school leaders raised concerns Thursday about possible cuts to federal programs that support vulnerable children.

They also worry about the impact of massive staffing cuts among their federal counterparts and revealed city schools received $8.4 million over the past two years from a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that was cut last week.

The cut to the federal food program, which helps schools buy from local producers, is among the first known Trump administration budget moves to trickle into city’s schools. It represents a small slice of the roughly $545 million in federal funding the city receives for school meals. (Officials said they are still expecting to receive the full $8.4 million, and though the funding is not expected in future years, they said they will continue to prioritize those items regardless.)

“We are lucky in that federal funding is not our largest funding source,” Emma Vadehra, the Education Department’s chief operating officer, said during a City Council budget hearing. About 5% of the city Education Department’s annual budget, or about $2.2 billion, comes from the federal government.

Still, federal funding streams “are usually dedicated for our most vulnerable students — our low-income students, our students with disabilities, our students in temporary housing,” Vadehra said. “It’s truthfully hard to know which of those funding streams is at greatest risk because it’s very unclear what is happening.”

Other federal changes could have an impact, too. Earlier this week, the U.S. Education Department announced plans to slash its workforce in half — including all of the staff at the regional Office for Civil Rights in New York. City officials suggested that could weaken protections for students.

And city Education Department leaders also pointed to cuts at the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers a congressionally mandated national test often referred to as the “nation’s report card.” That test helps policymakers understand how states and districts across the country stack up in reading, math and other subjects.

“The information we glean from that research is critical,” Vedehra said.

On top of anxiety about the federal government’s support of local schools, changes to the state’s funding formula are creating additional uncertainty about how much money will flow to New York City. Under proposed tweaks to the state’s school funding formula from Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York City’s public schools would stand to lose about $350 million compared to the current formula, according to city officials. (The state budget, and changes to the school funding formula, are still being negotiated. Lawmakers have suggested their own proposals to reshape the formula.)

“The fact that we might see a reduction in state funding compared to what we should have gotten, even as we’re looking at this federal situation, is very frustrating,” Vadehra said.

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

NYC schools get $2 billion from Washington. What’s at risk if Trump defunds the Education Dept.?

2025-03-12T21:05:00+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

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New York City parents and school leaders are fearful that President Donald Trump’s administration could cut into the roughly $2 billion the federal government sends to the nation’s largest school system each year.

The U.S. Department of Education cut its workforce in half on Wednesday, and an executive order to dismantle the department entirely is expected to follow.

Trump has long called to dissolve the U.S. Department of Education — starting in his first term. And newly confirmed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon seems poised to help, sending an internal memo to her staff last week where she described the department’s “final mission.”

“My vision is aligned with the President’s: to send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children,” she wrote in the letter.

But how Trump might achieve his goal to close the department is not straightforward: Only Congress has the authority to take such action. Still, with a gutted department, educators and advocates worry that major funding cuts will be on the horizon.

“We’ve all been looking at the alignment of the Project 2025 playbook and the first… weeks of the new administration,” Aaron Pallas, a professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, told Chalkbeat last week. Project 2025 calls for the gradual phasing out of certain funding from the federal government, he added.

Federal funding made up about 5% – or $2.2 billion – of New York City Public Schools’ budget for fiscal year 2025, which ends on June 30, according to the city’s adopted budget. (That includes COVID relief money, which was set to expire next year regardless.)

The city Education Department’s share of federal education funds is split across several grant programs targeting students from low-income households, those living in shelters, or students with disabilities, for example.

The Trump administration has already taken steps to withhold funding from certain programs. The department’s Office of Civil Rights sent a Dear Colleague letter last month to schools stating that they must forgo their diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs and activities to continue receiving federal aid. The DOE also launched an “End DEI” portal on its website. The directive has garnered pushback, including in lawsuits brought by multiple civil rights groups, and several attorneys general, led by New York’s Letitia James, issued their own guidance to schools. And James, along with 20 other attorneys general, filed a suit Thursday to stop Trump’s broader efforts to dismantle the department.

In addition to abolishing the department, Trump and other conservative federal lawmakers have called for civil rights enforcement and major grant programs, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, to be transferred to other departments within the federal government while other programs might be passed onto states.

Various scenarios could play out: Title 1 funding for high poverty schools and funding for students with disabilities could remain untouched — or they could be swept into broader budget cuts, converted into block grants given as a lump sum to states to spend as they see fit, or reduced by Trump’s push to steer more federal funding to private school vouchers.

While it’s unclear what will actually happen to the federal funding that the Education Department currently allocates, below are some of the highest-funded grant programs that the NYC Department of Education currently receives from the federal government, which could be at risk if the Trump administration restricts certain funds or calls for dramatic cuts:

ESSA, Title I ($679.1 million)

The Every Student Succeeds Act calls for students from low-income families to receive “fair, equitable and high-quality” education, according to the law. Federal dollars to support such students come from the Title I program.

The city’s Education Department has received more than $679 million from Title I so far this fiscal year, accounting for about a third of the department’s federal education revenue. It’s the largest source of federal funding to local districts.

Though federal law says schools must have at least a 40% poverty rate to qualify for the funds, districts have some freedom to set their thresholds, and in New York City, Title 1 schools serve at least 60% of students from low-income families. The money pays for costs including the salaries of paraprofessionals, mental health services, and technology upgrades.

Close to 1,300 of the city’s 1,600 schools qualified for the Title I schoolwide program this year, according to school allocation memorandum reports.

But there are strict requirements for how Title I funds may be used, Pallas said, and districts must provide a fair amount of guidance to school leaders on allowable expenditures. Title I funds, for example, cannot be used to fund the salaries of a gym or art teacher.

“The loss of Title I funding would widen the achievement gap, leaving our most vulnerable students without the resources they need to succeed,” said NeQuan McLean, president of the District 16 Community Education Council in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “This would undermine years of progress made in District 16 and severely limit opportunities for students who depend on these services to thrive.”

Meal programs ($545.4 million)

New York City participates in several meal programs subsidized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Summer Food Service Program, and the Child and Adult Care Program.

One in four children in New York City experiences food insecurity, according to a report published by the non-profit food rescue organization City Harvest.

All New York City public schools — as well as hundreds of public charter and private schools that operate outside of the city’s education department — provide free breakfasts and lunches to students through the federal government’s community eligibility provision. The provision allows schools to offer the meals at no charge to students, regardless of their families’ economic backgrounds, with the USDA covering the bulk of the costs.

“This is the most cynical and cruel time to be cutting food programs,” said Liz Accles, executive director of the food access non-profit Community Food Advocates, referring to how an executive order could impact federal food program allocations.

With proposals by House Republicans to reduce access to SNAP benefits and increase the eligibility threshold for meal programs looming, Accles said there could also be a “potential compounding impact of these threats.”

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ($290.8 million)

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires federal, state, and local education agencies to allocate funds to support students with disabilities.

In order for states and school districts to receive the federal funds, they must agree to use the money to supplement their own spending, rather than replace it. Schools can use the federal dollars on supplies, transportation, salaries, and contracted services for students with disabilities, such as translation and job training services.

At her confirmation hearing, McMahon proposed moving management of IDEA to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Moving the grant to a different department could force states and local education agencies to overcome additional bureaucratic hurdles when attempting to resolve civil rights complaints, said Senior Attorney at the Education Law Center Wendy Lecker.

“Having it all in the education department means that the state and districts only have to go to one place,” she said. “They don’t have to duplicate efforts.”

Additional ESSA funding ($171.5 million)

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, New York City schools also receive Title II funds, which support “effective” instruction. Title II funds can be used to pay for professional development programs, recruitment efforts, retaining educators in high-need areas, and other costs related to supporting educators.

Title III is a formula-based grant program that supports both English language learners and immigrant students. For English learners, the funds can be used to enhance or develop new programs, provide instruction outside of school hours, or provide translation services to parents. The Education Department also uses the money to provide immigrant students with programs that help them navigate the U.S. education system, as well as services to their family members through community-based organizations.

Title IV covers additional education programs that enhance basic learning at schools. For example, the funds could cover a class on nutrition and the costs of food items to be included in lessons. The funds could also be used to pay for field trips.

Health and medical services ($140.2 million)

Medicaid is a program that provides health care for free or at a low cost to low-income individuals. The reimbursements make up about 4% – or $81 million – of the Education Department’s federal revenue so far this fiscal year.

The department uses the reimbursements to pay for health and medical services for students with disabilities, including physical therapy, transportation, or counseling. The city’s Education Department also expects to receive about $16.7 million for substance use prevention and intervention.

Child Care and Development Block Grant ($125 million)

Through the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act, the federal government sends money to states to subsidize child care costs for low-income families.

The city mostly uses its allocation from the state to provide low-income New Yorkers with child care vouchers. Recipients can then use the vouchers to enroll their children in a formal child care center, a family-based center or an informal setting, like a relative’s home. Nearly 53,000 children used the vouchers to enroll in an early childhood education program as of last December, according to a report by the Administration for Children’s Services, which administers the program.

The city also uses the money for extended day programs beyond school hours and EarlyLearn, an early childhood program for babies and toddlers who are 6 weeks to 3 years old. More than 10,000 children were enrolled in the program last fiscal year.

A potential cut to these funds would be “disastrous to the early childhood education program that New York City has been building to meet the needs and demands of working families across the five boroughs,” said J.T. Falcone, director of communications at United Neighborhood Houses, which supports a network of settlement houses that provide early childhood programming.

Head Start ($70.7 million)

Head Start is a grant-based program run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that provides free early childhood education to low-income families. About 19,000 children rely on the program in the city.

After pressure from families, NYC schools chancellor reaffirms support for LGBTQ+ students

2025-02-25T00:43:58+00:00

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New York City schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos reaffirmed the public school system’s support for LGBTQ+ students in a letter to families on Monday, stating the Education Department’s policies and guidelines remain in effect, despite a flurry of recent executive orders from President Donald Trump.

“We are committed to maintaining a safe and supportive environment for all students — one that is free from discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying,” Aviles-Ramos said in the letter. “As I recently shared with over 1,000 students and staff attending our seventh annual Gender and Sexuality Alliance Summit, at New York City Public Schools, we see you, we support you, and we value you.”

The statement — which did not directly refer to Trump or his executive orders — comes weeks after parents criticized the Education Department for failing to issue a systemwide response to efforts by the federal government to restrict how schools support gender nonconforming students and teach issues of race in the classroom.

In the letter, the schools chancellor directed families to the city’s guidelines on gender — which include policies instructing staff to address students by their preferred pronouns at school, offering schools some discretion to not inform parents when a student is socially transitioning in cases where a family doesn’t accept their gender identity, and allowing students to join sports teams and use bathrooms consistent with their gender identities.

A spokesperson for the Education Department confirmed no policies had changed in light of Trump’s executive orders.

Last week, the Education Department also republished a series of videos focused on LGBTQ+ history that had been developed with WNET, the local PBS affiliate, after the broadcasting network deleted the videos from its site. Those videos drew on material from part of the city’s “Hidden Voices” curriculum that focused on uplifting the stories of prominent LGBTQ+ people.

Still, some parents were concerned over the lack of specificity in the chancellor’s letter.

Gavin Healy, a Manhattan parent and member of District 2’s Community Education Council, or CEC, said he was disappointed that the letter did not specifically express support for transgender students at a time when their rights have been under attack by the Trump administration.

In recent weeks, Trump has sought to withhold federal funding from schools that allow trans girls to join sports teams consistent with their gender identities. He has also issued executive orders seeking to prevent schools from teaching “gender ideology,” a phrase Trump and his supporters have used to broadly refer to discussions of gender identity or the existence of transgender people.

In other executive orders, Trump has looked to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender children and teenagers, and to define gender as a male-female binary that cannot be changed.

Efforts to erode protections for trans students have also occurred locally. Last year, District 2’s CEC passed a resolution calling on the city to reconsider its sports policy for transgender students. At the time, then-Chancellor David Banks condemned the proposal as “despicable.”

Healy felt that Aviles-Ramos should have explicitly mentioned transgender students and recent attacks on their rights to participate in sports at school, given the rhetoric of the Trump administration, as well as his own community education council.

“People are trying to question the existence and the rights of students to be their authentic selves through this red herring of an issue,” he said, ”and by not taking a stand, I think she just kind of lets them do that.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

LGBTQ history videos find new home after PBS pulls content due to Trump executive orders

2025-02-19T20:57:48+00:00

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In response to a blizzard of executive orders from President Donald Trump, the Public Broadcasting Service recently erased a series of videos made in partnership with New York City Public Schools focused on LGBTQ history.

This week, the city’s Education Department found a new home for them: its own website.

The short films draw on material from the city’s LGBTQ-focused curriculum, part of a series called “Hidden Voices” that seeks to elevate a broad range of underrepresented groups students learn about in their social studies classrooms.

The videos profile prominent LGBTQ people such as the feminist thinker Audre Lorde and civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. They also survey key historical moments, including the mass dismissal of queer government employees during the Lavender Scare of the 1940s-’60s and the 1969 Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village, widely considered a catalyst of the modern LGBTQ rights movement.

The city partnered with WNET, the local PBS affiliate, to produce the videos, and the broadcaster distributed them on its website. City Council allocated nearly $600,000 in discretionary funding to WNET in recent years to create LGBTQ curriculum resources, city records show.

The public broadcasting network’s decision to delete the videos, first reported by the news site Hell Gate, represented one of the first examples of Trump’s executive orders resulting in restricted access to curriculum materials developed for New York City teachers. Historians who helped create the LGBTQ curriculum and accompanying videos said they were glad the Education Department republished them, but worried the materials may now be less accessible.

“The fact that it’ll continue to exist on the internet is great,” said Daniel Hurewitz, a historian who served as a lead author of the LGBTQ Hidden Voices curriculum and wrote scripts for some of the videos. “At the same time, I’m confident that PBS as a website has a bigger reach.”

Hurewitz began to suspect something was amiss shortly after Trump’s inauguration, when he noticed one of the videos he helped create had vanished from the PBS website.

The film, which won a New York Emmy Award, profiles Albert Cashier, an Irish immigrant who was assigned female at birth but lived as a man and fought in the Civil War. He was later outed and accused of fraudulently collecting a pension, but his fellow soldiers came to his defense.

Representatives of PBS and WNET, the city’s local PBS station that helped produce the videos, did not respond to questions about why they pulled the films. A PBS spokesperson confirmed to Hell Gate that the videos were scrubbed in response to Trump’s executive orders but did not specify which one.

One order threatens to withhold federal funding for schools that teach “gender ideology” or “discriminatory equity ideology,” while another attempts to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government. In response, PBS recently closed its DEI office.

Stacie Brensilver Berman, a New York University professor who studies how schools teach LGBTQ history and helped create the Hidden Voices curriculum guides, said one silver lining is the videos may become more clearly associated with the Education Department.

“Having them on the DOE website, even though it’s happening for all the wrong reasons, demonstrates the connection between the videos and the Hidden Voices written materials, which I think can be important in terms of teachers thinking about how to use them,” she said. “It might not be the statement they’re trying to make at all, but it does in my mind signal to LGBTQ students and teachers that the DOE is supporting them.”

A city Education Department spokesperson did not comment on the decision to post the videos. Some parts of the department’s website still link to a PBS site where the videos are not available.

Brensilver Berman hopes that PBS will return the materials to its website as well, though she noted that the organization may continue to be in a difficult position because of its reliance on public dollars. About 16% of PBS funding comes from the federal government.

For his part, Hurewitz worries that broader attacks on teaching about LGBTQ people and their history will have tangible consequences for students across the country.

“We know for sure it makes life better for queer kids if there’s queer representation in the curriculum,” Hurewitz said.

He added: “When people become invisible then it’s very easy to demonize them and criminalize them.”

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

Amid confusion over shifting ICE guidance, NYC schools offers first direct communication to families

2025-02-12T23:35:03+00:00

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The head of the nation’s largest school system offered her first direct communication to families on Wednesday about how schools should handle visits from federal immigration authorities following days of confusion and mixed messages from Mayor Eric Adams.

In a letter to families posted on the city’s website, New York City schools Chancellor Melisssa Aviles-Ramos emphasized that the Education Department’s policies have not changed, that schools do not collect information about students’ immigration status, and that federal immigration officials are not allowed to access schools without a valid legal order.

“New York City Public Schools is dedicated to protecting the right of every student to attend public school, regardless of immigration status, national origin, or religion,” Aviles-Ramos wrote. “Our policies remain the same, and I encourage you to continue to send your children to school.”

The chancellor’s direct communication with families comes amid confusion over shifting guidance to city agencies about how they should respond to visits from federal immigration officials and other non-local law enforcement. Some families have been so fearful about possible law enforcement visits that they’ve been keeping their kids home from school.

Generally, the city’s policy forbids employees from cooperating with federal immigration officials unless they have a valid warrant. But a January memo first reported by the news site Hell Gate last week cleared the way for officials to grant access if they “reasonably feel threatened or fear for your safety or the safety of others around you.” That raised concerns among many observers that immigration officials could have easier access to a wide range of facilities, including schools and shelters that house migrants.

Education Department officials were slow to say whether the new guidance applied to the school system, but city officials clarified on Tuesday that it does not.

The city’s teachers union blasted Adams and the shifting guidance in an open letter released Wednesday. Citing Adams’ overtures to President Donald Trump, whose administration moved to drop corruption charges against the mayor this week, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew called the changing policy “a selfish political ploy with New York City students, educators, and school communities left paying the price.

“Educators have worked hard to calm their students' fears and to share accurate information about their rights,” wrote Mulgrew. “All that work was upended last week when your administration sent out a new memo outlining how ICE agents could be admitted to many public buildings.”

City Hall spokesperson Allison Maser pushed back against Mulgrew’s letter, emphasizing the January memo did not apply to the Education Department and was sent by the corporation counsel, which represents the city in legal cases, rather than City Hall.

“As Mayor Adams has stated over and over again, everyone should feel comfortable sending their children to school, seeking medical care, or reporting crimes, regardless of their immigration status,” Maser wrote. “It’s unfortunate that this one union boss is choosing to play politics as he spreads fear among the city’s immigrant families with this letter.”

Meanwhile, some parent leaders remain frustrated that city education leaders have still not sent out a systemwide message on another aspect of Trump’s education agenda: his effort to curtail how schools support gender nonconforming students and teach about racism.

Asked at several recent parent town halls about Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order targeting “radical indoctrination,” Aviles-Ramos reaffirmed the Education Department’s support for LGBTQ students. Spokesperson Nicole Brownstein previously told Chalkbeat the Education Department remains “steadfast in our commitment to fostering a safe, inclusive, and affirming environment.”

But for some panicked parents of transgender and nonbinary students, the city’s efforts have fallen far short – and several parent leaders are now making their own efforts to fill the communication void.

After receiving multiple letters from parents of gender nonconforming kids begging for additional support, Antonia Ferraro Martinelli, the president of the Community Education Council in Brooklyn’s District 15 decided to send out her own letter pledging to push back against the executive order.

“In the absence of statements from [New York City Public Schools] I am compelled to respond to concerns about the executive orders,” she wrote in a letter to district parents Wednesday morning, which was co-signed by seven other members of the council. “I will continue to be clear with the [Education Department] leadership that District 15 families expect them to resist attacks on students and teachers’ civil rights, human rights, and First Amendment rights.”

The Community Education Council in Brooklyn’s District 13 is also set to consider a resolution opposing the executive order at a meeting later this month, according to a council member.

Ferraro Martinelli said that as a parent volunteer on a body with limited power, she “should not be the spokesperson … speaking to these federal issues.”

But “there’s been radio silence from [New York City Public Schools], and our parents want to be assured at this point, I guess by anybody,” she said.

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

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

NYC Education Dept. didn’t get memo easing federal agents’ access to city buildings, union says

2025-02-08T00:29:02+00:00

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New York City schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos told elected and union officials Friday that she never received a recent memo from Mayor Eric Adams’ office that appears to give city workers more leeway to let federal immigration agents into public buildings, according to people familiar with the conversations.

The Jan. 13 memo allows city workers to let federal agents into public buildings without a warrant signed from a judge if they feel “reasonably threatened” for their own safety or that of others, according to a copy of the memo obtained by the New York Times. It sparked immediate outrage from elected officials and advocates, who said the language makes it easier for federal agents to gain access to city facilities and undermines sanctuary protections at schools, shelters, and hospitals.

But in a statement posted to social media Friday night, the city’s teachers union said “Chancellor Aviles-Ramos informed us the DOE did not receive the mayor’s new guidance for city agencies on federal agents attempting to enter city property. The DOE’s existing policies remain in effect.”

Aviles-Ramos offered a similar message to elected officials, though some wanted to see a clearer commitment in writing, according to a source familiar with the conversations.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said in an email that the guidance for public schools “is clear and unchanged — we do not permit non-local law enforcement into schools unless required by law." The official guidance for city schools is posted on the Education Department website, she added.

But when asked to confirm if that means the City Hall memo does not apply to public schools, Education Department officials referred the question to a spokesperson for Adams, who did not immediately respond. The spokesperson also didn’t immediately respond to a question about whether the memo applies to school safety agents, who are employed by the NYPD.

Union officials said the Education Department plans to send out a statement to families, but as of Friday evening, the department had not done so.

The Education Department’s longstanding guidance instructs principals to ask federal agents for any documentation, then call department lawyers to await instructions. The guidance does not give school employees permission to let the agents inside if they feel threatened, though it does instruct them not to try to physically interfere with an officer who ignores their instructions.

City officials reiterated that protocol to school principals in recent months and have held training sessions with principals and other school employees.

News of the Jan. 13 memo, first reported by Hell Gate, provoked a wave of condemnations from elected officials.

“The recent City Hall memo provides unclear and troubling guidance on interactions with federal immigration officials, creating unnecessary fear and confusion for our educators, students, and families,” said Brooklyn City Council Member and Education Committee Chair Rita Joseph in a statement on the social media platform X. “This is simply unacceptable.”

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said there have been “no substantiated instances of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents attempting to enter our schools.” But fears have remained high amid President Donald Trump’s efforts to ramp up deportations, sparking rumors of immigration agents at schools, and keeping some kids home.

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

NYC schools to bolster translation services to families with limited English after lawsuit

2025-02-06T22:51:16+00:00

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Under a new court settlement, New York City education officials will soon be required to beef up training and oversight at schools to ensure they are providing translation services for families who don’t primarily speak English.

The agreement stems from a 2019 federal civil rights lawsuit that alleged a “pattern and practice” of failing to provide interpretation services across the nation’s largest school system. Families were unable to access communications about bullying, lead contamination, and even serious medical conditions, the lawsuit claimed. In one instance, a family who requested an interpreter for a meeting was asked by school officials, “Why don’t you learn English?”

About 356,000 of the city’s public school students came from families who primarily speak a language other than English at home last school year, or roughly 44% of students, a population larger than the entire enrollment of Chicago Public Schools. Since the summer of 2022, New York City has seen an influx of about 48,000 newcomer students, many of whom are migrants who do not speak English, underscoring the importance of widespread interpretation services.

Under the terms of the new legal settlement finalized last week, the Education Department will expand “language access training” for a range of staff including principals, parent coordinators, and school nurses. The training will emphasize parents’ rights, best practices for interpretation, and how to make those services available, according to the settlement agreement. Central employees who help support schools, known as “language access coordinators,” will also receive enhanced training.

M’Ral Broodie-Stewart, a senior staff attorney at Legal Services NYC, which brought the lawsuit, is hopeful those efforts will pay off.

Translation for families has “not been happening on the ground in schools based on pure ignorance of the requirement to provide language access and how to actually get documents translated and how to get interpreters on the phone,” Broodie-Stewart said. “That’s been the biggest barrier for language access.”

The settlement requires city officials to collect more data on the number of requests for interpretation of documents and meetings that are fulfilled, though those figures will be reported to the plaintiffs confidentially. (City officials have previously made some of that information public.)

The Education Department agreed to send letters, conduct robocalls, and post on social media to remind families that language services are available, and it will post guidance for interpreting documents and meetings on its website. Officials must also create a new complaint form for families to report issues securing interpretation services.

Interpretation services are especially crucial for caregivers of students with disabilities who may struggle to advocate on their child’s behalf if evaluations, meetings, and special education learning plans aren’t properly translated. About 30% of the New York City students with disabilities have a home language other than English, Education Department officials said. Each of the four families involved in the 2019 lawsuit had children enrolled in public schools geared toward students with complex disabilities.

The responsibility to arrange translations of many special education documents and meetings has long rested primarily with school staff, leading to a patchwork system of finding outside vendors or recruiting staff to interpret even if they had limited language skills or knowledge of technical special education terms.

City officials have taken steps in recent years to centralize the process. In 2021, the Education Department agreed to translate special education learning plans for any student who needed it, instead of relying heavily on school staff. Last school year, the Education Department centrally translated 13,205 special education plans, up from 7,078 in the 2019-20 school year.

Still, even though all parents are eligible for their child’s special education plan to be interpreted, that process is not automatic and requires parents to request such services. Broodie-Stewart said it should be offered when schools meet with parents to craft the learning plan.

Much of the interpretation and translation process for day-to-day communication and meetings will still be handled by individual schools, Broodie-Stewart added, though she said there will be enhanced oversight from the Education Department.

Hui Qin Liu, who speaks Mandarin and has a child with autism, previously told Chalkbeat that she struggled to understand why requests for feeding therapy went unaddressed or why her daughter’s physical therapy services were reduced. She also struggled to communicate with the school about why her child, who was nonverbal, came home with bruises and bite marks. The situation felt “hopeless,” said Liu, one of four families who were part of the lawsuit along with the Alliance for Families with Developmental Needs.

“It was like torture to not be able to get updates on my child, especially during emergency situations,” Liu said in a statement in response to the settlement agreement. “But I am now hopeful that others can get the translation and interpretation services they need to make sure their children are safe and are getting the academic supports they need to learn.”

Liu and the other three families will each receive $11,000 as part of the settlement.

After this story was published, Education Department officials offered a statement and noted that they have increased spending on language access programs from $5.2 million in fiscal year 2019 to $14 million last year.

“Our goal is to ensure that our translation and interpretation services are available to all parents and families in our community,” Education Department spokesperson Onika Richards wrote in a statement. “As we continue to make improvements, we encourage all parents and families to request the services they need directly through schools or at schools.nyc.gov/hello.”

As part of the settlement, the Education Department did not admit to any wrongdoing.

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

‘Everyone is scared’: Deportation fears keep immigrant students home from NYC schools

2025-01-24T21:00:49+00:00

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This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Hallways at the Stewart Hotel, a midtown Manhattan shelter for migrant families, are typically bustling on weekday mornings with kids and parents on their way to school.

They were eerily empty on Thursday morning.

A similar scene played out at the nearby Roosevelt Hotel shelter and intake center, where a line of migrant families waiting to get back inside following school pickup was far shorter than normal Thursday afternoon. The majority of kids stayed home “because of that fear,” said one father in Spanish.

And in Bushwick, Brooklyn, one dad who warily sent his kids to school said he was in the minority of families at the shelter to do so.

“Almost nobody is sending their kids [to school] in case they’re taken,” said Amanda, a Venezuelan mother staying at the Stewart who kept her three children out of school all week and asked to use only her first name out of fear of jeopardizing her immigration case. She estimated that about 100 kids at the shelter stayed out of school this week. “Everyone is scared.”

On high alert after President Donald Trump’s inauguration this week and worried about his promise to fast-track deportations, scores of immigrant families kept their kids home from school, multiple parents said.

Educators are working hard to reassure anxious parents that their kids will be safe in school, according to interviews with eight school leaders, as the New York City’s Education Department prohibits federal law enforcement agents from entering schools except under narrow circumstances. But they’re also grappling with how to quell concerns at a time when federal action seems to be ramping up by the day.

As soon as Trump took office, he rescinded a longstanding internal policy prohibiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, from making arrests at “sensitive locations” like churches and schools, further heightening fears for families. His pledge to begin mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants nationwide hit close to home on Thursday when immigration officers launched a workplace raid across the Hudson River in Newark. Chicago Public Schools officials said Friday that agents showed up at a Chicago elementary school but school staff barred them from entering.

It’s difficult to know how many families across the five boroughs are keeping their kids out of school because of deportation fears. An estimated 48,000 newcomers have enrolled in city schools since summer 2022.

Daily attendance, which averaged 90% last year, dipped to the mid-80s on Tuesday and Wednesday before rebounding to 89% Thursday, according to daily attendance data from the Education Department, though other factors including the frigid temperatures and Regents Exams administration for high schoolers likely played a role.

Some educators are sounding the alarm that fears of immigration enforcement could keep kids out of school in large numbers — and will take a psychological toll on the kids who do show up.

“I cannot tell you how many parents have come to me today … Kids don’t want to come to school,” a parent coordinator at a Corona, Queens, school with a large immigrant population, told Mayor Eric Adams at a town hall this week. “Kids are scared to leave home and not come back to see their parents.”

“We are very clear, children should go to school,” Adams responded. “We are going to continue to stand up for all New Yorkers, documented and undocumented.”

But Adams has also cultivated an increasingly close relationship with Trump, sitting down with his “Border Czar” to discuss shared priorities, visiting Trump in Mar-A-Lago, and attending the inauguration in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Adams, who was indicted on federal corruption charges last year and could theoretically receive a pardon from Trump, has said his efforts to cooperate with the new administration are for the benefit of the city, and that his focus for immigration enforcement is on people who have committed crimes.

The mayor has said he will not criticize Trump publicly, and declined to take a stance on Trump’s decision to open the door to ICE making arrests at schools — a position some educators said undercuts his attempts to reassure educators and immigrant families.

“I didn’t feel like my institution was being protected,” said Lorenzo Chambers, the principal of P.S. 279 in Brooklyn, referring to Adams’ response to a question about immigration enforcement at schools and other sensitive locations. “I think [he’s] playing politics with it — and he’s on both sides.”

Principals struggle to reassure wary families

Principals are preparing guidance counselors to work with students who fear that their families could be deported, hosting information sessions with families about their rights, and reminding school staff of city rules that forbid sharing information with federal immigration officials or providing access to the building without a warrant.

One Manhattan middle school principal fielded an early morning phone call this week from a mother worried about traveling to drop off her daughter. The principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear that his school could be targeted by immigration officials, reassured the mom that despite the end of the federal policy limiting immigration arrests at schools, he would do everything possible to protect students.

“ICE is going to have to arrest me before they arrest your daughter,” he told the mom, adding that they would lock her daughter in his office if needed. The mother ended up bringing her child to school.

Dan Steinberg, co-principal of Harlem Link Charter School, said the school is making sure that it has accurate contact information for families in the event that immigration officials arrive and the school needs to quickly reach caregivers.

“We hope nothing happens but we can’t promise families that no one is going to show up,” Steinberg said.

Several migrant parents at the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown the city has used as its migrant arrival center since 2023 said workers at the shelter hadn’t offered much reassurance about potential immigration raids as families tried to piece together information from news reports, social media posts, and panicked conversations in WhatsApp groups.

Even parents who said that their children’s schools had clearly communicated their plans to protect students said that they weren’t convinced.

A group of migrant students wait for a bus across from the Stewart Hotel shelter in Midtown on the way to school, Jan. 24, 2025.

“They tell us to bring them, that they’ll be safe,” said one Venezuelan mother at the Stewart, another midtown hotel being used as a shelter.

“But we’re very scared, so better to wait a couple days to see what happens, continued the mother, who declined to share her name for fear of immigration consequences.

Most school leaders said they felt the guidance from the city Education Department has been helpful and clear. But that doesn’t make it any less bewildering trying to keep up with the fast-changing news at the federal level.

“I don’t know how prepared you can be when every day you’re hearing something else,” said a principal at a Manhattan school that’s enrolled many migrant students, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to talk to the media.

Attendance struggles predate this week

While several principals said it’s too early to tell whether attendance has taken a big hit this week because of immigration concerns, some noted attendance barriers for migrant students that pre-dated Trump. Those include housing instability and the city’s 60-day shelter eviction policy, which often results in families moving around the city and missing days of school at a time as they struggle to settle in and secure transportation, principals said. (City officials recently said they’re amending the policy to give families who have already gotten one 60-day notice a reprieve). Kids are also often pulled out of school for obligations like court dates.

One Manhattan principal said families sometimes depart the city without notice, leaving the school responsible for verifying that they’ve enrolled in a new school before discharging them. The principal added that they worried that more families are “going to go into hiding” now that Trump is in office.

Missing even a few extra days of school can feel like a big setback for kids still trying to settle in and learn a new language.

Samantha, a first-grader staying at the Stewart, said she enjoys reading, writing, and drawing at school, but has resorted to watching her tablet all day this week since her mom has kept her home because of deportation fears.

A mom of a 4-year-old who hasn’t been to school this week said, “It’s very difficult because she’s used to her friends, to playing.”

For the families who did decide to send their kids, the decision often came with intense anxiety.

Gleinjer, a Venezuelan mother of three at the Stewart, decided to send her kids to school Thursday after initially keeping them home. Her oldest, an eighth-grader, made sure to plug in her cellphone fully the night before so she could contact her mom in case immigration officials showed up, Gleinjer said.

“She said, ‘Mommy, I charged my phone. … Anything happens, and I will call you,’” Gleinjer said in Spanish. “She’s scared.” (That underscored recent concerns from State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa about how a looming statewide ban of cell phones in schools could limit communication between migrant caregivers and their children.)

Jehinzo Gonzalez, the father of two school-aged children at a shelter in Bushwick, said he’s continued to take the kids to school even as leaving them there now fills him with dread. He’s photocopied his kids’ asylum paperwork and other immigration documents to keep in their backpacks.

On a recent afternoon they were a few minutes late at dismissal and he panicked.

“I was scared, I was worried. I didn’t know if something had happened,” he said. “So it’s true it’s causing so much anguish, and there’s such fear and uncertainty. But we keep fighting, and hoping that things will turn out OK.”

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

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

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

School for immigrant students to open in Queens despite pushback from school sharing its building

2025-01-23T23:43:42+00:00

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A network of schools that exclusively serves newly arrived immigrants will be getting its first 6-12 school.

The new school, known as Queens International, won approval to open its doors this fall, following hours of debate during a contentious public meeting Wednesday evening.

Members of Ridgewood’s I.S. 77, the middle school it will share a building with, said the campus previously struggled with another school temporarily housed in its building. They also fear a new program could exacerbate enrollment declines at the school, which offers a Spanish dual language program.

Queens International will join the Internationals Network for Public Schools, which supports 17 public schools across New York City that exclusively cater to students who recently arrived from other countries. It will be the first middle school for new arrivals in Queens.

City officials said the new school will help accommodate a rapid increase in the number of migrant families — an estimated 48,000 newcomers have enrolled in local public schools since the summer of 2022. Queens public schools have absorbed the largest share of newcomers of the five boroughs, city officials said.

It’s unclear whether the city will continue to see such an influx in the coming years, or whether it might even see some people leave as local and federal officials attempt to reduce the flow of new migrants and the city faces an affordability crisis.

Approval to open the new international school comes as President Donald Trump has vowed to accelerate deportations and his administration this week rescinded a longstanding policy that limited immigration enforcement at schools and other sensitive locations. Mayor Eric Adams refrained from taking a clear stance on the shift.

Leaders of the Internationals Network previously said they have been preparing for a more hostile stance from the Trump administration. And the Panel for Educational Policy, which has the power to approve school openings, unanimously voted Wednesday evening in favor of a resolution laying out protections for undocumented students.

Similar to other schools in the Internationals Network, the new Queens outpost promises to offer support for children who are in the process of learning English and may have experienced disruptions to their schooling. Students at Queens International will also have access to Advanced Placement courses, opportunities to sample college coursework through CUNY’s College Now program, and paid apprenticeships in technology, finance, and business.

Much of the pushback to the new school at Wednesday’s panel meeting came from community members from I.S. 77, who pointed to a two-year co-location with Bushwick Leaders High School for Academic Excellence, an arrangement they described as chaotic. Some children from I.S. 77 said students at the high school sometimes got into fights that required them to stay in their classrooms until the disruption was resolved.

Other community members worried that opening Queens International in the building would strain access to shared resources, such as the cafeteria, and exacerbate enrollment declines at I.S. 77. They pushed for the Education Department to instead invest in expanding I.S. 77.

“It would create competition and comparison by parents and students and may lead to a shift of their students to an international school which is equipped with more resources,” Manisha Jain, a member of the local parent council in Queens District 24 said during the Wednesday evening meeting. The District 24 parent council overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging the city to reconsider the co-location proposal.

City officials contend that there is plenty of room for both schools, as the building is only at 39% capacity. Even once Queens International reaches its full projected enrollment of up to 510 students, the building will still have excess space, city projections show.

Alan Cheng, an Education Department superintendent who oversees the Internationals Network schools, noted that Queens International will focus on enrolling newly arrived immigrants who are learning English.

“This ensures that Queens International is meant to compliment, rather than compete, with the I.S. 77 dual language bilingual program,” he said, adding that the school “will address a critical need in our city.”

After hours of testimony, the proposal to open Queens International won nearly unanimous support from the education panel.

Notably, one of Mayor Adams’ appointees, Darling James Miramey, abstained from the vote. He called the proposal a “lose-lose situation.”

“I know that I’m [a] mayoral appointee and I should say yes,” Miramey said, referencing the longstanding practice of mayoral appointees voting in favor of proposals advanced by the Education Department, which the mayor controls. “I want more time for [a] better solution.”

The panel also approved another new Queens high school this coming fall called HBCU Early College Prep, a selective program that will partner with a historically Black university and offer early college credit. The vote in favor of that school was unanimous.

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

Top NYC students get automatic SUNY admission, but fine print excludes many Black and Latino kids

2024-12-10T20:09:18+00:00

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High school teacher Steve Lazar was ecstatic when he learned of SUNY’s new plan to automatically admit seniors who are in the top 10% of their class to a slew of campuses.

Lazar, who spent much of his career working at non-selective New York City high schools that predominantly serve low-income students of color, thought the new policy would give his students a leg up in an admissions process that often favors families with time and resources.

But the fine print worried Lazar. The new policy, called SUNY’s “Top 10% Promise,” requires students meet criteria beyond having a top GPA, such as posting SAT or ACT scores above certain thresholds, passing two Advanced Placement exams, or being on track to earn advanced diplomas that require additional tests.

The result: Black and Latino students in New York City are far less likely to receive an automatic admissions offer than their white and Asian American peers, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of city data.

Black or Latino students represented 51% of the top students in each school’s graduating class last year — but they made up just 36% of students who were in the top 10% of their class and met SUNY’s additional criteria for automatic admission. Meanwhile, white and Asian American students represented 47% of students at the top of their high school class, yet accounted for 61% of students who would have received a direct admissions offer.

Lazar said he was “unbelievably dismayed” by the expected impact of the extra rules. “My question is why have they put in these arbitrary criteria that are going to disproportionately exclude a Black and brown population?”

Chalkbeat evaluated the impact of the SUNY direct admissions policy on New York City public school students by requesting Education Department data for last year’s graduating class. The direct admissions policy is set to take effect for current high school seniors, so the figures may shift but still offer a close approximation of which students are likely to receive direct admissions offers.

The additional test score requirements would have excluded about 2,400 New York City students in last year’s class from receiving an automatic offer — meaning only about 6% of city seniors would qualify for the SUNY program.

Several states, including California and Texas, have rolled out direct admissions programs, a model that has grown in popularity across the country. The SUNY program includes automatic admission to nine campuses, including Purchase College, University at Albany, and Stony Brook University. Binghamton University, one of the state’s top public colleges, is not included.

Students in dozens of public school districts across the state are eligible for the program in its first year, including New York City. Officials plan to eventually expand it to all districts. A major goal is to keep top-performing students in New York for college and reduce hurdles for students from low-income households who may struggle to navigate the admissions process.

“It removes the barrier of doing the application,” SUNY Chancellor John King told the Daily News. “It removes the barrier of students maybe questioning if they’re going to be able to get into a top college.”

Asked why SUNY added additional criteria beyond ranking in the top of a high school class, SUNY spokesperson Holly Liapis said the purpose is “to ensure that students are academically prepared to succeed in college.”

Liapis stressed that students who aren’t offered automatic admission may still apply to SUNY campuses. She also pointed to the Educational Opportunity Program, a separate initiative that offers spots to low-income students who fell below traditional admissions criteria and comes with extra support.

Researchers: SUNY criteria exclude students who could thrive

Multiple experts who have studied automatic admissions policies in other states, including Texas and California, said there are some promising elements of SUNY’s approach, including directly admitting students rather than requiring students to apply even if they automatically qualify.

Still, they said it’s difficult to predict whether the program would shift students’ college enrollment decisions or increase campus diversity, noting any changes would likely be modest.

Zachary Bleemer, an economics professor at Princeton University who has studied direct admissions elsewhere, said SUNY’s additional criteria beyond course grades seemed more restrictive than in some other states — and could lock out students who would benefit from a SUNY education.

Bleemer’s research on a direct enrollment program in California found that students with high GPAs but relatively low test scores benefited from attending a selective University of California school, notching significantly higher college graduation rates and earnings compared with students who just missed the admissions cutoff and went to less selective schools.

“I think it’s very easy for state administrators to believe that top high school students with low test scores would not be able to take advantage of the educational resources provided by large public universities,” he said. “And that’s often wrong.”

Some New York City educators said they support the direct admissions program. Nitzan Ziv, a college and career counselor at Harvest Collegiate High School in Manhattan, said the handful of students who qualified for the program were thrilled to learn a few weeks ago that they automatically had a spot at SUNY school.

“It’s a great morale boost,” Nitzan said, noting that a handful of the school’s students got into all nine SUNY campuses participating in the direct admissions program.

But she’s unsure it will change their enrollment decisions, as the school’s top students are already plugged into the college admissions process and often attend more selective schools.

She also echoed concerns that some of the school’s strongest students are being excluded by the additional test score requirements.

“It just seems like it’s cutting out students who are excellent candidates for no reason,” she said.

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

Suspensions declined last year, but NYC schools issued more lengthy punishments

2024-11-26T21:49:07+00:00

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New York City students received fewer suspensions last school year, though the number of lengthy punishments ticked up, new data showed.

Schools issued 27,724 suspensions during the 2023-24 school year, a 2.4% decline from the year before when the punishments roared back to pre-pandemic levels.

Principal suspensions, which last five days or fewer and are typically served in school, declined by more than 3%. But superintendent suspensions, which stretch six days or longer and are served at outside suspension sites, ticked up about 1% to just over 6,200. Most suspensions are capped at 20 days, but in some cases can stretch for months and up to an entire school year.

The total number of suspensions remained below the nearly 33,000 issued in the school year before COVID hit, however suspension rates have returned to similar levels, as fewer students are enrolled in the city’s public schools. (The figures do not include charters.)

In the wake of the pandemic, some observers worried that suspensions would surge as concerns about student mental health and behavior multiplied. Unlike his predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams hasn’t prioritized reducing suspension rates — sparking fears among discipline reform advocates that his tough-on-crime posture on public safety could trickle into schools.

But Adams has not sought to dramatically change the school discipline code, which was overhauled under former Mayor Bill de Blasio to nudge schools away from suspensions. And facing pressure from advocates, Adams has largely kept restorative justice programs in place, which include peer mediation and alternative methods of talking through conflicts.

“It does feel like we’ve made inroads,” said Rohini Singh, director of the school justice project at Advocates for Children, which helps low-income families navigate the suspension process and has pushed to reduce punitive punishments. “Talking about the harm of suspensions and exclusionary discipline is not such an outrageous thing anymore.”

Many — though not all — studies show that suspensions hurt students academically, including research in New York City that found the punishments contributed to students passing fewer classes and increasing their risk of dropping out.

Singh noted that there were still troubling disparities in the suspension statistics. About 38% of suspensions went to Black students and a similar share went to students with disabilities, even as fewer than 20% of city students are Black and about 22% have a disability. Suspensions of Latino students were more in line with their share of the student population.

At the same time, white and Asian American students were significantly less likely to be suspended relative to their share of enrollment.

City officials said they are continuing to encourage schools to use alternatives to suspensions such as restorative justice. Schools are also expected to monitor disparities in suspension rates between different student groups, officials added.

“We are proud to see an overall decline in suspensions,” Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle wrote in a statement. “Through promotion of restorative measures and an emphasis on social-emotional learning, we aim to continue this downward trend while tackling historic inequities.”

In addition to longstanding disparities in which students are most likely to be suspended, advocates also worried about the uptick in lengthy superintendent suspensions — which require students to attend school at suspension centers and are even more disproportionately issued to Black students and children with disabilities. Students who received long-term suspensions previously told Chalkbeat that the suspension centers can feel chaotic, and academic expectations are often low.

In representing students in suspension proceedings, Singh said some schools appeared to “overcharge” students for relatively minor fights, but acknowledged it is difficult to know exactly what is driving the trend citywide.

“There’s still more work to be done” to bring those suspension rates down, she said.

The city’s suspension data is also incomplete. The Education Department did not include breakdowns for students in foster care, which were required under a 2023 tweak to city law. A department spokesperson said they were working to compile the statistics but did not offer a timeline for releasing them.

“This is very worrisome that they’re not including that data,” said City Council member Rita Joseph, who authored the bill and helms the education committee. “I wanted to capture the data so we can do better in providing support for these students … They’ve already gone through enough trauma.”

The full suspension data was also required to be shared publicly by the end of October, but was posted weeks late. A department spokesperson did not respond to a question about why the city has not published the statistics on time in recent years.

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

Concerns over NYC’s student data privacy proposal heightened by Trump win

2024-11-19T22:07:10+00:00

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New York City’s school board is delaying a vote on a controversial proposal regulating how the Education Department collects, stores, and shares private student data, including names, emails, phone numbers, home addresses, and birth dates.

For weeks, parents and advocates have expressed concerns over whether proposed revisions to a 15-year-old Education Department policy would adequately safeguard student data. Some worried the revised policy could weaken protections for students, in some cases allowing the Education Department to share student data with outside parties without parental consent.

The United Federation of Teachers echoed parent concerns over the proposed revisions in a letter sent earlier this month to the Education Department, according to a copy obtained by Chalkbeat.

Fears about student data privacy have increased in the weeks since President-elect Donald Trump won his reelection bid. During his campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed to enact aggressive mass deportations, a promise that is already spreading worry in New York City, which is home to thousands of asylum-seeking and other migrant students.

In light of Trump’s rhetoric, some parents, advocates, and city officials want to see even stronger protections for student data, ensuring information like a student’s home address won’t aid federal agents in identifying undocumented students.

The revised regulations were initially slated for an October vote by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP, which votes on major policy proposals and contracts. It was moved to the panel’s Wednesday meeting, then pushed back again at least until December, PEP Chair Gregory Faulkner said last week.

With more time before the vote, Faulkner said the PEP plans to hold a town hall during the first week of December to solicit public feedback on the regulations. (The date has not yet been set.) It’s one of two controversial proposals that will be discussed during the town hall, with families also asked to weigh in on a proposed nearly $17 million contract for the Specialized High School Admissions Test.

Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said moving the vote would allow for further community engagement.

“The proposed revisions to the regulation make necessary updates to conform with state and federal law, and bring the regulation up to date with current policies and practices related to safeguarding student information, which go beyond legal requirements,” she said in a statement. “We listen and are responsive to the voices of our families and communities, and we have revised the regulation twice in response to public comment.”

But critics of the revisions argue that the proposed regulations aren’t fully aligned with state law, which they say outlines more overt protections and oversight when it comes to how outside parties use student data collected by education agencies.

Members of the public can view the proposed revisions online, and share feedback to PEP by email or phone or by attending a meeting, city officials said.

Advocates argue opt out measures are insufficient

The proposed regulations update 2009 privacy protections and include details on parental and students’ rights when it comes to education records, the responsibilities of school officials handling those records, procedures that must be followed after data breaches, and more.

Advocates have expressed concerns over a stipulation through which student data can become classified as “directory information,” allowing the Education Department to release it to third-party vendors without parental consent.

Under the proposed regulation, schools would be required to give families at least a 30-day notice before such data is cleared for release, during which families could choose to opt out, according to city documents. Those notices would be required to include both the types of student data that would become directory information, as well as the parties to whom that data would be released. The notices must also be “written and distributed in a manner reasonably likely to be seen” by families.

But once classified as directory information, that data could be shared with the designated parties without parental consent.

Leonie Haimson, executive director of the advocacy group Class Size Matters and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, took issue with the broad array of student data that could be classified as directory information under the proposed regulations. She added that opt-out measures are insufficient to protect student privacy.

“We know that parent opt out is inadequate, as many parents will never see these notifications,” she said in an email. “Identity theft of minors can occur with only names and birth dates, and these crimes can go undetected for years, seriously damaging their future prospects.”

For many, concerns about student data being shared center on how outside parties might use the information — and whether the proposed regulations sufficiently guard against potential redisclosure or abuse of student data. Hearing that feedback motivated Faulkner to seek out more public input on the regulations, he said.

“It leaves our hands at some point, and that’s where there have been complaints,” he said of student data. “For me, I want to see that that directory information is really protected.”

Naveed Hasan, a Manhattan parent and PEP member, is awaiting input from the public before he decides on the proposed revisions. He’s concerned about how vendors might be using student data, particularly when much of the Education Department’s tech infrastructure is outsourced to other companies.

“My position has always been that none of our students’ private data should ever be on a non-DOE operated network under any circumstance,” he said.

Education Department officials said that students’ personally identifiable information cannot be used for commercial or marketing purposes and that vendors can only access, use, or share private data as necessary for the services they are contracted to provide.

Student privacy concerns heightened by second Trump term

Haimson has voiced a litany of other concerns about the privacy regulations, including that the language could exempt some student health records from the protections of state law, as well as the possible implications of the revisions for migrant students once Trump assumes office.

“Disclosing a child’s personal data, including their photos, could also further encourage predatory marketing, sexual harassment, deepfake porn or abduction, and help the Trump administration deport migrant students based on their addresses,” Haimson said.

Faulkner said he’s asked the city for more information about what the Trump administration’s focus on mass deportations could mean for the city’s students, particularly as it relates to student data privacy.

“Are we making this easy? Are there protections in place?” he said. “Some of the kids, if their addresses become easily accessible, all you need to know is where the shelters are. Would that target our kids who are undocumented?”

Beyond the issue of data privacy, Hasan said he hopes to see the city more firmly commit to protecting undocumented students from the Trump administration.

“We want the city to not cooperate if and when they approach them, no matter what,” he said. “We need to set up safeguards for our students and our families that are enrolled in schools — that have a federal right to be in those schools, no matter what their documentation status is — even if they’re approached by a hostile federal administration.”

Jessamyn Lee, a Brooklyn parent and member of the PEP, is hopeful that public pressure will push the Education Department to further strengthen protections for student data.

“These regulations only come up like once a decade,” she said. “So if we don’t get it right now, the students who are currently in our schools are just going to be screwed.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

1 in 8 NYC students experienced homelessness last year, a record high

2024-11-18T11:00:00+00:00

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The number of New York City students experiencing homelessness grew to more than 146,000 last school year, an increase of 26,000 students, according to a new analysis.

That meant roughly one in eight students in the nation’s largest public school system were living in temporary housing during the 2023-24 school year, a record high, according to a Monday report by Advocates for Children, which has been tracking the number for more than a decade.

New York City has long struggled to address its housing crisis, with the number of students in shelters, living “doubled up” with friends or relatives, or otherwise without permanent housing eclipsing 100,000 for each of the past nine years. The current high comes in part due to the thousands of asylum-seeking and other migrant families that have come to the city in recent years.

Students experiencing homelessness can face significant challenges at school. Just showing up can be a hurdle: Students in shelters are disproportionately impacted by transportation issues, with 40% of students attending school in a different borough from their shelter placement, according to Jennifer Pringle, director of the Learners in Temporary Housing Project at Advocates for Children.

In the 2022-23 school year, half of all students living in temporary housing — including 67% of students living in shelters — were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 18 days of school, according to the Advocates for Children analysis. For students in permanent housing, just 34% were chronically absent that year.

The share of students in temporary housing scoring proficient on state English and math exams was more than 20 percentage points lower than their peers. Students in temporary housing were also more likely to face suspensions or transfer schools. And students in shelters dropped out of high school at a rate three times higher than those in permanent housing.

The compounding obstacles can place additional strain on students and schools, Pringle said.

“Schools that have a large number of students in temporary housing have a lot of churn within their student population, and that means it takes that much more operational work and personnel to adjust,” she said. “You think about getting to know your students, getting to know what their needs are, and adapting your classroom practice to meet those needs — but what if your classroom composition is constantly changing? It takes time and effort to have a nimble response.”

Schools need additional staff and resources to adequately support students who are experiencing homelessness, from academic intervention and tutoring, to family outreach and engagement, to partnering with community organizations to provide wraparound support at school, Pringle said.

She suggested other ways the city can better support its students in temporary housing, including ending a requirement that families in some shelters exit the system every 60 days and either find alternative housing or re-apply for shelter, as well as hiring more staff to support students in shelters.

The city currently employs 107 school-based community coordinators who work with students in temporary housing, as well as 160 shelter-based community coordinators, according to Education Department officials.

Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said the city remained committed to supporting students in temporary housing through field and enrollment support, transportation services, counseling, immunization assistance, and academic support.

“Our students who are experiencing homelessness are among our most vulnerable,” she said in a statement. “We are also proud to provide attendance supports strategies that allow districts and schools to provide families with access to food, clothing, hygiene supplies, and health services.”

Tull added the city had updated its school funding formula last year to send additional funds to schools serving students in temporary housing.

Advocates call for more support for homeless students

Among the students living in temporary housing, 54% were doubled up, or temporarily sharing the housing of others, while 41% spent time in the city’s shelters. The number of students experiencing homelessness rose in every school district across the five boroughs.

Students experiencing homelessness were especially concentrated in upper Manhattan, southwest Bronx, and parts of northeast and central Brooklyn, a trend in line with prior school years, according to Advocate for Children’s analysis.

In the Bronx and Manhattan, nearly one in six students did not have a permanent home.

Advocates have called for further support for students living in temporary housing, particularly as the state reworks its nearly two-decades-old school funding formula.

That formula, known as Foundation Aid, was implemented in 2007, and sends roughly $24.9 billion to school districts — including more than $9.5 billion to New York City schools. As part of a state budget agreement earlier this year, the Rockefeller Institute is currently conducting a study on how to revise the formula and will issue recommendations by Dec. 1.

Many education experts, politicians, and advocates agree that the formula is no longer a sufficient measure of student need. In September, a coalition of more than 100 New York organizations, including Advocates for Children, urged the state to overhaul Foundation Aid.

“Student homelessness has skyrocketed over the past decade, but right now, districts receive no additional per-pupil funding from the State to help meet the educational needs of students in temporary housing,” said Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, in a statement.

And as the number of New York City students experiencing homelessness could continue to grow, Pringle said it’s critical that education remains a focus.

“Education needs to be part of the conversation about solving family homelessness,” she said. “Young adults who don’t have a high school diploma are four and a half times more likely to experience homelessness.”

Tackling the education challenges students currently living in shelters face is crucial in breaking the cycle to help prevent them from experiencing homelessness as adults, Pringle said.

“We need to make sure that they are getting educational support and services now,” she said. “So that they can thrive in school, get their high school diploma and more, and be successful, independent adults.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Is NYC’s Summer Rising program working? It depends how you’re measuring.

2024-10-30T21:27:28+00:00

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Four years after New York City overhauled its free youth summer program to blend academics and recreation, city lawmakers are asking a seemingly basic question about the $230 million-a-year initiative: Is it working?

The answer is surprisingly difficult to pin down, reflecting a mish-mash of competing priorities and goals for the Summer Rising program, which emerged in 2021 as a way to re-engage kids struggling with isolation and learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has continued to grow in popularity since.

It’s a pressing question for city leaders, who will have to decide once again whether to draw from the city budget to replace expired federal COVID relief dollars that previously supported a portion of the program. City elementary and middle school families – who have increasingly come to rely on the program as a free summer option – will be paying close attention.

“We are at a critical moment where we need to stop and say: Does this make [sense], this model in this way?” said Bronx Council Member Althea Stevens, the chair of the council committee on children and youth, during a Wednesday hearing.

At the hearing, city officials acknowledged that there’s room to improve Summer Rising, which taps Education Department teachers to offer academic instruction in the mornings and community organizations contracted by the city’s Youth and Community Development Department to run recreational programs in the afternoon.

Still, they made the case for sticking with the basic model, citing the overwhelming demand for slots last year, some evidence of academic improvement among participants, and the ability to reach vulnerable kids previously left out of summer camp.

But critics argue that trying to cram a full academic and recreational schedule into the same program has undermined both components. Some families have bristled at the mandatory academic instruction, while educators said it’s been more difficult to focus on students who need the most support.

Chalkbeat reported over the summer that attendance has hovered at just around 60% over the past three years – a number critics say raises serious concerns about whether the program is meeting families’ needs.

Stevens argues the city should return to its pre-COVID model, where summer camp providers offered full-day recreational programs, and schools ran summer classes for students who failed courses during the school year.

Here’s what emerged during Wednesday’s hearing about how the program is working, and where it’s falling short:

Booming enrollment and signs of academic improvement

The first thing city officials often point to as evidence that Summer Rising is working is families’ overwhelming demand.

Last summer, roughly 160,000 students applied for some 115,000 spots, Education Department officials said Thursday. Thanks to tweaks to the application process, city officials said they were able to match a higher percentage of applicants with their first-choice programs this year than last, though tens of thousands of kids still landed on waitlists.

Despite the attendance woes, families reported largely positive experiences on the city’s survey, officials said.

Education Department officials also pointed to some evidence that the program is boosting academic outcomes, a central part of its original rationale as a way to help city students recover from pandemic learning loss.

Emma Vadehra, the Education Department’s deputy chancellor for operations and finance, said Thursday that Summer Rising had a “statistically significant impact in math” for students learning English, as measured by their performance on academic screeners. The city saw similar gains in reading for other “priority subgroups,” Vadehra said.

The Education Department didn’t immediately provide those analyses or further details.

The National Summer School Institute, the organization that authored the curriculum used across hundreds of Summer Rising sites, also saw growth on math and reading assessments from the beginning to the end of the summer, the organization previously told Chalkbeat.

Serving the most vulnerable populations

Officials and advocates said Summer Rising has opened up access to vulnerable kids who may have previously been left out of summer camp. The program uses a centralized enrollment process run by the Education Department that prioritizes students in temporary housing and foster care, kids with disabilities, and other groups.

Last year, roughly 16% of Summer Rising participants were homeless, 21% were English learners, and 24% had a disability, according to officials – all higher percentages than in the regular school system.

Low attendance and questions about academic focus

Skeptics of the program say booming enrollment numbers mean little if many of those kids don’t regularly show up.

Daily attendance this summer averaged just 62%, down slightly from 63% last year, and up a bit from 59% the year before, officials said. Attendance averaged 89% citywide last year during the school year.

Roughly 9,000 students who initially registered for Summer Rising never showed up once, city officials said.

“It’s nothing to celebrate,” said Rita Joseph, a Brooklyn Council member and chair of the education committee, who led Wednesday’s hearing alongside Stevens. “If 9,000 kids go missing in our school system, I would like to know where they are and what are they doing.”

Officials said attendance is often low during optional, free summer programs and isn’t comparable to school year numbers.

“We intentionally make it flexible for families to be in and out, to not mandate a certain thing, to allow them to opt out a couple weeks,” said Vadehra. “That is not something we’ve been looking to change because we think that flexibility in a free program is actually appropriate.”

A spokesperson from the Youth and Community Development Department previously told Chalkbeat that in 2019 before Summer Rising, attendance in free city-run summer camps located in schools averaged 69%.

Stevens and Joseph also questioned whether the mandatory academic portion of the day, which lasts from 8 a.m. to noon, is meeting kids’ and families’ needs. For students not assigned to summer school, having to sit through several hours of instruction a day can be alienating, the council members argued. And having to teach classes with up to 30 kids at a mix of academic levels can make it harder for teachers to target the kids who need the most support, the lawmakers contended.

“Everyone is in the same room, whether you’re mandated or not,” said Joseph, adding that the students who need the most academic support may fall through the cracks.

A survey of Summer Rising families set to be released later this month by United Neighborhood Houses, an umbrella organization for camp providers, found that while most parents value the mandatory academic time, nearly two-thirds of middle school students felt disengaged during their morning instruction, and more than half felt it didn’t help them academically.

Families also reported a lack of paraprofessionals for students with disabilities and inconsistent field trips, according to the survey.

“Summer Rising is filling a critical need for free child care and summer program options,” the report’s authors wrote. “However, the findings underscore that a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach … does not work.”

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

Childhood vaccine coverage remains high, but we can’t let our guard down

2024-10-16T15:20:37+00:00

This story was originally published by Healthbeat.

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New data on childhood vaccinations shows many states are sweating because coverage continues to decline after taking a big hit during the pandemic.

However, New Yorkers have a different story: We continue to be one of the state leaders in vaccine coverage. It’s something to celebrate, but importantly, we can’t let our guard down.

New York has very high vaccination rates.

Recent data on kindergartners during the 2023-24 school year show that New York’s MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine coverage is 97.7%, making it the third-highest state in vaccine coverage.

Importantly, 97% is above the threshold needed to reach herd immunity for measles (95% must be vaccinated to prevent outbreaks). Measles is one of the most contagious viruses, so we need a very high vaccination rate to prevent outbreaks.

Measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination rates among kindergarteners for the 2023-24 school year.

Why does New York have high rates?

One big reason is the elimination of non-medical vaccine exemptions. There was a major measles outbreak in New York City in 2019: 605 cases in a community with low vaccination coverage (79.5%), leading to 20 kiddos going to the intensive-care unit. Outbreaks like these not only harm the health of individuals and communities but are very expensive — it’s estimated that the 2019 outbreak cost the city $8.4 million.

Shortly after, New York passed a law that made us the fifth U.S. state to address increasing pediatric undervaccination by eliminating non-medical exemptions (like for religious reasons). This directly increased vaccination coverage in public and private schools.

Vaccination coverage increased at public and private schools after New York eliminated non-medical exemptions.

All states, including New York, still allow medical exemptions, such as when someone is allergic to a vaccine component.

Does this mean we are in the clear?

Not really. While the state average is high, there are still counties with very low rates. These unvaccinated pockets — like Rockland, Yates, and Orange — have vaccination rates between 54% and 58%. All these counties need is a spark — an infected person traveling — to spread measles like wildfire.

Receipt of 1 MMR dose by 2 years of age. Rates shown here are lower than the New York state average because they are for individuals up to 2 years of age, while the state average MMR coverage rate is for kindergarteners. Vaccination is required to start kindergarten which explains the higher rate.

And there are sparks out there. This year there have been 13 measles cases in New York City and at least one in New York outside the city.

Polio and whooping cough are out there, too.

In 2022, a young, unvaccinated man was paralyzed by polio in Rockland County, an area with historically low vaccination rates. Wastewater monitoring showed polio was circulating in other New York counties as well. (This isn’t a surprise because, for every one case of paralysis from polio, about 100 people are infected.) Any detection of polio in the United States is considered a public health emergency.

We are also seeing an exponential rise in whooping cough — called pertussis — that can be prevented with a Tdap or DTaP vaccine.

New York City: Cases in 2024 are up 169% compared to 2023, with 427 cases reported so far.
New York state: Cases are up over 300% in 2024.

Ensure your kids, grandkids, neighbors, and friends are vaccinated.

Childhood vaccinations are safer than getting the disease itself. Over the past 30 years, childhood vaccinations prevented 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths.

In New York, children must have the following vaccinations to enroll in New York schools:

All students (child care and prekindergarten through 12th grade):

Diphtheria and tetanus toxoid-containing vaccine and pertussis vaccine (DTaP or Tdap)
Hepatitis B vaccine
Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine (MMR)
Polio vaccine
Varicella (chickenpox) vaccine

Children under 5 in child care or pre-K:

Haemophilus influenzae Type B conjugate vaccine (HiB)
Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV)

Middle school and high school:

Tdap vaccine for Grades 6-12
Meningococcal conjugate vaccine (MenACWY) for Grades 7-12
- Students in Grade 12 need an additional booster dose of MenACWY on or after their 16th birthday.

How can I persuade hesitant people?

It takes listening, time, and hearing the right things from a trusted source. Research shows health care providers are among the most influential factors in whether parents vaccinate their children.

Local health departments in New York state provide annual training to clinicians about evidence-based strategies to increase vaccination among populations with low or lagging rates, considering vaccine hesitancy.
Training can also be targeted to areas of the state identified as hotspots for vaccine hesitancy.

Talk to your local health department for their next training date.

Bottom line

New York has some of the highest vaccination rates in the country. And we should be proud of that. But we can’t let our guard down, as pockets of under-vaccination still pose a serious risk for outbreaks.

Love,

Your Local Epidemiologist

Dr. Marisa Donnelly, a senior epidemiologist with wastewater monitoring company Biobot Analytics, has worked in applied public health for over a decade, specializing in infectious diseases and emerging public health threats. She holds a PhD in epidemiology and has led multiple outbreak investigations, including at the California Department of Public Health and as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Marisa has conducted research in Peru, focusing on dengue and Zika viruses and the mosquitoes that spread them. She is Healthbeat’s contributing epidemiologist for New York in partnership with Your Local Epidemiologist, a Healthbeat supporter. She lives in New York City. Marisa can be reached at mdonnelly@healthbeat.org.

Confronting chronic absenteeism: NYC schools lean on data, tap peer-to-peer support

2024-09-23T20:11:24+00:00

Bronx Principal David Liu did not notice an abrupt change in attendance when students returned to in-person learning three years ago after pandemic campus closures. Instead, the problem became clearer to him as the year progressed.

Students and staff at Gotham Collaborative High School became fatigued by five-day school weeks. Child tax credits and supplemental unemployment benefits also began to wane, forcing parents back into the workplace and requiring students to take on more responsibilities at home.

“The grind of what school was started to hit students at different times of the school year,” he said. “That’s when chronic absenteeism became kind of more like this slowly growing thing in our school.”

Now, the school has begun to crack the code on chronic absenteeism, a problem challenging school districts across the country. Administrators implemented a data system to better track students’ attendance and leverage staff and community organizations to counsel those at risk of chronic absence. The school even offers incentives to get students to show up, such as early-morning breakfast raffles or day trips.

Schools across New York City have introduced new initiatives to address the longstanding issue. Some have started to use restorative justice as a guiding principle in group interventions that target chronically absent students, rather than resorting to more punitive measures. Increasingly, schools are enlisting other students to encourage their friends to attend school regularly.

Most districts, including New York City, consider a student chronically absent if they miss at least 10% of the school year, whether those days are considered excused, unexcused, or part of a suspension. With a 180-day academic calendar, that is 18 missed days of school.

The citywide chronic absenteeism rate stood at about 25% before the pandemic. Once students returned to in-person learning in 2021, the city’s share of chronically absent students jumped 15 percentage points. While schools have made progress to lower that rate over the years, citywide chronic absenteeism still hasn’t returned to what it once was. Nearly 35% of public school students were chronically absent last school year, according to data recently released in the Mayor’s Management Report.

Though higher-poverty schools began closing the gap on chronic absenteeism in 2022-23, that gap still hovered about 14 percentage points higher than their counterparts. As a result, more and more schools have found themselves addressing issues that exist beyond the school’s environment, such as students’ access to health care, child care, and transportation.

That is why some teachers and school administrators say tackling chronic absenteeism is so challenging – it often requires a deeper knowledge of the students and families that they serve. In its 2022-23 Comprehensive Education Plan, Gotham Collaborative cited “not knowing our students well” as the root cause of the school’s chronic absence problem.

And while data collection often serves as a first step to addressing chronic absenteeism, creating plans that lead to improvement requires people, said Kim Nauer, an education fellow at The New School’s Center for New York City Affairs who has looked at how poverty contributes to chronic absence.

“Every single one of those numbers needs to be a kid and a name and a parent and a person attached to them,” she said. “Otherwise you’re not going to make progress in any sustained way. Like robocalls [are] useless.”

Using data to target specific student groups

Gotham Collaborative High School, which served a little over 300 students last school year, had already viewed chronic absenteeism as an issue worthy of intervention before the pandemic. The school’s pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rate was already higher than the average, at about 56%, and it then grew to 61% in 2020 when the pandemic forced school closures across the city.

During the 2022-23 school year, however, the high school’s rate of chronically absent students dropped to roughly 29%, its lowest in years.

Tackling the issue has taken years of targeted work and has relied on a data system the school created, grouping students into four buckets according to their absences. Each group receives certain interventions depending on the severity of their record. Those are provided through several support teams that might include peer mediator ambassadors, school counselors, and a social worker.

Sometimes intervention looks like an in-depth, individualized assessment of a student and their needs, or a home visit with a student and their family. But other times it may look like a school social for students who feel that they don’t have a strong network of friends, or an early-morning breakfast raffle.

Addressing the needs of students whose attendance and academic performance didn’t raise warning flags was critical, Liu said. Before introducing the new system, he said, the school identified only a small selection of students – those who came in the least, or about half of the school year, and those who had near-perfect attendance. Changing their focus helped shift the school toward lower instances of chronic absence, he believes.

“This was a main ‘aha’ moment for us,” he said. “These are our students that are coming 80% of the time, four out of five times a week, they might be B-average students. It sparked a lot of conversations about how do we show them that what they’re doing is not meeting what they can be doing and their potential?”

Many schools with a high share of chronically absent students use some variation of Gotham Collaborative’s data tracking system.

New York City schools receive weekly automatic reports that list students who have missed five or 10 school days. Schools can also print additional reports that show all students who have missed school five or 10 times, or chronically absent students from the previous school year. The reports are most effective when schools create workflows to immediately address what they are seeing in the data, said a spokesperson for the education department.

Hedy Chang, director of Attendance Works, a national and state initiative to address the issue, also noted that early intervention is important. When she and other researchers began studying chronic absence using the current, widely adopted 10% rule, she said one of its main purposes was to serve as an early-warning metric. So if a student misses two days of school in a month, she said, that should alert teachers and staff that a student is in need of support.

“I don’t want you to wait til 17 days to notice that things are a challenge,” Chang said, in reference to annual absences. “Or even in the first month, if it’s 10 days, that’s a problem.”

Using peer-to-peer support to overcome chronic absenteeism

Researchers like Chang and Nauer often examine chronic absenteeism among younger students because it is more representative of families’ circumstances. A 5-year-old, for example, isn’t missing school on their own accord, Chang said.

But for teens, chronic absenteeism comes with its own set of complexities. Liu has noticed that some of his students may miss school due to working long hours or having to bring younger siblings to and from school. Some may choose not to show up to avoid conflict with friends, he said.

And because the conversations that staffers have with students inevitably look different than those that students might have with people closer to their age, Liu is now focusing on tapping students’ ability to deeply connect with their peers to curb chronic absence.

“Every year we get older, but the kids stay the same age,” he said. “So every year the staff gets one year removed from being generationally, culturally relevant.”

At The International High School for Health Sciences – where all students are newly arrived immigrants – students may also grapple with other hurdles that affect engagement, such as learning English for the first time, or preparing for standardized tests unfamiliar to them, according to administrators at the school. Yet the high school’s chronic absenteeism rate during the 2022-23 school year fell to 29.5%, nearly cutting its rates from the previous two years in half.

In 2018, the school began using restorative justice — a practice that the school has used in lieu of other disciplinary measures since it opened over 10 years ago – to address chronic absenteeism, administrators say. A chronically absent student – typically in their final year of high school – sits down with a group of their closest friends, a teacher that they have a strong relationship with, and the assistant principal. The group discusses the student’s strengths, reasons for why they don’t show up at school, and how others in the group can support them moving forward.

International High School also receives extra support from staff at Queens Community House, the school’s community-based partner. Now in its third year, the partnership is funded through NYC Community Schools, a grant-based program that extends to about a third of the city’s more than 1,500 schools.

Queens Community House provides services such as tutoring outside of regular school hours – particularly during Regents season – and events that range from self-care workshops to game nights. Communicating with families, however, is one of its primary functions, said the school’s Community Schools Director Lizbeth Mendoza.

“The framework for a lot of these conversations is building relationships,” she said. “So I’m actually the person that sends out the message letting a parent or guardian know that their student was absent at the end of the day.”

Principal Roberto Hernandez poses for a selfie with High School for Teaching and the Professions students.

At the High School for Teaching and the Professions in the Bronx, groups of older mentors and younger mentees start pairing together in October. The mentors, typically 11th or 12th graders, receive training in their own classes on how to support their mentees, whether that be through engaging in activities together or talking through the mentees’ experiences.

“They go in and they really create this bond,” said Principal Roberto Hernandez. “And what I found within the last two years was a sense of ownership that our mentors are having for their mentees.”

This sense of commitment has trickled into other areas of focus for the school, like attendance, Hernandez said. For some students, it has also created a sense of commitment to the school at large: Two of the high school’s guidance counselors are former students. Now that the school has a designated guidance counselor for every grade level, Hernandez said it is easier for the administration to connect with individual students.

“It’s not just teaching, it’s getting to know them and letting them get to know you, and they love it,” he said. “And I think that’s all contributing to where we are today.”

Mia Hollie is a data intern at Chalkbeat based in New York City. You can reach Mia at mhollie@civicnews.org .

As hate crimes rise, museum hopes to teach NYC students about the dangers of hate speech

2024-09-18T17:47:37+00:00

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As reports of hate and discrimination against marginalized groups are on the rise, a new Lower Manhattan museum exhibit aims to teach students about the roots of hate speech, as well as the dangerous outcomes that can occur if it is left unchecked.

And they’re hoping to get thousands of New York City public school students to see it.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage exhibit, titled “Speaking Up! Confronting Hate Speech,” opened on Wednesday, and will remain on display through the end of the school year, closing on June 29. It comes on the heels of a new partnership between the museum and the city’s public schools, with the exhibit aiming to show how language can lead to discrimination, persecution, and mass violence — providing students with historical and contemporary examples of how words can connect to harmful events, according to exhibit organizers.

“Acts of hate don’t start with violence,” said Jack Kliger, the museum’s president and CEO. “They start with words, and with thoughts, and with teaching. You have to be taught to hate.”

Organizers say the exhibit comes at a critical time for the city’s students — as statewide, hate crimes against Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers rose by 89% and 106%, respectively, in 2023, according to a report from the state Comptroller’s Office.

The exhibit will offer students a look at examples of propaganda posters from the time of the Holocaust, which sought to dehumanize Jewish people, said Sara Softness, the director of curatorial affairs at the museum. But the scope of the exhibit is global, she added, with sections devoted to other conflicts like the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the killings of the Muslim Rohingya people in Myanmar in 2016 — including how social media contributed to the latter of these atrocities.

“We’re moving not only through these global examples, but the way in which time has changed the transmission of those messages,” Softness said.

The exhibit also looks at historical and contemporary hate speech and discrimination targeted at Black, Native American, and Asian American Pacific Islander communities in the U.S., according to officials.

The museum hopes to equip students with tools to combat hate speech in their own communities, Softness said.

“The last third of the exhibition is all about how to counteract hate speech,” she said. “There’s counter speech: So how do you undermine a message that has started to proliferate online? How do you limit the dissemination of the message? How can you use protests to stand up to hateful rhetoric? How can you even just think about erasing graffiti as a way to stand up against the spread of hate?”

The troubling reports of rising hate follow a year that saw heightened tensions within school communities, as students and educators grappled with the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. In October, Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and took over 240 hostages, according to reports. Israel, in response, has bombarded the Gaza Strip, fueling a humanitarian crisis and killing more than 40,000 Palestininans, including many children, according to health authorities there.

That conflict has spilled over into the city’s classrooms, with several high-profile incidents garnering national attention. Meanwhile, schools Chancellor David Banks was called to testify at a congressional hearing in Washington D.C., where he defended the school system’s response to antisemitism.

Between October and the May hearing, there had been roughly 280 incidents of religious bias in New York City schools, with 42% involving antisemitism and 30% directed against Muslim students, according to figures Banks shared at the time.

Nearly 60% of Muslim students across the five boroughs and Long Island reported experiencing religious-based bullying at school, according to a recent report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The group noted the city had seen “a notable surge in anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian sentiment” since October.

Amid this backdrop, city officials have looked for other ways to tackle reports of rising antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate. Earlier this year, the city’s Education Department rolled out additional training to educators on how to have productive conversations about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

The city’s Education Department is developing new Hidden Voices curriculums centered on the stories and contributions of Jewish and Muslim people, expected to be available by June 2025. The Hidden Voices curriculums, which include LGBTQ history and Asian American history, aim to elevate historical figures largely left out of textbooks.

The city’s public schools are also partnering with the Museum of Jewish Heritage to allow more eighth graders to learn more about the Holocaust through free field trips to the museum — bringing in more than 85,000 students over three years. Through that partnership, many of the city’s students may be able to view the new exhibit, as well as others offered by the museum.

“At the Museum of Jewish Heritage, we come from a very specific angle, thinking about historic and contemporary antisemitism,” Softness said. “But there’s a way in which hate speech, as presented in this exhibition, is shown as fairly universal. There are certain patterns and systems of the way that speech can be disseminated that lead to violence … that we really need to learn about in order to combat.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Number of NYC youth with nowhere to sleep at night climbs

2024-09-16T16:38:22+00:00

This story was originally published on Sept. 16 by THE CITY. Sign up here to get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to you each morning.

The number of homeless youth who were denied shelter in the city shot up this year, with more than 1,100 young people sent back to the streets between January and July of 2024 — a historically high number driven by the asylum-seeker crisis, advocates say.

New data, released Thursday by the Department of Youth and Community Development, shows a steady increase in “youth not placed,” meaning shelters and drop-in centers operating under city-funded contracts couldn’t locate a bed for runaway and homeless youth between the ages of 16 and 24.

The statistics have grown steadily more dire.

In the first six months of the year, 1,127 young people could not be placed in any beds, data shows, without anyone declining a bed. That’s up from the 234 young adults who requested shelter and were not placed between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2023, including four who declined it.

In the first six months of 2023, only nine young adults were denied beds, including two who declined shelter.

There are 789 available beds through DYCD-funded runaway and homeless youth providers, and 338 separate beds for homeless young adults, according to the city.

Mark Zustovich, a spokesperson for DYCD, noted in a statement that the agency helped more than 500 young adults move into their own homes, although he did not specifiy during what time frame.

“While this report indicates that DYCD’s runaway and homeless youth system was fully utilized at the beginning of the calendar year, in the final two months of the reporting period, the number of young people not able to access an RHY youth shelter bed dropped significantly,” he said in a statement.

The city figures show a decline from a high of 363 young people turned away in January down to 54 in May and 58 in June.

While noting that the city does not track immigration status of shelter youth, he said, “the influx of asylum seekers contributed to the increased demand.”

Zustovich also said that “most” people unable to access youth beds were adults who have access to the city’s main homeless shelter system.

“DYCD providers continue to connect all young people to available resources or refer them to other programs so they get the critical services they need,” he added.

The department produces this report twice a year by law, detailing the age, gender and sexual orientation, if known, of every young person turned away and from a city-funded site.

The sharp increase shows there is demand for shelters designed to house youth, which are often in smaller settings with more services even for those eligible to enter an adult shelter, according to advocates.

The data contrasts with Mayor Eric Adams’ assertion that nobody — including asylum seekers — is going without shelter. The report does not say where they believe the young people go after being turned away from shelter.

“Contrary to what the mayor is saying — numbers going down, people not being regulated to the streets — that statement is clearly not holding true for young people,” Jamie Powlovich, the former executive director of Coalition for Homeless Youth, told THE CITY.

Settlement oversight expired

In 2020, a legal settlement by a federal judge guaranteed 16- and 17-year-olds who sought shelter would get beds at age-appropriate city facilities. The settlement came following a class action lawsuit filed a decade ago by the Legal Aid Society, which sought to get young people the same right to shelter as adults.

The settlement, however, didn’t extend to 18- to 24-year-olds, who, the report shows, represent a large share of those turned away from any shelter beds.

The monitoring period for that settlement expired at the end of 2023, which may have also caused the increase in street homeless, noted Theresa Moser from Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Project. It’s likely a combination of that expiration and an overall increase in youth homelessness and asylum seekers pushed the numbers of people turned away from shelter up, she said.

“We do see a lot more asylum seekers who are finding their way to DYCD programs and there may be an increase in other young people who are also seeking that program,” she said.

Eight months after being sworn into office in 2022, Adams released a plan to end youth homelessness boosted by a $15 million federal grant to make it easier for homeless youth to find homes.

The administration committed to fund a new street outreach program targeted toward youth, the creation of 20 jobs for youth who experienced homelessness, and 102 new units of “rapid rehousing” for youth and young adults, according to the Mayor’s Office.

“New York City has always been a place for those seeking refuge and acceptance, including young people, many of whom are fighting discrimination, bigotry, or family rejection,” he said in August 2022.

“To every young person in our city: We have your back, we’re looking out for you, and the entire city is ready to help you chart your future.”Other efforts to make it easier for young people to find permanent housing, however, have been squelched by the Adams administration, including a City Council measure that would have made rent-subsidy vouchers available to residents in the youth shelter system.

The City Council and Legal Aid sued the Adams administration to implement the bills, but last month a judge sided with the mayor’s team.

Every NYC school building now has Narcan to reverse opioid overdoses. Is it enough?

2024-08-19T18:41:03+00:00

Vince Muccioli will never forget the terror he felt waiting for paramedics as one of his students lay unresponsive on the classroom floor, color draining from his face.

It was a quiet Friday afternoon in March 2022, and Muccioli, a math teacher at West Brooklyn Community High School, had given the student permission to lay his head on his desk.

When a classmate later nudged the student and he wouldn’t wake up, Muccioli knew something was very wrong. The student’s pulse was racing, but he was barely breathing, recalled Muccioli, who immediately alerted the school nurse and told a student to call 911.

The thought of a drug overdose crossed Muccioli’s mind, but in his 15 years teaching, he’d never seen a student have one and didn’t know how to respond.

Fortunately, paramedics arrived within 15 minutes and administered Naloxone, a nasal spray that can reverse the effects of an overdose. The student revived immediately, Muccioli said.

“Those 15 minutes,” Muccioli said, “could’ve been the difference between life and death.”

Soon after the incident, Principal Malik Lewis invited the nonprofit Harm Reduction Coalition to train his staff on using Naloxone and provide educators with their own kits.

Nearly two-and-a-half years later, the rest of the nation’s largest school system has moved in a similar direction. Every school now stocks Naloxone, all school nurses are trained on administering the overdose reversal agent, and the Education Department is bringing the training to additional school staff, city officials said. This spring, the city partnered with New York University Langone Health to train roughly 300 educators on administering Naloxone, said Kelleyann Royce-Giron, the Education Department’s head of substance abuse programs.

“We see what we’re seeing in emergency rooms … youth that are coming in with overdoses,” said Royce-Giron at a training for about 50 educators last month at NYU’s Tisch Hospital. “The biggest space that we can help our New York City youth is in the biggest school district in the world, the New York City public schools.”

A participant at the June 24, 2024 Naloxone training displays the free Naloxone kits distributed to educators.

The effort to bring Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, into schools is part of a larger push to make the reversal agent as widely available as possible in the city, including in pharmacies, bars, and public health vending machines created by the city Health Department. Some NYPD officers also carry Naloxone, though a police spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a question about whether school safety agents — the more than 4,000 unarmed police officers stationed inside public schools — carry it.

This push follows similar moves in school systems across the country. As of 2023, 33 states including New York had laws permitting schools to stock Naloxone, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News. A smaller number went further by requiring schools to carry the reversal agent, the analysis found, though some schools and districts have resisted for fear that carrying Narcan would indicate a larger drug problem. Several districts in Long Island require schools to stock Naloxone, and the state offers a program for school districts to train staff in administering the reversal agent.

A 2023 survey by NPR found that 11 of the nation’s 20 largest school districts require schools to stock Narcan.

Overdoses in schools appear to be rare, but the risk is real, according to staffers and experts. Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest, required all schools to carry Naloxone and began training staff and volunteers after a 15-year-old died of an overdose at school in 2022.

In New York City, the number of 15- to 24-year-olds who have died from opioid overdoses has nearly doubled in recent years, from 48 in 2019 to 87 in 2022, the last year for which the city Health Department published data. Almost all of those deaths involved fentanyl, an extremely potent synthetic opioid that can be lethal in even small doses, or heroin, the Health Department analysis found.

Fentanyl is 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin and is often mixed into drugs like heroin or cocaine or found in counterfeit pills meant to look like Adderall or Percocet, NYU trainers told educators.

A Health Department spokesperson said the agency isn’t aware of any confirmed opioid overdoses of students in school last school year. Two city principals have told Chalkbeat they’re aware of Naloxone being administered on a student during school in recent years, though the Health Department spokesperson noted that the use of Naloxone doesn’t mean the incident was a confirmed opioid overdose.

In New York City, the 2023 death of a 1-year-old in a Bronx daycare from inhaling Fentanyl-laced dust captured the attention of the city and helped spur City Council legislation to stock Narcan in middle and elementary schools.

Larrisa Laskowski, a doctor of emergency medicine at NYU Langone Hospital and director of NYU’s Prevention Education Partnership, which works with the Education Department to offer Naloxone training, said the city shouldn’t wait for a similar tragedy in a public school.

“We can be proactive. We can get this perfect, very effective, very safe antidote in schools to protect young people as we’re trying to deal with the Fentanyl crisis in many other ways,” she said.

Educators point to gaps in Naloxone training, access

Teens are not immune from the growing opioid crisis that has gripped the city and the country in recent years, health officials said.

Educators across the city have reported an uptick in visible drug use during the school day since the return of in-person schooling following the COVID school shutdowns. Grappling with an ongoing mental health crisis, some teens have turned to substances as a coping mechanism. At the same time, the city’s drug landscape has rapidly changed due to the proliferation of smoke shops following the state’s rocky rollout of legalized marijuana.

“After we came back from the epidemic, I definitely see that there’s definitely a higher usage of students just self-medicating,” said Manolo Polanco, a dean at Fordham Leadership Academy in the Bronx, who attended one of the recent Narcan trainings. He said he’s had to call 911 several times for students feeling unwell after taking drugs, though fortunately none of the cases were serious.

Despite the recent progress in trainings, some educators worry there are still gaps in the city’s efforts to ensure schools are prepared to respond to student overdoses.

At Brooklyn Technical High School, the city’s largest school with nearly 6,000 students spread across eight floors, “having one or two nurses dealing with an overdose … means nothing because you won’t get to them in time to save their life,” said a staffer at the school, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the media.

Naloxone training should be mandated for multiple staffers at each school, similar to the way epi-pen training is mandatory for multiple staffers at schools where a student has a documented risk, the Brooklyn Tech staffer said.

Education Department officials said that anyone trained in Naloxone can carry and administer it at school, but the Brooklyn Tech staffer said that message “is not going out to everyone,” noting that many staffers at the school are under the impression that only the nurse can administer the reversal agent.

The city has also long struggled with nursing shortages: Roughly 140 schools didn’t have a nurse before the pandemic, according to the nonprofit Advocates for Children. The city used $65 million a year in one-time federal pandemic aid to hire an additional 400 contracted school nurses, but that money expired this year and was not replaced in the budget, according to advocates.

An Education Department spokesperson said officials are still “placing [a] nurse in every school and do not expect schools to be without a nurse,” but didn’t elaborate on where the funding will come from.

Trainings seek to make educators confident first responders

The technical requirements of administering Naloxone are fairly simple. It’s a nasal spray that doesn’t require any special technique and has no adverse side effects, according to Laskowski.

But the training sessions for school staffers are less about the technique than about giving educators “the confidence they need to feel like they can act,” Laskowski said.

That’s part of why Laskowski said she’s pushed back against suggestions to make the training sessions virtual, even though that might make them accessible to more people. It’s important to build the kind of comfort and familiarity that comes with in-person training, she said.

Royce-Giron — who oversees the school system’s roughly 260 Substance Abuse Prevention and Intervention Specialists, or SAPIS — appreciates the chance to dispel some commonly held concerns, including assuring attendees that fentanyl can’t be absorbed through the skin. She also takes pains to remind the educators that the state’s “Good Samaritan” law offers legal protection to people who intervene to try to save someone during an overdose.

Sherille Sheppard, a special education teacher who attended the training, said she found it “very informative.”

“I was glad to get the hands-on piece to really show me how easy it is to use Naloxone,” she said. “It’s really just as easy as using a nasal spray.”

Polanco, the Bronx high school dean, left the training feeling “a little bit more prepared” to identify an overdose. “Before, I don’t know if I even would have been able to identify it, to me it would have just been a kid passed out.”

At West Brooklyn Community High School, the importance of carrying Narcan wasn’t the only lesson to emerge from the close call with the student overdose.

The incident was a vivid reminder to staff that no matter how ill-equipped they might feel in the moment to deal with some of the complex challenges students are facing – from serious drug use to suicidal ideation – it’s vital to engage.

“When a student comes to confide in you, talk to them,” Muccioli said. “No matter how heavy the situation is, talk to them. Because there’s a window where they might tell you and only you.”

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

NYC girls outperform boys in academics. But they’re unhappier in school.

2024-08-12T21:43:55+00:00

By nearly every academic measure, girls in New York City’s public schools are outperforming boys.

Their four-year graduation rate is 10 points higher. After graduating, they attend college at a rate 11 percentage points higher. They far outpaced boys on 3-8 grade English state tests, while performing similarly to them in math.

Yet despite their academic success, girls report far less satisfaction with their school experiences. A Chalkbeat analysis of responses to the 2023 New York City school survey, a massive annual questionnaire in which more than 350,000 middle and high school students participated last year, found girls report significantly lower levels of satisfaction across a range of questions about students’ classroom experiences and their interactions with peers and adults.

Four in five girls reported feeling stressed during learning in the past year, compared to around three in five boys. And girls were 10 percentage points less likely than boys to report that their teachers noticed when they have trouble learning something, or support them when they’re upset.

While there has been a growing awareness of the school achievement crisis among boys, girls’ struggles at school can be less obvious – and more likely to go unaddressed.

For girls, there’s an “unsaid pressure” to perform well in school, said Camila Sosa, a 17-year-old rising senior at Uncommon Collegiate Charter High School in Brooklyn. For boys, she believes, the message is often, “Thank you for doing us this favor.’”

It’s not just in an academic context that girls report being unhappier in school: They were also seven percentage points more likely than boys to say students at their school harassed, bullied, and intimidated each other, both online and in person.

The problem is particularly acute for Black girls, who reported the lowest level of satisfaction of any race and gender group in 55% of survey questions. Black girls were most likely to say students at their school bullied each other.

By contrast, Asian American girls reported feeling the most academic stress and pressure, and were the least likely to say a teacher would notice when they had struggled in class.

Meanwhile, students who are neither male nor female, a category the Education Department only recently began tracking, reported worse outcomes than male or female students across nearly every question, though only 41 respondents identified themselves to the district as nonbinary.

Experts say the New York City school survey data speaks to broader national trends showing girls suffering disproportionately from the ongoing youth mental health crisis in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

“Girls tend to have higher levels of anxiety and depression,” said Tamar Mendelson, a professor of American health and director of the Center for Adolescent Health at Johns Hopkins University. “And these levels have been increasing.”

A survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 60% of teenage girls reported feeling persistent sadness or hopelessness in 2021, compared to 30% of boys – disparities that inevitably show up in school too, according to educators.

“We can’t feel surprised girls are feeling less safe, less seen, less heard, less treated fairly in school because we live in a society where that’s true,” said Emily Paige, the principal of Urban Assembly Unison middle school in Brooklyn.

Some other students and educators questioned whether some of the divergence in the school survey results could stem from the different ways boys and girls approach questions about mental health and happiness in school.

“Men, a lot of the time, they don’t want to be perceived as weak,” said Mia Gabriella-Bedoya, a 17-year-old rising senior at the Brooklyn High School for Law and Technology. “So they just say like, everything is fine.”

But, whatever the cause, students said the results should serve as a wakeup call for schools to do more to support their female students – and to remember that success in the classroom is no guarantee girls are doing okay.

“You have to acknowledge just the overall biases … in school,” said Sosa. “The normal expectations towards women about how they should dress and how they should act. It needs to be addressed as a whole.”

The Education Department has guidelines for schools on gender inclusion, a citywide gender equity coordinator, and a newly formed Gender Equity Team that will provide schools with professional development on “gender-related access and equity,” according to a spokesperson.

“Ensuring that every student of every gender, [sic] is heard, affirmed, and supported in their educational journey is a priority for New York City Public Schools,” wrote spokesperson Jenna Lyle in an email.

More success in school, but less support

In many cases, girls learn from a young age how to be compliant students — a skill that can bring academic success, but doesn’t ensure their needs are being met, said Chris Emdin, a professor of science education and Maxine Greene chair for distinguished contributions to education at Columbia University Teachers College.

“What we’re finding is that girls, Black girls in particular, learn by the time they get to middle school and high school that their role, in order to be seen as a good student… is actually to enact certain behaviors that are a detriment to [their] mental health, their emotional health,” said Emdin, who is currently conducting research on gender and classroom experiences in New York City schools.

“Even if you‘re getting good grades, you’re still not having your needs met. [You’re] still being ignored. [You’re] still not being paid attention to,” he said.

Boys, by contrast, can soak up a disproportionate share of classroom attention, educators and students said — even if that attention is negative.

“We definitely see that we have boys in our school who make their presence known, make connections with staff and make their needs known really, really well,” said Paige, the Brooklyn middle school principal. “Then we have students who are girls who are much quieter, much less likely to volunteer that kind of information.”

There can be downsides to the disproportionate attention. Boys were twice as likely as girls to be suspended from school during the 2022-23 school year. They were also twice as likely to be classified as having a learning disability, a designation that can sometimes carry a stigma but also brings extra support, including smaller classes and additional teachers.

By contrast, female students craving more attention and understanding from school staff often feel like they have to fight for it, said Sosa, the rising senior at the Brooklyn charter school.

“Most of the time they [girls] have to speak out for themselves,” she said.

Girls bear the brunt of ongoing youth mental health crisis

Girls’ negative experiences in school often begin with the pressures and expectations they face outside of it.

Derry Oliver, a 17-year-old who graduated last spring from Cobble Hill School for American Studies in Brooklyn, said her female friends deal with the “pressures that come with being a woman, such as safety, or what they are wearing, who they can be around, and because of that, it’s harder for them to be in the classroom and focus.”

Derry Oliver, 17, poses for a portrait in Brooklyn in February, 2024.

Those social pressures can be particularly intense and damaging for Black girls, who deal with a combination of racism and sexism in many facets of their lives, said Krystal Folk, a former school social worker in the Bronx.

“What is the idea of beauty? It’s not Black girls,” Folk said. “If you’re not meeting that standard, there’s a lot of internalization happening.”

Girls, particularly Black girls, have also reported feeling disproportionately targeted by school dress code policies.

The rapid growth of social media and the lingering effects of the pandemic have likely worsened the mental health crisis facing girls, educators and experts said.

Some schools reported an uptick in incidents of sexual harassment when students returned to school following COVID-19 school closures, a trend one staffer attributed to kids spending more time online.

But educators said it can also be hard to tell how much of the gender disparities in the school survey data comes from boys and girls experiencing different things in school, and how much comes from the two groups interpreting and talking about those experiences differently.

Anna Nelson, an assistant principal at Bronx Latin, a 6-12 public school, said in her experience there are differences in how male and female students approach the survey. “Girls are more thoughtful and take their time with the [school] survey,” she said. “Sometimes the guys will go through and answer things just like whatever.”

The results also raise questions about whether boys and girls have different definitions of bullying and harassment. Girls and boys who attended the same schools often had very different perceptions about how much bullying takes place in their schools, potentially indicating that they either witness different behaviors, or perceive the same behaviors differently.

Some schools look for solutions

Education Department officials said they began breaking down school survey data by demographics in 2021 to give schools a more granular look at disparities – and allow them to take action.

At Urban Assembly Unison Middle School in Brooklyn, educators, with the help of survey data, noticed that female students were less likely to speak up when teachers simply threw out a question to the entire class, said Paige, the principal.

“The mental health crisis hit particularly with adolescent girls,” Paige said. “If you’re in a group of 25 and are allowing impulse to rule who speaks, those who have more social anxiety might be less likely to speak.”

To address those gender disparities, the school revamped how teachers solicit student participation in class, building in time for students to think about an answer and to share with classmates in smaller groups before opening the discussion to the full class.

Some educators pointed to single-gender settings as another promising approach. New York City has a range of public schools designated for just girls and just boys. The city’s high schools across the board are unusually gender-segregated compared to other large districts. And even within schools, clubs like My Brother’s Keeper or female empowerment groups that provide single-gender spaces can also help, educators and students said.

There are also new efforts to create schools that are affirming for LGBTQ+ and gender nonconforming students, though one such proposal to open a charter school was not greenlit this year.

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

Liza Greenberg is a senior at the Bronx High School of Science and a student journalist for The Science Survey.

Kae Petrin is data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Some NYC summer youth programs will stay open later in coming weeks

2024-08-02T20:06:12+00:00

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Some New York City summer youth programs will stay open extra hours in the coming weeks to give kids more time in supervised settings and to help reduce the risk of crime, Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday.

The extended hours will apply at 18 programs across the five boroughs in areas city officials identified as “historically underserved,” and in police precincts with high levels of violence, officials said.

The city is pledging $2 million to keep some of the programs open later into the night on weekdays, and to extend other programs’ weekend hours.

“When we invest in summer programming, we give our young people not just a space to enjoy themselves but prevent crime from happening in our communities,” Adams said in a statement.

Seven Beacon programs, which are located in public schools and operate as community centers for kids of all ages, will push back their weekday closing time from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.. And for the first time, they’ll operate on weekends, staying open from 10am to 11pm, according to a spokesperson from the Youth and Community Development Department.

An additional 11 Cornerstone programs, which are based in New York City Housing Authority developments and are also open to kids of all ages, will extend their weekend hours by opening at 8 a.m. instead of 3 p.m., the spokesperson added.

Those 18 programs will also partner with “Cure Violence” programs that seek to prevent gun violence by deploying trusted community members in areas with high levels of violence to identify and de-escalate possible conflicts, according to a presentation obtained by Chalkbeat.

Despite the expanded hours, there will still be several weeks between the end of the city’s summer youth programming and the start of school. Beacon programs will end on Saturday, Aug. 17, while Cornerstone programs wrap up on Saturday, Aug. 24. The first day of school is Thursday, Sept. 5.

Adams has prioritized investments in summer programs during his two-and-a-half years in office, pointing to their potential to help reduce youth crime. He expanded the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program, which offers young people ages 14-24 paid summer internships to 100,000 spots last summer.

Past research found that teens who participated in the program were less likely to be involved in a crime than others who applied but didn’t get in.

Adams also preserved and expanded Summer Rising, a sprawling free summer camp and school program created by former Mayor Bill de Blasio to help kids recover from the effects of the pandemic. The program has attracted significant interest from families, but continues to struggle with attendance.

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

It takes a village: A Brooklyn high school and NYC nonprofits team up to enroll older immigrants

2024-07-10T19:26:02+00:00

The prospect of enrolling at a New York City school had begun to seem like a dim possibility for Amadou Sara Barry, an 18-year-old who arrived from Guinea five months ago.

Barry came to the U.S. by himself in February, determined to attend school to learn English and take the first step toward his dream of becoming an actor, he told Chalkbeat through an interpreter speaking Pulaar, an indigenous language of Guinea. But he’d hit a wall. Some schools told him he was too old, and others told him to come back in the fall, he said.

Under state law, students like Barry are allowed to attend public school through age 21. Yet he wasn’t alone in his struggles.

Few older immigrant students like Barry know where to begin the enrollment process. Those who do manage to make their way to schools or enrollment centers often wind up with referrals to schools that are ill-equipped to serve them or have no more room, advocates said. Others are directed to classes outside of traditional high schools that prepare students to take the General Educational Development test, or GED, a high school equivalency exam. In response, some groups are trying to ensure these students aren’t ignored or shunted away from what they want.

That’s how Barry’s situation changed on a recent sweltering Friday afternoon, as he and a group of seven other Guinean immigrant students sat rapt around a conference table at Brooklyn Frontiers High School while Principal Alona Cohen explained the registration process.

Of these eight Guinean immigrants, ages 18-20, only one had managed to secure a spot in a school previously, said Maricruz Badia, a program coordinator with the nonprofit InsideSchools who accompanied the students on the visit.

The Brooklyn Frontiers trip was part of a growing grassroots effort led by organizations like InsideSchools as well as Afrikana, a Harlem nonprofit that supports African migrants, to improve the enrollment process for older immigrant youth and ensure they find appropriate school placements.

“There [is] this large community of unaccompanied older youth who … should be in schools but are having a very hard time finding schools,” said Badia, who’s leading a new initiative to support these young people.

The push relies in large part on schools like Brooklyn Frontiers, a small transfer school with about 110 students that specializes in supporting older students. Brooklyn Frontiers had not historically served many newly arrived immigrants. But Cohen, the principal, was eager to enroll more and had recently hired a new English as a Second Language teacher.

“There was a population shift in terms of the need, it was just as simple as that,” she said of the school’s adjustments to serve more new English learners.

Brooklyn Frontiers High School students Mamadou Balde, 18, left, and Baubacar Diollo, 19, hold t-shirts.

The effort comes as a historic influx of migrant students into New York City enters its third year. So far, an estimated 40,000 immigrant students living in city homeless shelters have enrolled in school. Yet they often struggle to sign up even though there are plenty of open seats citywide.

Badia, a former Bronx middle school counselor who came to InsideSchools last year, was horrified to witness how difficult the basic task of enrolling in school proved for many of the older West African youth, in particular.

During one visit to an enrollment center in the Bronx, only students who brought transcripts from their home countries — documents that can be difficult to access for students who left in a hurry — were able to get school referrals, said Badia.

Anyone 18 and older was referred to the Education Department’s GED programs for 17-21 year-olds, she said.

An Education Department spokesperson said counselors at enrollment centers help older immigrant students choose between traditional high schools, transfer schools, international schools, and high school equivalency programs. The city expanded its GED classes and launched a new program called Young Adult Bridge that offers weeknight English classes to students ages 18-20 in response to surging demand, the spokesperson added.

“Our administration deeply believes that every child deserves the opportunity to succeed, no matter where they came from,” said Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein.

But Badia said the way the system is currently operating, “it’s going to spit these young people right back out.” That frustration is what prompted her to try a new approach: building relationships directly with school leaders like Cohen. That way, Badia can bypass enrollment centers, and she knows she’s connecting kids to schools that have the willingness to serve them.

She was excited when an old friend who teaches at Brooklyn Frontiers mentioned that the school was hoping to enroll more English learners.

For Cohen, the budding collaboration with InsideSchools — an organization known for its school reviews — is a promising way to direct more older newcomers toward her school.

“They understand our capacity, what we specialize in, what we’re maybe not as strong in,” Cohen said.

And for the eight students, the visit was a chance to get their questions answered and connect with other Guinean immigrants who had been in their shoes months earlier. As they munched on pizza, the students asked Cohen, with the help of a Pulaar interpreter, where to send school records from Guinea, when to report for summer school, and how to access their free MetroCards.

Barry, the 18-year-old aspiring actor, was cautiously optimistic. He said he could see himself eventually making friends at Brooklyn Frontiers, but is still worried about getting to summer school in Manhattan.

Mostly, though, he was excited to finally have something to do during the day.

By the end of the two-hour visit, all eight students were enrolled.

Older immigrants struggle to find seats in NYC schools

The challenges for older immigrant students trying to enroll in school are pervasive and long-running.

A recent investigation by the publication The 74 uncovered hundreds of schools across the country unwilling to enroll a fictional 19-year-old Venezuelan immigrant — even in states that allow students to remain in school through age 21.

New York City’s school system, the largest in the country, is better equipped than many to support older newcomer students. The city hosts a network of international schools specifically designed to enroll high schoolers learning English. And after years of pressure from advocates, the Education Department committed $300,000 in fiscal year 2023 to expand support for English language learners at six transfer schools, though that money was not renewed the following year, according to the nonprofit Advocates for Children.

Even with those advantages, the school system has struggled to keep pace with the influx of new arrivals, advocates said.

The problem is especially acute for older West African youth, many of whom are in the country alone, face pressure to earn money right away to repay smugglers, and are less likely than Spanish speakers to find adults in the school system who share their background or speak their language, said Adama Bah, the executive director and founder of Afrikana.

Adama Bah, Afrikana founder, works to help older immigrant students from West Africa enroll in school.

“If InsideSchools is not there, or I’m not there, there’s no success rate in getting people enrolled,” Bah said.

Many of the schools best equipped to work with older newcomers are full, said Badia.

GED programs can be good options for students who need to work long hours right away, Bah said. But those classes can also fill up, and many students crave the social and extracurricular benefits of high school and want to earn a diploma, she added.

For other students without access to advocates like Bah or Badia, it’s difficult to even know where to start.

Boubacar Diollo, 19, and Mamadou Balde, 18, are friends from Guinea who fled the country without their families and reunited in New York City last fall. They didn’t get any help enrolling in school from the Brooklyn shelter where they were staying, the teens recently told Chalkbeat through an interpreter.

Five months after arriving in the U.S., the boys hopped on the subway to Manhattan, and began walking the streets looking for a school. They walked into a school whose name they don’t remember and were told the school didn’t have room, but were handed a list of other schools to call.

One of the names on the list was Brooklyn Frontiers.

A school prepares to enroll more immigrant students

Until recently, the trickle of older immigrant students to Brooklyn Frontiers appeared to be largely random.

It began with one student showing up earlier this year at the school and asking to register. When staffers asked how he’d found it, he told them, “It looked like a school, so I walked in,’” Cohen recalled.

Then, a friend of Cohen’s who’s also a principal and lives near a shelter where some Guinean youth were staying, struck up a conversation in French with teens looking for a school. Cohen’s friend recommended Brooklyn Frontiers.

In February, Cohen managed to hire a second English as a Second Language teacher, Cole Moran, allowing her to enroll more newcomers.

Word began to spread. Soon, the population of English learners at Brooklyn Frontiers had grown to nearly 30, including the eight new signups from InsideSchools — roughly a quarter of the school’s population.

Moran said his new students have made remarkable progress in just a few months. He attributes that in part to classes where students have different home languages. That forces them to communicate with each other in English.

Badia agreed, adding, “If you have a diverse community, they’re going to develop their language skills.”

Administrators are trying to equip the entire staff with techniques to support newcomers, contracting with international schools to offer professional development.

Staffers also learned quickly that their newcomer students have very different needs outside of school than their U.S.-born classmates.

While the school has traditionally invested lots of effort into building relationships with parents and families to improve attendance, many of the newcomers came to the country without their families, but are attending school “very regularly,” Cohen said.

For the older newcomers, the school has focused more on locating students when they’re forced to switch shelters, and even providing home-cooked breakfast and toiletries that students are getting in their shelters.

The idea is to think about the needs of a person who’s living away from home and is unable to earn an income, said Amanda Blair, a director at Good Shepherd Services, a nonprofit that works with Brooklyn Frontiers to offer students additional support.

The rewards of enrolling the newcomers have been immense, staffers said.

“This is a new level and layer that I didn’t realize that I needed at this point in my career,” said Blair, who said she tries to treat the newcomers the way she’d want her own child treated if they were alone in a foreign country. “It’s like, wow, these young people are going to be able to learn. Some of them will get their diploma, some won’t. But I know they will be better for being in this environment.”

Correction: July 11, 2024: This article has been corrected to reflect that the Education Department committed $300,000 in 2022 to transfer schools supporting English Language Learners, not $6 million.

Interviews with Pulaar speakers were conducted with translation help from Amadou Bah, a volunteer interpreter for InsideSchools.

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

They thought graduation was near. Instead, several immigrant students were pressured to transfer.

2024-05-20T14:33:24+00:00

Leer en español.

Genesis Callero thought she was nearing the finish line.

The 18-year-old senior had made quick academic progress since arriving at the Cyberarts Studio Academy in Park Slope, Brooklyn — CASA, for short — from Ecuador last year knowing no English. She had passed four of her five required Regents exams and earned more than enough credits to graduate, according to Genesis and a school staffer familiar with her transcript.

All that remained was the English Language Arts Regents exam, the only Regents test newly arrived immigrants aren’t eligible to take in their home language. Students learning English as a new language often need extra time and support to pass, according to educators. Still, Genesis was optimistic that she would get her diploma this school year and had even taken a professional graduation portrait.

High school graduation photos of Genesis and Karen Callero.

So the teen was blindsided when school officials, including principal Valrie Wauchope, summoned her to a meeting just over two months ago and delivered devastating news.

Neither Genesis nor her sister Karen, 17 and also a senior, would be able to graduate from CASA, Genesis recalled the school officials saying. They told the girls they would need to transfer and recommended New Dawn Charter High School, a transfer school geared toward older students at risk of not graduating.

“They told me no, they can’t help me in this high school,” Genesis said in Spanish, recalling her meeting with CASA officials. “It seemed to me like something unfair.”

The family felt they had no choice but to transfer. Within days, Genesis and Karen left CASA.

The teens were not alone. According to interviews with the families of six immigrant students from CASA — all seniors who had recently failed the ELA Regents exam, according to families and staffers — Wauchope recently told their children they would not graduate if they remained at CASA and counseled them to transfer immediately.

“If he stays, he won’t graduate,” the mom of another 17-year-old senior at CASA told Chalkbeat in Spanish, recalling what the principal told her. The mom asked to remain anonymous because she fears jeopardizing an active immigration case.

Genesis Callero, 18, on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Brooklyn, New York.

All of the families have since taken their children out of CASA, according to interviews and school records obtained by Chalkbeat.

Wauchope, who is in her first year as principal at CASA, didn’t respond to phone calls or an email seeking comment. Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said, “We take allegations of students being pushed out of their school very seriously and investigate all formal complaints when they arise. Every student has the right to remain in their school through graduation and be immersed in a supportive learning environment.” Tull didn’t immediately say whether the department has received complaints about CASA.

Three staffers at the school, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, contend the students would have been able to graduate from CASA with more time. Immigrant students often fail the ELA Regents exam on their first attempt but can pass with extra time and support. Just 27% of city English language learners passed the ELA Regents in 2023, according to state data. Under New York law, students can remain in school through the academic year they start at age 21.

The staffers suspect students were pressured to transfer because if they did not graduate this school year, it would harm the school’s four-year graduation rate — a key performance measure for city principals. CASA’s four-year June graduation rate in 2023 was 75% last year, lower than the 81% citywide average.

Karen Callero, 17, on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Brooklyn, New York.

“They’re our best students. They come to school every single day, pass their other Regents exams,” said one staffer, adding that some students are homeless and haven’t been in the country long. “This is all because they can’t pass their English Regents on time. To push them out … it’s disgraceful.”

The staffers said they worry the situation will continue with future students learning English as a new language.

Annette Renaud, a longtime parent activist and former CASA Parent Association president who remains involved at the school supporting several relatives enrolled there, said she reached out to some of the families of immigrant students after learning about the situation from staff. She’s hoping the students can be reenrolled at CASA.

“I don’t know how many doctors, lawyers, sanitation supervisors, home attendants … we pushed out the door.”

Graduation pressures weigh on administrators

Several school administrators from across New York City told Chalkbeat that high school principals often face intense pressure to improve their four-year graduation rates. That pressure can be particularly acute for schools like CASA that have absorbed large numbers of newly arrived immigrant students amid the influx of roughly 36,000 migrant students over the past two school years.

CASA’s population of English Language Learners surged from below 40 in 2018 to nearly 100 out of its 300 students last year, according to city data. English Language Learners often take longer to graduate and finish high school at lower rates than their peers.

For English Language Learners who began high school in 2017, roughly 56% graduated in four years, jumping to 67% in six years.

That’s compared to 80% of all students in the 2017 cohort who graduated within four years and 87% within six years.

In recent years, “schools that have never really seen a high population of immigrant students were suddenly seeing these populations, and there were some growing pains there,” said Liza Schwartzwald, Director of Economic Justice and Family Empowerment at the New York Immigration Coalition, an advocacy organization.

But she stressed that “it is still incumbent on the school” to seek out some of the many resources available to better support newcomer students.

The allegations at CASA represent an “egregious example of the wrong way to go about doing this work,” she said.

The facade of John Jay High School campus in Park Slope, the building that houses Cyberarts Studio Academy.

Schools have alternatives to help immigrant students

To be sure, some older teenagers still learning English may benefit from a school more specifically tailored toward serving older newcomer students, particularly if they are in danger of aging out of the system and severely behind on credits, educators and advocates said.

But that wasn’t the situation for students counseled to transfer out of CASA, all of whom were 19 or younger, had passed at least some of their other Regents exams, and had accumulated all or close to all the credits they needed to graduate, according to staff and families.

Educators said that the school, which has hired several English as a new language teachers in recent years, was more than capable of shepherding the students to passing the ELA exam. They just needed a little more time.

“We would be able to get them to that passing rate within that time 100%,” said one CASA staffer. “No doubt in my mind.”

Schools have other avenues for supporting immigrant students struggling with the ELA Regents that don’t involve forcing them to transfer, said Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, the Immigrant Students Rights Project Director at Advocates for Children, a nonprofit that works on behalf of vulnerable kids.

They can refer students to extra night classes at Young Adult Borough Centers without un-enrolling them, and there is an appeals process specifically for the ELA Regents test for English Language Learners who fail the exam but score close enough to the cutoff.

“There are several options,” Rodriguez-Engberg said. “You don’t just ask a student to leave.”

Families struggle with fallout of being pushed out

The immigrant students who left CASA had different backgrounds and academic profiles, but all of them were making progress at the school and none wanted to abruptly leave in the spring of their senior year, according to interviews with the students and their families and records reviewed by Chalkbeat.

Sisters Genesis Callero, 18, and Karen Callero, 17, talk to each other while at a park near where they stay on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Brooklyn, New York.

One student, a 17-year-old recent arrival from Venezuela, quickly won admiration from staff and students since enrolling last fall for his gregarious demeanor and inspiring story, according to his family and staffers. The boy’s mom asked not to use his name because the family has an open immigration case.

On his most recent report card, issued around the time he left the school in March, he earned an 85% average and comments from teachers praising his “excellent progress,” “consistent participat[ion]” and “initiative,” according to a copy reviewed by Chalkbeat.

The teen recounted his grueling immigration journey in a student-produced film that played on TVs in the school’s main office and hallways, according to a video reviewed by Chalkbeat.

The family was devastated by the news he couldn’t remain at the school.

The boy’s mom said she asked Wauchope about alternatives that would allow her son to remain at CASA, like enrolling him in night classes for English or taking longer to graduate. Wauchope didn’t budge, and the mom agreed to withdraw her son.

“I felt it was something bad they did to him,” she said. But in the moment, she felt powerless. “Sometimes out of fear, we’re migrants, we don’t say no, we do what they say.”

That didn’t stop the woman from continuing to advocate for her son. She went back for a second meeting with Wauchope, telling the principal she thought the decision was unfair, she said.

She also visited an enrollment center and asked them to reenroll her son at CASA. She was told the school was now full and could not accept any more students, the mom said.

The boy was crushed but told his mom, “If it’s to graduate, it’s okay.”

He has since enrolled at New Dawn, but frequently drops by CASA to say hi to classmates and teachers.

“It hurt me very much because I see him now, he doesn’t want to go to class,” his mom said. “It destabilized him totally. It flipped his world upside down.”

The news landed just as hard for Carolina, a 19-year-old senior from Guatemala. Since arriving at CASA three years ago, she had made significant academic, social, and linguistic strides.

The teen, who asked to use only her middle name for fear of immigration consequences, struggled at first to acclimate to her new school and country.

“But after some time passed, I adapted. I understand and speak English,” she said.

Carolina’s attendance had faltered this year, and she still needed to pass two Regents exams, according to transcript information shared with Chalkbeat. But she was hopeful she would soon graduate and planned to apply to college or join the Army.

When Wauchope told Carolina she wouldn’t be able to graduate from CASA and counseled her to transfer in late February, the teen was crestfallen over the idea of leaving her home of three years.

“I couldn’t adapt to a new school or new people,” she recalled pleading in the meeting.

She and her mother begged for the chance to stay at the school, promising to redouble the teen’s efforts to pass the exam. But Wauchope held firm, according to the family. (One CASA staffer noted the teen is technically still on CASA’s roster, likely because she was never officially unenrolled. But Carolina’s mother said she wasn’t aware of that.)

Despite her misgivings, Carolina eventually decided to give New Dawn a try.

She set out for the school, which is a farther commute than she’s used to, on a Friday morning last month, and arrived after classes had begun, according to the teen and her mom. While Sara Asmussen, New Dawn’s founder and executive director, said the school “accepts students year-round with no intake requirements at all,” Carolina said staff at the school asked her, in English, to come back on Monday.

Carolina never went back. She hasn’t returned to that school, or any other, since.

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

Delays in free MetroCards for homeless NYC families threaten school attendance

2024-04-16T21:41:29+00:00

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Widespread shortages and delays in the distribution of free MetroCards to parents of homeless New York City public school students are frustrating families trying to get their kids to school, according to several sources.

Schools are supposed to provide parents of students in temporary housing free 30-day MetroCards each month so they can accompany their children to school on public transit, according to city policy.

But schools are struggling to get an adequate supply of MetroCards from the Education Department’s Office of Pupil Transportation, according to a survey of schools in Manhattan’s District 3 conducted last month by City Council Member Gale Brewer, D-Manhattan.

The problems mount as the city also confronts a record number of homeless young people, driven by the arrival of an estimated 36,000 migrant children over the past two school years. Without the free MetroCards, some families have stopped sending their kids to class altogether, while others have resorted to hopping turnstiles and risking tickets, according to an April 5 letter from Brewer to Mayor Eric Adams sharing the results of the survey.

Fifteen schools in the district, which includes parts of Harlem and the Upper West Side, reported not receiving all of the MetroCards they’d requested. Some orders fell dozens of MetroCards short, and refills arrived months late, according to the survey.

“We have families who are struggling to get their kids to school because their only source of transportation is the MetroCards we provide for them,” said April Diaz, the parent coordinator at P.S. 242 in Harlem.

The school, which recently enrolled around 50 newly arrived families living in shelters in addition to its other families in temporary housing, received a shipment of parent MetroCards in December, but didn’t get a refill until last week, despite weekly follow-up messages to the Office of Pupil Transportation requesting them, according to Diaz.

In the meantime, attendance suffered, Diaz said, and families can’t afford to pay police tickets for hopping turnstiles.

The 100 new MetroCards that arrived last week were quickly snapped up, and attendance has already improved markedly, Diaz said.

It’s not clear exactly how widespread the problem is, and some schools said they’ve received an adequate supply. But the issue isn’t confined to District 3, according to Jennifer Pringle, the director of the Learners in Temporary Housing Project for the nonprofit Advocates for Children.

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said that as of March 27, all Metrocard orders had been processed and shipped.

“We appreciate the Council Member’s partnership in this work and are reviewing the letter,” she added.

The Education Department has already given out roughly 62,000 MetroCards this school year, a more-than-threefold increase from the 20,000 MetroCards given out during the 2021-22 school year, officials noted. Spending on the MetroCards just through February this year is 55% higher than the total for all of last school year, officials added.

Nearly three-quarters of students living in homeless shelters missed at least 18 days of school last year, according to Advocates for Children.

Students’ need for transportation help surges

The transportation needs have grown even more acute since January, when Adams implemented a 60-day limit on shelter stays for newly arrived families. As a result, many families have had to move to shelters or find alternate housing further away from their children’s schools.

Roughly 1,000 families evicted from their shelters under the 60-day rule have left the city’s school system entirely or switched schools. But the vast majority — roughly 82% — have kept their kids enrolled in the same school, according to data from the City Council.

Many of those families likely now face longer commutes. Students in shelters are entitled to yellow school bus service under city policy, but it can often take weeks to get a route assigned, educators said.

As of last December, even before the 60-day rule took effect, nearly 1,400 homeless students had applied for a school bus but were still waiting for a route — more than double the reported figure from December 2022.

The Education Department received an additional 413 busing requests from students affected by the 60-day notices between January and March, according to the Council.

Orders for new MetroCards from schools during the months of January and February “far exceeded our projected inventory,” an Education Department spokesperson said.

The parent MetroCards are especially critical for families with children too young to take public transit on their own and for parents who don’t yet have the income to afford their own MetroCard, educators and advocates said.

Administration officials promised that families displaced by the 60-day rule would get the transportation help they needed to keep their kids in the same school. But Brewer said the long waits for buses and the delays in free MetroCards undercut that promise.

“I don’t want to be told by the administration” that families evicted from their shelters under the 60-day rule “can live anywhere,” said Brewer. “They can’t.”

One Venezuelan mom forced to move from a Brooklyn shelter within walking distance of her child’s elementary school, P.S. 46, to a Manhattan shelter due to the 60-day limit told Chalkbeat in February that she didn’t want her son to miss any school. But she couldn’t get a free MetroCard right away from the school. So the family decided to sneak through an open emergency gate, and her son’s father received a ticket.

Tickets and arrests for fare evasions have skyrocketed across the city over the past year as officials send more police officers into the subway system.

Schools, advocates want an improved MetroCard process

Schools are supposed to fill out a form through the Education Department’s Office of Pupil Transportation each month to request MetroCards.

But Pringle said the form is buried in the Education Department’s website, and multiple schools told Brewer’s office they didn’t receive any response after filling out the form.

Other schools said they were told there is a shortage of funds for the MetroCards, while Diaz, the P.S. 242 parent coordinator, said her school heard about backlogs, vendor issues, and delivery issues.

Pringle called the situation “ridiculous” and argued the system should be streamlined.

Lyle, the Education Department spokesperson, said “we are committed to providing every available resource to meet our families’ needs and ensure all students can get to school each day, as well as our families for students in temporary housing.”

This story has been updated to include comments from the city Education Department.

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

Young adults at Rikers say they’re systematically blocked from school

2024-04-04T20:32:26+00:00

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Young adults incarcerated at Rikers Island are systematically denied the opportunity to attend school, in violation of their legal rights, according to a motion filed Monday in federal court by The Legal Aid Society.

Those at Rikers who are ages 18-21 are entitled to attend the East River Academy, the public school in the facility, to work towards a high school diploma or GED. But in practice, they are frequently told they’re ineligible to attend school based on which housing unit they’re assigned to, or that they can’t attend class because no guards are available to escort them, according to declarations from 29 incarcerated young people.

That’s a violation of a 2016 court order mandating that young adults get access to education at Rikers, Legal Aid lawyers allege in the motion, which asks a federal judge in Manhattan to re-appoint a monitor.

“The City’s failure to educate these New Yorkers is not only a blatant violation of the 2016 court order, but heartbreaking and immoral,” said Lauren Stephens-Davidowitz, a staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, in a statement.

Rikers Island no longer houses 16- and 17-year-olds, who are now held exclusively in juvenile facilities. Education isn’t compulsory for the young adults on Rikers Island, but the city’s public school system is still required to enroll students through age 21 if they request it.

A 2016 order from U.S. District Judge George Daniels — part of a long-running lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society two decades earlier — mandated that the city provide at least three hours of education to students who want it, and that access to school in jail shouldn’t depend on the housing unit a young person is assigned to.

But according to the testimony of more than two-dozen detainees, school on Rikers Island is often out of reach.

One man, now 22, said that he “asked captains many times if I could go to school” but wasn’t enrolled because of the housing unit he was living in. After more than a year of trying, he was transferred to a new unit that allowed him to attend school, but was late most days because the guard who escorted him didn’t arrive on time, according to his declaration.

In addition, classes were frequently canceled because of lockdowns and fights, he said.

Enrollment at the East River Academy has shrunk over the course of the pandemic, as the detention center struggled with severe staffing shortages.

During the 2019-20 school year, 27% of young adults ages 18-21 incarcerated at Rikers were enrolled in East River Academy, on average, according to an Education Department report. By the 2021-22 school year, the most recent for which data is available, only 18% of eligible young adults were enrolled, on average.

Violations of the 2016 judge’s ruling mandating school access are “wider in scope and greater in magnitude” than before the pandemic, lawyers allege in the motion.

According to Education Department data, 121 of the 217 students enrolled in 2021-22, or 56%, had a learning disability. But only 73 of those students got a completed Special Education Plan, a document outlining how the school intends to accommodate their disability, according to the report.

One 19-year-old with a disability who attended a specialized school with counseling services before he was arrested in December 2022 tried in vain for more than a year to start school at Rikers. He eventually gave up, according to his declaration.

The court previously appointed a monitor following the 2016 order, but his last report was in 2018. Conditions have since grown worse, Legal Aid lawyers argue.

Now, lawyers are asking the judge to re-appoint a monitor for another two years.

Several members of the City Council held an oversight hearing last October to address reports that some incarcerated youth weren’t getting access to education. “Today’s lawsuit reinforces those concerns and highlights multiple instances where the Department of Correction failed to meet their mandate,” said Council Education Committee Chair Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn) and Criminal Justice Committee Chair Sandy Nurse (D-Brooklyn) in a joint statement. “Reversing course and addressing these challenges must be a priority for the Department.”

A spokesperson for the Education Department referred a request for comment to the Law and Correction Departments. A Law Department spokesperson said the agency is reviewing the motion. A spokesperson from the Correction Department said staff operate classes in multiple jails on Rikers Island and said new funding announced last month will bolster education programs.

4/5/2024: This story was updated to include comment from the Correction Department and City Council.

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

School staffers in shelters are a lifeline to NYC’s homeless families. Now their jobs are at risk.

2024-04-04T10:00:00+00:00

Dollie and her daughter were living in a Queens homeless shelter in January when the first grader came down with a severe bout of mononucleosis.

Dollie, who asked to use only her first name, was overwhelmed by the task of managing her daughter’s medical care and mounting school absences on top of her own work and housing search.

Fortunately, there was a staffer from the city Education Department working in her shelter to help with exactly this kind of situation.

The staffer, called a community coordinator, helped connect Dollie with medical care for her daughter, showed her what records she needed to provide the school to excuse the absences, and calmed her down when it all became too much.

“I would’ve been lost,” without her, Dollie said. She credits the community coordinator with getting her daughter better treatment, ensuring she returned to school quicker, and helping Dollie avert an investigation from the Administration of Children’s Services.

But the roughly $12 million in funding that pays the salaries of 100 community coordinators working across the city’s network of homeless shelters is set to run dry this summer, leaving the fate of the staffers up in the air even as the city confronts record numbers of homeless kids.

Seventy-five of the community coordinators are funded with one-time federal pandemic aid that expires in June, and the remaining 25 are supported with city funds that have not yet been renewed.

The position of shelter-based community coordinator was created in 2022 at the urging of advocates. Prior to the pandemic, community coordinators were only based in schools. The Education Department also employs other staffers called “family assistants” who work in shelters and are not funded with federal aid. But advocates say those staffers, who make less than community coordinators and work only 10 months a year, often can’t meet all the complex needs of families in shelters.

The community coordinators are among a long list of critical staff members and programs whose funding is tied to expiring federal aid – a list that includes 450 school social workers, free preschool for 3-year-olds, and community schools that partner with community organizations to provide extra services to families.

As budget deadlines approach, families and advocates are urging the city to preserve the community coordinators, arguing they play a critical role on the frontlines of two colliding crises: the exploding number of students – many of them newly arrived migrants – living in homeless shelters, and elevated rates of chronic absenteeism in the wake of the pandemic.

“It is unthinkable that funding for shelter-based community coordinators is in jeopardy at a time of such tremendous need,” said Jennifer Pringle, the director of the Learners in Temporary Housing project at the nonprofit Advocates for Children, which works to support the education of homeless youth.

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said the coordinators “provide critical resources and supports to our young people in temporary housing.

“We are extremely grateful for the stimulus funding that we used to support a range of programs and roles that support student wellbeing, especially as we continue to respond to the ongoing migrant crisis,” she added. “We will review these priorities as we go through the budget process.”

NYC sees a record number of homeless students

The number of city children living in a shelter or doubled up last year hit a record high of roughly 120,000 – a 14% increase over the previous years – thanks in large part to an influx of tens of thousands of migrant families.

Many of those families need immediate support enrolling their kids in school, getting evaluations for special education services, and coordinating transportation – particularly if they have to move to a shelter in another part of the city under Mayor Eric Adams’s 60-day shelter limit rule.

That’s where the community coordinators come in. They work directly from the shelters, though they often have to bounce between multiple locations.

Having staffers knowledgeable about the school system physically in the shelters, rather than having to rely on phone calls or visits to the school, makes a huge difference for parents like Dollie.

“You have eye communication. You have more understanding, you don’t have to go to two to three people to get a direct answer,” she said. Knowing that her community coordinator had seen firsthand the conditions she was living in at the shelter also made Dollie more willing to open up to her, she said.

The community coordinator ended up helping not just with school issues for Dollie’s daughter, but also with Dollie’s own work, education, and housing needs.

“I had lost hope, I had lost a lot,” Dollie recalled. “She went above and beyond with helping me. She brought my self confidence back in me where it was able to help me with my child.”

Coordinators combat chronic absenteeism

Job one for community coordinators is helping families regularly get their kids to school.

Citywide, rates of chronic absenteeism remain far higher than before the pandemic, with students in shelters logging among the highest rates of absenteeism in the city. In the 2021-22 school year, 72% of students living in shelters were classified as chronically absent.

But figuring out how to support individual families means earning the trust of families and unraveling multiple, overlapping challenges keeping kids from school.

In one case, according to advocates, a community coordinator learned that a child was embarrassed to attend school because he’d outgrown his wheelchair, and helped fit him for a new one. In another, a coordinator helped connect a student who’d just had a baby to a public school with a day care on site.

When Dollie’s daughter fell ill with mononucleosis, she dealt with high fevers and lethargy that made it impossible to concentrate on schoolwork. The school called to warn Dollie about the mounting absences, which stretched to almost a month. But Dollie was most concerned about getting her daughter the care she needed and ensuring she wouldn’t infect other kids.

The community coordinator, meanwhile, checked in regularly, asking about the girl’s fever and helping connect Dollie with doctors. She didn’t pressure Dollie about the absences, but made sure she had everything she needed to feel ready to send her daughter back to school, Dollie said. Without that support, the absences would have likely extended even longer, and could have triggered additional consequences like a child welfare investigation, Dollie added.

The family left the shelter recently and moved out of the city, but Dollie worries what will happen to other families in similar positions if the community coordinators aren’t funded next year.

“I really hope they do keep her there,” she said. “Without them, these shelters are nothing.”

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

LISTEN: Migrant students navigate a new reality

2024-03-27T10:00:00+00:00

The first episode of P.S. Weekly focuses on one of the biggest education stories in New York City this year: the arrival of thousands of migrant students.

Officials estimate that more than 36,000 migrant students have enrolled in city schools over the past two years.

What challenges are these new students facing? And what are schools doing to support them? This student-reported episode explores these questions through conversations with students, educators, and a journalist who’s been covering the issue.

The first segment features an interview with Chalkbeat reporter Michael Elsen-Rooney, as he explains how schools have been supporting recently arrived students — and what the media has gotten wrong. With the city’s recent policy limiting migrant families to 60 days in shelters, it’s been hard on schools to figure out how to help. Elsen-Rooney said school officials are grappling with questions like: “Can we figure out transportation for them, or do they leave? And then they have to start over at a new school?”

Next, Marisol Martin, a senior at Claremont International High School in the Bronx, talks about her hurdles and triumphs since coming here from Mexico a few years ago. As she’s gotten more involved with her school’s Dream Squad — a program the Education Department started in 2020 to help immigrant students and undocumented youth and is now in more than 60 schools — Martin has felt more a part of the community.

A poster for the Dream Squad at Claremont International High School.

She’s paying it forward, now as a Dream Squad leader herself, and she shares her view on how schools should better help students feel connected to one another.

“What I would tell them is to socialize with other people,” Martin said in Spanish. “When you’re alone, you’re shy, and you don’t want to talk to anyone, you close yourself in your own world, and you don’t know more about what’s happening outside.”

Finally, Sunisa Nuonsy, a former high school teacher of 10 years at International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, talks about why she became a teacher specifically focused on immigrant students, the challenges she faced, and her advice to other teachers, especially those who are working with migrant students who may have experienced trauma. (Nuonsy is currently a doctoral student in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center and a project researcher for the CUNY Initiative on Immigration and Education.)

Sunisa Nuonsy

“They can easily shut down and they can easily drop out,” Nuonsy said of migrant students. “So you have a very unique opportunity to be an adult in their life that is welcoming them and affirming them and showing them that they have value and that they should be here.”

P.S. Weekly is available on major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Be sure to drop a review in your app or shoot an email to PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org. Tell us what you learned today or what you’re still wondering. We just might read your comment on a future episode.

P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell. Listen for new episodes Wednesdays this spring.

Read the full episode transcript below

Dorothy: Welcome to P.S. Weekly… the sound of the New York City school system. I’m Dorothy Ha, a senior at Stuyvesant High School– and I’m super excited to be hosting the very first episode of P.S. Weekly. This show is a collaboration between Chalkbeat New York, a leading education news site– and The Bell, a leading provider of audio journalism training to high school students. It’s a pairing as natural as a bacon, egg, and cheese!

Dorothy: Each week this Spring, our team will dig into one issue affecting New York City schools, bringing you a mix of voices and perspectives that you won’t find anywhere else. Along the way, we want to hear from YOU, our lovely listeners– more on that later in the show. Right now… let’s get to it.

Dorothy: For our first episode, we chose what’s been arguably the biggest story in New York City this year.

News Clip: Parents and educators say several Manhattan public schools are overwhelmed with an influx of migrant students. CBS News’ Natalie Duddridge spoke with the Chancellor on his efforts to find solutions.

Dorothy: What challenges are these new migrant students facing? And what are schools doing to support them? We’ll hear experiences directly from students and teachers. But first! We have Mike Elsen-Rooney with us. Mike is a Chalkbeat reporter who’s been covering how schools are responding to thousands of newly arrived migrant students.

Dorothy: Hi Mike! Thanks for joining us.

Mike: Hey, Dorothy. It’s great to be here.

Dorothy: All right. So, Mike, when did the issue that some have called the “migrant crisis” hit your radar?

Mike: So I remember back in Summer 2022, when this was first hitting the headlines. I was watching a meeting, and a superintendent said, “We’re expecting a couple hundred new students to come in.” And I was like, “Whoa, that seems like a lot of kids.” And then here we are about two years later, and it’s a whole lot more than that.

Dorothy: Right, so now it’s 2024. And how many people are we talking about in total now?

Mike: So our best estimate is that about 36,000 new kids have enrolled over the past couple of years.

Dorothy: Wow. That’s a lot of students. So what can you tell us about where these new migrants are living and where they’re going to school?

Mike: Yeah. So where they’re living really depends on where the city has been able to set up shelters. We’ve seen shelters pop up in Long Island City in Queens, and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, and lots of different parts of the city. And so where kids go to school really depends on two things. Number one is how close it is to their shelters. The second thing is what schools are really good and well-equipped to serve English language learners.

Dorothy: I can imagine that there are a lot of challenges in handling this big increase in migrant students.

Mike: Yeah, it can be really hard just getting tons and tons of new kids with a lot of challenges. And then the thing that’s been really hard recently is that there’s this new policy: families can only stay in shelters for 60 days. After that, they have to reapply, and they may end up in a shelter in a different part of the city. And so schools have to figure out, “Can we keep this kid? Can we figure out transportation for them, or do they leave? And then they have to start over at a new school?”

Dorothy: Recently, you wrote a really interesting story about how this immigration issue is impacting students and how they’re feeling at this moment. And you spoke to folks at Newcomers High School. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Mike: Yeah. So Newcomers High School is this really interesting place in Long Island City, Queens. It’s been around for 30 years, and they’re really good at accepting newcomer kids from around the world and teaching them English and helping them get acclimated to life in the U.S. And so that school is also near a bunch of shelters in Long Island City. And so when I saw a couple of kids from Newcomers High School speaking at a meeting for the Panel for Educational Policy recently, I was really surprised by what they said.

Meeting Clip: Our name stigmatizes us and condemns us to always be patronized and not having a choice because we are “new.” We are marked with the idea that we are here occupying a space that is not ours.

Mike: They said that the name Newcomers High School was, quote, putting a target on their backs.

Dorothy: And so what happened after the testimony?

Mike: After that testimony, they went through the whole process of getting their name changed, and we just actually found out that they got approved to have a new name. And the school is going to be called Atlas.

Dorothy: The situation with their name change kind of makes me think about the portrayal of migrants in the media. You know, not every journalist is as thorough as you are, Mike. So what’s been the broader media narrative?

Mike: So we’ve seen some examples where the media actually has really not captured what’s happening on the ground. And one really good example is, there was an incident recently where the city had set up basically an emergency tent shelter on Floyd Bennett Field at the Southern tip of Brooklyn. And there was a storm coming, and the city decided to evacuate them.

News Anchor 1: Mounting frustrations this afternoon in Brooklyn after the city temporarily placed asylum seekers into the gym of James Madison High School in Midwood.

News Anchor 2: While the move was to provide shelter for them from last night’s storm, but it was meant– it meant that no classes happened at the school today. And parents are really frustrated by all of it.

Mike: The city had them stay there overnight and then got them out early in the morning. But the school’s principal decided, they weren’t going to be able to get it cleaned up in time; let’s switch to remote learning for the day. When this hit the news. It turned into this huge story, especially in a lot of right-wing media. And the narrative was that New York City kids are getting pushed out by migrant families. But when a colleague of mine actually talked to students and parents there, you know, kids were saying, “Look, we sympathize with these families. We didn’t want them to be exposed to any danger of being out in the storm. And it was just a very different set of reactions than what came through if you only read the kind of media firestorm over this. And so, you know, it kind of drove home this point that what the media says doesn’t always reflect the reality on the ground.

Dorothy: Wow, fascinating. And on top of that, immigration has been a big issue in the presidential election so far. I can think of one presidential candidate who has been speaking about it a lot in particular. So how has that impacted New York City?

Mike: So Donald Trump just weighed in on this. He made some claims in a recent interview that New York City kids were getting pushed out by migrant students. And it just is incorrect. And the biggest reason for that is that there are actually a lot of empty seats in New York City schools. We lost enrollment during the pandemic, and so there’s plenty of space and no one’s getting pushed out.

Dorothy: So my last question for you is, for educators, and policymakers, and community members who want to better support these migrant students, what are some of the success stories that you’ve seen?

Mike: So many schools have been finding really creative and empathetic ways to support their new kids. You know, one big example we’ve seen is that a lot of schools have done coat drives because a lot of these newcomer kids have lived in the Southern Hemisphere their whole lives and have never really been through a New York winter. So it’s just those kinds of things at the community level, listening to what these families need and making it happen.

Dorothy: Mike, thank you so much for sitting down and having this conversation with us.

Mike: Thanks so much, Dorothy.

Dorothy: And now, we’re going to take a closer look at what the experience is really like after students arrive here. And how one program is helping them adjust. Our P.S. Weekly reporter Jose Santana has the story.

Marisol: Hola, mi nombre es Marisol Martin. Soy del grado 12, soy senior, mi país es México.

Jose: This is Marisol Martin, an 18-year-old high school senior.

Marisol: The biggest challenge I have is the language. I only knew how to say “thank you.” The teacher back in my country told us “thank you” in English, but beyond that I didn’t know anything.

Jose: She arrived in New York City from Mexico when NYC schools were still remote because of the pandemic.

Marisol: It was very difficult for me to learn; ninth grade was very difficult. The classes were online, and that made it more difficult for me to learn, and I didn’t understand anything. I just used a translator or something like that to see what to do.

Jose: And she’s not the only one who faces these kinds of hurdles. New York City is a city of immigrants, and its schools reflect that. Young people from all over the world come here for a multitude of reasons. Last school year, nearly one in five city students was learning English as a new language. Here’s Governor Kathy Hochul during a press conference last September.

Kathy (News Clip): We have real challenges. They’re coming in from West Africa, South and Central America. So it’s not just assuming that Spanish is going to cover everybody. It doesn’t come close. City officials…

Jose: When high school students like Marisol first arrive in New York City, the school system typically enrolls them in one of about 20 international high schools. These are schools like Newcomers– now called Atlas –that specialize in supporting recent immigrants. Marisol attends Claremont International High School in the Bronx. Nearly all of its students are low-income and English language learners. When Marisol first got there, language wasn’t the only barrier.

Marisol: Another challenge for me was to use technology that was very complicated for me because they gave me an iPad to work with my things. But it was in English, and I didn’t know where to enter, what to do, or where to paste.

Jose: Being in a new country also takes some cultural adjustment.

Marisol: When I arrived here in the United States, I entered Claremont and I kind of didn’t have much connection with the people. Different countries, different cultures.

Jose: But lucky for Marisol– and so many other immigrant students –there was help.

Marisol: Something that has helped me are some groups, like the Dream Squad. When I entered tenth grade, I was on the Dream Team. That also helped me a lot to communicate.

Jose: What is a Dream Squad? To answer that question, come with me to one of their meetings. It’s 12 p.m. on a Tuesday and I’m here at the Dream Squad’s weekly lunchtime meeting in the school’s library. The Dream Squad’s staff director Evelyn Reyes is leading the meeting with about 10 students, who are all seniors. They were discussing plans and ideas to recruit more Dream Squad members by sending emails out, flyers and directly inviting students to their meetings. Evelyn said the program started in 2019 to help immigrant students and undocumented youth.

Evelyn: Our then social worker was working around creating a space where students, regardless of immigration status, could find, you know, that empowerment where their stories were shared.

Jose: Claremont is one of more than two dozen schools around the city with a Dream Squad program. Dream Squads receive support from the non-profit ImmSchools and the DOE’s Division of Multilingual Learners. They provide notebooks, laptops, lanyards, and events for students and staff. But the most important aspect of the program is the community itself– and the knowledge that gets shared. Meeting topics vary from week to week.

Evelyn: So, mental health, we want to talk about also “know your rights.” So that our students are aware of what their rights are as immigrants. We want our students to also know that they have different options when it comes to post-secondary planning, whether that is college, whether that is trade school, whether that is a certificate program. We do try to do our best to share the information that we share with the students inside those meetings, across the school.

Jose: Dream Squad is tackling some big challenges, and it’s not without its difficulties. Language continues to be an issue.

Evelyn: Claremont is a very multilingual school, so we are a very diverse school community. And sometimes, just being able to produce or communicate a lot of the resources on students’ native language, that could be something that can be a little bit challenging.

Jose: But, despite these challenges, Evelyn makes sure to let the students know that–

Evelyn: Your background, your values, your culture, all of that is an asset. Like you have that, value that. So I do want them to feel like their story matters. Like I want them to, to feel like they’re at a community. That they’re welcome not only inside our school community, but also, you know, in this country.

Jose: And how does Dream Squad measure success?

Evelyn: Knowledge is success for me. Like, as long as we’re about to reach our students and we’re able to provide the resources, that they know how to use the resources, that they know how to access those resources. That’s how we measure success.

Jose: After benefiting from the program, Marisol became a Dream Squad leader– for 2 years now –to help other students like her. I ask Marisol how she’s adjusted since arriving in New York 3 years ago.

Jose (in Spanish): After 3 years of being here, how have you adjusted?

Marisol: I think that through time and things around me, I was able to connect more with the things in the United States. And also how the people that I met helped me too, like… like my classmates who are also migrants. So, we talk to each other and tell each other about this and this. I think that was something that helped me a lot to adapt here.

Jose: I ask her what advice she’d give to other students who have just arrived and gone through a similar experience.

Marisol: What I would tell them is to socialize with other people. That’s very good, because having a connection to more people, you can know more things versus when you’re alone, you’re shy and you don’t talk to anyone. You close yourself in your own world, and you don’t know more about what’s happening outside.

Jose: And what can the schools do to make the experience better?

Marisol: I think that giving them guidance, telling them, like, “here you can learn, here you can communicate.” The schools need to have more– like a connection with students, because many of the children don’t know what to do when they arrive the first day. They are very shy, and I think that they should have more priority with them when they immediately arrive.

Jose: There’s no doubt that the increase in new students to the city creates a difficult situation for both the city and the students. But as Marisol suggests, there are things that can be done to make the immigrant student experience better. And it all starts with a supportive community– grassroots efforts like the Dream Squad program that are making schools a safe and welcoming space for all.

Dorothy: Once again, that was Jose Santana, reporting from Claremont International High School. We’re going to take a short break, but when we return… a teacher’s perspective.

Sunisa: Sometimes, students are hopeless. Which I think to a teacher, to see a hopeless student is sad; it’s heartbreaking.

Dorothy: So stay tuned…

Salma: Hey, listeners! We hope you’re enjoying the first episode of P.S. Weekly. We’ve got an assignment for you—follow us on Instagram @bell.voices. And we want to hear from you! Reach out to P.S. Weekly at psweekly@chalkbeat.org with comments, questions, and suggestions. And… if you want more student-created content, listen up!

Student 1: On Our Minds is a podcast about the teenage experience. Made by teens, for teens.

Student 2: There’s a lot on our minds, and talking about it helps.

Student 1: On Our Minds: Season 4 is produced by PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, in collaboration with KUOW’s RadioActive Youth Media.

Student 2: Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Dorothy: In the last segment, we heard about the immigrant student experience. When it comes to helping these students overcome language barriers and navigate a new environment, that job often falls to… you guessed it… teachers. Our producer Bernie Carmona spoke to one of them.

Bernie: As a child of immigrants, I’ve thought about the experiences of migrant students navigating through school life. But who takes on the responsibility for making sure students are fully prepared for their future? What do teachers go through while navigating classrooms with migrant students? I remember speaking to my older sister, Mariana, who moved from Mexico to South Carolina in 2002 when she was about 5 years old. She didn’t know English when she arrived and struggled to adjust to the new environment. She didn’t feel supported until she came to New York City, where she experienced the diverse culture and language in schools, things she couldn’t access in South Carolina.

Bernie: Her experience made me wonder: how does all of this look from a teacher’s perspective? I spoke to Sunisa Nuonsy, a former high school teacher of 10 years at International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn.

Bernie: Thank you so much for being here, Sunisa.

Sunisa: Thank you so much for having me.

Bernie: Sunisa, why did you choose to become a teacher?

Sunisa: I became a teacher, particularly for immigrant students, because of my own experience. My family came to the U.S. as refugees from Laos. And sadly to say, some of my aunts and uncles, who were adolescents at the time of resettlement here, they were not equitably served in schools, and they dropped out of school. And so I always carried that with me. And when I became an adult, and I was thinking about my career path, I was very much drawn to language and to working with immigrants just because I felt like I could connect with them.

Bernie: Can you tell me a little more about how that experience was like for you?

Sunisa: The first time that I entered the school, I was interviewing as a student teacher, and I saw the students, and the different kinds of clothes they were wearing. Some kids were like, you know, dressed very Western, some kids were wearing more cultured clothes, hearing different languages. I thought it was the coolest place ever because I was like, “Look at these beautiful kids.” They come from everywhere. But we’re in Brooklyn. They’re so fly, they’re so fresh. It’s like where roots are– are like bursting through the ground, you know, because everything is just alive. Like the ways that language comes together, right?

Sunisa: I worked at a school, I would say was mostly Dominican. So every student learned Dominican Spanish, right? Whether you were from Yemen or Guinea, everybody was like, “Que lo que.” And just the way that our students were so open with their cultures and playing with one another’s cultures and really learning with it was just this beautiful hybrid space. And I don’t want to romanticize it, but I just imagine that that’s what our world could really be like is, you know, a place where people feel affirmed in who they are, but also aren’t scared to get to know other people. But we’re trying to make the world better, right? We’re trying to make people freer, more liberated. So I love that space. I love that liminal space.

Bernie: What would you say has been the biggest challenge you face with working with migrant students?

Sunisa: Well, I can say that although I identify as an immigrant myself, it’s such a tough situation to be in, and the larger administration is not aware of that. And they’re expecting you to be this robot that just has to do their job and perform their functions. But a lot of times I’ve seen it impossible to get a student to respond to classwork because they have so many other pressing and urgent issues that are just surrounding their brain and their souls. And that can be challenging to do when you have students who don’t see a pathway to college, they don’t even see a pathway to graduation. So to work with students, try to instill in them some sense of agency and empowerment, you know, even in the smallest ways, I think is really important because sometimes students are hopeless, which I think to a teacher, to see a student hopeless is sad. It’s heartbreaking, right, because you think that you’re there to really guide them to all of these opportunities when those opportunities are inequitably distributed. Like I think about college tuition, right, and financial aid and who can access financial aid and who can’t.

Bernie: What was a difficult moment you encountered?

Sunisa: I had two amazing students who were sisters, and they wanted to go to college. And their dad, culturally, didn’t think that college was for them. And so I had just so many conversations not only with them but with their guardians, with administrators at the schools, with other teachers. And oftentimes, I would just go back to my classroom and cry out of frustration because you could feel like you’re doing all of the hard things that you need to do to support these immigrant students. And there are still things that are just out of your control. So to see these students who had come all this way, had come from this village in Yemen to Brooklyn. And really learn how to believe in themselves and have some empowerment and still not be able to make that one crucial decision about whether they can continue their educations. It’s just, you know, I don’t know, even know how to troubleshoot that.

Bernie: Do you have any advice for teachers that are currently working with migrant students?

Sunisa: My recommendation for all teachers really is to know who your students are. Get to understand their context and their experiences before you label them as anything. Because, especially immigrant students, the ones who have experienced trauma along the way, they can easily shut down and they can easily drop out. So you have a very unique opportunity to be an adult in their life that is welcoming them and affirming them and showing them that they have value and that they should be here.

Bernie: Thank you so much for being a part of this interview, Sunisa.

Sunisa: Thank you so much for having me.

Bernie: I’m Bernie Carmona, reporting for P.S. Weekly.

Dorothy: That’s it for our first episode, but before you go, we have an extra credit assignment for you! Go to chalkbeat.org/newsletters, or click the link in our show notes, to sign up for the Chalkbeat New York morning newsletter. It’s the best way to stay informed on local schools coverage Monday through Friday. And if you really want to impress the teacher, drop a review in your podcast app or shoot an email to psweekly@chalkbeat.org. Tell us what you learned today or what you’re still wondering. We just might read your comment on a future episode.

Dorothy: P.S.: We’re back next Wednesday with an episode on how the national wave of Book Bans is impacting local schools.

Preview Clip: These groups are trying to erode the trust of educators in general by placing doubt in people’s minds about what a teacher is exposing kids to, is really just trying to attack the public school system.

Dorothy: Until then… [with entire cast] class dismissed!

CREDITS

Dorothy: P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat, made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation, The Summerfield Foundation, FJC, and Hindenburg Systems. This episode was hosted by me, Dorothy Ha. Producers for this episode were Sanaa Stokes, Jose Santana, and Bernie Carmona. With reporting help from Chalkbeat reporters Alex Zimmerman and Mike Elsen-Rooney. Engineering support was provided by Ava Stryker-Robbins. Our marketing lead this week was Santana Roach. Our executive producer for the show is Joann DeLuna. Executive editors are Amy Zimmer and Taylor McGraw.

Additional production and reporting support was provided by Sabrina DuQuesnay, Mira Gordon, and our friends at Chalkbeat. Special thanks to our interns Miriam Galicia and Makenna Turner. Music from Blue Dot Sessions and the jingle you heard at the beginning of this episode was created by the one and only: Erica Huang.

Thanks for tuning in! See you next time!

Correction: The Dream Squad, which started in 2020 is now in 60 schools, up from 25.

NYC chancellor says controversial school building swap had a happy ending. Teachers disagree.

2024-03-20T19:49:31+00:00

To hear New York City schools Chancellor David Banks tell it, a bitter fight last year over the decision to swap the buildings of two Manhattan high schools had a happy ending.

Students at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School, an under-enrolled transfer school for kids at risk of dropping out, were forced to switch buildings with The Young Women’s Leadership School, or TYWLS, a crowded school occupying a smaller space across town. The move sparked an uproar last year from West Side’s community, who argued it would deprive already marginalized kids of critical resources housed in its long-time building.

In recent months Banks has shared an upbeat update, telling reporters and members of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, a board that approves decisions to relocate schools, that he heard from West Side staff that “after the dust settled … everything worked out.”

“They couldn’t be happier,” he added last week, paraphrasing a letter from the principal and the school’s chapter leader, the official representative to the teachers union.

Banks’ update seemed to tie a neat bow on a messy public dispute. It also bolsters his argument for advancing other contentious school merger and relocation proposals and validates his decision-making at a moment when he’s urging the state legislature to extend mayoral control over schools.

There’s just one problem: According to teachers and students at West Side, the move has had anything but a happy ending.

Seven West Side teachers and a student who spoke to Chalkbeat said the move to the new space has worsened their school experience in almost every way. It has reduced access to organized sports and deprived students of the health clinic and on-site day care available in the old building. Forcing kids and staff into more cramped quarters has exacerbated tensions between students and diminished teachers’ ability to provide individualized support, teachers and students said.

“The chancellor was characterizing the move as being good and fine in the end … which is just utterly false,” said Joel Solow, a West Side teacher. “This has been an incredibly challenging year on almost every count.”

For students like Joel Gomez, 17, who started at West Side in October 2022, moving to the new space has felt like having the best part of his school experience “ripped away.”

Spending last year in the old building was “one of the best years of my life,” he said.

But “this year just feels like everything is dampened down,” he said. The move, for him, “did not work out in a great way.”

Even the city’s original justification for the move – that West Side needed much less space, while TYWLS needed much more – hasn’t panned out.

Last year, West Side had only 230 students last year in a building that can fit nearly 800, while TYWLS has hovered between 450-480 students in a building that could hold 560. Officials had predicted West Side’s enrollment would stay flat, while TYWLS would immediately grow when it moved to the larger space.

But the opposite has happened: Enrollment at West Side has surged, to 344 as of this month, thanks to an influx of migrant students and the addition of a bilingual program. Enrollment at Young Women’s Leadership, meanwhile, has shrunk to 363 – leaving the two schools now at almost the same size, according to Education Department records.

Education Department officials noted that despite its enrollment increases, West Side’s daily attendance still hovers around 51%.

An Education Department spokesperson attributed the drop in enrollment at TYWLS to smaller classes of entering 6th and 9th graders, and said the school couldn’t offer more new seats because the move was approved too late in the year. But state data shows that the drops in 6th and 9th grade classes account for only a fraction of the overall enrollment reduction at TYWLS, and other grades shrunk as well.

The West Side building swap reverberates beyond the two schools

The city Education Department is facing increasing pressure to move, merge or even close schools as a result of pandemic enrollment losses – and Banks will need the approval of the Panel for Educational Policy to advance those proposals.

A happy ending to the West Side saga, one of the most high-profile fights in Banks’ tenure, strengthens Banks’ case to move forward on other controversial proposals, offering evidence that dire predictions from angry communities don’t always come true. Already, several proposals on the docket in the coming months have spurred fierce community pushback, some of which echoes the concerns raised by the West Side community.

West Side also is relevant to the ongoing negotiations in the state legislature over if and how to extend mayoral control over city schools. The current governance structure gives Mayor Eric Adams power to appoint the majority of the Panel for Educational Policy, an arrangement Banks says allows him to “make the best decisions on behalf of the entire school system,” even when it means fighting through some opposition, he said last week.

But critics of mayoral control say the West Side move is a case study in the limitations of a system that allows officials to ignore community input to the detriment of kids.

“In mayoral control,” Solow said at a January town hall in Manhattan, “the people who have to deal with the consequences have no voice that needs to be listened to. And the people who get to determine the consequences need to listen to no one.”

Dueling interpretations of a letter

Part of the ongoing dispute comes down to dueling interpretations of a letter sent in the fall by West Side Principal Mara Rivera and chapter leader Mark Weller.

The letter, a copy of which was reviewed by Chalkbeat, thanked facilities officials for the “excellent job” in upgrading the new building, praising the “remarkable” difference in the condition of the facility now compared to last year, and calling the atmosphere in the building “much more uplifting … than we had expected.”

The principal and chapter leader didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Multiple staffers who spoke with the chapter leader said he had explained that the letter, which was written without the knowledge of staff and was not addressed to Banks, was meant to build goodwill with facilities staff to help secure future upgrades. It wasn’t meant as an endorsement of the move or affirmation that it had worked out for the best. The letter writers weren’t notified that Banks was going to share the letter publicly, staffers added.

It was a “fairly simple message about ‘thanks for making the move a little less bad,’” Solow said.

An Education Department spokesperson didn’t directly address criticism that Banks misrepresented the letter, but said he only stated that the “principal wrote a letter of appreciation for the work done to get the space ready for the students of West Side High School.”

Banks heard about the letter through a regular update from facilities staff, the spokesperson said.

“We promised we would ensure the building meets both our standards and those of the school community, and the upgrades have made a true impact in the way students and staff view their new learning environment,” spokesperson Chyann Tull said in a statement.

Enrollment numbers don’t tell the full story

West Side staffers and students argued that there were features of the old building – which the school has occupied since the late 1980s – that were critical to its success and would be lost in the new facility, a prediction they said has come to fruition.

The old space had a child care program and health clinic on site, as well as a full-size gymnasium and access to an adjacent sports field. Those amenities filled specific needs for the school’s students, who are older, often juggle competing responsibilities, and struggle with attendance.

The new space, located on the seventh to 11th floors of an office building, has none of those things. The difficulty of restarting organized sports, such as volleyball, has been a particular blow, since that’s what helps keep many kids engaged in school, staffers said.

An Education Department spokesperson said officials are working to sustain services for students in the new space, including connecting the school to a nearby Mount Sinai location.

Staffers said they appreciated the facilities repairs, but those can’t alter some structural differences in the new building, including classrooms that are often about half the size of their old home.

One teacher described moving into a smaller classroom with multiple students with emotional disabilities. In the old building, there was enough space to separate students during conflicts. The new room doesn’t allow for that, said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Gomez, the student, said the new building is “claustrophobic” and “dreary.” He misses the joy of seeing the little kids at the old on-site day care, the access to fields and a gym, and the spacious hallways and classrooms where kids could take a lap if they got overwhelmed.

He’s struggled to keep up his attendance this year. For one stretch, he missed a month of school.

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

Newly arrived young adults face challenges to NYC school enrollment

2024-03-19T20:24:30+00:00

This article was republished from City Limits, an independent, investigative news source.

The 20-year-old from Mauritania arrived in the city four months ago with the dream of graduating from high school in the United States.

”I want to make my life better. I am still a baby, and I should go to school to have more experience, to have more knowledge,” the youth—who preferred not to be identified by name, citing past experiences with other media—said in fluent English, something he quickly picked up from daily interactions, adding to the multitude of languages he already speaks. “I don’t want to lose my time.”

In only four months, he has moved from one shelter to the other: living first in Manhattan, then Brooklyn, and now the Bronx, after the city instituted a 30-day shelter limit for adult migrants in the city last year, which was extended last week to 60 days for adults under 23 as part of the city’s “right to shelter” settlement.

Over 852 single immigrant youth between the ages of 17 and 20 were in the city’s shelter system as of March 3, according to City Hall. Dozens of them have told shelter staff they want to graduate from high school, but haven’t been enrolled—even though they are entitled to do so under federal law, according to several community-based organizations (CBOs) that are trying to assist them.

Eight local organizations that provide services to immigrants and/or youth described delays and difficulties in enrolling young migrants recently. The organization with the highest number of cases was Safe Horizon’s Streetwork Project, a drop-in center for homeless youth that has been serving an increasing number of asylum seekers since last year, which says it has referred around 60 cases of migrants directly to the New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) since January.

But only six have been enrolled so far, lamented Sebastien Vante, associate vice president of Safe Horizon’s Streetwork Project in Harlem.Other organizations—Afrikana, an East Harlem community center that serves young immigrants; Artists Athletes Activists, which greets asylum seekers upon arrival and connects them with support services; the Coalition for Homeless Youth; The Door, which offers legal aid, counseling, and various support services to youth; and the New York Legal Assistance Group—told City Limits that the youth they serve have faced difficulties in school enrollment.

Some have been told there is no space, some have been put on waitlists and others said they were only given the option of taking the General Educational Development (GED) high school equivalency test, according to these groups.

When asked about these complaints, a New York City Public Schools spokesperson said the education department “does not track enrollment referrals and students are not asked to disclose how they received information about the enrollment process.”

“Enrollment does not work on a referral basis,” added the spokesperson in an email.

The department said it is working to ensure that older students who want to attend classes are afforded academic options including traditional high schools, transfer schools—which serve students who are behind in credits or need alternative forms of education—as well as adult GED programs.

“Since the inception of Project Open Arms, we have made it clear—we cannot do this work alone,” the spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the city’s initiative to offer educational support to new immigrants and asylum seekers.

But stating now that enrollment does not operate on a referral basis, advocates said, has created confusion, departing from how the city has historically enrolled unhoused young people referred by social services organizations.

“Providers have always utilized certain processes through relationships with students in temporary housing liaisons,” countered Jamie Powlovich, executive director for the Coalition for Homeless Youth. “If that process is no longer something NYC Public School supports, they didn’t tell anyone.”

Under the McKinney-Vento Act, a federal law that protects the educational rights of homeless children and youth, these young adults should be enrolled in school immediately, even in the absence of documentation such as proof of residency, immunizations, school records, or other documents normally required.

The New York State Education Law stipulates that those between the ages of 5 and 21 who have not received a high school diploma are “entitled to attend the public schools maintained in the district in which such person resides without the payment of tuition.”

Further, State Education Department guidance notes that, “Districts may not force such individuals to forego a full-time high school program to pursue this alternative option [GED test], or otherwise steer such individuals toward this alternative option.”

“I feel like almost all my clients in that specific situation—17 to 20, trying to get into high school—are almost always pushed towards the GED program,” said Salina Guzman, immigrant youth advocate at The Door. “I think very often, there are many barriers that our clients face when trying to get into high school.”

Since July 2022, about 36,000 students in temporary housing have enrolled in city schools, according to NYCPS, though the agency could not detail how many of them were aged 17-21.

To enroll, the department stated, prospective students must go through a Family Welcome Center, with locations in each of the five boroughs to handle year-round registration and admissions to traditional high schools.

But advocates say many immigrant youth have learned the hard way that they needed an appointment at these sites before showing up.

“[It] doesn’t sound like a huge issue,” said Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, director of the Immigrant Students Rights Project at Advocates for Children of New York. “But if you’re brand new to the country, and you’re already very confused and trying to make a lot of pieces fit together, and make the trip to the Family Welcome Center, and they tell you that you can’t be there, that you have to go back—that might be a reason alone why a family decides to just stop trying.”

A NYCPS spokesperson disputed that appointments are required at Family Welcome Centers, saying they are recommended but that walk-ins are accepted too. Welcome Centers can provide referrals to students interested in transfer schools, but for other pathways to graduation, such as adult education programs, prospective students should visit a referral center instead, the spokesperson said.

However, migrants who do make appointments at these welcome centers are sometimes told there is no space or they have to go on a waiting list, advocates say.

In an email, a NYCPS spokesperson acknowledged the presence of waitlists at some of its Welcome Centers—one in Downtown Brooklyn, for example, had less than 20 students waiting at the time of publication—but said names are taken off those lists daily thanks to rolling admissions, and that prospective students have the option of applying through other enrollment centers if their local spot is full.

But advocates say what should be a relatively smooth process now takes several weeks to a little over a month, and depends on a variety of circumstances: available seats, the type of school (transfer school, international high school, etc.), the needs of the student, and the time of year.

“The biggest problem: there’s no room in GED or high school alternatives,” explained Chia Chia Wang, NY Director of Church World Service (CWS), an organization that works with unaccompanied children who have come to reunite with their family members, which has been assisting many young people who are 17 or older with enrollment.

A CWS case manager explained that it took a month for one migrant, who will turn 18 in April and is living in a youth shelter without a guardian, to be enrolled after visiting the Family Welcome Center and being placed on a waiting list. “Despite reaching out to several transfer schools, he remained on waiting lists,” the caseworker said in an email.

“His absence from an educational environment,” the case manager added, “was starting to impact his mental well-being, as he expressed feeling down while observing his friends attending school while he remained at the shelter.”

To enroll migrants, advocates have made appointments, visited the Family Welcome Center, and called a bunch of high schools directly. “And that’s how, you know, we get students in school,” described Rodriguez-Engberg.

But according to the law, and reiterated by both the U.S. Department of Education and the NYS Department of Education, enrollment should be immediate. A U.S. Department of Education spokesperson said that anyone who meets the eligibility requirements and who is identified as homeless by a local liaison that serves students in temporary housing and their families in schools, should be able to attend classes right away.

A spokesperson for the New York State Education Department (NYSED) said that NYCPS has not reported any difficulties, delays, or problems in enrolling immigrant students in this age group, nor in failing to enroll them promptly, as required by the McKinney-Vento Act. NYSED would provide direct technical assistance to ensure compliance, added the spokesperson.

As a recipient of McKinney-Vento funds, the NYCPS has submitted proposals and annual reports ensuring compliance with the act, NYSED explained.

The New York State Attorney General’s Office encourages people who have been denied enrollment to contact its office or to file a Civil Rights Bureau complaint form.

Aging out of classrooms

An applicant approaching 18 complicates enrollment, several advocates explained. Turning 18 often makes it even harder.

“I had difficulty enrolling a client that was 17 and a half,” a Church World Service caseworker said via email. “The family was told that he was going to be 18 years old soon and that he should go to take a GED program instead of enrolling him in high school.”

The two young men City Limits spoke to during a visit to the Safe Horizons drop-in center in Harlem, one 20 and the other 18, said they had both asked staff at their shelters to be enrolled in school, to no avail. Nor were they referred to a family welcome center.

The young man from Mauritania said he did not persist or revisit the request because, under the city’s previous 30-day stay limit rules for adult migrants, it would be too difficult to fully focus on his studies without a stable place to live.

“So if I finished that one month, I should wait two weeks—three weeks, or one week, whatever—to get a shelter. I cannot sleep in a church, or sleep in a mosque, and then wake in the morning and go to school and come back tired,” he said.

CBOs told City Limits this age group easily falls through the cracks of the city’s shelter system and tends to be perceived as adults, not as young adults or unaccompanied youth.

“For newly arrived migrant youth of that age group—17 to 20—it’s rare that somebody will identify them as a [school-age] student, as a youth who needs to be in school,” Rodriguez-Engberg said. “They’re looked at as like adults, or they’re overlooked, period.”

Many young adults are entering adult shelters, where it’s harder to access the programs designed to help them.

Young people under the age of 24 are eligible for specialized runaway and homeless youth shelters under the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD), but with only 813 beds, it has long been near or at capacity. In addition to school enrollment assistance, these shelters provide mental health services, access to legal aid, job training, and other services.

After two years of new immigrants arriving from all over the world, organizations say it’s hard to know the magnitude of the problem: how many young people who could be enrolled who are not in school right now, and how their lives could have been changed with such access.

“A bigger problem is the fact that we don’t really even know what the actual need is,” Rodriguez-Engberg said. “How many are there actually, who just gave up and are working or trying to do something else, because they had no idea they could be in school.”

In 2020, the Migration Policy Institute estimated that 3,800 newly arrived immigrants in New York City, ages 16 to 21, were neither enrolled in city schools nor had a diploma.

While NYCPS expanded programs for new immigrants enrolled in the city’s transfer high schools in 2022, the same year that more immigrants began arriving in the city, advocates say it’s still not enough to keep up with demand.

Enrollment challenges have affected both young adults living alone in the city as well as those living with their families. “The problem that exists with the lack of options and the Family Welcome Centers referring students to GED programs, happens regardless of whether the student is here alone or they’re here with their family,” Rodriguez-Engberg explained.

The youngest, those between 17 to 19, advocates explain, have a better chance and more time to navigate the laborious enrollment process, but for older youth, time is limited, since federal law only guarantees their right to attend through age 21.

“Every beginning is hard, but in the end, it’s going to be okay, but we don’t want to lose time,” the young man from Mauritania told a City Limits reporter. “We’re not allowed to work, so we should go to school to get information. If we were allowed to work, that information can help us in the future.”

He cited his own multilingual skills as something he and many other immigrant youth can offer the local job market—if they can access it.

“Maybe, the U.S. is going to need us one day,” he said.

Editor’s note from City Limits: This story has been updated since original publication to include additional information provided by NYCPS.

Jóvenes inmigrantes recién llegados enfrentan dificultades para matricularse en escuelas de Nueva York

2024-03-19T20:24:18+00:00

Este artículo se publicó originalmente en inglés el 18 de marzo en City Limits, una publicación independiente de investigación. Traducido por Daniel Parra. Read the English version here.

El joven de Mauritania de 20 años llegó a la ciudad hace cuatro meses con el sueño de graduarse de secundaria en los Estados Unidos.

“Quiero mejorar mi vida. Todavía soy un bebé, y debería ir a la escuela para tener más experiencia, para tener más conocimientos”, dijo en un inglés fluido —-aprendido rápidamente en interacciones diarias y que se suma a la multitud de idiomas que ya habla— el joven, quien prefirió no ser identificado por su nombre por experiencias pasadas con otros medios de comunicación. “No quiero perder el tiempo”.

En sólo cuatro meses, ha pasado de un albergue a otro: viviendo primero en Manhattan, luego en Brooklyn y ahora en el Bronx, después de que la ciudad instituyera el año pasado un límite de 30 días de estadía en refugios para los inmigrantes en la ciudad, y que fue ampliado la semana pasada a 60 días para los adultos menores de 23 años como parte del acuerdo sobre el “derecho a refugio” de la ciudad.

Más de 852 jóvenes inmigrantes solteros entre 17 y 20 años estaban en el sistema de albergues de la ciudad al 3 de marzo, según la alcaldía. Decenas de ellos han pedido al personal de los refugios que quieren terminar el bachillerato, pero no se les ha matriculado, a pesar de que tienen derecho a ello en virtud de la legislación federal, según varias organizaciones comunitarias que intentan ayudarles.

Ocho organizaciones locales que prestan servicios a inmigrantes y/o jóvenes describieron retrasos y dificultades para matricular a jóvenes inmigrantes recientemente. La organización con mayor número de casos es Safe Horizon y su Streetwork Project, un centro de acogida para jóvenes sin hogar que atiende a un número creciente de solicitantes de asilo desde el año pasado, afirma haber remitido unos 60 casos de inmigrantes directamente a las Escuelas Públicas de la ciudad de Nueva York (NYCPS por sus siglas en inglés) desde enero.

Pero hasta ahora sólo se han inscrito seis, lamentó Sebastien Vante, vicepresidente asociado del Proyecto Streetwork de Safe Horizon en Harlem.

Otras organizaciones —como Afrikana, un centro comunitario de East Harlem que atiende a jóvenes inmigrantes; Artists Athletes Activists, que recibe a los solicitantes de asilo a su llegada y los pone en contacto con servicios de apoyo; la Coalition for Homeless Youth; The Door, que ofrece asistencia jurídica, asesoramiento y diversos servicios de apoyo a los jóvenes; y el New York Legal Assistance Group— dijeron a City Limits que los jóvenes a los que atienden han tenido dificultades para matricularse en la escuela.

Según estos grupos, a algunos de los jóvenes se les ha dicho que no hay cupos en los colegios, a otros se les ha puesto en listas de espera y otros afirman que sólo se les ha dado la opción de presentar el examen General de Desarrollo Educativo (GED por sus siglas en inglés) de equivalencia de bachillerato.

Cuando se le preguntó acerca de estas quejas a NYCPS, un portavoz dijo que el departamento de educación “no rastrea los casos referidos de inscripción y no se pide a los estudiantes que revelen cómo recibieron la información sobre el proceso de inscripción”.

“La matriculación no funciona en base a referidos”, añadió el portavoz en un correo electrónico.

El departamento dijo que está trabajando para asegurar que los estudiantes mayores que quieran asistir a clases tengan opciones académicas que incluyan escuelas secundarias tradicionales, escuelas de transferencia —que sirven a los estudiantes que están atrasados en créditos o necesitan formas alternativas de educación—, así como programas de GED para adultos.

“Desde el inicio del Proyecto Open Arms, hemos dejado claro que no podemos hacer este trabajo solos”, dijo el portavoz, refiriéndose a la iniciativa de la ciudad para ofrecer apoyo educativo a los nuevos inmigrantes y solicitantes de asilo.

Pero afirmar ahora que la inscripción no funciona con referidos, dijeron los defensores, ha creado confusión, apartándose de la forma en que la ciudad ha inscrito históricamente a los jóvenes sin hogar remitidos por las organizaciones de servicios sociales.

“Los proveedores siempre han utilizado ciertos procesos a través de las relaciones con los estudiantes en los enlaces de vivienda temporal”, refutó Jamie Powlovich, directora ejecutiva de la Coalition for Homeless Youth. “Si ese proceso ya no es algo que apoye NYCPS, no se lo han dicho a nadie”.

Según la Ley McKinney-Vento, una ley federal que protege los derechos educativos de los niños y jóvenes sin hogar, estos jóvenes adultos deben ser matriculados en la escuela inmediatamente, incluso en ausencia de documentación como prueba de residencia, vacunas, expedientes escolares u otros documentos normalmente exigidos.

La Ley de Educación del Estado de Nueva York estipula que las personas entre 5 y 21 años que no hayan recibido un diploma de secundaria tienen “derecho a asistir a las escuelas públicas en el distrito en el que resida dicha persona sin el pago de matrícula”.

Además, la directriz del Departamento de Educación del estado señala que “los distritos no pueden obligar a estas personas a renunciar a un programa de escuela secundaria a tiempo completo para seguir esta opción alternativa [examen del GED], o de otra manera dirigir a estas personas hacia esta opción alternativa”.

“Siento que casi todos mis clientes en esa situación específica —de 17 a 20, tratando de entrar en la escuela secundaria— casi siempre son empujados hacia el programa de GED”, dijo Salina Guzmán, defensora de los jóvenes inmigrantes en The Door. “Creo que muy a menudo, hay muchas barreras que nuestros clientes enfrentan cuando intentan ingresar a la escuela secundaria”.

Desde julio de 2022, alrededor de 36,000 estudiantes en viviendas temporales se han inscrito en escuelas de la ciudad, según NYCPS, aunque el departamento no detalló cuántos tenían entre 17 y 21 años.

Para matricularse, dijo el departamento, los futuros estudiantes deben pasar por Centros de Acogida para Familias (Family Welcome Centers), con sedes en cada uno de los cinco condados para gestionar las inscripciones y admisiones durante todo el año.

Pero los defensores dicen que muchos jóvenes inmigrantes han aprendido por las malas que necesitaban una cita en estos lugares antes de presentarse.

“No parece un gran problema”, dice Rita Rodríguez-Engberg, directora del Proyecto de Derechos de los Estudiantes Inmigrantes de Advocates for Children of New York. “Pero si eres nuevo en el país, y ya estás confundido y tratando que un montón de piezas encajen, y haces el viaje al Centro de Bienvenida Familiar, y te dicen que no puedes estar allí, que tienes que volver, eso podría ser una razón por sí sola por la que una familia decida simplemente dejar de intentarlo”.

Un portavoz de NYCPS negó que los Centros de Acogida para Familias requieran cita previa, afirmando que es recomendable, pero que también se aceptan visitas sin cita previa. Los Centros pueden referir a los estudiantes interesados a escuelas de transferencia, pero para otros programas de graduación, como los programas de educación para adultos, los interesados deben visitar un referral center (centro de referencia) en su lugar, dijo el portavoz.

Sin embargo, los inmigrantes que tienen cita en estos Centros de Acogida para Familias a veces les dicen que no hay cupo o que tienen que inscribirse en una lista de espera, dicen los defensores.

En un correo electrónico, un portavoz de NYCPS reconoció la presencia de listas de espera en algunos de Centros de Acogida para Familias: uno en el centro de Brooklyn, por ejemplo, tenía menos de 20 estudiantes esperando en el momento de la publicación, pero dijo que los nombres se eliminaban de la lista diariamente gracias a las admisiones continuas, y que los futuros estudiantes tenían la opción de ir a otros centros.

Sin embargo, los defensores de los estudiantes afirman que lo que debería ser un proceso relativamente sencillo tarda ahora varias semanas o un poco más de un mes, dependiendo de diversas circunstancias: cupos disponibles, tipo de secundaria (escuelas de transferencia, escuela internacional, etc.), necesidades del estudiante y la época del año.

“El mayor problema: no hay cupos en las escuelas alternativas de GED o bachillerato”, explicó Chia Chia Wang, directora en Nueva York de Church World Service (CWS por sus siglas en inglés), una organización que trabaja con menores no acompañados que han venido a reunirse con sus familiares, que ha estado ayudando a muchos jóvenes de 17 años o más a matricularse.

Un gestor de casos del CWS explicó que un migrante que cumplirá 18 años en abril y vive en un refugio de menores sin tutor, tardó un mes en ser matriculado tras visitar el Centro de Acogida para Familias y ser incluido en una lista de espera. “A pesar de contactar a escuelas, seguía en lista de espera”, dijo en un correo electrónico.

“Su ausencia de un entorno educativo”, añadió el gestor de casos, “estaba empezando a repercutir en el bienestar mental, ya que el joven expresó sentirse decaído al observar a sus amigos asistir a la escuela mientras él permanecía en el refugio”.

Para matricular a los inmigrantes, los defensores han concertado citas, han visitado el Centro de Acogida para Familias y han llamado directamente a un montón de escuelas. “Y así es como, ya sabes, conseguimos que los estudiantes vayan a la escuela”, describió Rodríguez-Engberg.

Pero de acuerdo con la ley, y reiterado tanto por el Departamento de Educación de EE.UU. y el Departamento de Educación del estado de Nueva York, la inscripción debe ser inmediata. Un portavoz del Departamento de Educación de EE.UU. dijo que cualquier persona que cumpla los requisitos de elegibilidad y que sea identificada como persona sin hogar por un enlace local que atiende a los estudiantes en viviendas temporales y a sus familias en las escuelas, debe poder asistir a clases de inmediato.

Un portavoz del Departamento de Educación del estado de Nueva York (NYSED por sus siglas en inglés) dijo que NYCPS no ha informado de ninguna dificultad, retraso o problema para matricular estudiantes inmigrantes en este grupo de edad, ni sobre matricularlos con prontitud, como exige la Ley McKinney-Vento. El NYSED proporcionaría asistencia técnica directa para garantizar el cumplimiento, añadió el portavoz.

Como beneficiario de los fondos McKinney-Vento, el NYCPS ha presentado propuestas e informes anuales que garantizan el cumplimiento de la ley, explicó el NYSED.

La Oficina de la Fiscal General del estado de Nueva York anima a las personas a las que se haya negado la inscripción a ponerse en contacto con su oficina o a presentar una queja a la oficina de derechos civiles.

Envejecer fuera de las aulas

Estar cerca a cumplir 18 años complica la inscripción, explican varios defensores. Cumplir 18 años a menudo lo hace aún más difícil.

“Tuve dificultades para matricular a un cliente que tenía 17 años y medio”, dijo por correo electrónico un gestor de casos de CWS. “A la familia le dijeron que pronto iba a cumplir 18 años y que debía ir a un programa de GED en lugar de matricularlo en el instituto”.

Los dos jóvenes, uno de 20 años y el otro de 18, con los que City Limits habló durante una visita al centro de acogida de Safe Horizons en Harlem dijeron que ambos habían pedido al personal de los refugios que los matricularan en la escuela, sin éxito. Tampoco los remitieron a un Centro de Acogida para Familias.

El joven de Mauritania dijo que no insistió en la solicitud porque, según las normas anteriores de la ciudad sobre el límite de estadía de 30 días para inmigrantes adultos, sería demasiado difícil centrarse plenamente en sus estudios sin un lugar estable donde vivir.

“Cuando termine el mes, debo esperar dos semanas —tres, o una semana, lo que sea— para conseguir un refugio. No puedo dormir en una iglesia, o dormir en una mezquita, y luego levantarme por la mañana e ir a la escuela y volver cansado”, dijo.

Las organizaciones de base comunitaria dijeron a City Limits que este grupo de edad fácilmente queda fuera del sistema de albergues de la ciudad y tiende a ser percibido como adultos, no como adultos jóvenes o jóvenes no acompañados.

“Para los jóvenes migrantes recién llegados de ese grupo de edad —de 17 a 20 años— es raro que alguien los identifique como estudiantes [en edad escolar], como jóvenes que necesitan estar en la escuela”, dijo Rodríguez-Engberg. “Se les mira como adultos, o se les pasa por alto, sin más”.

Muchos jóvenes ingresan en centros de acogida para adultos, donde es más difícil acceder a los programas diseñados para ayudarles.

Los jóvenes menores de 24 años pueden ir a los albergues especializados para jóvenes fugados y sin hogar del Departamento de Juventud y Desarrollo Comunitario de la ciudad, pero con sólo 813 camas, hace tiempo que están casi o al límite de su capacidad. Además de ayuda para matricularse en la escuela, estos albergues ofrecen servicios de salud mental, acceso a asistencia jurídica, formación laboral y otros servicios.

Tras dos años de llegada de nuevos inmigrantes de todo el mundo, las organizaciones afirman que es difícil conocer la magnitud del problema: cuántos jóvenes que podrían estar matriculados no están escolarizados ahora mismo y cómo podrían haber cambiado sus vidas con acceso.

“Un problema mayor es el hecho de que ni siquiera sabemos realmente cuál es la necesidad real”, dijo Rodríguez-Engberg. “Cuántos hay en realidad, que simplemente se dieron por vencidos y están trabajando o tratando de hacer otra cosa, porque no tenían idea de que podían estar en la escuela”.

En 2020, el Migration Policy Institute estimó que 3.800 inmigrantes entre 16 y 21 años recién llegados a la ciudad de Nueva York no estaban matriculados en las escuelas de la ciudad ni tenían un diploma.

Si bien el NYCPS amplió los programas para los nuevos inmigrantes matriculados en las escuelas secundarias de transferencia de la ciudad en 2022, el mismo año en que más inmigrantes comenzaron a llegar a la ciudad, los defensores dicen que no es suficiente por la demanda que hay.

Los problemas de matriculación han afectado tanto a los adultos jóvenes que viven solos en la ciudad como a los que viven con sus familias. “El problema que existe con la falta de opciones y los Centros de Acogida para Familias que remiten a los estudiantes a los programas de GED, sucede independientemente de si el estudiante está aquí solo o está aquí con su familia”, explicó Rodríguez-Engberg.

Los más jóvenes, los que tienen entre 17 y 19 años, explican los defensores, tienen más posibilidades y más tiempo para navegar por el laborioso proceso de matrícula, pero para los jóvenes de más edad, el tiempo es limitado, ya que la ley federal sólo garantiza su derecho hasta los 21 años.

“Todos los comienzos son duros, pero al final todo va a salir bien, pero no queremos perder tiempo”, dijo el joven de Mauritania a un reportero de City Limits. “No se nos permite trabajar, así que debemos ir a la escuela para informarnos. Si nos dejaran trabajar, esa información podría ayudarnos en el futuro”.

Él citó sus propios conocimientos multilingües como algo que él y muchos otros jóvenes inmigrantes pueden ofrecer al mercado laboral local, si pueden acceder a él.

“Tal vez, Estados Unidos nos necesite algún día”, dijo.

Este artículo ha sido actualizado desde su publicación original para incluir información adicional facilitada por NYCPS.

NYC’s youth shelter system locks out hundreds as migrants seek entry

2024-03-12T19:10:05+00:00

This story was originally published on March 12 by THE CITY.

In the depths of January, without a coat on his back, an 18-year-old orphan from Guinea named Mamdou spent a week riding the subways, before a stranger handed him a $20 bill and led him to the Roosevelt Hotel, the city’s main intake for newly arriving migrants. He got a 30-day shelter stint in a converted office tower in Midtown and a few weeks of relative peace after a perilous journey across the world.

But his anxiety built as his eviction day neared. He’d heard about Covenant House, a special youth shelter for people under the age of 21 overseen by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, and was determined to secure a bed there.

“I went there every day, sometimes two or three times a day. They know me there,” he said in French on a recent afternoon, two days after he’d been ejected from his Midtown shelter after his 30 days ran out, under Mayor Eric Adams’ strict limits on stays for adult migrants in shelters.

Both nights since his eviction he’d slept outside on the sidewalk. “But every day when I go there they tell me there’s no room.”

The migrant crisis is increasingly intertwined with another crisis: an explosion in the number of homeless youth. Data obtained by THE CITY shows a dramatic increase in young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 reported as having been turned away from specialized shelters that serve young people in that age bracket, with 473 youth rebuffed in the second half of 2023 — up from seven in the first six months of the year.

Last year, DYCD funded about 800 youth shelter beds, with most of those available only to those under age 21, the agency reported to the City Council.

Service providers and advocates had warned for months that the city’s migrant response does not address the needs of the many young people arriving in New York on their own. Those advocates now say the official rejection numbers don’t begin to document just how many young people are unable to find a spot in a homeless youth shelter.

“I’ve been doing this work for 20 years,” said Jamie Powlovich, the director of the Coalition for Homeless Youth, a statewide consortium of more than 60 groups. “I have never seen the level of unmet needs and young people being further traumatized and forced to endure homelessness, especially street homelessness, ever.”

The coalition tallied more than 200 young people turned away from youth shelters in a 12-day period last fall, including seven children under the age of 18, after which they stopped keeping count.

“The list was getting too long, and it wasn’t moving,” Powlovich said. “We didn’t want to add people to a list and give them false hope.”

Advocates have been pressuring the city to make some concessions for youth in the adult migrant shelter system, urging that at the very least adopting the more forgiving 60-day shelter stay limits used for families with children under the age of 18.

“We’ve been told for about four months now that that is something that they’re working on,” Powlovich said. “But it hast happened yet.”

A spokesperson for City Hall didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly defended the city’s handling of the arrival of migrants from the southern border.

“This is a national problem that has been dropped in the lap of places like New York and Chicago, Massachusetts and others who have similar programs, 30‑ and 60‑day programs,” he said at a press conference this week. “We’ve done our job. New Yorkers have done their job, and we’re going to continue to do our job, but this is a national issue.”

While the city’s “right to shelter” court consent decrees are supposed to guarantee a bed that day to anyone who requests one, no legal requirement exists for teens or young adults to be placed in an age-appropriate shelter.

As a surge of teen and young adult migrants arrived last fall, they were funneled into the same tent shelters, converted warehouses and office buildings as other adult migrants without children. The city’s migrant intake centers don’t distinguish migrants in their late teens or early 20s from other adults, and the city doesn’t keep separate data about that age group.

Through the organizing of mutual aid and community groups, some newly arriving migrants have found their way into the specialized youth shelter system, which allows youth to stay longer and offers more specialized support services. But last fall, that system became overwhelmed and securing a bed within it became next to impossible, as reflected in the new city data.

After their 30 days in shelters run out, migrant youth are directed to the East Village “reticketing site” inside an old Catholic school, where they can get in line for another shelter cot, a wait which takes days or weeks. Those seeking new shelter placements are directed to spend nights in outer-borough waiting rooms where they can rest on the ground, but a city survey found that, like Mamdou, hundreds spent the night on the streets or trains instead.

THE CITY reported last month that the city Office of Emergency Management was working on plans to close the “overflow” locations.

‘A human cost’

The city’s eight youth drop-in centers, run by nonprofits, are the formal gateway into the youth shelter system, providing young homeless New Yorkers with clothing, food and showers, and linking them up with case workers who can help connect them with youth shelter beds if they become available. Those centers, too, have seen a sustained spike in usage over the past several months.

In January, 1,600 youth spent time in city drop in centers, a 28% increase from July according to monthly data reported by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development. Case workers at those drop-in sites served 1,700 people in the first four months of the fiscal year, 300 more than the city had planned to serve in the entire year.

Yet Adams’ preliminary budget released in January proposed slashing $2 million from the $52 million allocated for runaway and homeless youth, eliminating 16 positions that help young people access permanent housing options. The Adams administration is also refusing to implement a recently passed law that would allow people in youth shelters to access CityFHEPS housing vouchers, saying the mandate is too expensive.

Mark Zustovich, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development said funding to shelters themselves remained the same in Adams’ proposed budget.

The department and the nonprofits that run shelters for homeless youth “are providing vital services to all youth who seek support — even as the number of young people accessing drop-ins has increased,” he said.

The surge in homeless youth comes a year after a controversial order by the Adams administration banning people from sleeping in 24-hour drop-in centers.

Youth who can’t find shelter are in jeopardy, advocates warn.

“A young woman had recently been discharged from her shelter because her 30 days was up. She didn’t know anybody in the city, spent a night on the street, and was brutally assaulted. That’s preventable,” said Joe Westmacott, a project assistant at Streetwork, which runs a drop-in center for homeless youth in Harlem, referring to an incident that THE CITY has not independently verified.

“We know from decades of research that street homelessness is expensive…. And there’s also a human cost.”

‘They want to go to school’

Many employees at youth facilities are taking the surge in new arrivals in stride, scaling up programs, deftly finding ways to communicate with hand signals in a plethora of languages, and retooling day-to-day operations like how much food they serve on site.

On a busy day before the latest surge in new arrivals, Safe Horizon’s Streetwork daytime drop-in center on 125th Street served about 50 young people a day who would pop in to use computers, eat a meal, peruse the closet of free clothing, or drop off dirty laundry.

Now the center sees about 100 people a day, almost exclusively newly arriving migrant youth who’ve learned about their services through word of mouth. Last fiscal year, the program enrolled 306 new youths into their programs. Four months into this year, they’ve enrolled 542.

Sebastien Vante, associate vice president at Safe Horizon, said they had to halt all new intakes, unable to accommodate any more people. While they can’t connect their clients to specialized youth shelter beds, there are other ways they can support them, he said.

They’ve taken to sending advocates to the East Village reticketing center with their clients, in order to try to advocate for them to get beds in shelters closer to schools if they’re enrolled. They offer referrals to immigration attorneys, and on a recent afternoon, dozens of migrant youth crammed into a back room of the facility intently listening into a demonstration about the asylum application process held in French and Arabic.

“Right now, this is who this is who’s walking through our doors,” Vante said. “Their needs are no different. They’re looking for shelter. They want long-term housing. They want to go to school. They wanna do all these different things.”

But, Vante went on, with its staff already working at capacity, “we spend a significant amount of time managing the expectations of the young people who come into our space,” Vante said.

Programs for high school students at risk of dropping out face ‘catastrophic’ funding cliff

2024-02-28T21:58:52+00:00

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After one of Clara Delgado’s students gave birth late last year, she quickly arranged a home visit.

A staffer at Downtown Brooklyn’s Young Adult Borough Center — one of the Education Department’s evening programs for students who are behind in credits or can’t attend school during the day — Delgado arrived with a counselor in tow, donated baby clothes, and made sure the student could log in to Google Classroom to complete assignments remotely.

Delgado hoped the message was clear: The school would do whatever it could to help the teen finish the two classes she needed to graduate.

But staff like Delgado — along with funding for about 3,000 paid work slots — could soon disappear from a network of Young Adult Borough Centers and transfer schools that collectively serve nearly 15,000 students who have struggled at traditional high schools, are behind in credits, and are at risk of dropping out. That’s because a bevy of counselors, social workers, and internship coordinators, are paid through a city initiative called Learning to Work, which is predominantly funded by federal dollars that will expire at the end of this school year.

Educators and advocates say the services provided through Learning to Work are a lifeline for high-need students who enroll in transfer schools and evening classes. Those students include those who have struggled to pass classes at traditional schools, are caught up in the criminal justice system, are parents themselves, or are living in temporary housing.

To help get those students back on track, Learning to Work pairs alternative schools with community organizations that provide extra staff who help ensure students show up to school, get connected to social services, and even help craft college and career plans. It also funds thousands of paid internships, which can give students valuable work experience and create an incentive to attend school rather than dropping out to support themselves.

“A lot of [our work] is social-emotional,” said Delgado, a program manager at Good Shepherd Services, a nonprofit organization that partners with the Brooklyn night program. “They need somebody to take that off their plate so they can be successful with the academics.” The student who gave birth earned a diploma last month and plans to enroll at the Borough of Manhattan Community College this fall.

If the program’s funding is cut, Delgado said it will be a blow for students who have already struggled with the city’s education system. “It’s just someone writing them off again – they’re getting another back turned on them,” she said.

Jobs for students and staff could be lost

Learning to Work has existed since 2005, unlike other programs funded with federal dollars that were intended to address the pandemic’s fallout, such as Saturday programming for students with disabilities or expanded summer school.

But the city began using federal money to finance most of the program two years ago. Nearly 70% of Learning to Work’s budget, or about $32 million, now comes from one-time federal pandemic relief funds, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. (The program faced a 25% cut in 2020, but its budget has since returned to pre-pandemic levels.)

Without an infusion from the city, “on July 1 these young people lose their support system and lose money they’re paying their bills with,” said Michael De Vito Jr., executive director of the New York Center for Interpersonal Development, which operates three Learning to Work programs across Staten Island and Brooklyn. “This is also going to cause layoffs of hundreds of nonprofit workers.”

Ariana Rivadeneira, 22, said the paid work experiences helped her re-engage with school and ultimately earn a diploma. Before the pandemic hit, she took on a job working at a veterinary clinic to help her mother pay rent after her parents split up. She began missing school and fell behind academically.

But after switching to West Brooklyn Community High School, a transfer school, the staff helped line up paid work experiences and training, including solar panel installation. There was suddenly less of a tradeoff between school and work.

Ariana Rivadeneira, 22, graduated from West Brooklyn Community High School in 2023.

“I was able to focus and redirect my whole education path to school,” Rivadeneira said. She graduated a year ago and now works as an EMT.

The work experiences helped Rivadeneira and her peers “experience what life could be for them – not just school, not just this responsibility of, ‘you have to graduate,’” she said.

Transfer schools could be hit hardest

The previous mayor, Bill de Blasio, made the decision to use one-time federal funding to support the Learning to Work program, but it’s unclear how Mayor Eric Adams will proceed. Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks have made career education a centerpiece of their agenda, and many advocates hope city officials will see the program’s connection to that work.

Still, community organizations worry that the program is not on the city’s radar, as Adams said in January that he “had no clue of the extent of how many programs were being funded by stimulus dollars” until he was briefed by Banks. And while Adams has restored some initiatives that were funded with one-time federal money, there are many remaining programs that are competing for city dollars, including preschool for 3-year-olds.

“We constantly have to remind people that we even exist,” De Vito said. “It seems like the network [of alternative programs] at large is just an afterthought.”

The city has not made a final decision about the program’s future, Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull wrote in an email. “We are engaging with Learning to Work providers as we plan for the future and recognize the importance of this impactful programming for our city’s young people,” she said. “We continue to advocate to our state and local partners to identify new funding to sustain these programs after this year.”

But even if the funding is restored in the city budget, which is finalized in June, some staff are already heading for the exits, as workers realize that funding for their jobs is uncertain, De Vito said.

If the cuts go through, they could add to an existing funding threat to the city’s network of transfer schools, which serve older students who are off track to graduate and may face smaller budgets next year. Enrollment at transfer schools was roughly 12% lower last school year compared with pre-pandemic levels, while traditional high school rosters fell just 2%. Federal relief funding that kept school budgets afloat despite enrollment losses is also set to expire.

With the possible cut to Learning to Work, one Brooklyn transfer school principal said the consequences could be “catastrophic.”

The principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity, noted that the community organization that partners with the school and is funded by Learning to Work, helps students with everything from getting clean clothes to lining up a paid internship “so they don’t have to choose between school and earning a living.”

Without those efforts, the school would have to entirely rethink its approach. “From the beginning our school has been designed with a [community organization] partner – not just as an appendage,” the principal said. “You can’t tear off a chunk of your school and assume that there’s some way to replace it.”

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

Brooklyn high school baffled by media frenzy over migrant families’ one-night stay

2024-01-12T02:59:30+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Students at James Madison High School Madison returned to classes Thursday without fanfare, after the school received hate calls and even a bomb threat for serving as an emergency shelter Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning for migrants with children.

The families living in tents in an airfield arrived at the school after 5 p.m. on Tuesday to wait out a heavy rain and wind storm, and left the school before 5 a.m. Wednesday morning. Even before their departure, the migrants’ presence and the principal’s decision to shift to remote classes on Wednesday immediately became a talking point for right-wing pundits nationwide.

But parents, staffers and students who spoke with THE CITY expressed shock that the school had made it into the national spotlight, for what they saw, in the scheme of things, as a relatively minor disruption.

“I understand the frustration. No one wants their kids to be displaced out of their school, but it was just one day,” said Marsha Thompson-Miles, a mother of an 11th grader at the school and the head of its Parent-Teacher Association.

“In America we have so much and we have to deal with so little. Wars are raging around the world and we don’t really feel the effects of it,” she said, adding she felt pride that the school had provided a space for families in need.

“For one night people didn’t have to deal with rain and wind and the elements. They felt safe and warm,” she added.

While pundits raged about a supposed “takeover,” students had one day of remote lessons on Wednesday, with after-school activities canceled and a dance scheduled for that evening postponed.

School officials said the NYPD had thoroughly inspected the building and custodians gave it a deep clean before students and staff returned on Thursday.

A staffer who asked not to be named said Wednesdays tend to be a shorter day for students, and that the lingering impact of the storm would have made it difficult for some students to get to school in any event.

“It has been pretty quiet here,” the staffer said. “We went remote for one day, that’s it.”

Hate calls and a bomb threat

As 70-mile-an-hour gusts of wind bore down on New York City Tuesday, officials hastily evacuated 1,900 parents and children from a tent shelter located at the remote Floyd Bennett Field, busing them to the high school to shelter in the school gym, auditorium and cafeteria in chairs and on the ground for the night.

While their stay lasted for less than 12 hours, prominent conservatives treated the migrants’ presence at the school as nothing less than an invasion, with talk radio dedicating hours to the topic while Elon Musk tweeted that migrants “will come for your homes” next. Angry commenters followed suit, flooding the school’s Facebook page after officials announced the day of remote learning.

“They are putting these people over our students,” one commenter said. Another added: “That school needs to be disinfected.”

The vitriol wasn’t just online. A woman identifying herself as an “agitated mother” heckled the migrants as they entered the school in the rain Tuesday evening. And during a Zoom call hosted by Principal Jodie Cohen and Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol, the two were shouted down by several outraged parents, several attendees said.

By Wednesday, city officials said the school had received “a torrent of hate calls and even a bomb threat,” Iscol said at a press briefing that morning. He added, “we don’t foresee us using James Madison High School again.”

Later on Wednesday, Assemblymember Michael Novakhov (R-Brooklyn) held a rally outside the school where he invoked the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, saying that “they wanna bring more and more people who rely on the government and vote for them.”

Republican Councilmember Inna Vernikov, who represents parts of southern Brooklyn, made the rounds on national television to complain that “our kids are really being punished.”

On Thursday, Curtis Sliwa, who ran against Mayor Eric Adams in the 2021 mayoral election and has been rallying against migrant shelters over the last year, blocked traffic outside of the Kings Plaza Shopping Center while calling for the Floyd Bennett shelter to close.

“Now the parents and the children who go to Madison High School have to be penalized,” he said. “Nobody’s happy about the situation.”

James Madison High School junior Akib Chowdhury said he wasn’t disrupted by migrants staying in the school’s gym during a storm, Jan. 11, 2024.

“It was kind of sad to see,” he said, when the migrants “just want a better place, a better place to live.”

‘Kind of crazy’

The neighborhoods of Marine Park, Madison, and Midwood surrounding the high school have trended Republican, voting heavily for Trump in 2016.

But members of the school community pointed out James Madison’s diverse student body; out of 3,700 students, 500 are English language learners; 19% are Asian, 16% are Latino and 10% are Black, according to Department of Education statistics.

Others pointed out the school’s history as the alma mater of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders and a place that’s long been a haven for immigrants of all kinds, from Holocaust survivors to Russians fleeing communism.

“Madison High School has always been a melting pot,” said Steve Kastenbaum, a veteran radio reporter and alumni of the school.

“People within the alumni community were quite frankly appalled that some people in Brooklyn exhibited the vitriolic rhetoric that was aimed at these people who were seeking shelter in a storm.”

A few students leaving the high school Thursday afternoon expressed their own trepidation about what had happened there.

“They put them over us students which is kind of crazy,” said a 15-year-old.

Another student lamented the school no longer felt safe for her. “It doesn’t feel like my safe space. It usually feels like my safe space.”

But many others took the remote day in stride, and said they felt their voices had been missing from the national news about their school. Zola Zephirin, a senior, said many students were upset by how things appeared on television and online.

“The hostility towards the migrants was definitely uncalled for,” she said. “These are people, they have families, they come here and attempt to make a better life, just like many of the students at Madison.”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

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

NYC sends families from tent shelter to sleep on school floor during storm

2024-01-09T22:38:29+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Officials hastily moved hundreds of families living at the Floyd Bennett Field migrant shelter in Brooklyn early Tuesday evening as a powerful storm with wind gusts exceeding 60 miles per hour hit the city.

The families were bused to relatively nearby James Madison High School, in Marine Park, to rest as best they could in chairs or on floors. By 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning the winds had died down and families were bused back to Floyd Bennett, according to the city’s Office of Emergency Management.

Despite that scheduled departure time, an alert sent by the school late Tuesday afternoon advised students and their parents that classes would “pivot to remote” on Wednesday.

The sudden move by the Adams administration drew ire from all sides, with homeless rights advocates and the migrants themselves decrying the disruption for families, and local parents slamming the city’s use of the public school.

People living at the field shelter made of tents described a chaotic and stressful day that included: learning of the impromptu evacuation just hours before it was slated to occur before 4 p.m. racing back to the Floyd Bennett after picking up their children from schools to try to catch the buses to Madison; and crowding in the school’s auditorium and cafeteria with hundreds of others spending the night in chairs or on the ground.

“They want us like animals sending us from here to there,” a 31-year-old mother of three from Venezuela told THE CITY in Spanish, asking that her name be withheld out of fear of retribution for speaking out. ‘’This is craziness.”

She noted that she was thankful for the help of the city for a place to stay — “but this isn’t how children and families should be treated.”

A group of migrants race into James Madison High School in Brooklyn after city officials evacuated Floyd Bennett Field during a rainstorm, Jan. 9, 2023.

In an impromptu press conference early Tuesday afternoon to announce and explain the evacuation, city Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Zachary Iscol, said the agency started notifying families at the shelter at 11 a.m that buses would take them to Madison High School that evening.

By that time many families had already left the shelter for the day for jobs and school, though word spread of the planned evacuation on WhatsApp groups.

“We are doing this out of an abundance of caution because of the high winds,” Iscol said.

Iscol said that tents shelters for migrant adults on Randall’s Island and Creedmoor Psychiatric Facility were not slated for evacuation because both had more protection from the wind and pilings dug into the ground that made them more sturdy than the Floyd Bennett location.

“It’s a really complex operation,” he added.

Spokespeople for OEM, the mayor’s office, and the city’s hospitals system, which runs many migrant shelters, didn’t respond to requests for comment immediately about the lack of cots for the migrants staying at the high school.

Critics of Mayor Eric Adams’ handling of the arrival of migrants denounced the rapid move out of hundreds of children and families.

“The need for the city to find temporary shelter for the people already in temporary shelter demonstrates that the site was not adequately set up for extreme weather on top of the hardship this isolated and inadequately serviced location, miles from the nearest neighborhood school, already imposes on its residents,” said city Comptroller Brad Lander, a regular critic of the mayor.

‘It’s overwhelming’

The evacuation Tuesday came the same day evictions began for migrant families staying in the Row Hotel in Manhattan, as part of the city’s new policy limiting shelter stays for some migrant families to just 60 days.

Around 40 families were forced to leave Tuesday, officials from the city’s Health and Hospital corporation said, with the number expected to quickly ramp up to around 100 families per day. About 4,800 families have received 60-day notices that will force them out of hotel rooms in the coming weeks, city officials said.

Maria Quero, 26, who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant with her first child, said she’d begged her social workers at the Row to let her stay until after she gave birth. She’d presented a doctor’s note to staff, she said, but was denied an extension.

Pregnant migrant, Maria, leaves the Row Hotel shelter after receiving an eviction notice, Jan. 9, 2024.

Instead she trudged across Midtown with her husband from the Row to the Roosevelt Hotel Tuesday morning to ask for another 60-day placement while hoping to still make her prenatal doctor’s appointment later that day.

“I can’t be sitting down a lot, my hips are hurting,” she said in Spanish. “It’s overwhelming, it’s really stressful.”

By that evening Quero said she’d be reassigned to a shelter in Brooklyn.

Asked about Quero’s situation at the Tuesday press briefing, Dr. Ted Long, who oversees migrant shelters run by NYC Health and Hospitals, said: “We look forward to helping Maria.

“They deserve that stability — that stability can never be in the hotel room,” Long added, speaking generally about why the city has set 60-day shelter stay limits for families. “It can only be with our help, how we get them to complete their journey.”

‘Everyone is feeling sad’

Staff at James Madison — the alma matter of both U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer — said they first learned of the plan around noon Tuesday. They were told that the migrant families would arrive after students left Tuesday afternoon and would be gone by the time school starts Wednesday morning.

“It’s an enormous logistical challenge, but if you throw enough bodies at it you can do it,” said a staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Sixteen-year-old junior Spencer Katz said students learned about the evacuation Tuesday afternoon, and most of the discussion focused on whether or not school would be canceled Wednesday.

“I was expecting some people to be racist,” Katz said, but “I was pretty pleasantly surprised by how cool everyone was about it … Every single person I know has an immigrant as a parent or grandparent, so everyone was pretty understanding.”

As supportive as some students were, local Republican Councilmember Inna Vernikov denounced the use of the school in a video on X directed at Adams. “This is unacceptable!” she posted. “Stop this now and take the migrants into Gracie Mansion!”

The shelter has already proven a lightning rod in the GOP-leaning district and word of migrants moving into the school drew ire of right wing commentators and some residents. Video posted to X by a reporter for The New York Post showed a woman who identified herself as “an agitated mother,” heckling the migrants, yelling they were “taking over” her kids’ school.

“How does it feel that you kicked all the kids out of school tomorrow?” she yelled. “I hope you sleep really well tonight.”

The Adams administration also faced pushback from homeless rights advocates at the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless, who issued a joint statement slamming the city’s hasty evacuation as “traumatic and disruptive.”

“This last-minute evacuation further proves that Floyd Bennett Field — a facility mired in a flood zone, miles from schools and other services — has never and will never serve as an appropriate and safe place to shelter families with children,” the group said.

An earlier wind storm in mid-December also caused chaos for migrant families, many of whom described a sleepless night with crying children, or were terrified the tents would collapse.

A 38-year-old mother of three, who asked that her name not be published to avoid repercussions from staff at the shelter said the latest commotion at the tents were stressful and exhausting for families.

“It’s not a life, it’s not good for the kids,” she said. “Everyone is feeling sad.”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

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

Migrant families and schools brace for wave of shelter evictions

2024-01-08T10:00:00+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Thousands of migrant families with school-aged children will begin having their time in city shelters run out starting Tuesday as the first 60-day eviction notices, which the city began passing out in October, start to expire.

Among those whose time runs out Tuesday is Joana, 38, a Venezuelan mother who asked that her last name not be used. She said in recent days she’s been having hard conversations with her 8-year-old daughter about what’s in store.

“I try to explain to her as gently as I can the reality,” Joana said in Spanish. “So she can understand why we’re leaving this place, where her school bus comes to get her, where she’s lived for a year, and where she feels like it’s part of her home.”

The shelter evictions for families with children mark the beginning of yet another city policy shift on homelessness, as Mayor Eric Adams struggles to contend with a ballooning shelter population driven largely by the arrival of more than 160,000 migrants, which cost the city $1.4 billion last fiscal year.

Through the end of December, 122,700 people were living in shelters, including over 68,300 migrants, the vast majority of whom are families with children.

Thus far only adults without children have been subject to the Adams administration’s attempts to eject migrants from city shelters. The city has limited their stays to 30 days. In order to reapply for another stint afterwards, adults must now brave long lines in the cold for hours and sleep on the floor of various waiting rooms for more than a week, with limited access to food and showers, before they can secure another cot.

To date, most families with children have been spared this kind of disruption. Adams has repeatedly said his administration’s goal is for no families with children to sleep on the streets — but exactly how family evictions will be carried out is still unclear.

Since the city unveiled its family eviction policy in October, about a third of migrant families in the city’s care have been hit with 60-day eviction notices, or around 4,800 families, a city spokesperson said.

Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for the Adams administration, said families who have nowhere else to go when their time in shelters ends will be directed to return to the Roosevelt Hotel, the city’s main intake center, to request another 60-day placement. The city will try to place families in or near the school district where kids are currently enrolled in schools, she added. No child would be forced to change schools, as is required by federal law.

But up through last week, those instructions still hadn’t been communicated to families directly in writing. Several 60-day notices distributed to families reviewed by THE CITY only said that the city would help send you to another location, and if you had any further questions you could talk to staff at the hotel. Parents who spoke with THE CITY said social workers had told them about the option to go to the Roosevelt Hotel.

Joana said that’s where she planned to do Tuesday: pull her daughter out of school for at least for the day and head to the Roosevelt Hotel to try to get another shelter placement.

“I’m trusting in God that we’ll have another place to stay,” she said in Spanish.

Mamelak reiterated Mayor Adams’ frequent plea that with 33,000 migrant children enrolled in schools since June of 2022, the city still needs more help from the state and federal governments.

“While we are grateful for the assistance from our state and federal partners, for months, we have warned that, without more, this crisis could play out on city streets,” Mamelak said. “It is crucial — now, more than ever — that the federal government finish the job they started by allowing migrants to immediately work, and to come up with a strategy that ensures migrants are not convening on one, or even just a handful of cities across the country.”

‘I have no idea what to do’

The evictions are slated to begin at the Row Hotel in Midtown on Tuesday, which has rooms for 1,000 families. Forty families will run out of time on the first day, and another 250 families will see their shelter stays expire during the first week, according to Josh Goldfein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, who is in direct communication with city agencies on behalf of the Coalition for the Homeless.

After the Row, other families at other Midtown hotels like The Stewart, The Watson, and the Wolcott will see their time run out, expanding to around 100 families ejected per day in the coming weeks, Goldfein said.

Ahead of the evictions, residents of The Row who spoke with THE CITY described a mix of anxiety, dread, and resolve.

“The kids have already missed so much school,” said Yeisi Zerpa, a 26-year-old Venezuelan mother of four, who said she’d had to pull the kids out of school to apartment hunt ahead of her eviction date Tuesday.

“If every 60 days I’m going to leave the shelter and get back in line, that’s going to be stress all the time, the kids won’t be able to go to school,” she said in Spanish.

With the help of a kind woman she’d met while begging for change and subsequently become friends with, she’d managed to find a room her family of six would share in a Bronx apartment.

Zerpa is still waiting for her work permit to come through, and was looking for work cleaning houses, but wasn’t sure how she’d pay the rent going forward.

“I have no idea what to do,” she said, adding she was still trying to figure out if she should keep her daughters at the same school or transfer them to somewhere closer. In the weeks ahead of her eviction, she said social workers at the Row offered little guidance.

“No one has helped us to find a rental,” she added. “You ask the social worker a question and they don’t know anything. You don’t have the help of anyone there.”

City officials didn’t return a request for comment about how many people had moved out ahead of their evictions this week. But several other families who spoke with THE CITY said they had managed to secure alternative living arrangements ahead of their final days at the hotel.

Lorena Espinosa Castro, a 36-year-old mother of two from Peru, was moving out trash bags of her belongings on a recent afternoon, headed to a studio apartment in Corona that she’d rented for $800 a month through a friend. In nearly a year in New York City, Castro had managed to find work as a server in a Mexican restaurant not so far from her new apartment.

“The truth is I always wanted to get out of there,” Castro said in Spanish. “I couldn’t cook. My girls, we didn’t eat well. It’s our moment to be more independent. I fought for it.”

“The help of the government is over,” she said.

At some Manhattan elementary schools with large populations of migrant students, families have already started disappearing as the deadlines for the 60-day notices approach.

“Since about two weeks prior to the vacation, we’ve lost a lot of students,” including around 10 this week alone, said a teacher at a Manhattan elementary school that’s enrolled a large number of migrant families, including many living at The Row. The teacher spoke on the condition of anonymity and asked that the school not be named for fear of retaliation.

Watching students who have been at the school for months and built connections abruptly drop off of the school roster is wrenching, the teacher said.

“There’s something really special about watching students grow in a space and become acclimated and familiar. So it’s hard when they’re moved,” the teacher said.

Many other migrants who spoke with THE CITY ahead of their eviction dates said they hadn’t been able to find anywhere else to go and planned to return to the Roosevelt Hotel hoping for another place to stay.

Piedad, a 49-year-old mother who asked that her last name be withheld, expressed a fear that they’d be sent to the far off tents at Floyd Bennett field, where families live in a quasi-congregate setting miles from the nearest neighborhood — a concern shared by many families in recent days.

“We’re hoping, with God’s will, we’ll get another shelter, and not the tents,” she said in Spanish.

‘We’re adding to these kids’ trauma’

Since October, the city has been issuing 60-day notices to families that have been staying in shelters run by the city Health and Hospitals system for more than a year, as well as many more recently arrived families, including all those at Floyd Bennett Field.

So far, the approximately 8,800 migrant families living in shelters overseen by the city’s Department of Homeless Services, which is subject to more strict state oversight, have been spared the shelter evictions. In November, however, city officials requested permission from the state to expand the policy to those families as well, according to Anthony Farmer, a spokesperson for the state’s office of Temporary Disability Administration. As of last week, the state had still not granted that request.

Goldfein and other advocates have looked at the daily chaos unfurling outside the city’s reticketing site in the East Village and fear a similarly dire situation could await families with young kids later this week.

“We’re certainly very concerned,” Goldfein said. “We asked about that and they believe they have it under control. But we’ll see.”

Schools are also preparing for another destabilizing shuffle, the Manhattan teacher told THE CITY, as some students leave and new ones come in.

“All year is just constantly readjusting to try to catch students up, readjust the dynamics of the classroom, rebuild community,” the teacher said. “It’s a heavy load for teachers.”

One Education Department source familiar with planning for the 60-day notices called the educational impact on children would be immense. “We’re adding to these kids’ trauma,” the source said.

Unlike the Department of Homeless Services, which has a data sharing agreement with the Education Department so schools can directly look up where homeless students have been transferred too, Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs large-scale family migrant shelters, has no similar arrangement. Schools will thus be flying blind come Tuesday.

“The only thing these children have consistently in their lives is school,” the source said. “So now you’re taking them out of shelter, you’re putting them someplace else. They’re not gonna be in school for a few days easily. They have to adjust to a new environment and if they’re lucky, they figure out how to get back to that school.”

The Education Department has been recommending families bring information about their schools with them to the Roosevelt Hotel, so that they might be placed in the same borough as their child’s school.

Nicole Brownstein, a spokesperson for the Education Department, said schools had been working directly with emergency shelters, “to support all students and their families and ensure there is no gap in services, whether they transition to a new school community or choose to stay in their current school.”

The city has touted their 30-day policy for adults for reducing the number of people who return to seek another 30-day placement to just 20% of those who had their time run out.

But Goldfein with the Legal Aid Society said if the city really needed to move people around, it could reassign them directly from their current hotels, instead of sending them into a lurch of uncertainty at the Roosevelt Hotel, where it’s not clear where they’ll end up or how long it will take. He described the situation as a “logistical nightmare merry-go-round.”

“There’s a bigger question of why do you need to do this,” he said. “Do you need people to move just to harass them? To push them to move out?”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

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

What’s in a name? Students at NYC’s largest school for newcomer immigrants push for change

2023-12-05T18:48:01+00:00

The name of New York City’s largest public school for immigrant students succinctly describes who it serves: Newcomers High School.

The school, located near a cluster of newly opened homeless shelters in Long Island City, Queens, has lived up to its name, enrolling perhaps more migrant students over the past two school years than any other in the city. Its roster jumped from roughly 800 two years ago to more than 1,400 now, according to Education Department records.

Often, over the school’s 30-year history, the name has served as a badge of honor, especially when Newcomers won national recognition for its academic achievement. The school is one of about 20 across the city designed to provide more targeted support and help new arrivals acclimate to life in the U.S.

But as New York City grapples with political and economic tensions surrounding the ongoing influx of migrants, the school’s student government wants a name change.

“The brand ‘Newcomers’ does not identify us any more,” Brianna Segarra, a senior and the student government president, said at a recent meeting of the city’s Panel on Educational Policy. “We are hurt by it, by all the people in the U.S. who are against migration.”

The name, she worries, “puts a target on us.”

Changing the name of a New York City school isn’t easy. It involves securing the approval of the Parent Association and principal, soliciting public comment at a community education council meeting, and getting a final sign-off from the chancellor.

Students pushing the name change at Newcomers are still in the early stages. They haven’t come up with a replacement name and haven’t yet begun the process of gathering input from all kinds of people with a stake in the school, said teacher and student government adviser Aixa Rodriguez.

Principal Elizabeth Messmann, who couldn’t be reached for comment, said in an email to staffers on Monday that the School Leadership Team, a body composed of staff, parent and student leaders, has begun discussing “rebranding the school.”

There’s also likely to be pushback.

“The fear [is] that if we change the name, will it change the character of the school?” said Rodriguez. “Are we killing the legacy of the last 30 years?”

A sweatshirt design raises questions of belonging

Student government leaders say they began considering the idea of a name change while designing the annual school-branded sweatshirt.

Demand for the Newcomers hoodie was through the roof this year.

Many new arrivals lack winter gear, and were excited to add a warm item to their wardrobes, student leaders said.

But when the student government began gathering feedback on this year’s design, they heard the same thing again and again from peers.

New York City Public Schools Chancellor David C. Banks poses for a photograph with students from Newcomers High School.

“They said the name was really big. They said, ‘I don’t want the name ‘Newcomers’” featured so prominently,” said Lindsay Abad, a senior and student government secretary who hails from Ecuador. Students worried it would make them vulnerable to “suffering a hate crime or something like that.”

The influx of migrants that began in summer 2022 and has included roughly 30,000 students has spurred bursts of generosity as well as vitriol, with protests against new shelters springing up across the city.

Students are acutely aware of that charged political climate, said Rodriguez, the teacher who advises the student government. They’ve also confronted some of it head-on.

Students confided in staff that they’ve heard insulting comments on public transit, Rodriguez said. They’ve also heard them during sports games at other schools.

“They don’t want to be associated with something that feels negative. They want to belong,” Ridriguez said. “When they’re going on a train or a bus to a game, they don’t want that attention.”

Several students also said they were hurt by a New York Post article suggesting that swelling enrollment had forced students from a school that shares the building to relocate to another campus across the street.

An Education Department spokesperson denied that claim, but the story still stung, students said.

Many Newcomers students felt the implication was “we are here occupying a space that is not ours,” said Mary Barcarse, a senior and student government chairperson originally from the Philippines.

That’s not to say the enrollment boom hasn’t posed real challenges, said Rodriguez.

Class sizes have ballooned, while class rosters are constantly in flux as new students arrive and others leave due to transient housing situations, Rodriguez said. Many of the new students are carrying significant trauma while juggling competing responsibilities like a pressure to work or care for siblings, she added.

Students say they were steered to Newcomers

Some students said the discussion about the name “Newcomers” has pushed them to reconsider a more fundamental question about educating immigrant students: whether they should be enrolled in separate schools in the first place.

The student government leaders who spoke to Chalkbeat said they didn’t feel like they had much choice about where to enroll and were pushed towards Newcomers.

“They said, ‘You’re from Ecuador, you go to Newcomers,’” Abad recounted.

There can be advantages to attending a school populated exclusively by immigrant students: classmates who can relate to your experiences, teachers who are seasoned in supporting language development, and a climate that’s inclusive and welcoming, students and staff said.

But there are also drawbacks. With fewer native English speakers, students at Newcomers said they feel like they’re missing out on critical chances to improve their English. And because the school focuses so many of its resources on language support, some students felt it offered fewer options for acceleration, electives, and specialized tracks than other high schools.

Regardless of which model works best, students said they wished they’d gotten more choice in where they enrolled. They worry that many of the new arrivals are getting funneled into a similarly narrow range of schools.

The name “Newcomers,” they argue, reinforces the idea that immigrant students only belong in one type of school, and that only one type of student belongs at schools like Newcomers.

Students also said the name doesn’t feel entirely accurate. At least 50 members of the school’s senior class were born in the U.S. and are citizens, but recently returned to the country after time abroad, according to Rodriguez.

“They feel it labels them,” she said, “in a way that doesn’t reflect every single person who walks in this door.”

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

As shelter limit for migrant families nears, NYC schools try to prepare

2023-11-29T23:37:59+00:00

New York City schools have started preparing for a massive reshuffling of students as early as next month, as thousands of migrant families face a new limit on shelter stays, education officials said during a Wednesday city council hearing.

Approximately 2,700 families have received notices since Oct. 27 that they’ll either have to reapply for shelter or find alternative housing within 60 days, according to a City Hall spokesperson. That means families will have to leave their shelters as early as Dec. 27. For families who do reapply for shelter, there’s no guarantee they’ll end up in the same site, or even the same borough.

Mayor Eric Adams has argued that the limits are necessary to relieve severe overcrowding in the city’s shelter amid an unprecedented and ongoing influx of migrants, many of whom are seeking asylum. Case workers will help families figure out next steps, according to city officials.

But educators and advocates have sounded the alarm for months that the policy could have devastating educational consequences.

Preparations are underway to try to minimize the disruptions and inform families of their rights, especially in Manhattan where the shelters are concentrated, Education Department officials said on Wednesday.

“What we’ve started to do is look very closely at where those students are located, engage principals, engage superintendents,” said Flavia Puello-Perdomo, an Education Department official who oversees students in temporary housing. “While we can’t fully control all the implications of the 60-day rules … as much as possible we’ll ensure every family is aware they have the right to stay in their schools.”

Federal law requires school districts to provide transportation for homeless students so they can remain in their schools. The city Education Department offers school buses for homeless students in kindergarten to sixth grade, and MetroCards for older kids. But arranging that transportation can take a long time, and the city’s sprawling school bus system is notoriously unreliable, according to advocates and educators.

Many families may opt to transfer rather than enduring that uncertainty and a potentially grueling commute.

One Manhattan school is getting ready to call all of its migrant families to ask if they’ve received the notices and walk them through their options, according to the principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But the principal said no amount of preparation will prevent the massive disruptions ahead.

“It’s going to be like musical shelters,” the principal said. “All these kids who we’ve spent the last 10 months building relationships with … we’re going to break that bond.”

Schools brace for logistical challenges

During Wednesday’s council hearing on immigrant students, Education Department officials offered a glimpse at the huge logistical challenges schools and families are facing as the 60-day deadlines hit.

The first task will be figuring out which families have even received the notices and where they are headed.

Staffers who work with the newly-arrived families said it’s possible some will leave the city or find their own apartments, but others will have no option other than reapplying for shelter.

“I’ve visited the shelter near me,” said the Manhattan principal. “My assumption is that if they had a better option, they would’ve already used it.”

The Education Department doesn’t have a data-sharing agreement with Health + Hospitals, the agency that administers many of the newly-created Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, or HERRCs, where migrants are residing. That means schools won’t get automatic updates when children transfer from one shelter to another, officials said.

It could fall largely to schools to track down families to figure out if they’ve received a 60-day notice, where they’re moving, and whether they’ll need transportation – an especially daunting challenge given many of the newly-arrived families still may not have reliable phones.

The Education Department employs roughly 100 community coordinators who work directly with families in shelters – but that’s far short of the more than 360 shelters now operating across the city, according to an Education Department official.

Delays in figuring out where families have transferred will lead to delays in arranging transportation or finding new school placements.

Families face long commutes, school transfers

Even if the communication between schools and families is seamless, families who have to leave their shelters will face the tough decision of enduring a longer commute or transferring schools.

The Manhattan principal said several families have already switched shelters, and opted to remain at the school – but their attendance has suffered.

Schools across the city are already struggling with elevated rates of chronic absenteeism and the problem is even more severe for students in shelters, over 70% of whom were chronically absent last school year. The reshuffling from the 60-day notices will likely make that worse, the principal argued.

Transportation is especially challenging from the newly-opened shelter at Floyd Bennett, a former airfield in southern Brooklyn. The emergency shelter, which officials say can accommodate 500 families, has drawn fierce criticism from advocates who say it’s inappropriate for children, and some families have refused to stay there.

Education Department officials said on Monday that roughly 195 children staying at the shelter have registered for school. But Glenn Risbrook, the Education Department’s senior executive director for student transportation, acknowledged it’s in a “transportation desert” and said the agency has arranged for a coach bus to connect families to public transportation so they can get to school.

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

Influx of asylum seekers pushes NYC’s homeless student population to record high

2023-11-01T10:00:00+00:00

The number of homeless students attending New York City schools reached a record high last year after thousands of asylum-seeking families entered the city’s shelter system, a new analysis shows.

Roughly 1 in 9 students were living in shelters, “doubled up” with relatives or friends, or otherwise without permanent housing at some point in the school year, according to state data compiled by Advocates for Children, a group that supports the city’s most vulnerable students.

The city’s population of homeless students was astronomical even before the recent influx, with the number of kids lacking permanent housing exceeding 100,000 for each of the past eight years – a stark indication of the city’s ongoing housing crisis.

But the sudden arrival of thousands of families fleeing dire conditions in Latin America and other parts of the world pushed the figure to nearly 120,000 last school year — a 14% increase over the previous school year. It’s an all-time high, even as the city’s overall student enrollment has plummeted, according to Advocates for Children, which has been crunching this number annually for more than a decade.

The number is likely to be even higher by the end of this school year. Roughly 12,500 new students in temporary housing have enrolled in city schools since July, according to an Education Department spokesperson.

“Our young people experiencing homelessness are some of our most vulnerable students, and it is our on-going priority to provide them with every support and resource at our disposal,” spokesperson Jenna Lyle said in a statement.

The increase has profound implications for city schools.

Homeless students face significant educational roadblocks, from the added logistical challenges of getting to school from distant shelters to the trauma that comes with losing permanent housing.

An astounding 72% of students living in homeless shelters were marked chronically absent last year — meaning they missed at least 18 days of school, according to data compiled by Advocates for Children. For all students in temporary housing, including those living doubled up, the rate was 54%, and for kids in permanent housing, it was 39%.

Students living in shelters were also more than four times as likely as kids with permanent housing to transfer schools last year, and less than half as likely to score proficient on state reading exams, according to the data.

Advocates fear the number of school transfers will spike even higher this year due to a new city rule that requires families in some shelters to exit the system every 60 days and either find alternative housing or re-apply for shelter. Families that re-apply would have no guarantee of ending up in the same shelter or even the same borough.

Mayor Eric Adams said the new policy is necessary to relieve severe overcrowding in shelters and free up space for new arrivals. He promised the city would work to ensure that students don’t have to transfer schools whenever possible.

Students who end up in homeless shelters far from their schools are entitled under federal law to transportation so they don’t have to transfer, but given the difficulty of coordinating the rides and the stress of the long commutes on families, that often amounts to “a right in name only,” said Jennifer Pringle, the director of Advocates for Children’s Learners in Temporary Housing project.

An Education Department spokesperson said district superintendents will ensure that transportation requests from homeless students are prioritized.

Schools go all out to help homeless students

Schools often devote considerable resources to supporting families in temporary housing with everything from transportation to basic needs like laundry.

At VOICE charter school in Long Island City, Queens, a sudden explosion of enrollment of students in shelters transformed educators’ approach to working with families.

Historically, the K-8 school enrolled no more than 20 homeless students in a year, said Principal Franklin Headley. But last year, given the school’s proximity to a cluster of recently converted shelters housing asylum-seeking families and an effective outreach strategy, the school enrolled hundreds of newly arrived families. It now serves roughly 270 students in temporary housing, Headley said.

The school’s 15-person operations team pivoted to focus almost exclusively on supporting the newly arrived families, fanning out to shelters to survey families’ needs and establish relationships with shelter staff, said Director of Operations Karina Chalas.

That work yielded several new school initiatives, including an after-school program to help parents who needed child care (because of shelter rules prohibiting them from leaving kids alone) and a laundry room for families without washers and dryers in their shelters.

Staff worked hard to keep attendance tabs on the new arrivals, even as families moved to new cities and states or transferred to shelters in other parts of the city. The school helped arrange bus or train transportation when possible for families who moved to different neighborhoods so kids didn’t have to transfer schools.

“They built a community here already,” Chalas said. “We try as hard as we can to give them any option of ‘here’s what we can do.’ After a while, if it becomes too much, we know as a school we tried everything we can do.”

Budget woes could unleash more instability for homeless students

All that support requires additional resources and expertise – and advocates say the city is still not providing enough help.

A city Education Department initiative last year that hired 100 new staffers, called community coordinators, to work directly in shelters to support families with educational needs is funded by one-time federal pandemic aid that expires at the end of this year.

Meanwhile, a plan to hire an additional 12 staffers this year to support homeless students is on hold because of a hiring freeze related to city budget cuts, advocates said.

“Losing the shelter-based Community Coordinators would almost certainly increase the already sky-high rates of chronic absenteeism and make it even more difficult for students in shelter to succeed in school,” said Kim Sweet, the executive director of Advocates for Children, said in a statement.

City officials have rolled out some new investments, including revamping the Education Department’s school funding formula to give extra dollars to schools for every student in temporary housing. The Education Department also employs 100 school-based social workers devoted to supporting homeless students.

Lyle, the Department spokesperson, said the agency plans to “work with our partners at the city and state levels to identify and establish supports for our students in temporary housing, while contending with the city’s financial reality.”

Staffers at schools serving large numbers of asylum-seekers remain worried about how the new 60-day shelter rules will affect their families. Chalas, the staffer at the Queens charter school, said she’s heard many families at her school talking about cramming into shared apartments together rather than re-enter the shelter system.

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

36% of NYC public school students were chronically absent last school year

2023-09-06T22:32:05+00:00

Thirty-six percent of New York City public school students were chronically absent last school year, missing at least 10% of the school year, according to figures released by Education Department officials on Wednesday.

That represents a modest improvement compared with the 2021-2022 school year, which saw chronic absenteeism exceed 40%, the highest rate in decades.

Despite a year-over-year reduction, the figures are a stark reminder that absenteeism remains a stubborn challenge that will continue to complicate efforts to catch students up from years of pandemic-fueled disruptions.

Before the coronavirus forced school buildings to shutter, chronic absenteeism rates typically hovered closer to 25%. But absenteeism has surged in recent years, reaching 30% during the 2020-2021 school year, when students were allowed to learn virtually or in person.

Absenteeism exploded to roughly 4 in 10 students — or nearly 353,000 children — during the 2021-22 school year, the first time all children were required to attend school in person since March 2020. Coronavirus-related illnesses likely played a role, as hundreds of thousands of students and staff tested positive that year.

But even as there were fewer spikes in coronavirus cases last school year, the effects of the pandemic still reverberated. With student mental health concerns on the rise, some families struggled to coax their children to attend school. School staffers said caregivers were more likely to keep their children home at any sign of illness. And schools may also have struggled to re-engage students who grew accustomed to long stretches of remote learning and relaxed attendance expectations.

Whatever the cause, chronic absenteeism is often seen as a key metric of school performance, as missed school typically means missed learning. Absences can also hurt student achievement in the long run.

One Manhattan middle school principal said he was surprised to see persistent chronic absenteeism at his school last year, even as staff made an effort to reach out to families and offer prizes for high attendance.

“I was thinking [attendance] would come back, and it didn’t,” said the principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There’s a much more pervasive sense that if my kid doesn’t go to school they can still do the work at home.”

The principal wished he had more resources available to hire additional social workers, conduct more home visits, or even fund for outside-of-the-box ideas like financial incentives for student attendance.

During a press briefing on Wednesday, city officials said they’ve made a few district-level tweaks to address chronic absenteeism, including giving superintendents authority over a cadre of attendance teachers deployed to schools with more acute absenteeism problems. They credited those efforts with helping to ease absenteeism last year.

Education Department officials also pointed to new high school programs that allow a small number of students to attend school virtually or on a hybrid schedule that includes some in-person learning.

First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said those schools were created specifically for students who might struggle in more traditional settings or who work jobs during the day and can benefit from additional flexibility. He said those programs are part of the city’s strategy to address chronic absenteeism, but also acknowledged the challenge is much broader.

“Chronic absenteeism is not just a problem in New York City,” he said. “This is a national problem in every large urban district — and many of the small ones.”

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

Betty Rosa, New York’s top education official, raises equity concerns over class size law

2023-08-17T21:07:14+00:00

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State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa raised fresh concerns Thursday about a new law that will require New York City to slash class sizes, responding to a Chalkbeat analysis that found that the highest-poverty schools are least likely to benefit.

Rosa said the equity implications of the law are “a problem,” as lower-need schools are more likely to have larger class sizes that violate the new caps and will therefore disproportionately benefit from the policy.

The law does not come with new funding earmarked to reduce class sizes, raising the possibility of difficult tradeoffs, such as cuts to other schools or programs.

“You’re gonna have to take it from Peter to give it to Paul,” Rosa said during an education conference hosted by the news organization City & State.

As the state’s highest-ranking education official and staunch advocate of equity in education, Rosa’s critique of the policy is noteworthy, though she has no direct power to alter it. The law, passed overwhelmingly by the state legislature and signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, represented one of the biggest changes in state education policy last year. It was widely celebrated by educators and advocates who point to research that shows smaller class sizes often boost student learning and argue that small classes are a basic necessity that all students should enjoy.

But because higher-poverty schools already have smaller class sizes, those schools are least likely to benefit from the influx of resources that will be required to comply with the mandate.

Experts have warned that city officials could be forced to funnel more resources to some of the city’s better-off schools — funding that could have otherwise been spent on social workers, tutoring, or other support at higher-need campuses.

Rosa suggested that tradeoff is at the heart of her worry about the new policy.

She said education policy ought to be driven “by needs — not driven by trying to give everybody the same thing.”

A spokesperson for Hochul did not respond to a request for comment about Rosa’s critique of the class size policy or answer questions about the law’s equity implications. (The governor does not appoint the state’s education commissioner.)

Implementing the law will require the city to hire thousands of new teachers at a cost of between $1.3 billion and 1.9 billion a year, according to projections from the New York City Department of Education and the city’s Independent Budget Office.

Experts have warned the hiring spree could prompt more affluent schools to poach educators from higher-need schools, which have long struggled to attract qualified staff and are more likely to have high turnover rates.

Still, the class size law’s backers said those concerns are outweighed by the need to reduce class sizes across all schools, as the current caps allow classes as large as 34 students. Under the new law, most classes won’t be allowed to exceed 25 children. Supporters also note that the majority of the students who will see their class sizes shrink come from low-income families, as most of the city’s students fall into that category.

State Sen. John Liu, who sponsored the state legislation and also attended the City & State event, was unwavering in his support for the law. He argued that the city should direct recent increases in state funding to the effort, noting that he believes small classes are a necessary ingredient for a quality education.

“You cannot provide a sound basic education when class sizes are still excessively large,” he said during a panel discussion at the conference. “It’s as simple as that.”

Matt Barnum contributed.

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

NYC must slash class sizes under a new law. The neediest schools stand to benefit least.

2023-08-17T10:00:00+00:00

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When Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a new law last year that would slash class sizes in New York City, praise came in from many quarters.

Teachers, along with their union, hailed the move as a victory that would improve classroom conditions and boost learning. Education activists said smaller class sizes would benefit the most vulnerable students. Lawmakers in Albany, who overwhelmingly passed the bill, rejoiced.

There are good reasons for this enthusiasm. Studies have found that students often learn more in smaller classes. Some research suggests that children from low-income families, who constitute a majority of New York City students, benefit the most. Plus, smaller classes are popular with parents and teachers alike.

But in recent months, some of the new law’s costs and tradeoffs have come into sharper focus. A Chalkbeat analysis shows that because the city’s highest-poverty schools already have smaller classes, they stand to benefit the least from the state’s class size cap. This aligns with recent reports from the New York City Department of Education, the city’s Independent Budget Office, and The Urban Institute.

Researchers who have studied class size say that these findings raise troubling equity concerns. The class size cap could mean that new resources will be funneled not to the schools that have the greatest needs or lowest test scores but to some of the city’s better-off schools.

The cap could exacerbate teacher shortages in high-poverty communities by creating a hiring spree that encourages more advantaged schools to poach teachers. And city officials, including Mayor Eric Adams, said they’ll be hard pressed to afford the class size mandate absent additional state money.

“Some of the less advantaged schools already have smaller class sizes — in that way, it’s not putting the additional money you have into the schools that probably need it the most,” said Susanna Loeb, a Stanford University researcher who has studied New York City schools.

Highest-needs schools already have smallest class sizes

The new cap dramatically reduces the number of students allowed in a single classroom.

Under the previous rules, classes were generally capped at 30 to 34 students, depending on the grade, with 25 students in kindergarten. Under the new law, classes may not exceed 20 students in kindergarten through third grade, 23 students for grades 4-8, and 25 students in high school. Physical education and classes involving “performing groups” are limited to 40 children.

But the reductions in class size will not be shared evenly once the law is fully implemented over five years.

At the city’s highest poverty schools, only 38% of classrooms are larger than the new caps allow, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of city data from last school year. By contrast, at low- to mid-poverty schools, 69% of classrooms are above the caps.

To bring schools into compliance with the law, which will take full effect in 2028, the city will need thousands of new teachers at an annual cost of $1.3 billion to $1.9 billion, according to projections from the Education Department and the city’s Independent Budget Office. That’s at least 4% of the department’s operating budget.

At overcrowded schools that need more classroom space to reduce class sizes, the School Construction Authority estimated the costs could run tens of billions of dollars.

But since the state has not earmarked new funding attached to the class size law, it remains unclear how the city will pay for it. Experts warn of difficult tradeoffs. Additional dollars spent reducing class sizes on lower-need campuses could instead be directed to the city’s highest-need schools — to, say, hire more tutors to combat pandemic learning loss or additional social workers to address student mental health challenges.

In Brooklyn’s District 16, which includes much of Bedford-Stuyvesant and where the vast majority of students come from low-income families, 36% of classrooms were above the new class size caps. That’s the second-lowest rate of the city’s 32 districts.

NeQuan McLean, the president of District 16’s local parent council, said he wasn’t aware that higher-need districts are less likely to benefit from the new law, noting there wasn’t much public debate of that issue when the law passed.

“I would definitely have a problem with resources being pulled from low-income districts to go to high-income districts when investments need to be made in underserved districts,” McLean said. “We can’t use the method of robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

He said additional investments in his district are sorely needed, from upgraded gyms and bathrooms, to additional wraparound services in schools to combat food insecurity. He also wants more on-campus health services and dental clinics, as students often miss school to go to those appointments.

There will be tradeoffs at lower-need schools, too, as school leaders may be required to direct more resources to staff smaller classes, potentially forcing cuts to other programs. City officials may also have to cap enrollment at some schools.

“Maybe principals have decided they want slightly larger class sizes [in exchange] for a math coach,” said Matthew Chingos, an Urban Institute researcher who recently published a report about the impact of the class size caps and serves on a city advisory group on the issue. “It may force some tradeoffs that people didn’t fully appreciate.”

Supporters point to advantages of small classes

The law’s backers contend that small classes are a basic necessity with broad benefits to students.

Jake Jacobs, a Bronx art teacher, said it is difficult to offer individual support when his classes exceed 30 students. “Those classes were nightmares because of it,” he said. Despite some of the tradeoffs of the law, “as a teacher I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.”

As for concerns about equity, supporters point out that most students in New York City are from low-income families, so much of the class size cuts will still redound to their benefit.

“The law actually lowers class sizes for a higher number of high-need kids compared to lower-need kids,” said Christina Collins, the director of education policy at the United Federation of Teachers, which pushed for the new caps.

Collins and other supporters emphasize that the law also requires the Education Department to prioritize higher-need campuses first as the new caps phase in. (However, experts note this doesn’t address the key equity issue, since all schools regardless of poverty level will be required to meet the new class size limits within five years.)

Asked about concerns that the law would still require the city to funnel resources to schools with fewer high-need students, Collins pointed to education programs that give students access to the same resources regardless of family income, such prekindergarten or free meals.

Proponents also contend that there is funding available to cut class sizes, pointing to recent boosts in state education dollars that stem from a decades-old lawsuit that argued New York’s schools were not properly funded.

“The courts mandated that every kid get a sound, basic education. And their mandate cannot be achieved when kids are still in excessively large class sizes,” said state Sen. John Liu, who sponsored the class size legislation.

The city’s Education Department may use increases in state funding to reduce class sizes. But officials note the department has already committed the money to other priorities, including for the first time fully funding the city’s own school budget formula, which channels more resources to schools that enroll higher-need children.

Mayor Adams has warned that complying with the class size mandate will restrict city officials from spending education dollars as they see fit.

“Clearly we should use taxpayers’ dollars to focus on equity — not equality, equity,” Adams said at a press conference last September. “There are certain school districts that need more,” he added. “We’re taking away the chancellor’s ability to focus on where the problem is, and the governor made the decision to sign it.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Hochul did not respond to questions about the equity implications of the law.

Unintended consequences loom large

Hiring thousands of new teachers in New York City could prove a particular challenge, especially at a moment of rising teacher turnover. A hiring spree might force schools to bring on less skilled or less qualified educators, which could limit the gains from smaller classes.

In one study of New York City, Michael Gilraine, an economist at New York University, found that when schools reduced class size without having to hire a new teacher, there were large improvements in student test scores. But when they had to add a teacher to get class sizes down, the benefits from smaller classes were swamped by a decline in teacher quality.

“The results indicate that smaller class sizes do improve student achievement,” wrote Gilraine. “Policy makers and school administrators need to be mindful, however, that these gains can be offset by changes in teacher quality.”

Research in California has highlighted a similar tradeoff, though it suggests that the problem dissipates over the longer term.

Higher-need schools typically bear the brunt of teacher shortages. For instance, an older study in New York City found that better teachers were more likely to migrate from lower-performing schools to high-performing ones, a concern echoed in the city’s working group on class size reduction.

One leader of a Manhattan middle school, where most classes already met the new class size caps last school year, said he’s concerned that higher-performing schools in the district may poach quality educators.

“How many teachers from the lower-performing schools are going to go [to higher-performing schools] because they can get paid the same amount and have an easier life?” said the principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak frankly about the class size cap’s impact on their campus. “That’s my bigger worry honestly.”

New York City does not offer additional pay to teachers working in higher-needs schools to potentially counteract this effect.

“It’s hard to recruit teachers right now” and high-poverty schools typically have a harder time doing so, said Loeb, the Stanford professor. “Adding class size reduction may in fact escalate that.”

Collins, of the UFT, says there should be efforts to expand the pipeline of new teachers to meet rising demand.

For now, officials don’t have clear answers to these challenges and much remains uncertain about how the city will implement the new law. The Education Department has convened a task force that includes advocates and policy experts to gather input.

The law also includes a handful of exemptions to the class size mandate, including for schools that are overenrolled, would face significant economic hardship to comply, or or have insufficient teachers in subjects that are difficult to staff. The Education Department and the unions representing teachers and school administrators must all agree to those waivers. If they don’t, the decision falls to an arbitrator.

“It’s not clear how those decisions are going to be made — and school communities that wind up losing valuable dollars are going to be up in arms,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who has studied New York City schools.“I would like that process to be as open and transparent as possible.”

Regardless of the challenges, Liu, the state senator who championed the law, remains sanguine. “I don’t think anybody will say 10 years from now that, ‘Oh, this was the wrong thing to do,’” he said.

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

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Nonbinary students are now included in NYC school enrollment data

2023-07-25T18:15:01+00:00

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After New York City cleared the way for families to list their child’s gender as “X” instead of “M” or “F,” officials released statistics for the first time on how many families selected that designation for their child’s school records.

The numbers are small for now: Just 108 nonbinary, gender fluid, or gender expansive students used the “X” designation last school year out of more than a million children in the city’s public schools, including charters.

But advocates say the new statistics represent an important milestone, given the increase in reported gender nonconformity among young people, and as Republicans are ramping up attacks on schools’ support of LGBTQ students and gender diversity.

“The first step to making sure a school is meeting the needs of its student body is knowing who is in the student body,” said Allie Bohm, an attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union who focuses on LGBTQ issues. “It’s really important that they’re collecting these data.”

City and state officials have recently ramped up their efforts to make schools more welcoming for transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and gender expansive children — populations that often experience an outsized share of bullying, harassment, and mental health challenges.

Beginning last fall, city officials began allowing families to select the “X” designation on official school records in lieu of “female” or “male” — an option already available on city birth certificates. The state education department requires districts across New York to report the number of nonbinary students who are enrolled and now lists those statistics publicly. The federal education department is also beginning to collect similar data.

The number of city public school children who don’t identify as male or female may be an undercount, as changing a student’s gender on official paperwork generally requires parental consent and students may not be comfortable broaching the topic with their family. Some caregivers also may not know they can request a change to their child’s gender on official paperwork to the “X” marker.

In New York City, student- and school-facing records — such as transcripts, report cards, and attendance rosters — generally do not include a student’s gender. And education department policy requires teachers to call students by the names and pronouns they assert at school, even without explicit parental consent or changes to legal documents.

“New York City Public Schools is committed to providing a safe, equitable and affirming school environment for every student in our school building,” education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle wrote in a statement. “Affirming students’ gender identities is of paramount importance.”

School to school, experiences may vary

The degree to which a school is welcoming to LGBTQ students may also affect how comfortable families feel changing their students’ records. At Brooklyn Collaborative Studies in Cobble Hill, educators were not surprised that their school reported enrolling four nonbinary or gender expansive students — the most of any public school in the city.

“We do work really hard to have an open, welcoming, communicatory school space,” said Diana Roffman, a sixth grade English teacher and co-advisor of the school’s joint gender and sexuality alliance and Black Lives Matter club (known as the GSA BLM Collective).

Students and staff at the grades 6-12 school have access to all-gender bathrooms, the GSA BLM Collective has invited LGBTQ authors to speak with students, and teachers often help review each other’s lessons to make sure they are culturally responsive — including diversity in religious experiences, racial identities, and family structures. The school previously set up its own processes to track students’ preferred pronouns and names.

“Within our electronic gradebook there were notes so that students didn’t have to come out to like seven different teachers,” said Devon Shanley, a seventh grade English teacher and co-advisor of the GSA BLM Collective.

But even as city and state officials are making efforts to be more inclusive, students’ actual experiences may vary significantly from campus to campus — and gaps in policy can emerge.

When schools pivoted to remote instruction during the pandemic, for instance, some nonbinary students said their online learning platforms automatically displayed their names assigned at birth, often referred to as deadnames, and which may not match their gender identity. That led to anguish for those who already used chosen names in their daily interactions with their teachers and peers.

“For all the Zoom meetings, I see my dead name,” one city high school sophomore told the news organization THE CITY in 2020. “It’s distressing.”

Facing pressure from the city comptroller, the education department made it easier for families to alter their children’s school records with a chosen name — which can be displayed on report cards, attendance rosters, and other records — even if it differs from what appears on legal documents.

But schools do not always swiftly adhere to the policy.

Brooklyn mom Eliza Hittman said it took months for her child’s elementary school to process a name change request last year, with school officials using the student’s deadname in the meantime. The experience was emotionally fraught for her child, a rising fourth grader who identifies as gender diverse, and contributed to the family’s decision to transfer them to a different public school.

“Schools aren’t necessarily aware of the importance of things like a name change form and the level of distress it can cause a student who is transitioning to have a legal name called out,” Hittman said. “There are DOE guidelines that are clear but they’re not implemented unless you have families who are fighting for them.”

Bohm, the New York Civil Liberties Union attorney, said swiftly processing requests to change students’ names and genders is essential, noting that feelings of discrimination can affect school performance. Adapting to new policies and norms may require culture shifts at some schools, which can take time, Bohm added.

“I wish I could say guidance comes out or regulations come out and everything is great now,” she said. “There’s no silver bullet.”

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

New York wants to revamp how schools are evaluated. Here’s what could change for now.

2023-06-22T16:45:25+00:00

How does the state determine whether schools are doing well or if they are struggling and need extra support?

Before the pandemic, state officials relied on standardized tests and high school Regents exams to figure out how well students were doing, along with other factors, such as graduation rates. But the public health crisis paused state testing and affected school performance metrics in other ways.

Now, education department officials are seeking a new, temporary evaluation system for the next two school years, with the hopes of creating something more permanent for the 2025-26 school year.

If a school is found to be struggling, it is required to develop an improvement plan that must be approved by local and state officials. Schools that don’t make progress for five years could face state takeover or closure — but it’s a route that state officials rarely took even before developing the current accountability system, which is meant to be less punitive for schools.

In the short term, over the next two years, state officials want to exclude certain science and social studies exams, as well as measures for student growth and college and career readiness, when deciding which schools need improvement. These changes are necessary, officials say, because schools are still missing a trove of data, such as enough student participation in state tests, because of the pandemic.

Already, the conversation is sparking some controversy. Some groups focused on education reform believe the move represents a step backward just as schools need more help as they recover from the pandemic. Other observers believe the state’s proposed plan is reasonable.

Ultimately, the federal government must sign off on these proposed changes, since the state’s accountability system is required by federal law and is written into New York’s federally required Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, plan.

“They’re doing a decent job of balancing what’s of interest in the state and the federal ESSA requirements, and incorporating all the instability and uncertainty that came with the slowdown of testing during the pandemic,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Teachers College and an expert in testing.

But Education-Trust New York, an advocacy organization focused on equity issues, worried that several of the proposed changes could mean masking “bright spots and disparities,” according to their written public feedback to the state.

“I think these next two school years are incredibly important for kids coming out of the pandemic,” said Jeff Smink, the group’s deputy director, in an interview with Chalkbeat. “We have to both give them all the support they need but also hold them to high standards, and I just don’t feel like we’re doing that right now.”

What metrics would still be used?

Under the state’s proposal, schools will still be measured on English language proficiency (based on a state language exam for English learners), graduation rates, how well students are doing in core subjects based on Regents and state test scores, and chronic absenteeism. In New York City, chronic absenteeism has been a pressing issue, with 41% of students last school year absent for at least 10 school days.

What do state officials want to ditch (for now)?

The state wants to put a pause on measuring academic progress based on certain goals for student scores on state English and math tests.

State officials say they want to update these goals — first set in the 2017-18 school year — before they use them to determine whether schools are struggling.

The state’s proposed plan would also pause the use of “Measures of Interim Progress,” which more broadly measures whether schools are meeting goals for academics and other things, like their graduation rates.

For elementary and middle schools, officials want to pause how they’ve been measuring student growth, largely because of the lack of testing data. Typically, they calculated student growth using three years of testing data, but the pandemic caused big disruptions: For example, just one in five New York City children took state exams in the 2020-21 school year, when most children chose to learn from home.

For high schools, officials won’t consider college, career, and civic readiness metrics, which include advanced coursework or extra credentials in specialized jobs-based courses. That’s because the pandemic may have hampered students’ access to some of these programs or courses, officials said. They also worried that the pandemic’s impact on learning may have caused students to perform worse academically than they otherwise would have, such as on AP exams.

What will the state do with data, even if it’s not being used to evaluate schools?

State officials still plan to provide all of this data to schools for “informational purposes only” for the next two school years, they said.

Why do state officials want to exclude elementary school science exams and high school social studies assessments?

Science tests would be excluded because the state has changed who must take those exams. Traditionally, students in fourth and eighth grades take the state science test. However, only eighth graders took the test this school year, as the state prepares to offer the exam next year to fifth graders instead of fourth graders. That means they won’t be able to compare results equitably across elementary and middle schools that have different grade configurations.

Fifth graders will take the exam next spring. Asked why those scores won’t be taken into account for the 2024-25 school year, a spokesperson said that it allows districts to have “consistency and predictability” for now, as they attempt to rebuild the accountability system.

While calling it a “logical” move, Ed-Trust argued that excluding science tests “undermines the importance of science education” and worried schools will have less reason to focus on it. The organization suggested that the state should instead work with local districts to “ensure a smooth transition” to the new science assessments without entirely removing it as one way to measure student performance.

On the high school level, officials want to pause using social studies tests because of multiple exam cancellations in recent years. The state looks at cohorts of students, such as the graduating class of 2023, when considering how they performed on these tests, namely the Regents exams for Global History and Geography and U.S. History and Government.

But students who will graduate this year couldn’t take Regents exams in 2021, when they were in 10th grade, because of the pandemic. U.S. History and Government exams were also canceled last year, when these students were juniors, in the wake of a mass shooting in Buffalo, with the state education department claiming there was material on the exam that could “compound student trauma.”

State officials have emphasized that this plan “in no way diminishes” the importance of science or social studies instruction.

How will schools be labeled if they need support?

The lowest performing schools are known as schools in need of Comprehensive Support and Improvement, or CSI. But the state won’t list new CSI schools until the 2025-26 school year because they identified a group of such schools this year under a tweaked system, and that process only happens every three years, officials said.

A total of 139 New York City schools were identified this year as in need of some level of improvement, with 83% of them listed as CSI schools, according to state data.

However, New York will identify schools for Targeted Support and Intervention, or TSI, next year, which must happen annually per federal law. Those are schools that aren’t meeting goals set for specific student groups, such as by race, economic status, and those with disabilities.

In one recent — and perhaps confusing — change, schools that are meeting or exceeding their goals are no longer called “Schools in Good Standing” and instead are now labeled by the state as schools identified for Local Support and Improvement, or LSI.

What will happen for the 2025-26 school year?

State officials plan to revamp the accountability system for the 2025-26 school year after collecting feedback from the public. The new plan will also incorporate any changes to the state’s graduation requirements, which could come as soon as the end of this year. The education department is rethinking the role of Regents exams in graduation, among other considerations.

Pallas said that the plan for the 2025-26 school year and beyond would still have to meet federal ESSA requirements and earn the buy-in of school district leaders — meaning that it likely won’t be “a dramatic break from the past.”

“It’s gotta be something that feels progressive but also comfortable,” Pallas said.

Thomas Wilburn contributed.

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

College felt impossible to this student in foster care. Then NYC offered to pay.

2023-06-15T16:14:05+00:00

At the age of 16, Marowa, a Bangladeshi immigrant, entered New York City’s foster care system, after her parents had physically abused her for much of her life.

Two years and five foster homes later, Marowa fled to California to build a new life but returned to New York City by the age of 19, in search of stable housing and a familiar community. (Marowa said she does not have a legal last name.)

After she reluctantly re-entered foster care, a social worker asked Marowa if she knew that Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS, could help her pay for college and other expenses.

“I was just thinking about surviving,” Marowa said. “I wasn’t really thinking about college.”

Last week — five years after that conversation — Marowa graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Brooklyn College, with the help of the financial assistance that her social worker had described.

Marowa is one of 300 students who used the College Choice program this year to fund up to $15,000 of tuition, room and board, and $60 in daily stipends, according to ACS officials, who said that no eligible student who applied on time was turned away.

The program, announced in October, combined with other state and federal grants, covers all tuition and living expenses for these students. It was similar to other programs that preceded it when Marowa first entered college with some updates that aim to ease the burden on participants: College Choice doubles the daily student stipend and allows them to live on the same campus as where they go to school.

For the 2023-24 school year, the Adams administration has proposed keeping this $10 million initiative.

A more stable future for students in foster care

The program attempts to set up a stable future for students like Marowa, who might otherwise be unable to pay for college or incur student loan debt, even with federal and state grants. In New York City, the cost of higher education is not the only barrier: Last school year, 45% of students in foster care graduated from high school on time, compared with 84% of students not in foster care, according to state data. In 2019, before the pandemic and the loosening of certain graduation requirements, just one-quarter of youth in foster care graduated on time.

The city’s Fair Futures program, which advocates pushed the city to create in recent years, attempts to improve those graduation rates by linking students in foster care ages 11 to 26 with academic, career, and life coaching.

Even children who make it to college can find it financially impossible to stay enrolled, said Jess Dannhauser, commissioner for ACS. Dannhauser, who previously oversaw foster care agency Graham Windam, said he’d hear about students who dropped out of college because they couldn’t afford pricey textbooks or even doing laundry regularly.

“The things that came up both were expensive, and it was hard to be nimble to meet all those needs,” Dannhauser said of students’ experiences. “And it sends a message that they don’t belong there.”

In order to be eligible for College Choice, young people must currently be in foster care, earn a minimum GPA of 2.0, and apply for financial aid grants, such as the federal Pell Grant and New York State’s Tuition Assistance Program, or TAP.

Larger stipends and more places to live

Before Marowa used College Choice this year, there was “The Dorm Project,” which used a total of about $7 million to provide housing and tuition help to about 200 students in foster care last year who attended CUNY schools. ACS also provided $31 daily stipends to college students in foster care.

Marowa pictured on her graduation day at Brooklyn College.

College Choice ironed out a few wrinkles with the previous program, officials said. Unlike previous years, the program helps cover costs for students who attend any college, not just CUNY. Students also receive a $60 daily stipend — and will now receive that money for six months after graduation.

The old program provided year-round housing at certain CUNY dorms where the city had purchased space but not necessarily where students were attending school. In what felt like a particularly important change for children, College Choice allows them to live on the same campus where they’re enrolled.

“We heard from young people that they really wanted to live and go to school in the same place, that they wanted that choice, that they wanted to have the opportunity to go out of state,” said ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser in an interview. “And the College Choice program allows for that.”

The program is a positive start at helping students access college, but broadening the eligibility requirements would help many more students in need, said Chantal Hinds, a researcher focused on students in foster care at the Next100, a policy think tank based in New York City. Hinds noted that the program doesn’t benefit students who aren’t in foster care anymore but might still be struggling financially and mentally from their experience in the system.

She noted that Marowa could have been one of those teens had she not re-entered the foster care system after her time in California.

“If you’re in the foster system for a month or 12 years, you’re still impacted,” said Hinds, who was once an attorney for ACS. “There was still a significant portion of your life that was changed because of this experience.”

Marowa began receiving financial support through the old college aid programs and then switched over to College Choice this past school year, which meant her daily stipend doubled in size.

In college, Marowa changed majors twice before landing on English literature, which she fell in love with after being forced as a newcomer immigrant years ago to learn the language.

Marowa was one of the students who pushed ACS for better college assistance, and she continues to advocate on behalf of foster youth, both she and an ACS spokesperson said. She’s considering a teaching job offer, and has qualified for subsidized housing.

Once she becomes more financially stable, she’s hoping to fulfill a longtime dream: to become a foster mom.

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

How to support LGBTQ students: New York education officials update guidance

2023-06-12T13:00:00+00:00

As some states pass anti-LGBTQ legislation, New York state education officials have moved in the opposite direction, issuing new guidance on Monday on how schools should support transgender and gender-expansive students.

The 42-page document includes a slew of information for schools, including the correct terminology to use for gender identity, or how to support students who are coming out at school or want to transition. It has information on students’ privacy rights — including in relation to their parents — and research about LGBTQ students’ experiences at school. It also outlines the laws that prohibit discrimination against students on the basis of their gender.

Many of these laws were created after the state’s initial guidance from 2015, said Kathleen DeCataldo, assistant commissioner of the state education department’s Student Support Service office. One of those laws is the GENDA Act, which in 2019 added gender identity and expression as a protected category to New York’s Human Rights Law.

The document also includes more information and resources for schools than the 2015 guidance. For example, the guidance released Monday includes 26 words schools should know in relation to LGBTQ students, such as misgendering. The older document had just eight words.

The document opens with results from a 2021 national survey conducted by Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, which found that nearly 82% of the LGTBQ student respondents reported feeling unsafe at school. More than two-thirds of those students said they felt unsafe was because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Two-thirds of the respondents said they heard homophobic remarks at school, and roughly 40% said they “often or frequently” heard transphobic words, such as “tranny” or “he-she.”

As other states pass laws that seek to curb the rights of LGBTQ people, officials in New York “understand the climate right now,” DeCataldo told Chalkbeat.

“That makes it even more important to be clear about what the law requires of schools, so this is the perfect time to really have this update,” she said.

As one of the first states to release guidance nearly a decade ago, New York was ahead of the curve on pushing schools to create safer spaces for LGTBQ students. But members of New York’s Democratic committee recently signaled that the state is not doing enough. In May, the committee passed a resolution that called for elected officials and the governor to create a statewide LGTBQ curriculum for public schools. Efforts to do so in the past have failed.

New York City’s education department has a social studies curriculum supplement that centers the voices of LGTBQ people. On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams signed an executive order that, among other things, prohibits the city from cooperating with out-of-state investigations into gender-affirming care.

State officials developed the new guidance with the help of a roughly 30-person advisory committee that included representatives from advocacy groups such as the New York Civil Liberties Union, or NYCLU, and the Trevor Project, which focuses on preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth.

Allie Bohm, policy counsel for NYCLU and advisory committee member, praised the committee’s array of voices, including parents of transgender youth, lawyers who work in this subject area, school psychologists, and adults who had the experience of transitioning as children. She was especially glad that state officials asked transgender students themselves about their experiences to help shape the updated guidance.

The document quotes some of those students anonymously. For example, one student shared that it took about eight months to get a legal name change at school. “They will let you put in a nickname in the system,” the student said, “but teachers never really use it, especially in the beginning of the year.”

The state’s guidance cites a 2016 study that says LGBTQ students who felt discriminated against for their sexual orientation and gender expression got worse grades than students who reported fewer instances of harassment. Those students were also roughly three times as likely to miss school.

Bohm said her organization hears about different ways schools across the state have discriminated against transgender youth, such as people who were told they couldn’t use a bathroom that matches their gender identity. It’s less common to hear examples in New York City but not unheard of, she said.

“This is a document that really, clearly says from the state’s highest education agency, ‘We see you,’ to trans youth, and, ‘We support you,’” Bohm said. “To feel like your state has your back is incredibly powerful.”

Creating this guidance may also mean that students might not have to constantly explain themselves, said Kraig Pannell, director of the Office of LGBTQ Services for New York’s state health department and another advisory member.

“Regardless of how you identify or regardless of what your gender expression is, if you have to go in and explain and teach somebody something, that gets burdensome,” Pannell said.

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.

NYC’s Summer Rising program rejected 45,000 applicants, launching scramble for child care

2023-05-24T21:50:38+00:00

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Roughly 45,000 children have been shut out of New York City’s free, popular summer program, education department officials said this week.

The program, which runs between six to seven weeks for most students, provides academics during the morning and enrichment activities in the afternoon for children in grades K-8 across the five boroughs from July to August.

Like last year, a total of 110,000 seats were available this year, with a portion held open for students mandated to attend summer school. During a City Council hearing this week, the education department’s Chief Operating Officer Emma Vadehra said there are 94,000 seats available for 139,000 applicants. Officials initially reported that 30,000 families did not receive spots.

It’s possible that some of the rejected applicants will have to attend the program anyway for academic reasons and will get a seat that has been set aside. Still, many of those families, who were notified earlier this month that they didn’t get seats, are likely scrambling to find summer programs for their children before the school year ends on June 27.

“The basic challenge is that demand outstripped supply pretty dramatically,” Vadehra told City Council members. “And so there’s different ways that could have looked, but we just didn’t have enough seats in the program for the number of kids and families that really wanted this program despite the fact that it is the largest summer program we’ve had – and the largest in the country.”

Two of those unsuccessful applicants were Alejandra Perez’s 5- and 10-year-old sons, who should have been prioritized for seats because they attend an after-school program run by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, through a community-based organization that helps oversee Summer Rising.

Perez, a lifelong East Harlemite, paid $2,250 last summer for six weeks of child care, which she can barely afford again this year.

But in mid-May, about three weeks after applying, she was informed via email that her sons, who attend a charter school in East Harlem, didn’t get in. While she can probably rely on a relative to care for her older son, she is scrambling to find free or affordable care for her 5-year-old.

“I am still trying to find a program,” she said. “By the act of God, maybe I’ll get an email like, ‘Hey, we found you a spot!’”

Some children with priority did not get spots

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio established the program two years ago with federal relief dollars as the city clawed its way out of the pandemic, attempting to provide children with a bridge back to school after remote learning. It differs from summer programs in the past: It’s open to any child, including those in charters and private school, not just those who are mandated to attend summer school.

The program, though bumpy with its initial roll out, has grown in popularity. This year, city officials made a couple of key changes to the application process. While still open to the same number of children, applicants were allowed to rank choices for Summer Rising sites instead of the first come, first served process last year. Additionally, students who attend after-school programs subsidized through the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, were supposed to be prioritized for seats, like Perez’s children. That’s in addition to students living in temporary housing, children in foster care, and children with disabilities who must have services year round.

Perez had ranked three Summer Rising sites close to her home. Perez said the application did not ask if her kids were in an after-school program. According to an education department spokesperson, Perez’s children didn’t receive a spot because there was likely a lot of demand at the sites she chose.

When she asked someone from the after-school program why her sons didn’t get into Summer Rising, they didn’t have an answer — except that none of the kids in the program who applied got in, Perez said. (A representative for their SCAN-Harbor Beacon after-school program did not return a request for comment.)

During the City Council hearing this week, officials said that just over half of the seats that have been filled went to students in the priority groups. Of those, 29,000 spots went to students who were in DYCD-run after-school programs, 16,000 went to students in temporary housing, 3,000 seats to children with 12-month individualized education programs, or IEPs, and another 1,000 to students in foster care. (Last year, Summer Rising had 12,000 students in temporary housing, 2,700 students with 12-month IEPs and 1,000 students in foster care.)

New seats won’t be added, but filled seats might open up

Vadehra said they’re not planning to add seats — emphasizing that this program is being supported by federal dollars that are set to run out next year — and there is no wait list for seats. But they are expecting an unspecified number of spots to open up, either because fewer students will be mandated to attend summer school or because families may decline a seat they’ve been offered. The education department is working with DYCD to figure out how to make families aware of empty seats in June and how they can apply for those, she said.

In the meantime, parents are scrambling to find options that seem few and far between — and too pricey.

Perez’s rejection email from the education department included a link to other DYCD programs that might be available. She said she has called every local community-based organization near her home for some type of programming with no luck.

“At this point I am just emailing everyone,” she said.

Tia Jackson, who lives in Central Harlem, knew she would potentially need to scramble for summer options if her son didn’t get into Summer Rising, so she signed him up for a YMCA program near her home. Her planning came in handy: Her son did not get a Summer Rising seat.

While he doesn’t fall into any of the priority groups, her son, who is autistic, also has an individualized education program. The YMCA program has staff who can assist him if he needs extra support, Jackson said. She will be reimbursed up to $2,250 for summer care expenses through the state’s Office of People With Developmental Disabilities, but that only ensures four weeks of summer programming for her son. He’s planning to visit his aunt in Florida for one week, and she will pay out of pocket for child care for an additional week.

She feels thankful for having a “Plan A and Plan B.”

“I feel like the way they rolled out the program to start was very late, and it wasn’t the best for working parents, typically because when you think about summer camps most applications for summer camp start in February and March,” she said. “We didn’t get the Summer Rising notification until April.”

The department spokesperson did not explain the timing of the Summer Rising application, except to say there are several factors that impact the timeline.

Both of Loretta Bencivengo’s children got into Summer Rising last year, likely because she submitted her application as soon as it opened during the previous first come, first served model. This year they didn’t get spots, said Bencivengo, who lives in Windsor Terrace.

The most affordable alternate option she’s found so far is with the local YMCA for a $5,000, eight-week program for both of her children, which she equated to two months of rent. Many places don’t have space this late in the spring, she said.

“All those slots are filled up in January and February,” she said of private programs. “If that’s the case, why not put this application out in November and December so that you can open an appropriate amount of slots?”

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

NYC drafts plan to shrink class sizes, but changes won’t start next school year

2023-05-19T22:43:25+00:00

Many education advocates cheered when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law last September a five-year plan to reduce class sizes in New York City’s public schools.

For the first year, however, the city’s education department plans to make no changes, according to a draft plan shared with reporters on Friday.

Under that plan — which is supposed to spell out how the city will meet the law’s new requirements — class sizes will remain the same in September. That’s because the education department says that enough of its core classes — an average 39% — for K-12 exceed the requirements in the law for the first year of the plan. (The plan only affects city-run schools, not charters.)

But, for future school years, education department officials are bracing for some big expenses to comply with the law. They estimate it will cost $1.3 billion a year for new teachers when the plan is fully implemented as well as about $30-$35 billion in capital expenditures to construct new spaces or reconfigure old ones.

The education department said it would gather feedback from the public and educators to determine the best way to shrink class sizes by 2028, when state law requires that the entire school system meet the new requirements.

The city teachers union — one of the entities that must approve the plan — blasted the education department’s effort, emphasizing that they will work with the state to ensure the city “fulfills its obligations” of the law.

“Meeting the new class size standards is going to require a real plan — and so far, the DOE hasn’t managed to create one,” said teachers union president Michael Mulgrew in a statement. “This document is missing a strategy for implementation and a targeted proposal for where and when new seats should be built.”

Education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer responded in a statement that the draft was created after consulting “extensively” with the unions, and they will continue to be able to share feedback.

“The tradeoffs involved in implementation are too important to be made behind closed doors and our entire community must be involved in informing these decisions,” Styer said.

The education department will begin collecting public comment on the plan, which is posted online, in June. Within two weeks of the end of that process, officials must submit the plan to the state education department for approval.

Here are seven things to know:

What are the new class-size caps?

Kindergarten through third grade should have no more than 20 children.

From grades four through eighth, classes should have no more than 23 students, while students in ninth through 12th grades can have up to 25 students.

That’s down from a previous cap of 25 students for kindergarten, and 32 students in the rest of elementary school grades, according to the teachers union contract agreement. Middle and high schools were supposed to be capped previously at 33 and 34 students, respectively, with a 30-student limit in Title 1 middle schools (where at least 60% of students are from low-income families).

What will change next year in terms of class-size reductions?

Nothing. State law requires 20% of the city’s classrooms be in compliance with the new state law each year, reaching 100% by 2028. According to the education department, an average 39% of classes meet the new requirements, meaning they expect to meet the state’s requirements for next school year. This includes elementary school homerooms, where children receive their core instruction, and core subject classes for grades 6-12 — meaning math, science, social studies, and English courses, including gifted and talented, integrated co-teaching, which includes a mix of students with and without disabilities, and accelerated courses.

Ninety-one percent of performing arts and gym courses are in compliance.

In year two, 40% of classes must comply, then 60% and 80% until the final year when all classes are expected to meet the targets (unless they get exemptions).

How will the education department shrink class sizes by 2028?

We don’t know the details yet, but the education department offered some clues in its plan.

From May to October, the education department plans to meet regularly with a working group that it convened this spring to gather feedback on how to meet the law’s new requirements.

Officials wrote that they will identify additional classrooms for space; work with the city’s School Construction Authority on the next capital plan, which lays out building plans for the school system; and would focus on high-poverty schools not meeting requirements, as required by the law.

Starting in November, officials will begin changing policies “and reprioritization of programming” in order to meet the class-size mandates. Officials did not immediately explain what sort of policies or programs would change. But before the law passed, Chancellor David Banks warned that the law could mean a cut in school services or programming because of the cost of creating more classes.

Who will be exempt from the class-size law?

Any exemptions must be approved by the chancellor, as well as the heads of the teachers union and the union representing principals and other administrators. Disagreements will head to arbitration, the law mandates.

Schools might be exempt because of space limitations, but the education department will have to show that they are working to resolve the issue through their capital budget plan. Schools that are overenrolled or ones in which they would face severe economic hardship to comply might get exemptions. (The plan offered no other information on this.) There might be exemptions for schools where they have insufficient numbers of teachers in subjects that are hard to fill, like bilingual math; the teachers union can negotiate higher class sizes for electives and specialty classes if the majority of a school’s staff approves the increase.

Does the law prioritize any particular schools in regards to meeting the new class-size mandates?

The law requires the education department to start with schools with high shares of students living in poverty. In its plan, the education department said that schools with the highest numbers of low-income students are more likely to have smaller class sizes.

Fifty-nine percent of classes meet the new requirements at schools with the most students from low-income families, according to education department data shared in the plan. In contrast, schools with the fewest students living in poverty have just 23% of classes meeting the new requirements.

Where else are schools more — or less — likely to meet the class-size mandates?

Schools with larger classes also hew closely to racial demographics. Roughly 54% of classes already meet the class-size targets at schools with the highest percentage of Black students compared to schools with the highest percentage of Asian and white students, where only about a quarter of classes meet the targets.

Three Brooklyn districts — Ocean Hill/Brownsville’s District 23, Crown Heights’ District 16, and District 18 in Canarsie/East Flatbush had the greatest share of classes at or below the caps, according to the education department data. These three districts have among the highest shares of Black students in the city.

Two Queens districts — Bayside’s District 26 and Flushing’s District 25 — along with Staten Island’s District 31 have the lowest share of classes that meet the targets. District 25 and 26 have the city’s highest share of Asian students, while District 31 has the highest share of white students.

Of the five boroughs, the Bronx might have the easiest time meeting the class-size caps, with 50% of its schools already hitting the targets. Staten Island could have the most challenges, with only 22% of its schools meeting the class size requirements.

Schools that have grades 6-12 or 9-12 are more likely to have smaller class sizes, the figures show, with about 44% of these schools already meeting the new class-size mandates. Only 30% of standalone middle schools meet the targets, followed by K-8 and K-5 schools.

What happens next?

The education department must collect public comments on the plan and then submit it to the state education department for final approval. The teachers and principals unions must also sign off on the plan, which must go into effect in September.

Next month, city officials are holding online public hearings for each borough via Zoom on the following dates, starting at 6 p.m.:

Staten Island: Friday, June 2

Queens: Tuesday, June 6

Brooklyn: Thursday, June 8

Manhattan: Tuesday, June 13

The Bronx: Thursday, June 15

The city will have two weeks to analyze the public comments before submitting its final proposal to the state.

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

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@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.

NYC schools grasp for support as some migrant students miss out on mandated English instruction

2023-05-09T10:00:00+00:00

Miriam Sicherman looks at her Google Translate app or her pocket translator an average of 25 times a day while teaching fourth graders at the Children’s Workshop School in Manhattan’s East Village.

For a recent lesson on internet safety, she translated her presentation into Spanish and Russian ahead of time for her five newcomer immigrant students who speak those languages, but then used her phone to look up words like “password” or “email address” to respond to their questions. In an eight-hour school day, she repeats this process over and over again.

On top of the translation apps, Sicherman takes Duolingo Spanish lessons in her own time and accepts occasional help from a bilingual student and a Russian-speaking teacher at another school in her building.

Still, it sometimes feels impossible to explain in-depth concepts in a language other than her own.

An estimated 14,000 asylum-seeking immigrant students have enrolled in New York City public schools, city officials said last month. Teachers are finding that many of these children are learning English at the most basic level, and some hadn’t attended school regularly before arriving in the United States. The students are legally entitled to extra support, but some schools are struggling to provide it.

Failing to meet the needs of English language learners is not a new problem. Since 2016, the state has placed New York City on a corrective action plan because the district has failed to adequately support English learners, including not providing required services for those with disabilities. The plan, which has been extended multiple times over the past seven years, requires the city to gradually provide more of these services.

For Sicherman, it’s crucial that her English language learners get the support to which they are entitled. But there is just one part-time English-as-a-new-language, or ENL, teacher who provides this support to dozens of students at her school. That means Sicherman’s newcomers are getting a fraction of the extra help they should receive, she said.

“I can make them feel comfortable and safe — that I’m doing my best with, and I think I am achieving that — but they really are entitled to much more than that,” Sicherman said.

Sicherman’s concern is one that potentially many educators share, as thousands of new immigrant families have sought refuge in New York City this year, from Central and South American countries, as well as from Ukraine and Russia.

In anticipation of students’ arrival, the city launched “Project Open Arms” in the fall to send a total $12 million to schools that enrolled six or more newcomer students living in temporary housing. Officials also said schools that have enrolled more students than expected have received another $98 million this year.

Still, some teachers say their schools don’t have enough funding to hire more staff who are equipped to work with newcomer English learners. Some schools have the money, but have struggled to find teachers due to a long-standing shortage of bilingual teachers. That leaves teachers like Sicherman feeling overwhelmed and at times unequipped to properly help these students.

As the city expects another wave of newcomer immigrant families, teachers and advocates are worried it will become even more challenging to support English learners without more help from the city.

The New York Immigration Coalition has heard complaints throughout this school year that students aren’t receiving their required services, said Andrea Ortiz, senior manager of education policy.

“We shouldn’t be allowing students to be just housed in places where they’re not gonna be given the types of supports that they’re legally entitled to,” Ortiz said.

In a statement, education department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said officials are working closely with schools to “assess any gaps in resources and to provide solutions as expeditiously as possible.”

‘It’s kind of demoralizing’

Sicherman’s school has been waiting months for more help.

Over each of the past five years, her school enrolled between six and 13 English learners, according to demographic records. This year, roughly 60 English learners enrolled, Sicherman said.

School leaders volunteered in January to accept more asylum seekers, the spokesperson said. A crush of newcomer immigrant students began coming in February, but even after the principal requested more staffing help from the education department, the school still had just one part-time ENL teacher, Sicherman said.

Budget records show that the school received about $64,600 in funding from Project Open Arms, which can be used to pay teachers overtime, cover teacher prep periods, and pay substitutes, among other uses related to communication with parents. It’s not clear when the school received those funds. The principal did not respond to a request for comment to discuss the school’s challenges this year or explain how that money was used.

As beginner-level English learners, Sicherman’s five newcomer students should each be receiving 360 minutes a week of extra help building English skills, per state regulations for grades K-8. But they are only getting 135 minutes, since the part-time ENL teacher can only work with them for 45 minutes during each of her three days at the school.

Officials did not answer why the school hasn’t received more staffing help. Superintendent Carry Chan, who oversees Manhattan’s District 1, where the Children’s Workshop School is located, has appealed for the school to receive another full-time ENL teacher, a spokesperson said. The spokesperson added that the school also has a classroom teacher licensed to work with English language learners, and suggested they could tweak programming and use that person so that students are getting more services.

Sicherman said she’s constantly trying to balance those students’ needs with those of the 16 native English speakers in her class. She translates many lessons and uses other tools, including donated Spanish flash cards. But it’s difficult to explain topics in-depth, such as the Irish potato famine, or have a conversation about it. She relies “completely” on Google Translate for her Russian student, with whom the language barrier is so thick that Sicherman worries the child won’t be able to tell her if she’s feeling unwell.

Even lighthearted moments are hard. Sicherman recently pulled up Google Translate to tell a few of her Spanish-speaking students that they were “being silly.” Her bilingual student stopped her: Using the app’s suggested word “tonto” would be like calling the children idiots, he said.

“It’s kind of demoralizing,” Sicherman said. “I wish I could be teaching these kids, and I’m really not teaching them.”

There don’t appear to be immediate consequences for schools or districts who are not providing legally required services to English learners. J.P. O’Hare, a spokesperson for the state education department, said the corrective action plan requires the district to submit multiple reports a year about how they’re improving support for these students. In response, state officials share “direction and guidance” on where city schools need to improve and meet regularly with district staff.

Some experienced ENL teachers are struggling this year

Even experienced ENL teachers say they’re overwhelmed by the arrival of thousands of new immigrant students.

Brooklyn ENL teacher Melanie is usually paired with middle schoolers. But this year, as more English learners enrolled at her Bay Ridge school and one of her ENL colleagues went on leave, she was also asked to work with children in grades 2-5.

Melanie, who asked only to use her first name because she was not authorized to speak with the press, found she was “really struggling” to help younger students, since she’s used to helping older children who know how to read and write at more advanced levels.

The school couldn’t find a replacement for the ENL teacher on leave, who returned a few weeks ago.

For most of this year, Melanie served roughly twice as many children in the “beginner” level as she usually does, many of whom haven’t attended school in a while and are learning various skills, such as how to use an iPad. She was providing the legally required amount of support to these children, but she doesn’t think they received enough individual help, she said.

“I know going into it, I am not meeting their needs,” she said.

One Brooklyn high school enrolled about 30 new immigrant students between February and April, causing classes for beginner-level English learners to fill up to the legal limit of 34, said Nathan, an ENL teacher at the school who asked only to use his first name.

The school, which is used to serving many English learners, is staying afloat for now. They’ve created new classes with existing staff, and they’re using some funding to pay one person overtime in order to be a “migrant students coordinator,” who is charged with creating resources for newcomer families.

But if they get another similar wave of students, he’s unsure if the school has enough funding to add another class for beginner-level English learners or even meet legal mandates.

“That would require a lot of creative budgeting,” Nathan said.

Asylum seekers are a ‘blessing’ for one Brooklyn school

Some schools, such as those with dual language programs, seem better set up to welcome newcomer immigrants.

Asylum-seeking families have “been a blessing” for one Spanish dual language program in Brooklyn, where the number of English language learners has doubled this year, said F.C., a teacher at the school who requested only her initials be used because she was not authorized to speak to the press. Typically, the school doesn’t attract many native Spanish speakers. This year, the surge in enrollment has given both English and Spanish speakers a chance to learn from one another.

As a former newcomer immigrant herself, F.C. has used her experience to connect with students. She comforted a student who would occasionally cry because he was struggling in class and missed home. She told him once, “I used to cry, too, because I didn’t understand what everyone was saying, and that motivated me to learn.’” He gave her a hug.

Most schools don’t have dual language programs. There are 245 such programs across all grades for general education students, covering 13 different languages.

While those programs are “set up well” for English learners, they don’t exist everywhere, said Councilmember Rita Joseph, chair of the council’s education committee, who used to be an ENL teacher. Looking ahead, she thinks the education department will have to “pivot” as more asylum-seeking families make New York City their new home.

“We’re gonna have so much that we can no longer have part-time [ENL] teachers,” she said. “That’s the only way you can stay in compliance.”

Sicherman’s school recently launched an after-school program for English learners, which doesn’t count toward their legally required support but is helpful, she said. Her principal also bought each teacher a pocket translator, which Sicherman has found more useful than Google Translate. Sometimes students use it to talk with each other while she uses her phone app.

Five days after Chalkbeat reached out to the education department about the issues at Sicherman’s school, she discovered that their part-time ENL teacher would soon be working with them full time.

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

Summer Rising applications are now open. Here’s everything you need to know.

2023-04-14T20:30:55+00:00

Applications open Monday for New York City’s free, sprawling summer program for children in kindergarten through eighth grade.

The program was first launched in 2021 under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, using federal COVID relief money, as a way to help children ease into school following remote learning. The rollout of the program was bumpy, but for the first time, it provided a mix of academics and enrichment activities to many children beyond those who are mandated to attend summer school.

In its third year, the program will again have 110,000 spots and will be open to any child in New York City, including children who are home-schooled or attend charter or private schools.

But a couple things will be different from last year, including the application process. Spots won’t be assigned on a first come, first served basis this year; instead, parents will rank multiple choices. In another change, students who already attend a school associated with a Summer Rising site will be added to the list of groups receiving priority in selection for that site.

Parents who want to apply should visit this website when the application opens on Monday.

Here’s what you should know about this year’s Summer Rising program:

Where are the programs, and when will Summer Rising start?

Programs won’t be in every school. Rather, each school will be associated with one of 374 sites across the five boroughs.

The program length will depend on a few things. Programs will run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from July 5 to Aug. 18 for children in kindergarten through fifth grade and until Aug. 11 for middle schoolers.

Students with disabilities who have yearlong individualized education programs, or IEPs, will attend programs from July 5 to Aug. 14, from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Students at District 75 schools, which serve children with the most challenging disabilities, will attend programs that run from July 6 to Aug. 15, also from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Students in Nest and Horizon programs, which serve students with autism, who have 12-month IEPs, will attend a monthlong program from July 5 to Aug. 1, from 8 a.m. to noon.

What will my children do?

Generally, students will spend the morning on academics and then in the afternoons participate in enrichment activities, such as sports, arts and crafts or going on field trips. Elementary-age children will spend the last week of their program on enrichment activities and trips, according to the education department website. (Enrichment activities are run by community-based organizations.)

Students with disabilities will receive extra services that are mandated in their IEPs, including services from health and behavioral paraprofessionals, according to the department’s website. For these students, their school will create an accommodation plan for the summer that will be provided to their parents and the Summer Rising site before their program begins.

Students with disabilities are supposed to receive services “as needed” during the enrichment portion of the day, according to the department’s website. If a family doesn’t want the enrichment portion, they should contact their child’s school instead of using the online application. These children can choose on the application to participate in extended-day enrichment programming until 6 p.m.

Last year, several families reported that their children did not have special education support by the start of Summer Rising, said Randi Levine, policy director for Advocates for Children. She said it’s “important that planning begin early” so that students aren’t left without the services they need.

Will my child get transportation to the program?

Generally, students who are already eligible for busing during the school year — typically in grades K-6 — will receive busing to their summer program but not past 3 p.m. This includes students with disabilities whose IEPs recommend busing, as well as students in temporary housing and students in foster care who are more than a half-mile away from their Summer Rising site.

For children who want to participate in programming until 6 p.m. and need transportation, families will have the option of a prepaid rideshare service. However, a caregiver must take the rideshare service to and from the summer site to pick up their child, which some advocates have said is not manageable for working parents.

Eligible students who receive MetroCards during the school year can also get MetroCards from their Summer Rising site, or if their site is more than a half-mile from their home.

Students who are not eligible for busing during the school year could receive transportation if their regular school is not open for Summer Rising and their site is more than a half-mile away.

How will the application work?

Seats rapidly filled up last year, quickly elbowing out many families who wanted to apply, according to some advocacy and community-based organizations.

This year, instead of the first come, first served model, families will be asked to rank up to 12 choices for program sites, “ensuring that more families receive placements that work for them,” according to a news release.

Like last year, priority will be offered to students in temporary housing, in foster care, who are mandated for summer school, and with disabilities who have year-round individualized education programs. But also, students who have a “local connection” to their school will also be prioritized, such as if they attend the school during the year. Last month, city officials said students who attend city subsidized after-school programs will also be prioritized.

Asked how these groups will be ranked, an education department spokesperson said they’re aiming to give every child in a priority group access to their first choice.

The application will close May 1, and families should be notified the following week of where their child will attend the program, according to the department website.

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.

NYC extends deadline for youth jobs program. Here’s what to know.

2023-03-31T17:58:09+00:00

This story was updated to reflect the new deadline.

New York City extended the deadline for its Summer Youth Employment Program, or SYEP, which provides paid jobs and career exploration programs for young people ages 14-24.

Young people have until April 14 to apply, officials announced Friday.

This year marks the $236 million program’s 60th year and will again be open to 100,000 young people – making it the largest public youth jobs program in the nation. The program will run between July 5 to Aug. 12 and from July 12 to Aug. 19.

One new feature this year is an effort to pair LGBTQ youth with affirming jobs, though specifics are scarce. Officials said they’re still working on the details based on how much interest they get, which can be marked on the application.

City officials also plan to nearly triple the number of slots for a small program that offers paid opportunities for youth who are undocumented.

How do I apply?

Youth can apply online here.

The types of programming and pay depends on the participant’s age. Dozens of community-based organizations oversee programming and find work sites that are willing to host youth workers.

What kinds of opportunities are available?

Younger youth, who are 14 to 15 years old, spend 12.5 hours a week gaining work readiness skills and learning about different careers. They also participate in project-based learning, which often involves finding a problem in the surrounding community and creating solutions. These teens are paid up to $700.

Youth ages 16 to 24 are paired with jobs through one of dozens of community-based organizations. Those organizations line up work sites, such as retailers or local businesses, that are willing to host youth workers for the summer. These young people are paid the city’s minimum wage rate of $15 an hour and work 25 hours a week – meaning they can make up to $2,250 by the end of the program.

Work sites range between public, private, and nonprofit organizations. Last year, a majority of jobs – 45% – were in the nonprofit sector. Private jobs were most commonly in retail, followed by day cares and camps, hospitality, tourism and health care, according to a report on last year’s jobs program published by the Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, which oversees SYEP. Other opportunities included jobs in media and entertainment, business and finance, arts and recreation, real estate and technology.

In the public sector, about 4,600 youth worked last year for the education department, such as working with staff, in school kitchens, and in maintenance. In the public sector, nearly 4,000 youth last year worked for city agencies or mayoral offices. Nearly 120 youth worked for City Council members.

Applicants are asked to list their top three career choices and the provider they want to work with.

Am I guaranteed a spot?

No. The program has 100,000 open slots, but applications typically exceed that number. DYCD has received more than 126,000 applications so far, according to an agency spokesperson. Last year, the agency received roughly 167,000 applications.

Once applications are submitted, youth are chosen through a lottery system.

However, some young people who might be facing certain barriers to employment don’t have to go through the lottery system and can be directly referred to the jobs program through a city agency they’re working with. This includes youth who are homeless, in or aging out of foster care, are involved with the court system, and in families that are receiving preventative services through the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, such as support for mental health needs, substance abuse, and domestic violence.

Just like other young people, these youth also participate in either career readiness programs or are paired with jobs through a program called SYEP Emerging Leaders.

I am undocumented. Am I eligible for this program?

Generally, no. The program is only open to New York City youth who are legally eligible to work in the United States — an issue that has caused some advocates and lawmakers to push for more opportunities for undocumented immigrant youth. As of 2019, 77,000 undocumented youth ages 16-24 lived in New York City, according to estimates from the Migration Policy Institute.

However, a fraction of undocumented youth will have access to a small DYCD program this summer. Last year, the city agency quietly offered stipends to 282 high schoolers who “face obstacles” in applying to SYEP. The program, called SYEP Pathways, provided up to 60 hours of a paid work readiness and project-based learning program for students attending a handful of schools that already offered CareerReady, which is a year-round program that helps students gain career readiness skills.

This year, officials are hoping to expand that program to 750 children. Community organizations directly recruit youth for this program.

Because of federal regulations that limit how much you can pay someone without work authorization, students who participated in this small pilot were paid $552. Officials did not immediately explain how students can sign up for this summer.

Children’s Aid was one organization that oversaw programming for 25 teens in last year’s pilot program. They developed projects, “listened to presentations from a variety of professions, went on educational trips, and presented what they learned at the end of the summer,” said Sandino Sanchez, director of workforce development programs at Children’s Aid, in a statement.

While advocates have praised DYCD for offering some sort of opportunity for undocumented young people, they’ve also raised concerns that the pay is inequitable compared with other youth participating in SYEP. But there might be other, private options for undocumented youth where they can receive more money.

For example, an organization called Oyate plans to pair 60 undocumented youth this summer with jobs at local college campuses, said Lymarie Francisco, a project manager at the organization who works with young people. Those youth will get $500 Visa gift cards each week.

Oyate received 312 applications for the program, prompting them to recently close the application, according to organization officials.

Eilen, a 15-year-old girl who participated in Oyate’s inaugural jobs program last year, said her job at Fordham University helped her become more disciplined about forming a daily routine. Additionally, the $500 gift cards allowed Eilen — who moved to New York City from the Dominican Republic two years ago — to help buy things around the house as her mother prepared to move them to a new home. She was also able to buy a new cell phone and pay for a gym membership.

“I didn’t have to ask my mom for anything,” she said in Spanish.

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

NYC’s Summer Rising program gets admissions overhaul

2023-03-22T21:41:27+00:00

As summer approaches, New York City families should expect changes in the sign-up process and who will be given priority for the city’s sprawling public summer enrichment program, which will again be open to 110,000 children.

Summer Rising — launched under former Mayor Bill de Blasio in the summer of 2021 with the help of federal COVID relief dollars — offers academic and enrichment programs to elementary and middle school students, even if they’re not mandated for summer school.

Last year’s program was offered on a first come, first served basis — leading to a mad rush of applications that filled up most school sites within a week of enrollment opening. In response to concerns about enrollment, this year the city will ditch the first come, first served model, said Keith Howard, commissioner of the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, during a City Council hearing on Wednesday.

Families, who will also be able to rank their preferences for school sites, can sign up during the whole enrollment period, which will open in early April, said Howard, whose agency partners with the education department on running Summer Rising. This suggests that there will be a lottery process though city officials declined to confirm that or share more details with Chalkbeat.

“We’ll have more to share in the coming days, and we are prioritizing getting the needed information to our families and school communities,” said Mark Zustovich, a DYCD spokesperson, in a statement.

In another significant change, students who are already attending one of the city’s hundreds of DYCD-run after-school programs will also receive priority at the schools where their after-school provider runs Summer Rising. This move is meant “to accommodate families who are accustomed to year round programming,” Howard told the City Council.

Like last year, seats will be prioritized for students in temporary housing, students mandated for summer school, and those with disabilities, though officials did not immediately share how many of these seats would be set aside or if the seats for students with disabilities would be separate from those who are mandated to attend school for 12 months on their individualized education programs, or IEPs.

Neither DYCD nor education department officials immediately shared how all of these priorities would be ranked.

Randi Levine, policy director for Advocates for Children, said her group was happy about the end of the first come, first served enrollment process. She said many families who “needed more support to apply” didn’t get spots, including the very people who were supposed to be prioritized, such as children in shelters.

“We heard from families living in shelter and immigrant families that they did not know about Summer Rising in time to get seats for their children and heard from staff at shelters that when they went to help families enroll, the seats were already gone.”

At the same time, under the enrollment system last year, there weren’t many seats left for students who attended the school if they weren’t in one of the priority groups, said Erica N. Oquendo, division director of youth and family services for Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, which expects to oversee Summer Rising programs in at least eight schools this summer and also runs eight DYCD after-school programs.

Another issue for Oquendo: Sometimes last summer, she saw children sign up for seats but never show up. To her frustration, her organization didn’t have control over unenrolling that child and offering their seat to someone else in need — an issue that must still be addressed, she said.

While the changes announced Wednesday could mean more seats for students already attending a given school, Oquendo craved more details about how the various priorities would be ranked.

“That’s the hard part — I wouldn’t necessarily say I would want to prioritize an after-school student over a child in a homeless shelter,” Oquendo said. “How do we measure the level of care that’s needed?”

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

64% of NYC’s bilingual special education students didn’t get all of their services last year

2023-03-20T22:12:41+00:00

Nearly two-thirds of New York City students who are entitled to bilingual special education services are not receiving all of their mandated support, according to new figures released by the city’s education department.

At the end of last school year, just 36% of children who were assigned bilingual special education services received the correct amount of instruction from a certified bilingual teacher and in a classroom with the proper ratio of students and staff.

That means about 3,100 students did not receive their correct classroom placements, including those that are co-taught and include a mix of special and general education students, classes with higher staff ratios exclusively for students with disabilities, or situations where students are pulled out of their classrooms for small group instruction. By comparison, 88% of all students with disabilities were placed in the correct environment listed on their individualized education program, or IEP, which officials said is the highest rate on record.

The statistics are part of the city’s annual special education report and refer to services delivered last school year, when students were required to attend school in person for the first time since the pandemic led to shuttered buildings in March 2020. The report now includes more detailed breakdowns for students who are entitled to bilingual special education services, revealing troubling gaps between those students and their English-speaking peers.

For years, state officials have criticized the city for failing to provide bilingual special education services, placing the education department on a corrective action plan in part due to ongoing shortages of certified bilingual educators and service providers. Advocates emphasized that those problems are even more urgent now, as roughly 14,000 students have enrolled in the city’s public schools since July, many of whom are seeking asylum and may not speak fluent English.

“It is unconscionable that the city has yet to fully close the gaps for immigrants with disabilities,” Andrea Ortiz, senior manager of education policy at the New York Immigration Coalition, wrote in an email, noting that lost services and instruction during the pandemic hit English learners particularly hard. She added that caregivers who don’t speak English have also struggled to access translated IEPs and other special education documents.

City statistics also show significant gaps in access to other wraparound support, though there have been significant improvements since the previous school year. About 21% of bilingual students who were entitled to counseling services received none or only part of their required sessions, far higher than the 6% rate for all other students with disabilities. Meanwhile, 13% of students who were entitled to receive bilingual speech therapy received none or only part of their required sessions, about the same as last year. Only 3% of their English-speaking peers fell into that category.

Lori Podvesker, director of disability and education policy at IncludeNYC, also pointed to an increase in the share of English learners who are eligible for special education services but are waiting more than the required 60 days for an IEP meeting. About 32% of English learners fell into that category, up from 23% the year before.

“That’s significant — that shows the need for more bilingual evaluators and providers,” she said.

Education department officials noted in the report that one reason students may not receive all of their bilingual special education services is families may not want to relocate their children to schools that can offer the full range of support.

“Many families do not move their child to a school where a bilingual program is available, and the DOE does not force families to accept placement in a particular school for the reason of special education programming,” the report notes.

The department is working with superintendents across nine of the city’s 32 districts to add bilingual special education classes, according to the report. They are also using federal relief funding to offer small group instruction, often outside of their regular classrooms, for bilingual students who are not receiving all of their classroom services. Officials also wrote that they are trying to speed up special education evaluations, including by adding psychologists to school support teams and expanding after-school evaluation sites.

Still, advocates argue that families aren’t to blame if nearby schools can’t provide bilingual special education support, noting that traveling long distances to secure services may not be tenable for younger children, and the city’s yellow bus system is notoriously unreliable. Plus, some families simply aren’t offered services at all if there are no available seats, according to Janyll Canals-Kernizan, director of the Robin Hood Project at Advocates for Children, who works with families seeking bilingual special education services.

“It’s not just that families are being offered something and they’re rejecting it because it’s far away. It’s also that [they] are mandated to receive these supports on their IEPs,” she said, “and they just never get it.”

Under city law, the annual special education report is due by Nov. 1, though city officials did not release it until this month despite repeated requests. An education department spokesperson did not respond to a question about what caused the delay.

Reema Amin contributed.

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

Mental health safety net for youth: Adams outlines vision to catch kids in crisis

2023-03-02T22:07:21+00:00

If you or someone you know is considering self-harm, please dial 988 for the national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

As New York City continues to grapple with youth mental health challenges, Mayor Eric Adams laid out a sweeping vision on Thursday to help schools better recognize student mental health needs and create a safety net for kids in crisis.

The needs are high: About a fifth of children ages 3 to 13 had one or more mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral problems in 2021, according to health department data provided in the mayor’s new plan, called Care, Community, Action: A Mental Health Plan for New York City.

Rates of suicidal ideation jumped to nearly 16% from about 12% over the past decade, with more than 9% of the city’s high school students reporting they attempted suicide over the course of 2021.

“We’ve all seen the isolation and trauma that children have experienced over the past several years, along with the results: disappearing into screens, behavioral issues, and even suicide,” Adams said while revealing the plan.

Addressing the mental health needs of young people and their families was one of the three major focal points of Adams’ blueprint. The plan calls for several things, including opening more school-based mental health clinics, creating suicide prevention trainings for educators, and assessing the impacts of social media as possible “toxic exposure.”

Though most of the ideas lacked details in terms of timeline and cost, the mayor did add a price tag of $12 million for a previously announced telehealth hotline for high school students, which the city says will be the largest of its kind in the nation.

City officials said they will track certain data points to determine whether the plan is working, including the number of contacts made by or on behalf of youth through NYC Well (the city’s free, confidential support, crisis intervention, and information and referral service), and the percent of young people reporting feelings of sadness and hopelessness.

Here are four highlights from the plan that relates to youth and schools:

City taps telehealth to fill treatment gaps

The mayor initially announced in January that the city would launch a telehealth program for high schoolers, though has not said when the program will launch and how students can access it.

Officials said Thursday they are still working out details.

“Telehealth can improve access to care for young people and their families who cannot easily get around or meet the strict time or expenses of traveling to in-person appointments, especially when mental health provider locations might be far away from the child’s home,” the mayor’s plan stated. “In addition, many youth feel more comfortable using technology to connect, and technology offers new ways to stay connected outside of traditional therapy sessions.”

Other cities are leaning on telehealth for young people, as well, including Los Angeles.

Experts previously shared cautious optimism with Chalkbeat about the plan when Adams first announced it, while also raising questions about how it would work, including whether school staff will be monitoring sessions and get involved if a student’s needs are more serious.

School-based mental health clinics to expand

As of the 2020-21 school year, 162 schools had on-site mental health clinics, while another 238 had health clinics that offered some mental health services, according to a 2022 report from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The mayor’s plan calls on expanding mental health clinics that exist inside of school buildings through a partnership with the city’s education department, health department, the state’s Office of Mental Health and community providers.

Asked how many more clinics the city wants to open and an estimated cost, a health department spokesperson said these “are active and ongoing discussions.”

Creating school-based mental health clinics, however, can be complicated, said Kevin Dahill-Fuchel, executive director of Counseling in Schools, which partners with schools to offer counseling services. It involves getting approvals from the state, finding space inside of schools that would be eligible for such clinics, and setting up a financial structure to get reimbursed by Medicaid for the services, he said.

An easier lift, he suggested, might be to get more community organizations like his to offer services in schools. Those groups often operate with grants, thus cutting out complicated funding issues.

A push to train school staffers on suicide prevention

Adams wants schools staff to be trained on suicide prevention so that they can “respond appropriately to the needs of students,” the plan said.

Dahill-Fuchel praised such training, noting they could potentially help more students realize they need help.

“I think one of the things that is really gonna be useful is this idea of a public health approach to suicide prevention, which at its core really means demystifying it,” Dahill-Fuchel said. “It tends to be a word that, around children, people don’t like to use and that becomes part of the problem.”

City officials also plan to launch a program, called “Caring Transitions,” that would focus on preventing youth ages 5-17 in the Queens and Bronx who have been to the hospital for a suicide attempt from re-entering. Teams would be responsible for connecting these young people to follow-up services in their neighborhoods as well as “additional supports” for up to three months after they leave the hospital.

The plan also says it will launch a suicide prevention pilot program for young people of color ages 5 to 24. The goal is to bolster interventions that more effectively meet the needs of Black, Asian American, and Latino youth who face suicide-related risk “that includes or is intensified by racial inequities,” the plan said. The plan did not specify what those interventions might look like.

An attempt to address cyberbullying

Concerned with social media’s impact on youth mental health, the Adams administration plans to create a task force to study the issue and develop a public health approach to reduce exposure to harmful online content.

The plan noted that “there are few rules or regulations” on how social media companies interact with young people.

“We’re also going to examine the potential risks of social media to our children’s mental health and work to make sure tech companies are required to keep online spaces safe for our kids,” Adams said during his speech.

The group would include youth and families, according to the plan. It didn’t specify when the group would launch.

Federal officials have called for more rigorous research on how social media impacts youth mental health. In a 2021 advisory released by the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, officials note that while several studies have linked worsening mental health to online platforms, other researchers have argued that there is no clear relation between the two.

Seattle Public Schools recently filed a lawsuit against leading social media companies, alleging that students and schools were harmed by worsened mental health that stemmed from social media.

The surgeon general’s advisory also called for technology companies to make sure they were fostering “safe digital environments” for their youngest users.

Some of the pressure seems to be working: Tik Tok announced earlier this week it will set the default screen time limit to 60 minutes for users under 18, though kids can continue using the app with a passcode.

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.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC to match LGBTQ+ youth with ‘supportive’ summer jobs, officials say

2023-03-01T23:06:43+00:00

As some states pass anti-LGBTQ+ laws, New York City is moving in the other direction with plans to offer “safe and affirming” jobs to LGTBQ youth through its sprawling summer employment program.

The effort will be part of the city’s now 60-year-old Summer Youth Employment Program, or SYEP, which last year provided about 100,000 paid jobs and career exploration opportunities to young people, ages 14-24.

Mayor Eric Adams has shown special interest in the summer jobs program — with hopes that it would help reduce gun violence among young people — and expanded it last year by adding 25,000 more slots. As part of his annual State of the City address in January, the mayor’s office noted plans to create “supportive work opportunities” for LGBTQ+ youth.

Details are so far scarce on what the initiative — dubbed “SYEP Pride” — will look like, or what will define a safe and affirming workplace. Officials are hoping to reach “a few hundred young people,” but the ultimate program will depend on how many LGBTQ+ youth apply through March 31, when the SYEP application period closes, said Mark Zustovich, a spokesperson for the Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, which oversees SYEP.

“SYEP Pride will connect young people who identify as LGBTQ+ with supportive, safe and affirming work and career exploration experiences,” Valerie Mulligan, deputy commissioner for Workforce Connect at DYCD, said during a recent City Council hearing focused on youth services. “The program will also allow employer partners to offer unique employment and learning opportunities that will support and empower LGBTQ+ youth through the SYEP program.”

City officials did not immediately say why they’ve decided to launch this program now. But it comes at a time when LGBTQ+ rights have taken center stage nationally, as conservative states have proposed anti-LGBTQ+ laws, including banning discussion of sexuality and gender identity in classrooms.

Discrimination in the workplace has long been an issue for this community, including youth. Just over one-third of young people reported experiencing discrimination in the workplace, with higher rates among transgender and nonbinary youth, according to a 2020 survey of 40,000 LGBTQ+ youth, ages 13-24, conducted by The Trevor Project, an organization that advocates on behalf of LGBTQ+ young people.

More than 80% of youth who reported discrimination said it came from co-workers, while half said it came from supervisors. Youth who said their employer was LGBTQ+-affirming also reported slightly lower rates of attempting suicide compared with those who didn’t feel their workplaces were welcoming.

“Further, our data indicate an urgent need for companies to develop diverse and inclusive hiring strategies as well as to create workplaces that are affirming and supportive of LGBTQ+ youth, particularly those who are transgender and nonbinary and/or youth of color,” the Trevor Project survey brief noted. “Doing so will not only require companies to train all staff on diversity and inclusion but also to create a culture in which diverse identities are appreciated and celebrated.”

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.

NY’s budget has $100M for academic and mental health programs. Schools still don’t have the money.

2023-02-24T23:07:54+00:00

With growing concerns over youth mental health and academic recovery, New York’s state lawmakers included $100 million in the state budget last year for schools to spend on mental health resources or after-school programs.

But, with the majority of the school year now over, school districts haven’t been able to apply for the money.

“It is very disappointing that the money that was allocated for desperately needed services by children and adolescents is not getting to them,” said Dawn Yuster, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children. “There is a lot of trauma, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideations that we continue to hear about from family after family.”

The idea was to let school districts apply for a chunk of the money, which would match whatever other dollars they planned to spend on such programs. Half of the money was to be used during this school year and the other half for the 2023-24 school year. Lawmakers envisioned the funds going toward hiring mental health professionals, expanding school-based mental health services, and creating summer, after-school and extended day and year programs.

State education officials, who are charged with planning the grant program, have blamed the delay on a lengthy process that involves getting approvals from the state’s budget division — which has not yet given its final sign off.

Justin Mason, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, said the process has been complex because it involves both mental health and education components. They now expect the money to be available for next school year, but declined to answer whether schools will get to use the money for any additional school years.

Asked whether Hochul finds the delay acceptable, Mason said it’s the result of a longstanding process that exists to “ensure state funding is allocated in a fair and transparent manner.”

Hochul proposes grant funds to bolster pandemic recovery

As calls grew nationally to address a youth mental health crisis fueled by widespread loss and grief from the pandemic, Hochul proposed last January to add $100 million to the state budget for this fiscal year, which runs from April 1, 2022 to this upcoming March 31, and touted the money in a press release when it made it into the final budget.

At the time of Hochul’s proposal, students had returned to campuses full time for the first time since the pandemic. Many educators had reported students struggling with behavioral, social, and mental health issues. Social workers and counselors reported being inundated with student referrals.

In New York City, one in every 200 children has lost a caregiver to COVID. More than 40% of students nationally reported feeling persistent sadness in 2021, compared to about 25% ten years before that, according to a recently released survey.

Bob Lowry, deputy director for advocacy and communication at the state’s Council of School Superintendents, said his organization has seen a need for more dedicated mental health resources in New York’s schools since at least 2017, based on an annual survey of superintendents across New York.

They were thrilled when Hochul highlighted it as a priority. He said that they are “surprised” and “disappointed” that this $100 million has still failed to reach schools.

It’s possible many districts are still busy spending billions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief aid, potentially making this grant less of a need at the moment, advocates said.

Still, districts likely would have jumped at the money had it been available, Lowry said. Those matching funds could have helped districts launch or expand initiatives that they’d already been working on, such as New York City’s pilot effort to pour more mental health resources into 50 high-need schools in order to minimize the use of police intervention, Yuster said.

Getting grant money to school districts can take almost a year

Education officials said it usually takes nine to 10 months to issue a request for proposals, or RFP, which lays out the parameters of the funds and is what districts must respond to when applying for grant money.

For grant programs, education officials are typically tasked with creating the RFP, which other agencies, such as the state’s budget division, must then approve. That can lead to monthslong delays from when the money is available to when schools can use it, advocates said.

“I think mental health was something that was underinvested in prior to the pandemic [and] the pandemic exposed this is actually a high-need area,” said Jasmine Gripper, executive director of Alliance for Quality Education, an advocacy group that has pushed for more school funding. “We needed to double down, and the delay in that process just kinda signals how we don’t take our children’s mental health needs as a priority.”

A timeline provided by the education department shows how the process played out with this $100 million pot of funds: Education officials first sent a summary of a possible RFP last June to the budget office. They spent July reworking their proposal in response to feedback from the budget and governor’s offices, but by August budget officials asked the education department to create an RFP based on what they had originally proposed.

In November, two months after the school year had started in New York City, education officials sent over a completed draft of the RFP. They received more feedback right before winter break, which required “substantial” changes, according to education officials, who sent another revised version back to budget officials earlier this month.

As of Friday, the education department was awaiting final approval to release the RFP to school districts.

“The field is looking at us and saying, ‘We desperately need this,’” State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said during a legislative budget hearing earlier this month, where she was asked about the delay in distributing the funding.

“We have to streamline it,” Rosa said of the RFP approval process. “We have to get to a point that… we do it and make sure that if they have 27-30 questions, let’s sit at the table, let’s get the questions done, let’s get this money into the hands of our school districts and our schools and our agencies, where it’s needed,” Rosa said.

Hochul is still interested in these issues: Her budget proposal this year calls for making mental health services more accessible for students and directing a chunk of Foundation Aid, the state’s main formula for school funding, toward high-dosage tutoring.

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 proposes $90 million in new funding for homeless students and high-need schools

2023-01-24T01:04:56+00:00

New York City plans to boost funding for homeless students and funnel more resources to schools that serve a disproportionate share of students with disabilities, English learners, and those living in poverty, according to a proposal unveiled Monday.

Advocates have long criticized the city for not accounting for homeless students in its school funding formula given the depth of their needs and staggering numbers: Nearly one in 10 New York City public school students live in shelters, are doubled up with relatives, or otherwise lack stable housing.

Starting next school year, the city plans to add homeless students to a list of groups that come with more dollars, including students with disabilities and those who have low test scores. The move would send about $45 million that schools may use to hire additional staff, add attendance outreach programs, and help serve an influx of migrant students, most of whom do not live in permanent housing.

The city will send another $45 million to schools that educate high concentrations of needy students, defined as campuses serving an outsize share of students with disabilities, English language learners, as well as those living in poverty. That change would boost the budgets of roughly 300 schools, city officials said.

The proposals are a response to a school funding task force that recommended revising the city’s Fair Student Funding formula, which accounts for about two-thirds of school budgets. Under the formula, schools typically receive a baseline amount per student — this year, it’s about $4,197. Students with additional needs come with extra dollars on top of the baseline.

Mayor Eric Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks also have faced enormous pressure to increase school funding, especially after reducing school budgets last year because of declining enrollment and dwindling federal relief money. (Earlier this month, city officials reversed plans to further reduce school budgets next school year.)

“These changes, made as a direct result of the thoughtful work of the Fair Student Funding Working Group, are representative of New York City public schools’ commitment to working directly with our communities and putting into place genuine change to support our schools and our kids,” Banks said in a statement.

Changes to the funding formula are not final and must be approved by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy.

Both city proposals line up with recommendations the task force issued in November; however, the administration is planning to spend significantly less money on them than the task force suggested. Their report recommended spending from $42 million to $85 million more on homeless students and from $60 million to $120 million more on schools with high concentrations of vulnerable students. The city plans to spend $45 million in each category.

The city also ignored three of the task force’s five main recommendations, including adding a weight in the funding formula for students living in poverty; increasing the $225,000 baseline schools receive on top of their per-student funding; and nixing a controversial funding boost for some of the city’s most selective high schools.

Asked why the city sidestepped some proposals, Jenna Lyle, an education department spokesperson, wrote in an email that the city prioritized recommendations that would funnel more money to high-need schools without needing to reduce resources on other campuses to pay for it.

Still, multiple members of the task force, outside education advocates, the city’s teachers union, and elected officials cheered the city’s plan.

The education department’s “adoption of key recommendations from the Working Group is a welcome step that will result in $90 million in new funding for our most vulnerable students,” City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams tweeted.

Jasmine Gripper, executive director of the advocacy group Alliance for Quality Education and a co-chair of the task force, said the city’s proposal was a step in the right direction even though she was initially skeptical about the process.

“It doesn’t feel like parents and students and advocates wasted their time,” Gripper said. “Do I think it’s going to solve everything? No. But it will drive resources to our neediest students.”

The city’s efforts to rethink its school funding formula have sputtered in the past; a previous task force never publicly released any recommendations.

The latest task force was created only after the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, which is largely appointed by the mayor, took the unusual step of voting against the Fair Student Funding funding formula for this school year. Though the formula was later approved, officials promised to launch a task force to solicit feedback.

There was some tension with city officials over how to pay for the proposals included in the report. Education department officials had insisted that spending increases, such as a boost for students who are in temporary housing, would have to be offset by school budget cuts elsewhere.

Education department officials confirmed that they would not reduce other elements of the school funding formula to pay for the changes, but did not elaborate on how the plan would be funded.

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

NYC’s education panel grows with new mayoral appointees and elected members

2023-01-20T14:50:39+00:00

Mayor Eric Adams unveiled on Thursday his newly appointed members to New York City’s Panel for Educational Policy, which has grown significantly in response to an updated state law.

Adams appointed six new people to the newly expanded panel that signs off on major education department contracts and school closures or co-locations. State lawmakers last year required the panel’s expansion from 15 to 23 members when they granted Adams another two years of controlling the nation’s largest school system, in hopes of bringing more parent voice to the body.

Those state-level changes called for the panel to grow from nine to 13 mayoral appointees. Four of these members must be public school parents, with at least one parent of a child with a disability, one with a child who is in a bilingual or English as a new language program, and one parent with a child in a District 75 school, which serves students with disabilities that require intensive support.

The new law also required the presidents of the city’s 32 parent councils to elect five members representing each borough — four more than currently serve. The city’s borough presidents continued to have their previously allotted number of five appointees.

One of the mayor’s new picks already raised eyebrows: Khari Edwards was ousted from his role as a governor’s aide in 2009 after the state found him “immature and irresponsible,” and accused him of lying in testimony for an inspector general investigation, according to the Daily News.

A City Hall spokesperson defended Edwards, calling him “not only a dedicated public servant, but, more importantly, a caring parent of three, who has continued to demonstrate his commitment to New Yorkers since these allegations surfaced over a decade ago.”

Edwards, who has since launched One Brooklyn Health and It Starts Here as the vice president of external affairs at Brookdale University Hospital, “has a strong track record of serving his community,” the spokesperson said in a statement after this story initially published.

Adams made a previous misstep with a panel appointment: last year he tapped Staten Island pastor Kathlyn Barrett-Layne but quickly withdrew the choice after the Daily News reported she had a history of anti-gay comments.

Two of Adams’ previous appointees, Kyle Kimball and Karina Taveras, were not reappointed, according to a spokesperson for City Hall, who declined to say why.

Additionally, the council presidents only elected four members instead of the required five. The Staten Island seat “remained vacant” during the election process, according to a City Hall spokesperson. Typically, such vacancies must be filled within 60 days by another vote from parent council presidents in that specific borough, according to the chancellor’s regulations.

In this case, there is only one parent council in Staten Island, so its president will appoint someone to the position. (Parents can nominate themselves by sending their information to the education department’s Office of Family and Community Engagement, which will forward eligible applications to the council president.)

With the expansion, the mayor’s appointees still make up a majority of the panel, which is often seen as a “rubber stamp” of the administration’s policies since mayoral appointees typically vote in favor of the administration’s proposals. Last year, dissenting voices were typically from the borough president appointees, as well as the panel’s elected member, Tom Sheppard, who has been reelected to the panel. One such vote — which was in part the result of the mayor failing to appoint enough of his members in time — was the panel’s rejection of the city’s funding formula.

Under this new configuration, it’s possible the public will see more disagreement among members. For instance, members elected by the parent councils and borough president appointees could potentially band together against certain policy proposals, such as school closures or co-locations. But their votes would still fall short of the mayor’s majority.

Also as part of the state’s changes last year, the panel must consider changes to school utilization, including co-locations and closures, in the borough of that school. That may lead to more frequent panel meetings. The panel, which typically meets once a month, has scheduled two meetings each in January and February.

Below is a list of the new panel. Those in bold are new:

The mayor’s appointees

Phoebe-Sade Arnold, director of community affairs at Columbia University
Lily Chan, parent of two English language learners and a brand manager for Revlon
Khari Edwards, head of corporate relations at Ayr Wellness and parent of three students
Anita Garcia, retired principal of Coney Island’s P.S. 329
Anthony Giordano, founder and managing partner at marketing firm Legacy Partners USA
Michelle Joseph, parent of a public school student who previously worked in District 79
Alan Ong, previous president of the District 26 parent council
Angela Green, chair of the panel and retired principal of Richard S. Grossley Middle School in Jamaica
Gladys Ward, executive assistant to the CEO of The Ministers and Missionaries Benefits Board
Gregory Faulkner, former chief of staff for New York City council member
Maisha Sapp, led program development for an organization called Blossom For Girls
Marjorie Dienstag, mother of two children who have graduated and a third child who attends a District 75 school
Maria Kenley, mother of a child with a disability

Newly elected members from the city’s parent councils

Naveed Hasan, parent of a public school student, who served several years on District 3’s parent council
Jessamyn Lee, parent of two public school students and a former teacher who worked with students learning English as a new language
Thomas Sheppard, the panel’s first elected member, parent of three public school students and former member of several parent groups, including District 11’s parent council
Ephraim Zakry, parent of two public school students and has served on the Citywide Council for High Schools

Borough president appointees

Queens representative Sheree Gibson, owner of a consulting firm and member of several parent boards, including former co-chair of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Committee
Bronx representative Geneal Chacon, parent of three public school students and PTA president at P.S. 277
Brooklyn representative Tazin Azad, mother of three public school students and member of several parent groups, including former vice-chair of District 22’s parent council
Manhattan representative Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, medical lecturer at CUNY School of Medicine and former president of District 4’s parent council
Staten Island representative Aaron Bogad, parent of a public school student and member of several parent-led groups, including president of District 31’s parent council

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.

After COVID paused Regents exams, graduation rates for NYC’s English language learners surged

2023-01-19T19:31:54+00:00

Arnulfo Toribio was ready to drop out of high school.

It was 2020, and Toribio felt exhausted from learning years’ worth of material while balancing school with a full-time restaurant job. Before immigrating to New York City a few years earlier, he had spent much of his childhood working on a Mexican farm to support his family after his father died, missing at least six years of formal schooling.

A guidance counselor persuaded him to stay on track for a diploma, and Toribio got an additional boost just months before graduation: In response to the pandemic, the state canceled New York’s Regents exams, five of which students are required to pass in order to graduate. Students would still need to pass their courses. Toribio, who hadn’t passed his English or Algebra Regents after a couple attempts, graduated later that year.

“I benefited from that policy,” Toribio explained in Spanish through a translator. “It honestly helped me graduate.”

Bucking national trends, graduation rates rose across the state in the 2020-21 school year. Even more surprising, the rate catapulted for the city’s English language learners — rising by 14 percentage points to 60%, the largest increase on record for those students and a greater rise than other student groups.

The graduation rate spike seemed counterintuitive given that low-income immigrant communities had been severely affected by the pandemic, and many English learners found it more difficult to learn remotely. (Educators also found it difficult to teach remotely.)

Data obtained by Chalkbeat suggests that the temporary policy change — first canceling the English Regents and then not requiring a passing score on it to graduate in 2020-21 — removed a hurdle for English language learners trying to earn their diplomas. More English learners graduated during that time period, far fewer of whom passed the English Regents exam.

State officials acknowledged the spike could have been connected to the temporary cancellation of the Regents exams, and specifically the English exam, but they couldn’t say to what extent.

The effects of that policy could become clearer soon, as the state prepares to release graduation rates from the 2021-22 school year, when Regents exams resumed. The data could help inform a commission tasked with recommending changes to the state’s graduation requirements in 2024, including whether the Regents exams should still be required for students to graduate.

More English language learners take advantage of the Regents cancellation

Students typically take the English Regents exam at some point between freshman and senior year — with some taking it multiple times in hopes of eventually passing so they can get their diplomas. (Some students can appeal their scores and still graduate.)

In the 2018-19 school year, nearly 3,000 English language learners graduated from city public schools within four years, and roughly 67% of them had passed their English Regents at some point. In comparison, nearly all students who graduated and were not learning English as a new language had passed their English exams.

By 2020-21, when the English Regents was optional, the number of English language learners who earned diplomas rose to nearly 4,900, while just 8% passed their exams. (Pass rates also fell for other students who graduated, as more of them earned diplomas. Still, more than three-quarters of non-English learners had passed the test.)

The data doesn’t prove that English Regents exams are the source of low graduation rates among English learners because other factors could have influenced the recent rise, multiple policy experts who reviewed the data said.

Still, there’s “pretty good evidence” that canceling the exams was “one of the things that caused kids to be able to graduate,” said Julie Sugarman, senior policy analyst for K-12 education who focuses on English learners at the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigration Integration Policy.

Sugarman also noted that counselors could have encouraged more students to graduate, or looser grading policies could have helped students. (In Toribio’s case, he said his teachers were also flexible with his assignment deadlines as he searched for a new job during the start of the pandemic.)

Still, the data shows strong signs that “students who disproportionately struggle with high stakes standardized tests are disproportionately impacted” when those exams are no longer required to graduate, Sarah Part, a senior policy analyst with Advocates For Children, which has been advocating to remove Regents as a graduation requirement, said in an email.

English language learners typically don’t graduate on time

Graduation rates for English learners have been historically low — 46% graduated on time in 2020 in New York City, compared with 79% of all students citywide. Advocates and policy experts have cited many reasons, including that newer immigrant students might juggle work with school and lack of enough support in classrooms as they’re still learning the language.

Those rates have steadily grown since 2016 by an average of roughly 4 percentage points annually. But the 14-point jump in the 2020-21 school year was an anomaly. It was so high, that for the first time in eight years, English learners no longer had the lowest four-year graduation rate among the city’s major student groups, surpassing children with disabilities.

Research has found little evidence that requiring high-stakes graduation exams improves student achievement, and doing so may actually increase dropout rates for struggling students. The English exams can be particularly hard on English learners, advocates and researchers said. Sugarman said she often hears from educators about students who have passed all of their classes, but can’t pass the English Regents exam.

Just 3% of the city’s English learners who graduated last year did so without using any exemptions from Regents exams, compared to 28% of non-English learners, according to an analysis from The Education Trust-New York.

That organization described their findings as a “signal that students may be underprepared for postsecondary opportunities.”

At the same time, the data is likely fodder for advocates who have called for the state to stop requiring the Regents exams to graduate.

“What are more meaningful measures that can still capture the student’s learning and still give them different possibilities in different ways, so that their ability to graduate doesn’t depend on one test they take on one day for a few hours out of the four years plus of their high school career?” said Juliet Eisenstein, senior staff attorney with Advocates For Children who sits on the state’s commission that is reviewing graduation requirements.

Juanmy Moscoso, an English learner who graduated in 2021, took the English Regents exam five times before passing it, finally succeeding his junior year of high school, three years after he first moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic. He was part of the minority of English learners who passed the exam prior to graduating in 2021.

He felt that his teachers had done all they could to prepare him, but it was tough to pass the exam while also juggling a challenging course load, including several Advanced Placement classes.

“The problem is me not knowing the language as I wanted,” Moscoso said.

Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, an associate professor of international education at NYU, who has studied English language learners, has raised the larger question of why officials expect newcomer English learners to graduate on time to begin with — an argument other policy researchers have also made.

Those students are acclimating to a new country, as well as a new language, and could benefit from extra support and more time instead of “getting them out as quickly as possible,” he said. He said that many newer immigrants don’t pursue college and wondered if that would be different if they received more support in school.

There are signs that English learners who get more time to learn the language perform well academically. The graduation rates for students who are former English learners typically outpace their peers.

Toribio, the student who graduated in 2020, went on to attend community college. But he stopped attending because he was struggling to pay for school, according to an advocate who has helped him in the past. He hopes to go back soon.

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.

Hochul’s 2023 education agenda: high-dosage tutoring, college access, student mental health

2023-01-10T18:14:53+00:00

Improving access to student mental health services, boosting school funding, and creating high-dosage tutoring programs figure prominently in New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s education agenda, according to her annual State of the State address on Tuesday.

Hochul’s speech — which governors use to signal their priorities for the coming year — outlined issues she’s shown interest in before, such as improving college access.

Her proposals, which come two months after significant drops on national reading and math exams, also show a deeper commitment to addressing how the pandemic impacted students both academically and mentally.

Still, her proposals don’t include some items that advocates were hoping to address this year in Albany, including hiring shortages, which Hochul prioritized last year.

Here are highlights from Hochul’s education policy proposals:

Hochul keeps pledge to fully fund Foundation Aid

As part of her budget proposal, Hochul confirmed that she will include a $2.7 billion increase in school funding for districts across New York under the Foundation Aid formula, which sends more money to high-needs districts.

Last year, state lawmakers had promised to spend billions of more dollars over three years to fully fund the long-debated formula, which accounts for most of the dollars that schools receive from the state.

This upcoming budget will represent the final phase-in of that money, and Hochul’s commitment to spend an additional $2.7 billion matches the funding request from the state’s Board of Regents, as well as a coalition of education-focused organizations called the Educational Conference Board.

High inflation rates ballooned the cost for this year from a $1.9 billion increase to $2.7 billion — raising concerns among some advocates about whether Hochul would stick to her word as the country is at risk for a recession.

“This historic level of financial support for New York public schools will reverberate for generations to come, broadening access to opportunity and enabling New York to build the education system of the future,” said Hochul’s book of policy proposals.

Several education organizations applauded Hochul’s plan. In a statement, Alliance for Quality Education, a school funding advocacy group, called it a “historic milestone for New York State’s public schools.”

Plans to make student mental health needs more accessible

As part of a broader effort to address mental health needs, Hochul has proposed to make school-based services more accessible to students and less expensive to open and run such programs in the first place.

Student mental health needs have been a large focus for educators and advocates since the onset of the pandemic. While many New York City schools offer some level of help to those with behavioral or mental health needs, educators and families report that the needs outpace what’s available, and many students are unable to access those resources.

More than one-third of New York City public schools have none of the six mental health programs that the education department touts on its website, according to an audit conducted last year by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Hochul wants to increase the rate at which school-based clinics and other wraparound services are reimbursed by Medicaid, hoping that this will encourage providers to open more such clinics. She would also create annual grants that would help cover the costs of creating school-based services. Her proposal did not include more specific details, including how much money would be available for the grants.

Hochul also wants to introduce legislation that would require private insurance to pay the Medicaid rate for school-based services that students receive, since those insurance companies typically pay below the Medicaid rate, according to a spokesperson for the governor.

Charles Dedrick, executive director of the state Council of School Superintendents, applauded the proposal and described it as a “comprehensive plan” to expand and provide coverage for these services.

Hochul wants to invest in high-dosage tutoring

In order to address the academic effects of the pandemic, Hochul plans to invest $250 million of Foundation Aid money for districts to create high-impact tutoring programs, where students are tutored multiple times a week.

Mirroring national trends, New York saw steep drops in fourth grade math and reading scores, as well as eighth grade math, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, given for the first time last year since 2019.

Districts would use the money to establish the programs on their own or in partnership with an outside provider. These programs would specifically tutor students in grades 3-8 on reading and math.

Officials did not immediately respond to say how the money would be distributed or how much New York City would receive.

Researchers have found that students can do better in school when they’re tutored frequently in small groups. The endeavor is expensive, but an investment from the state could inject a boost to create such programs in New York City and elsewhere. Hochul’s policy book says that such programs “deliver increased instructional time and customized student learning, and establish meaningful relationships between tutors and students.”

One possible model in New York City is a CUNY-run tutoring program, where 800 of the school’s students studying to become teachers are working with struggling readers in first and second grade.

Creating a pipeline to higher education and the workforce

Hochul pitched a slew of proposals aimed to get more students into college and the workforce.

Under her plan, New York’s graduating high school seniors would receive admission to their local SUNY community college. Additionally, students who aren’t admitted to their SUNY school of choice would automatically be considered for admission at another SUNY campus.

She’s proposing to spend $20 million in grants for districts to create college-level courses in high school, through which students can earn college credit. The money would also go toward technology-focused programs – both in school districts and colleges – with the goal of preparing more students for such careers after graduation.

Priority for the grant money will be given to programs in high-needs school districts, as well as districts that plan to create programs focused on computer science and computer and software engineering pathways “with an eye toward the technology jobs of the present and future,” according to the proposal book.

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.

Goodbye, Regents? A New York commission mulls high school graduation requirements

2023-01-04T23:16:42+00:00

New York’s high school students have taken Regents exams since the 1870s. But they could become a relic of the past, as state officials start the final leg of a lengthy process to rethink the state’s graduation requirements.

In New York, students are generally required to earn 22 course credits in high school and take five Regents exams, including one each in English, math, science, and social studies. A 64-person commission charged with reviewing those requirements first met in October, and it is expected to present its recommendations to the New York State Board of Regents in the spring or summer of 2024.

The long-simmering discussion often centers on how New York is one of just 11 states that requires high school exit exams and that, despite a rising graduation rate, diploma requirements may be hurting the state’s most disadvantaged students.

“Regents exams have been the gold standard for over a century — and with good reason,” Commissioner Betty Rosa wrote in February 2019, when she was the chancellor of the Board of Regents, months before the state’s efforts began. “But our systems must be continually reviewed, renewed, and occasionally revised in order to best serve our students and the people of this great state.”

Policymakers and advocates are offering some clues for where they hope things will go. That includes alternatives to the Regents exams, removing the exams as part of graduation requirements, or even creating another type of exit exam.

Research shows that exit exams may increase dropout rates

Decades of research has shown that Regents exams don’t better prepare students for life after high school and can harm students of color from low-income families.

This was backed up in a review of academic literature presented to the Board of Regents in November and shared with the special commission tasked with recommending possible changes to the board. High school exit exams led to an increase in dropout rates and were more likely to impact graduation rates for low-income and Black students, the review found. However, one nationally representative study found that graduation rates only temporarily dipped after introducing high school exit exams.

Dropout rates can improve if students are offered “alternate pathways” that aren’t another high-stakes exam, such as the SAT or ACT, according to the review. The review also found that students enrolled in optional, high-level classes were more likely to do well on standardized tests and attend college. Additionally, graduation rates also increased in places that offered peer support programs and had mandatory attendance policies.

A pilot program offers hints at alternative graduation requirements

The Board of Regents was supposed to consider changes in 2021, but the pandemic delayed the process. As the board picked back up on that work last year — which included collecting feedback from communities across the state — officials showed an interest in alternatives to the Regents exams. On top of offering more options for completing exam requirements in recent years, the state education department launched a pilot program that offers students alternatives to Regents exams, such as projects and essays.

That program was, in part, inspired by New York City’s roughly three dozen consortium schools, which have been approved by the state to grant diplomas based on oral presentations, essays and research papers, science experiments, and higher-level math problem-solving instead of the five required Regents exams.

But policymakers may face some pushback to performance-based assessments.

Jeff Smink, deputy director at Education Trust-New York, which is represented on the blue ribbon commission, said his advocacy organization isn’t opposed to alternate pathways and understands that some students need other options to meet graduation requirements. But the group wants students to be assessed using an “objective measure.”

“The concern is that there just won’t be that accountability — districts can say students did this performance assessment, but there’s no objective measurement of whether students are prepared,” Smink said.

Policy tweaks in recent years have led school districts to rely disproportionately on less rigorous graduation requirements, according to Smink’s organization. For example, in 2019, Ed Trust found that 62% of the state’s increase in graduation rates was due to more students earning “local” diplomas, which is one of the state’s less rigorous graduation pathways. They also found that Black and low-income students were more likely to take less rigorous, career-focused pathways. (It had been easier for students to earn an older version of local diplomas through the 1990s, but that changed as the state phased in the Regents diploma requirements by 2015.)

Ed Trust is also concerned about how prepared students are for life after high school. Smink pointed to data that gives a glimpse of what happens after graduation. Of New York’s nearly 58,000 graduates in 2014 who received tuition assistance and attended college in the state, just 59% of those students graduated from college in six years. Only 29% of those students graduated from college on time.

Some advocates don’t want to wait for commission

Other advocates are pushing the board to scrap Regents exams from graduation requirements even before the commission comes up with its recommendations.

The Coalition for Multiple Pathways to a Diploma, a group that has pushed for changes to graduation requirements for more than a decade, compiled a 1,200-signature petition last month calling for the state to immediately remove Regents exams from diploma requirements. The coalition pointed to research about the negative effects of the exit exams.

“While the Commission’s work moves forward, the State should take action now to ensure that students who have passed all their courses are able to graduate from high school and pursue their postsecondary goals,” Julie Eisenstein, senior staff attorney for Advocates for Children, which is part of the coalition, said in a statement.

Bobson Wong, a math teacher at Bayside High School in Queens who is on the commission and has helped write and edit questions for the Algebra 2 Regents exam, wants to see more research before deciding whether the Regents exams should be eliminated or how they should factor into earning a diploma.

Regents exams have a mix of multiple choice and open-ended questions. Wong doesn’t think that multiple-choice questions best capture what students have actually learned about a subject, but he sees value in some sort of final exam, such as a Regents exam with just 10 free response questions.

“How would that change our thinking about student learning and student assessment?” Wong said. “Of course, there are logistical issues of how would you grade 3,000 exams like that, but just imagine if we kind of freed ourselves from the mentality of making this a standardized test.”

Wong said he’s not opposed to the idea of alternate or performance-based pathways such as essays or projects, but he’s skeptical of how well they prepare students for life after graduation.

He’s hoping that the commission can have an “honest conversation” about why current requirements are leading to rising graduation rates but are leaving many students without the skills he believes they need after high school.

“Every teacher I know, knows that there is enormous pressure within the entire system to graduate students, whether or not they know the material,” Wong said. “I know students who have difficulty doing middle school math, so why are they in high school? Because we don’t have the support in place to master the content in middle school, so we just move them along because we don’t want a 15-year-old sitting in seventh grade.”

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.

Rising inflation adds $800M to cost of fully funding New York’s main school aid formula

2022-12-21T20:36:02+00:00

New York school funding advocates have been looking forward to next year, when Gov. Kathy Hochul and the legislature are supposed to finish fully funding the state’s 15-year-old school funding formula, resulting in billions of more dollars for school districts statewide.

But a new problem might put the money in jeopardy: Because of inflation, the increase is expected to be nearly $1 billion more than expected, state officials said.

Advocates said they don’t yet expect that lawmakers will renege their promise of fully funding Foundation Aid, which sends more money to school districts with students who have higher needs.

Regardless, they are already on the offensive ahead of the next legislative session, which begins Jan. 4. They said they’ll still be pressing state leaders on the issue, in light of what happened when the formula was first implemented in 2007, right before the Great Recession.

“We got two years of full funding before there was a financial crisis, and then they froze the funding and started to regress and cut some schools,” said Jasmine Gripper, executive director of Alliance for Quality Education. “And we’ve fought for schools ever since.”

Last year, state lawmakers agreed to fully fund the Foundation Aid formula over three years, with the final phase-in scheduled in time for the 2023-24 school year. Since the Foundation Aid formula accounts for inflation, state officials expect that the final increase this year will cost $2.7 billion — about $800 million more than what the state’s Board of Regents had previously projected.

With that increase, schools across the state would receive a total of $24 billion in Foundation Aid next year.

The increased cost is because this final phase-in of money “happens to occur in a year with the highest inflation rate since the formula began,” according to a spokesperson for the state education department.

Advocates hope that the rising cost won’t deter lawmakers or Hochul from carrying out their promise to fully fund the formula, which she agreed to do as part of a legal settlement last year.

“As long as the state’s finances hold up, it seems as though it’s actually manageable,” said Bob Lowry, deputy director of policy and advocacy with the state’s Council of School Superintendents. “But if we got evidence that a recession is taking hold or revenues from the financial sector are coming in much lower, that could create an obstacle to achieving full funding in the next budget.”

The state’s financial picture is mixed. Through September of this year, the state had collected $3.1 billion more in personal income taxes and other revenue than was expected earlier this year, but there are still budget gaps expected for the next three fiscal years, according to the state budget division’s midyear report. Budget officials wrote that the national economy and the “elevated risk of a recession” could mean a gloomier budget in New York down the road.

State Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat who oversees the Senate’s New York City education committee, said cost increases and inflation are going to impact various parts of the budget, and it’s hard to say if better-than-expected tax revenues are enough to help.

Still, Liu said there is a “very high level of commitment” from the legislature to fully fund Foundation Aid.

“There is not enough money for everything everyone wants, but education is our biggest promise, from the state constitution and from the budget agreements over the last couple of years and from the settlement of the lawsuit from the governor’s promise,” Liu said. “I fully expect this final increase in Foundation Aid should be part of the coming budget.”

The governor’s office declined to say whether they’re still committed to fully funding the final projected increase for Foundation Aid. In a statement, spokesperson Katy Zielinski said details about the governor’s budget proposal will be released early next year.

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 promises affordable child care to undocumented families through voucher program

2022-12-15T19:03:30+00:00

Next month, New York City will begin providing subsidized child care to low-income, undocumented families, who typically can’t access such services because of their immigration status.

The $10 million initiative, called Promise NYC, is expected to serve 600 children over the next six months, city officials announced Wednesday. It also aims to help the influx of asylum-seeking families from South America who have come to New York City over the past several months.

Because children from undocumented families typically don’t qualify for state or federally subsidized child care, advocates had pushed state lawmakers to expand care for undocumented children earlier this year. But that effort failed.

In the spring, city lawmakers pushed the mayor to include $10 million in this year’s budget expanding childcare for undocumented children. In June, Mayor Eric Adams committed to funding the initative, which would pay for vouchers and “develop a mechanism for families to seek care without compromising the confidentiality of their immigration status,” according to his “Blueprint for Child Care & Early Childhood Education in New York City.”

The city tapped four community-based organizations with “deep ties to immigrant communities in their respective boroughs” to help launch the program: the Chinese American Planning Council in Queens, Center For Family Life in Brooklyn, Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation in Manhattan and the Bronx, and La Colmena will help Staten Island families.

The four organizations, which are contracting with the city’s Administration for Child Services, will be responsible for signing up eligible families.

Beginning in January, low-income undocumented families will be eligible to participate in the city’s child care voucher program, which provides free or low-cost child care to families with children ages 6 weeks to 13 years old. (To qualify, they must earn less than 300% of the federal poverty level.) Child care providers — licensed center-based or registered home-based care — will get reimbursed by the community organizations overseeing the program, city officials said.

Many asylum-seeking families residing in shelters are having trouble finding work without access to child care, according to Gothamist.

In a statement, Adams said his plan will alleviate the challenges that come with being a new immigrant.

“Navigating obstacles in a new city and a new country are tough, and coupling those issues with a lack of child care can prevent parents and families from achieving the dream they so desperately set out to achieve,” Adams 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.

To rethink NY’s 15-year-old school funding formula, state officials ask for $1 million study

2022-12-13T00:11:20+00:00

For many educators, parents, and advocates who follow the money behind school budgets, last year was a milestone: For the first time, New York began to fully fund Foundation Aid, the formula created 15 years ago to send state money to its roughly 700 school districts.

With that battle settled, New York’s Board of Regents now has its eyes on the next challenge: updating the formula itself. As part of Monday’s annual state budget proposal, New York’s Board of Regents requested $1 million to hire researchers, who would get feedback from the schools, advocates, and funding experts on how officials should change Foundation Aid for the 2024-25 school year. Those researchers would then design potential models for an updated formula.

Foundation Aid is a progressive formula that’s structured to send more money to schools with high-need students. It went underfunded until the state agreed in 2021 to fully cover the costs that the formula called for over three years. Lawmakers are expected to finish phasing in the money for the 2023-24 school year, amounting to $4 billion in additional funding for schools, for a total of about $24 billion in Foundation Aid next fiscal year.

In recent years, education advocates and some lawmakers have highlighted how components of the formula are severely outdated, leaving districts shortchanged for their actual needs. For example, one measure used to calculate student poverty is based on the 2000 Census, meaning that if student poverty has gone up in districts since 2000, they’re likely not receiving all the funds they are entitled to.

Department officials want researchers to provide a “factual-based perspective” on how the formula needs to change, said Sean Giambattista, director of state aid at the state education department, at the monthly Regents meeting on Monday in Albany.

“We understand the Census poverty rate that’s used is currently out of date, but there’s more core considerations that we would need some researchers to come in and look at,” Giambattista told the board.

The Regents aren’t alone in their request. Last month, Columbia University’s Center for Educational Equity issued a report calling for the creation of a permanent commission to ensure the formula is updated and reflective of student needs today. That report noted that the state may need to explore entirely new ways to calculate student needs, such as poverty.

“The new system must take current realities and current student needs into account, and it must be designed to respond to changing needs and costs in the future,” the report said. “It must be insulated from undue political influence, and it must respond to the experience of education stakeholders, the people most affected by inequities and inadequacies.”

Representatives for Gov. Kathy Hochul said the governor is reviewing all requests ahead of her own budget proposal next year. They did not say whether she supported this initiative.

Regents want funding for CTE and virtual programs

The Regents discussed other budget wishlist items, including a similar request they made last year to change how school districts like New York City’s are funded for career and technical education, or CTE, programs.

Funding for CTE programs — which provide training for students in different career pathways — is based on rates created in the 1990s, state education advocates said.

As a result, many schools struggle to provide enough support for keeping such programs operating.

The Regents are proposing a new formula that would reimburse districts for CTE costs instead of giving them a budget where they receive a base amount per student, which also takes into account the number of participating students and a measure of the district’s wealth. Making that change would result in more funding, officials said. The state is pushing to expand CTE offerings, hoping to make such programs accessible to all students across the state by 2030. Mayor Eric Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks have shown considerable support for such career-focused programs as well.

Separately, the state has also proposed the creation of statewide virtual high schools that would operate their own school districts.

“Our experience with virtual technology during the pandemic has allowed us to think differently about how to serve students who are not able to attend traditional school programs,” state officials wrote in their proposal.

The programs would be funded similarly to current school funding mechanisms, based on the needs of students enrolled in the programs on top of start-up funding. Students with disabilities in need of in-person services would also be served by their local existing school district, which would receive funding to do so.

New York City has begun experimenting locally with such virtual programs. One new high school has experimented with mixing online learning with in-person classroom work and fieldwork in the outdoors.

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.

As family homelessness climbs, calls grow louder for solving school attendance woes

2022-12-12T11:00:00+00:00

Nine-year-old Ameerah remembers when her commute to school was a five-minute walk. That was before her family left their Queens home for a shelter in another part of the borough.

During the year they lived in the shelter, Ameerah was at the bus stop with her mom and sister at 6:30 a.m., commuting at least 45 minutes on two buses and two trains. They often returned nearly 12 hours later, her mom said, and the girls were sometimes too tired to complete their homework in the evenings.

“My legs, sometimes they hurt. My backpack, it’s heavy,” Ameerah said during one of her bus rides last spring when she was in third grade. She fell behind in math, requiring her to go to summer school. (Chalkbeat is using pseudonyms to protect the family’s privacy.)

Last school year, nearly 30,000 New York City public school students lived in shelters. For these students, getting to school is often a problem, as many are placed far from their current schools. Nearby shelters may lack space, or if the family is in a domestic violence situation, they may be deliberately placed far from home. Shelter transfers can be hard to come by. So families must often choose between punishing commutes like Ameerah’s or transferring schools, which research shows can lead to chronic absenteeism and the need to repeat a grade.

Chronic absenteeism — often a key indicator of academic performance — is a growing problem for students citywide following the pandemic. But for homeless students, it’s a crisis: 64% of students living in shelters were chronically absent in the 2020-21 school year, meaning they were absent for at least 10% of school days, according to the most recent data obtained by Advocates For Children. That’s compared with about 30% of students citywide.

Advocates fear attendance problems could worsen as homelessness continues rising to historic levels in New York City amid rising inflation, the end of the eviction moratorium, and the threat of a recession. Additionally, an influx of asylum-seeking students from South America have entered the shelter system. Last month, more than 12,100 families with children were in shelters run by the Department of Homeless Services, compared with roughly 8,500 in November 2021.

Ameerah’s family had little help navigating the shelter system and their school-related transportation needs, they said. This left her mom, Huma, an immigrant from Pakistan who sometimes struggled with English, to wade through bureaucracy while trying to work enough hours to qualify for subsidized housing. Many advocates believe that families can benefit from having a dedicated, shelter-based coordinator to support them and have been pushing the city to hire such staffers for the past year.

By June, the city had committed to hiring 100 such coordinators — 75 of them funded for the next two years with about $17 million of the $33 million in federal relief money earmarked for homeless students, according to Advocates For Children. (The education department declined to share how much the initiative would cost.)

But in the nearly five months since then, the city has hired just 45 of these coordinators, with another 33 in the hiring process, according to an education department spokesperson, who declined multiple times to explain why there has been a delay.

Dozens of advocacy organizations had originally called for 150 of these staffers, given that the city has more than 160 family shelters serving children. But now they’re concerned that the city hasn’t yet hired all of these staffers and are wondering what happens when the relief dollars run out in two years.

They also note that the problems go deeper than such a role can address and intersect with a variety of systemic issues, large and small, from intergenerational poverty to transportation issues.

Historically, there has been a failure to cooperate and minimize disruptions to students’ schooling between the multiple agencies connected to homeless children, including the education department and homeless services, said Jennifer Pringle, director of Project Learning In Temporary Housing at Advocates for Children.

This moment, in particular, is critical for figuring out solutions, said Pringle, whose organization is one of more than three dozen calling for an inter-agency task force focused on how to tackle a slew of issues, including reducing chronic absenteeism among homeless students.

“This is an opportunity to figure out, OK, as families are coming in, how can we make sure that kids are connected with school, connected with their peers, with their teachers,” Pringle said, “so that while the family is going through this process and ultimately finds permanent housing, the kids’ education doesn’t get derailed.”

One of Huma’s daughters holds on to a pole on a city bus during her commute to school.

Transportation from shelters to schools remains difficult

A longstanding federal law attempts to create some stability for students who become homeless. Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, later expanded in 2001, school districts are required to provide transportation to and from a child’s “school of origin,” or the school they attended before becoming homeless.

But in vast New York City, students crossing between boroughs may have hours-long commutes between shelter and school. In response to news reports in 2017, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to ensure more families were placed in the same borough as their youngest child’s school.

His administration began to deliver on that promise. In 2018, about half of families were initially placed in shelters located in the same borough as their youngest child’s school. By last fiscal year, that grew by 11 percentage points, to three in every five families — including Huma’s.

But even a shelter placement in the same borough can mean a challenging commute to school.

When there are school attendance issues, many shelter providers’ default position is to encourage families to change schools, Pringle said, rather than to revisit shelter placements and try to move families closer to their schools.

“In a city where we have so many shelter locations, the needs of children are not being prioritized as a part of this process,” she said.

For its part, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Services said their teams, along with the Department of Homeless Services, reach out to families in shelters “with longer commutes to schools, offering them shelter placements close to their youngest school-aged child’s school.” Last fiscal year, 75% of families were in shelters in the same borough as their youngest child’s school; however, advocates noted that it’s unclear how much of that reflects children transferring schools instead of shelters.

When Ameerah’s family moved into one of New York City’s family shelters in April 2021, they had escaped what Huma described as an emotionally abusive home she had endured for many years. Adjusting to the shelter was tough. Even after the girls managed to fall asleep while sharing a bed in the small roach-infested room, the shelter’s 9 p.m. bed-check often woke them up.

Huma’s case worker had asked where she wanted the children to attend school when they first entered the shelter. She thought that transferring schools felt disruptive, as the girls were returning to school for the first time since the onset of the pandemic while adjusting to a new, strange place.

“My kids, the big one especially, she is so sensitive now because of all this stuff,” Huma said, noting that they’d moved several times in the past. “She said, ‘I’m so tired from moving, every single time I change my school, but this time I don’t want to change my school. I like my school.’”

And for her younger daughter, arriving at school each day felt like a silver lining. She enjoyed seeing her friends and said that “time goes a little bit faster there.”

After exiting their final bus, Huma and her younger daughter walk to her school.

Transferring schools can have significant drawbacks for students without stable housing. One study from 2015 found that New York City students who transferred schools were more likely to be chronically absent, missing at least 10% of school days. Chronically absent homeless children were three times more likely to repeat the same grade, compared to their homeless peers who missed fewer than five days of school, that report found.

Students in shelters in kindergarten through sixth grade are eligible for bus transportation to their schools, no matter where they are. Older students, like Huma’s eldest daughter, Ayaneh, who was about to start seventh grade, receive a MetroCard, though some seventh and eighth graders can get busing on a case-by-case basis, such as if they have a disability. But Huma, who felt that Ayaneh wasn’t yet ready to take public transportation on her own, said this information wasn’t shared with her until weeks into the school year. (The city’s yellow bus system is also notoriously problematic, and a recent City Council report found that service delays have been higher this fall than the past five years.)

After Huma called the girls’ schools for more information on busing, school staff directed her to a general education department telephone line for transportation issues, she said. She didn’t call it.

“I said, ‘I just need the answer if you’re not providing a bus,’” she said of shelter staff. “They just kept promising it, but it never came.”

Huma didn’t trust that calling the education department would solve her issues. That might be why officials there said they did not have records of transportation issues or complaints related to her children.

Navigating the shelter system feels like a second job

There are 117 “family assistants” working across shelters, who are supposed to inform families about their school transportation rights, provide route information, and help with enrollment. But those employees don’t work year-round and often are not equipped to untangle more complicated problems, such as why a child may be chronically absent, advocates said.

The newly added shelter-based community coordinators would have broader responsibilities and are expected to proactively reach out to families living in shelters. They’re supposed to ensure students are getting to class, helping families navigate problems with transportation and enrollment using data compiled by the city. The education department is also using stimulus funds to better track homeless student attendance in hopes of working with shelters to address chronic absenteeism.

“There should be support services for families both at the shelter and at school that can help them with issues they might be facing, especially if there are attendance issues,” said Jacquelyn Simone, policy director for Coalition for the Homeless, an organization that advocates on behalf of homeless New Yorkers. “If someone is struggling to get to school, and it’s the proximity of the shelter to the school, then there should be, in an ideal world, a team that would identify the issue.”

At 6:30 a.m. on a day this past spring, people line up to board a bus in Queens.

Bus service eventually was set up for Ameerah by October of last year, a few weeks into the school year, Huma said. Ultimately, she decided against it because it no longer made sense. She would still need to accompany Ayaneh to school — and she would need to be with both girls to get back to the shelter since minors can’t go inside without a parent or guardian. This would prove a complicated juggling act as Huma tried to increase her work hours.

Like all shelter residents, Huma was eligible to apply for rental assistance after 90 days of her placement, but she needed to work at least 30 hours a week. After months of struggling to find employment, she took a job as a home health aide. Her job locations frequently changed, which made it more challenging to coordinate her daughters’ transportation to school, she said.

Meanwhile, Huma had been told that she needed a more stable work schedule in order to meet the qualifications for rental assistance.

Catherine Trapani, executive director of Homeless Services United, said she’s often found parents who struggle to meet their required number of work hours while also taking care of other responsibilities and following all shelter rules, such as ensuring children are accompanied at the shelter.

“It’s very difficult to get your employment in with that schedule, plus your obligations to cart your children to and from school, particularly if you don’t have a robust network of support,” Trapani said.

In a sign that job requirements had become too burdensome to qualify for the city’s rental subsidy requirements, city officials recently cut in half the required weekly work hours from 30 hours to 14.

The family chooses a new school, after all

After a lot of back-and-forth providing pay stubs and other employment documents, Huma was approved for subsidized rent in March of this year — seven months after her caseworker informed her that she would start the process. That was much longer than the median 26 days it took for families to receive vouchers after completing applications last year, according to the annual Mayor’s Management Report.

Huma moved her family into their own apartment in May. Nearly 5,200 homeless families found permanent housing last fiscal year, a 30% drop from the previous year, according to city data.

Their new commute still required two buses for the girls to get to school, but their travel time was cut by 20 minutes.

Huma waits for a subway train.

But the instability has not gone away. Shortly before school started, Huma had attached a $622 utility bill to the fridge, marked with a bolded “final notice.” Huma was bringing in about $450 a week, and typically had nothing left after paying rent and other bills. Food stamps help provide some respite, she said. But she left her job in October after tensions with a patient’s caregiver, and she was still looking for work in December.

They’ve acknowledged that the apartment is not perfect. Their oven broke in the fall, and her landlord hadn’t arranged for it to be fixed. Carpet curled up at the edges of the walls. Still, the family seemed happy.

“At least they have their bed and they can sleep good,” the mom said.

Ayaneh still attends her middle school from last year. Her mother said she is seeing a therapist to deal with the family issues that caused them to seek shelter in the first place.

In the end, Huma decided to change Ameerah’s school to one around the corner from their new apartment.

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.

Half of NYC students are behind in reading. Hundreds of CUNY tutors aim to change that.

2022-12-07T22:09:59+00:00

Just after the school day winds down, a group of three students at Brooklyn’s P.S. 40 sit in a semicircle and crack open “Looking for Lunch,” an illustrated book with large print. With help from a tutor, they begin reading aloud in unison, running their fingers along words like “hungry” and “animals” as they go.

Next door, a student is working with a one-on-one tutor and struggling with a more basic task: forming the word “tan” using small wooden blocks to represent individual sounds. He’s just beginning to grasp the relationships between sounds and letters.

In both classrooms, these first graders are behind their peers and at risk of joining the roughly 50% of city students who are not proficient readers by the time they reach third grade. To help catch them up, P.S. 40 is leaning on an intensive strategy: individualized tutoring at least three times a week.

The program pairs CUNY students studying education with New York City public school children who are struggling to master literacy skills. Known as the CUNY Reading Corps, the effort has grown into one of the largest tutoring initiatives involving pre-service teachers. This year, it’s projected to include more than 800 tutors and reach roughly 2,700 of the city’s public school children, primarily first and second graders.

Researchers have pointed to high-dosage tutoring as a tried-and-true method of reaching students who are struggling or were derailed by the pandemic. Catching up students who are behind — but still at widely varying skill levels — is a significant challenge in a typical classroom with dozens of students. Tutoring in small groups or one-on-one is one way of making that task more manageable, though it can be expensive and challenging to pull off on a large scale.

The Reading Corps program, launched in fall 2020, has helped ease some of those barriers. The idea came from Katie Pace Miles, a Brooklyn College professor and literacy expert who had two main concerns. For one, hands-on teaching opportunities for her education students were upended.

She also worried that more affluent families were able to marshal their own resources, launching learning pods or hiring tutors, creating even larger opportunity gaps compared with thousands of low-income children, many of whom struggled to access remote learning.

“Some children maintained, or gained, or accelerated,” Miles said. “And other children were left with shuttered school buildings and hybrid learning that wasn’t really working for them — and no additional support.”

A high-dosage tutoring program shows promise

The Reading Corps program helped address both of those problems, paying tutors in graduate or undergraduate education programs between $20 to $25 an hour to work with public school children for three to five sessions a week over about 13 weeks.

Before they begin working with children, the tutors receive between six and 12 hours of training in one of two reading programs, both of which include phonics lessons. Reading Ready, which Miles developed herself, is designed for students who are furthest behind, training them how to recognize foundational letter-sound relationships, form words by blending different sounds, and read basic sentences. The lessons typically last about 20 to 30 minutes.

The other program, Reading Rescue, is used across the city and is meant for students who can already recognize letters but are still below grade level. During the 30- to 45-minute sessions, children participate in step-by-step phonics lessons, read texts out loud, and respond to questions about what they’re reading. The lessons are typically delivered individually but sometimes include groups of up to three students.

Since the program launched in 2020, it has grown from 275 tutors to more than 800 at a cost of about $2.9 million for this school year and next summer, an effort that is largely foundation funded.

“Schools were very responsive” to the program, Miles said. “This really started out of urgency and need — and we were trying to go big.”

They initially provided lessons remotely, as the program launched when school buildings were still mostly empty. Even though campuses are now open, the majority of students still participate virtually, logging in from school buildings or from their homes outside of regular school hours.

A P.S. 40 student logs into a virtual tutoring session.

Still, there have been some challenges. Schools aren’t always excited about adding a virtual tutoring program, though Miles said it can be as effective as in-person tutoring. Online sessions also make it easier for tutors to arrive on time and reduce opportunities for viruses to spread. At P.S. 40, the school’s principal pays a teacher to help supervise the students who participate remotely.

Student attendance is not always high, a common stumbling block for tutoring programs. When the Reading Corps first launched, attendance was in the mid 60% range. Last year, attendance was closer to 70% and is now consistently above 70%.

“It takes some students longer to get through the program, just because they’re not always able to make their sessions,” said Erin Croke, CUNY’s director of literacy initiatives. “We really want to get them in and out,” she added, “so that we can then serve more students.”

City officials have said they want more students to receive the kind of systematic reading instruction offered through the Reading Corps program, and are requiring elementary schools to adopt phonics programs approved by the city. But those efforts to improve instruction will likely take time, necessitating remedial strategies in the interim.

“While we spend the time figuring that out, we need to provide students with this service,” Miles said.

CUNY officials say the program is showing signs of effectiveness. However, the tutoring program has not yet been studied rigorously, making it impossible to definitively say how effective it is. Miles said she is in the process of collecting data from student assessments to understand the program’s impact.

Outside experts who are familiar with the research on tutoring said the program is promising and should be studied carefully.

“The CUNY Reading Corps has all the design features that set a tutoring program up to succeed,” said Matthew Kraft, a professor of education and economics at Brown University who called for a national expansion of tutoring to help address learning disruptions caused by the pandemic.

Not all tutoring programs are created equal

At P.S. 40, an elementary school in Bedford-Stuyvesant where more than 90% of students are Black or Latino and 89% come from low-income families, the need for individualized help was clear, Principal Louise Antoine said.

Although challenges with teaching students to read are nothing new, kindergartners have been arriving further behind, unable to identify their letters. Fewer arriving kindergarten students had attended prekindergarten during the pandemic, one reason the principal surmised they were further behind.

“We noticed that a lot of our students are coming in, and they’re not ready to read,” Antoine said.

Antoine previously had mixed experiences with tutoring. The school experimented with a virtual program that students completed from home, but it was costly, the tutors didn’t have much training, and attendance among both students and tutors was spotty. But the Reading Corps program, she said, has been much more effective.

“The tutor has to be invested,” Antoine said. “The tutor has to be trained in how to support children in reading. I learned not every program has those qualities.”

Mary Escobar, an undergraduate student at Hunter College who is tutoring at P.S. 40, said she became interested in teaching literacy skills after helping a child with dyslexia she was babysitting. The CUNY Reading Corps jumped out to her as a chance to receive more formal training and practice in a public school setting.

Even though the Reading Ready lessons she’s delivering are highly regimented, not all of the sessions are a breeze. During a recent afternoon, a student named Kyrie was struggling to focus, squirming in his seat and playfully tossing tiny wooden cubes meant to represent sounds.

After some sessions, “I don’t get that feeling that we actually made progress” Escobar said, “and that’s a tough feeling.” But the goal isn’t just to deliver instruction — it’s also to help her figure out how to adjust and be a more effective teacher once she’s in the classroom full time.

CUNY student Mary Escobar embraces a student at the end of a recent tutoring session.

“I’ve wrestled with how important it is to get the kids focused and believing in themselves and getting positive reinforcement for their effort rather than just trying to get something done,” she said. “What I’m doing with these kids is going to help me down the line with so many other kids.”

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

‘All-hands-on-deck’: A Queens charter school welcomes 70 asylum-seeking students

2022-11-28T22:31:47+00:00

On a Friday night in early November, roughly two dozen families at VOICE charter school in Long Island City, Queens, were preparing for a New York winter — most for the first time in their lives.

In the school’s ground floor gymnasium, parents who had recently migrated from Venezuela and other Latin American countries to seek asylum in the U.S. perused tables stacked high with warm winter gear, pots and pans, and school supplies. Students in light blue uniforms munched on pizza and played with toys and balloons.

Ingles Moreno, the mother of a seventh grader at VOICE who arrived with her daughter in New York City in late August after fleeing Venezuela, surveyed her suitcases and garbage bags full of new supplies.

“I feel happy,” said Moreno, who is living at a nearby homeless shelter. “I didn’t have [winter clothes], and now thank God I do.”

The Friday night giveaway was part of what school staffers describe as an “all-hands-on-deck” effort to accommodate an influx of dozens of new migrant families at VOICE, a K-8 school of around 650 students, 84% of whom receive free or reduced-price lunch.

The enrollment rush began as a trickle in the summer and quickly picked up steam as families referred each other to the school or got recommendations from local shelters and social service organizations. A proliferation of hotels in recent years in Long Island City led to a cluster of newly converted homeless shelters in the school’s backyard.

Pandemic-related enrollment declines left VOICE with extra space, and the school wound up enrolling an estimated 70 asylum-seeking children, said principal Franklin Headley.

Across the city, an estimated 7,200 students living in homeless shelters have enrolled in public schools since July, many of them asylum-seekers sent on buses by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, education department officials said last month. In the neighborhood on the border of Astoria and Long Island City where VOICE is located, several schools saw dramatic influxes: The public elementary school that shares a building with VOICE’s younger students also enrolled about 70 asylum-seeking kids, according to education department budget records.

Officials didn’t have an estimate of how many migrant students have enrolled in publicly funded, privately run charter schools like VOICE.

At VOICE, their arrival profoundly reshaped the school almost overnight.

The school, which does not have dedicated dual language programs and got no advance notice of the new arrivals, has scrambled to meet the material, educational, and emotional needs of students and parents. Staffers acknowledge it’s still a work in progress.

“I’m really proud of my teachers,” said Headley. “It’s hard when they see so many children in the class and not quite knowing what to do.”

And while the past few months at VOICE have been taxing, they’ve also been inspiring, Headley said. They’ve given the school an injection of new students at a time of faltering enrollment, and given existing families and staff a shared purpose in helping the new arrivals.

“I think there’s been a narrative out in the news a little bit that maybe schools are panicked about this,” Headley said. “I think for us, it’s like these kids are a gift.”

Teachers adjust their expectations

The number of the school’s homeless students leapt from under 1% last year to 10% this year, school officials said. VOICE previously served English language learners — about 16% of its students were classified as such last year. That number jumped to about 27% this year, nearly half of whom are classified as beginners, Headley said.

But numbers alone didn’t communicate the scope or complexity of what the school was about to face. It was only when staff started conducting more detailed intake interviews that a fuller picture of the families’ needs started to emerge, said Peter Cataldo, a social worker who’s been at VOICE for 12 years.

“An influx of children who don’t speak English is very new for us,” he said.

Families often arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs, school social workers learned. Few were prepared for winter, and they had scant options for cooking food or washing their clothes in the shelters. Many kids didn’t have the immunizations required to attend school in New York City, and parents were anxiously searching for ways to earn money without work permits as they awaited immigration hearings, which were often scheduled in other states.

Administrators tried to distribute the newly arrived students as evenly as possible across multiple classrooms so that no single teacher had a critical mass.

VOICE had two dedicated English as a new language teachers prior to this school year, and hired another this year. But those educators don’t lead their own classes, instead helping out in existing classes or pulling out small groups of students to offer supplementary support.

An English as a new language teacher works with two recently arrived immigrant students at VOICE charter school in Queens.

The first few weeks were a blur of trial and error.

At first, some classroom educators translated every word of their lessons into Spanish, but quickly learned that was too impractical and time consuming, said Matt Kolman, VOICE’s middle school dean.

Then some teachers started leaning on students who were fluent in both English and Spanish to buddy up with the newcomers to help translate. But the bilingual classmates found themselves missing most of the lesson trying to help out their peers.

Ultimately, many educators settled on a more limited approach — translating key words and assignments, allowing students to use an automated computer program that translates English audio to Spanish in real time, and setting up “translation stations” with computers that students can check into at their discretion.

“I’m in my 10th year at VOICE, and in some ways, it’s like going back to like being a new teacher,” said Danny Powell, who teaches seventh and eighth grade social studies.

The city education department shelled out $12 million in additional funding last month to roughly 370 city public schools that enrolled asylum-seeking students, but charter schools weren’t included in that allocation.

Headley said the school has relied on a group of schools convened by the New York City Charter School Center that meets monthly to learn about serving English learners, and tried to pass some of that knowledge along to administrators and teachers.

Middle school students use headphones and laptops to help with translation during a class at VOICE charter school.

One of the hardest lessons for staff has been accepting that the pace of learning may look very different.

Teachers have had to learn to “pump the brakes a little” and accept that “get[ting] them settled in the country, building language, making community … is just as important as what they’re learning,” said Cataldo, the social worker.

The steep challenges, however, have made the small victories and moments of joy even sweeter.

One middle school student, an aspiring future actor who migrated from Colombia, was able to define the word “personification.” Another group of kids let loose on a class field trip to the Statue of Liberty. Seeing them “be kids, feeling accepted and safe and welcome,” was deeply gratifying, said Powell.

‘Peeling back the layers’: Students share their stories

Nearly three months into the school year, staffers are still carefully working to gain the trust of students and parents struggling with memories of traumatic border crossings.

“Some students … are carrying a lot with them, whether they left family members behind, a few who have … encountered death along the way,” said Cataldo, the social worker. “We’re really just peeling back the layers of the onion right now.”

Four middle school students who spoke with Chalkbeat on the condition of anonymity described grueling and perilous journeys that remain fresh in their minds.

One sixth grader described getting swept up in a strong current while crossing the Rio Grande, and being separated from her mother and siblings, who remained in Mexico for several days while the preteen was in detention in the U.S.

“I went three days without seeing her and knowing nothing about what happened to my siblings,” the student said.

“There were a lot of deaths out there in the forest, the desert,” said another middle school student, who journeyed to the U.S. with family members, including a 5-month-old cousin. “My little cousin almost drowned.”

Several of the students said they were still traumatized by elements of the journey and think about it often.

The school has several built-in advantages responding to emotional and mental health challenges, including six social workers on staff.

“The kids want to talk, want to tell you their story,” said Cataldo, the social worker.

One of his colleagues who doesn’t speak Spanish called a city-sponsored phone translation service, “sat the phone right there in the middle, and an hour-and-a-half later got like this whole story, just this wonderful opportunity for this kid to just share what they were carrying,” Cataldo said.

Educators and parents provide wraparound support

The school has focused on integrating the new students into social and extracurricular activities, encouraging soccer players to join the school’s team and trying to create opportunities for the new arrivals to build friendships with students who have been at the school for years.

Staffers and parents at the school have been trying to figure out what the school could help with directly, and what kinds of services it could help link the families to through community partners.

Students participate in a music class at VOICE charter school. The school has focused on integrating new students into social and extracurricular activities.

Karina Chalas, the head of middle school operations, and one of a limited number of bilingual staffers, forged relationships with staff in the shelters, giving the school a better understanding of the conditions families were facing.

Chalas soon learned that parents were struggling with what to do with their kids in the afternoon. Shelter rules prohibited kids from staying alone in their rooms – so the school made a push to enroll the new arrivals in after-school programs.

The school’s parent leaders — some of whom arrived in New York City as immigrants themselves — also leapt into action.

“To me it’s very personal. I came here in 2000 from another country, and Astoria is such a great community,” said Aniko Domokos, the corresponding secretary of the parent association. “I just want these people to feel the same way … of I was so welcomed, and found my place here.”

Looming over all of the school’s efforts to support the migrant students is the question of how long they will stay.

Many of the families are looking for permanent housing, but may wind up in far-flung corners of the city, or they have court dates that will take them to other states. The school loses funding if students drop from its roster, making any big additional investments something of a financial risk.

But Headley, the school’s principal, says he’s trying not to worry about what the future holds.

“We don’t know how long they’re going to be with us,” he said. “They’re here now, let’s make the most of it.”

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

NYC school bus delays reach highest level in five years, City Council analysis shows

2022-11-22T00:03:57+00:00

School bus delays spiked this fall to levels higher than any point in the last five years, according to figures revealed during a City Council hearing Monday, representing a growing hardship for families who depend on yellow buses to ferry their children to school.

Last month alone, there were nearly 14,500 school bus delays, lasting 41 minutes on average. That’s up from about 10,600 delays averaging 37 minutes in October 2021.

Both the number — and duration — of delays last month were higher than during any other month over the last five school years, according to the City Council’s analysis, which is based on self-reported data from bus companies.

City officials emphasized that the self-reported nature of the statistics may make it unreliable and noted that the data shows heavy traffic represents a significant share of the increase in delays. But numerous advocates and elected officials said Monday that the bus system appears to be under greater strain.

“In 2018, the education committee held a hearing on [the Office of Pupil Transportation’s] failure to provide students with reliable school busing services,” Rita Joseph, the committee’s chairperson, said during an oversight hearing on school bus transportation. “The only thing that seems to have changed since that is that the problem has gotten worse.”

New York City’s school bus network is responsible for transporting roughly 150,000 students to school at a budgeted cost of $1.6 billion this year, according to the Independent Budget Office. But families have struggled for years with delayed buses, no-shows, or even getting a bus route assigned at all. Some of the city’s most vulnerable students — including 65,000 students with disabilities — are dependent on buses to transport them to programs that are often outside their immediate neighborhoods.

Late buses have wreaked havoc on Jalissa and her 6-year-old son, Deandre. The family moved to a Bronx domestic violence shelter last year, at least an hour and 15 minutes from Deandre’s elementary school in Jamaica, Queens. Last year, the bus was late so often that Jalissa was fired from her job at a food preparation and delivery company.

“My manager was really thoughtful and tried to be as lenient as he can,” she said. But “I got terminated because I was constantly late every single day” on account of the school bus delays. (Jalissa requested to be identified only by her first name to protect her privacy.)

The situation hasn’t improved this year. Despite help from Advocates for Children, a nonprofit group, Jalissa struggled to secure a bus at the beginning of the school year, even though the required paperwork was filed on time, according to her advocate. She took Deandre to school on public transportation, leaving their shelter at 6:30 a.m. for the hour and a half trip by subway and bus, trips she paid for out of pocket.

Even after Jalissa finally secured a bus roughly a month into the school year, it is almost always at least an hour late. That has left her in an impossible position, as she does not want to transfer her son to a new school. “I’m very serious about my child’s education,” she said. “I don’t want to change his school.”

At the same time, she worries about the impact of missed class and lengthy waits. Plus, the unpredictability of the bus schedule has made her reluctant to search for a new job. Frequent calls and complaints to the bus company and the education department’s Office of Pupil Transportation have not resolved the issue.

“He is still developing; he should not be a whole hour late,” she said. “Something has to change.”

At Monday’s City Council hearing education department officials said that bus driver shortages were partly to blame for disrupted service, even as officials in the previous administration insisted it wasn’t an issue. At the beginning of the school year, the system was short about 500 drivers, said Glenn Risbrook, the education department’s senior executive director of student transportation. In some cases, that forced drivers to run two routes, one after the other.

“It is often our highest needs students who are on these routes that end up without permanent drivers and thus are put in these situations,” Risbrook said. He added that the shortage has dropped to 313 drivers and the city is working with bus companies “to get qualified drivers on the roads as quickly as possible.”

But officials also acknowledged that getting drivers back on the job may be a challenge after thousands of them were furloughed in the wake of school building closures.

“They were laid off, in a worldwide pandemic, with no wages, no pension contributions, and, above all else, no health care,” said Kevin Moran, the education department’s chief school operations officer. “And so when we talk about the driver shortage and trying to bring people back into the system, we have a fair bit of work to do to re-establish trust.”

In the meantime, city officials said they are paying for rideshare services to help fill in the gaps and also pointed to a long-delayed GPS tracking system that is supposed to eventually give parents real-time information about the location of buses, help the education department create better routes, and more comprehensively track delays. (The education department is piloting the GPS system in District 26 in Queens but a spokesperson did not provide a specific timeline for rolling it out citywide.)

Advocates said the rideshare solution is imperfect because it is not always explicitly offered to families and requires a caregiver to ride with their child, often disrupting work routines.

“It doesn’t really work for all families and it doesn’t resolve the actual bus issue,” said Janyll Canals, the director of the Robin Hood Project at Advocates for Children and who testified at Monday’s City Council hearing. “Multiple families that I’ve worked with don’t know it’s an option until they come to us.”

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