Chalkbeat

As NYC preschool offers release, some families are left without a 3-K seat

2024-05-16T20:01:39+00:00

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Mayor Eric Adams has vowed that every family who wants a seat in New York City’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds will receive one, despite recent cuts to city funding for the early childhood system.

But as the city distributed 3-K offers on Thursday, some families say they didn’t receive a seat at any of the programs to which they applied.

Diana Sidakis, a public defender who lives in Manhattan, said she tried to be savvy with her application. She spent hours extensively researching programs, compiled spreadsheets, attended tours, and eliminated any programs that seemed unlikely to admit her son.

Despite applying to 12 programs, the maximum number, Sidakis did not receive a seat for her child. She was waitlisted at all of them.

“Every kid needs education at 3 years old,” she said. “They’re socially and developmentally ready, and it changes the rest of their life. So for Mayor Adams to say that he can cut this program and every family who wants a seat will get a seat, it’s just such a fraud.”

Building up the free prekindergarten system was a signature initiative of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who leaned heavily on federal COVID relief dollars to expand preschool for 3-year-olds, aiming to make the program universal. That effort stalled under Adams, whose administration has justified funding cuts to the program by arguing that thousands of seats are sitting empty due to a mismatch of supply and demand in some neighborhoods. Advocates counter that the mayor has not invested in promoting preschool options to families.

This year, the city’s early childhood system has taken center stage in budget negotiations between City Council members and the Adams administration. Under a plan Adams proposed last month, the city would replace $92 million of expiring federal funding for 3-K with city and state funds — but it would not restore a separate $170 million in city funding that was cut from early childhood programs in November. Adams also promised to spend $5 million to help recruit more families to the city’s pre-K programs.

At a budget hearing on Wednesday, Education Department officials said enrollment in preschool programs, including the larger pre-K program for 4-year-olds, had grown to roughly 114,000 children. In total, there were about 53,000 seats in the city’s 3-K program, with about 44,000 filled.

Despite cuts to early childhood funding, Adams has remained adamant that “every child who wants a 3-K and pre-K seat will have access to one.”

In a statement Thursday evening, city officials emphasized that thousands of 3-K seats remained open and said the city would work with families who were not initially admitted to find nearby open seats.

“The mayor was clear: Every child who wants a seat will have access to a seat and he will keep his word,” said Amaris Cockfield, a spokesperson for City Hall. “The guidance sent to a limited number of families by New York City Public Schools, unfortunately, did not fully convey all the seats still available to New York City students.”

The city made offers to 94% of families who applied to 3-K on time, receiving approximately 43,000 applicants for about 52,000 seats across the city, according to city officials. The Education Department will send an “updated letter” to families about seats that remain open in 3-K.

Still, advocates were quick to condemn the mayor’s previous promises as some families received the news that they had not been offered a 3-K seat. As of Thursday afternoon, more than 20 families across the city had reached out to the advocacy group New Yorkers United for Childcare, informing them they had been rejected or waitlisted. Others told the group they were admitted to programs far from home, adding logistical challenges for parents seeking care for their young children.

“The impact cannot be understated: without free 3-K, childcare costs families an average of $20,000 a year per kid, with many spending more — a cost far too many families cannot afford,” said Rebecca Bailin, director of the group, in a statement. “Now, New Yorkers who are already facing a skyrocketing cost of living must decide whether to leave work and stay home with their child, drain their savings, or potentially leave the city altogether.”

Prior reports have shown a lack of access to affordable child care can have a significant impact on parents’ ability to work. More than half a million people did not seek employment in 2021 due to child care needs, and about 375,000 parents chose to leave or considered leaving their jobs due to the combined impact of the pandemic and a lack of affordable child care, according to a 2022 city report.

Sidakis said she’s unsure whether her family can afford to consider private child care options if she ultimately does not receive a 3-K seat that works for her family.

“It’s just an enormous, enormous source of financial and emotional stress,” she said.

“I really don’t want to leave the city,” Sidakis added. “I’m a public defender. I’ve devoted my life to public service. I want my kids to go to public school. I believe in public school. But this is really wrong.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed reporting.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams boosted pay for special ed pre-K teachers. Now they face deep cuts.

2024-01-22T11:00:00+00:00

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In his first year on the job, Mayor Eric Adams vowed to fix a glaring inequity in the city’s prekindergarten system. His predecessor’s universal free pre-K program, widely celebrated as a national model, did not provide a seat to every child with a disability, despite a legal requirement to do so.

“The previous ideas of universal 3-K and pre-K did not account for children with disabilities — it was just wrong,” Adams told reporters in December 2022. The mayor promised every child with a disability would have a placement the following spring.

To meet that goal, officials began pouring roughly $134 million into private community organizations that operate the vast majority of the city’s preschool special education seats. It was a shot in the arm for providers that have struggled to keep their doors open due to years of anemic funding and staff churn, allowing them to raise teacher salaries by thousands of dollars to bring them closer to their public school counterparts.

But despite the funding influx, more than 1,100 preschool students with disabilities languished without a placement at the end of last school year. And this coming spring — a year after every child was supposed to have a seat — the Education Department anticipates needing between 866 to more than 1,400 additional seats, according to a new analysis of city data by Advocates for Children, a nonprofit that helps families navigate the special education system.

The problem may soon get worse. The funding Adams used to boost preschool special education programs flowed from one-time federal pandemic relief money that will expire in June — and city officials have not committed to replacing it. Providers say that could lead to a spate of classroom closures, leaving even more children with disabilities without placements at a key developmental stage.

“At some point, I’m going to tell my staff the money that we said was here is not here anymore,” said Jolene Gunther-Doherty, program director for The Guild for Exceptional Children, which operates a special education preschool program in Brooklyn. The additional city funding helped her program boost some teacher salaries from $48,000 a year to just over $68,000 a year, raises that would be reversed if the funding is not renewed.

“I may not get all the resignation letters the next day, but I might get them [in] mid-July or the beginning of August,” she added. “That’s when you begin to say you can’t keep the doors open.”

Teacher recruitment remains a challenge even with higher salaries

Preschool special education programs have long been the most neglected part of the city’s early childhood system.

The state provides a significant chunk of the providers’ budgets and officials approved flat or anemic funding for many years, below increases for traditional public schools (officials approved more generous increases during the last two years). As a result, teachers in the sector are often paid tens of thousands of dollars less than their peers in other schools, leading to high turnover and vacant classrooms, providers said.

Community organizations that operate general education preschool seats, the cornerstone of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s universal pre-K program, faced a similar funding disparity. After years of advocacy, those providers won big raises for their educators that brought them closer to their public school peers. But the special education teachers were left out, cementing their status as the lowest paid teachers in the city despite serving a high-need population.

Adams’ plan was designed to help fix that problem, providing extra funding to 86 providers to boost salaries closer to the minimum wages enjoyed by public school teachers, lengthen their school days from five hours to 6 hours and 20 minutes to match the district’s preschool schedule, and provide a slew of training and support.

The money is helping operators like HeartShare, which runs four preschool special education programs across Queens and Brooklyn. The organization lengthened the school day and increased many teacher salaries from about $50,000 a year to $68,652 a year, bringing them closer to the starting salary of certified teachers with a master’s degree in the city’s public schools. Teacher assistant wages increased to about $35,000 annually.

Carol Verdi, executive vice president of education services at HeartShare, said raises helped keep staff from leaving and enabled her to hire teachers for two classrooms that had been sitting empty because she couldn’t find anyone to run them.

“For retention, it was great,” Verdi said of the funding boost. “For recruitment, it helped a little bit.”

But strong incentives for teachers to work elsewhere remain. Under the new contract negotiated by the city’s teachers union, public school educators recently notched raises, leaving those in community-based pre-K classrooms below the new minimums. And for teachers with years of experience, they can earn thousands more by jumping to a public school.

Even with the recent salary boost for community organizations, Verdi still has seven classrooms she can’t find teachers for despite plenty of demand from families. “Our phone rings off the hook for seats,” Verdi said. “There are children out there in need.”

Sema Atilgan, who has worked at HeartShare for roughly two decades, said she has often considered leaving and briefly took a job at a public school in 2006. But she loves working with preschool students with disabilities, especially the feeling when students arrive with limited speech skills and leave the program speaking whole words.

“That gives me a lot of not only excitement to go forward ... but just gratitude,” said Atilgan, who has worked as a teacher and special education coordinator at the organization’s preschool program in Howard Beach, Queens.

Sema Atilgan, a long-time preschool special education teacher, is facing a pay cut this summer that may prompt her to quit.

But her salary would rise by more than $30,000 a year if she left for a public school teaching position, an enticing boost. Plus, she’d have a more generous benefits package and a summer break; preschool special education teachers in programs like HeartShare work year round. Instead, she’s facing a pay cut of about $3,700 this summer, which would bring her salary below $70,000 annually. That could be the final straw that pushes her into another job.

“If they give us a decrease in our salary there will not only be an uproar but also a mass exodus,” she said, adding that she works a side job on Sundays conducting evaluations for Early Intervention services to help make ends meet. “Who gives money and tries to take it back?”

The temporary nature of the funding took several providers by surprise, especially given Adams’ framing of the new money as a “historical leap forward” that would ensure every child with a disability has a preschool seat.

“We would have advised our providers to really seriously think about this unless the [Education Department] had a plan how to fund it” in the future, said Chris Treiber, who represents preschool special education providers through the InterAgency Council of Developmental Disabilities Agencies, an advocacy group. “If this funding ends, our teachers become the lowest-paid teachers in New York City again.”

Largest gaps are in NYC’s neediest neighborhoods

When the city fails to find a seat for a preschool student with a disability, they often sit at home, or wind up in a program that can’t provide intensive support and services, such as speech therapy, listed on a student’s learning plan.

The impact on the city’s youngest students is significant. A lack of special education services early on can lead to more significant learning deficits later — and increased costs for the city. The gap in seats this coming spring is projected to be highest in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, covering a swath of the South Bronx and central Brooklyn, including Brownsville and East New York, according to the Advocates for Children analysis.

“We need to hear a plan for how the city will provide a seat to every child who needs one this year,” said Randi Levine, the policy director at Advocates for Children. “The possibility of 1,400 seats being needed at the end of this year is extremely alarming.”

Nathaniel Styer, an education department spokesperson, said the city exceeded its goal of adding 800 seats by the end of last school year, mostly by helping providers raise salaries to recruit educators for classrooms that were sitting vacant. Still, those additional seats were not enough to meet demand, and officials have not detailed any new efforts to meet the projected gap this spring.

“We expanded access and increased pay for this critical sector at a time when it was suffering due to underinvestment and difficulty hiring staff,” Styer wrote in an email, pointing to “the extremely low base pay rate” offered by the state. “As the need continues to grow, we continue to pivot and shift.”

Bronx mom Diana Benavides struggled to find a special education preschool seat this year for her son Liam, who has autism. The 4-year-old attended a general education preschool program, which couldn’t provide all the support he needed this year, including speech therapy. Plus, his class of 17 students proved overstimulating, and he became much more withdrawn, she said.

“He’s more hesitant to go to school [and] has more separation anxiety,” Benavides said. After securing a new learning plan in November that called for a special education program with a class size of 12, she struggled to find a seat.

Benavides spent hours tracking down and calling roughly 20 programs. “It’s almost like a part-time job just trying to find that information and following up with the schools,” she said. She ultimately found just one program in Manhattan that could meet Liam’s needs, including speech and occupational therapy services on site.

Liam started at the new school this month, though Benavides worries about other children who are languishing at home or whose parents don’t have time to conduct their own exhaustive search.

“The need is just growing, especially coming out of the pandemic,” she said. The lack of seats, she said, “is going to have generational impact.”

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

Applications are now open for NYC’s free preschool programs. What parents should know

2024-01-10T22:41:59+00:00

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New York City families: Applications to the city’s free public preschool programs are now open.

The application period began Wednesday and will remain open until March 1, according to city officials. Parents have about two months to submit applications to preschool programs for 3- and 4-year-olds, with offers scheduled to release in May.

The city’s 3-K (for 3-year-olds) and pre-K (serving 4-year-olds) programs offer free, full-day educational programming in public schools as well as community-based organizations. (“Full day” means 6 hours and 20 minutes.) They can be hugely beneficial to families, saving them thousands of dollars in child care costs.

Research has found preschool programs can have positive impacts on a child’s development, academic performance, and health.

Making pre-K universal for the city’s 4-year-olds is widely considered former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s crowning achievement. He aimed to do the same for the city’s 3-year-olds, but never had the full funding in place to make 3-K universal, relying on temporary federal COVID relief dollars to expand the program. But in recent years, enrollment in pre-kindergarten classes has fallen significantly, and thousands of seats in the city’s program for 3-year-olds have gone unfilled. The sector’s challenges have also grown as a result of budget cuts and the looming expiration of federal COVID relief funds.

Here’s what families need to know:

How to apply

Parents can apply in three ways:

Online at MySchools.nyc;
Over the phone by calling 718-935-2009 Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.;
Or in person by going to a family welcome center.

The city’s Education Department will also host virtual information sessions to help families learn more about the admissions process, officials said.

Families can attend virtual sessions either by visiting this link and entering a passcode posted here, or by calling 646-931-3860 and entering the following conference ID: 939 3029 2133.

The first virtual session will take place Thursday at 2 p.m., with others scheduled over the coming weeks. Interpretation services will also be offered, according to city officials.

Other virtual information sessions:

Jan. 18 at 6 p.m.
Jan. 23 at 6 p.m. in Spanish
Feb. 7 at 2 p.m.
Feb. 15 at 6 p.m.

How preschool programs have changed

The city’s early childhood programs have undergone changes in recent years, with Mayor Eric Adams stepping back from an expansion to 3-K planned by his predecessor, while vowing to ensure the city offers enough seats to preschool students with disabilities.

The city has also moved toward a single curriculum.

Though data released in November showed enrollment in the city’s public schools rising slightly for the first time in eight years, figures remain below pre-pandemic norms.

The number of children attending pre-kindergarten programs has declined by more than 12,000 since the pandemic began, with about 56,900 children enrolled as of this year. Despite growing demand for 3-K programs, thousands of seats remain empty.

Some declines may have been caused by outside factors, like birth rates falling nationally over time or families leaving the city as housing costs have risen. But advocates have also complained that many 3-K programs are only available between 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., making them difficult for working parents to take advantage of.

Education Department officials have noted that seats in some areas are in higher demand, adding the city has worked to shift unfilled seats to areas with greater need.

City officials have put money toward addressing the enrollment losses and empty seats. Last year, officials said the city would pay a consulting firm just over $760,000 to help determine how to allocate 3-K seats across different neighborhoods. And in the fall, the city moved to spend $21 million on a two-year ad campaign to provide families with information about enrolling in public schools.

Programs brace for budget cuts

The sector is likely to face further challenges ahead, as the city’s Education Department undergoes budget cuts, and as federal COVID relief funds are set to expire in the fall. In November, Adams directed the city’s Education Department to cut nearly $550 million from its budget, with further cuts still expected.

An analysis released Wednesday by the city’s Independent Budget Office showed those cuts would reduce the overall budget for 3-K and pre-K by $82 million beginning in 2025 — with 3-K facing an additional loss of $10 million each year in 2026 and 2027, after the expiration of federal funds.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

‘Caught between two systems’: NYC family sues over missed Early Intervention services

2023-09-26T21:50:13+00:00

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After a Brooklyn toddler with autism failed to receive many of the therapies she was entitled to, two city agencies refused to provide makeup services to help her catch up, according to a federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday against the city’s health and education departments.

The case concerns a child, identified by her initials R.A., who has limited speech skills and cognitive delays and was eligible for a range of therapies through Early Intervention, a program that provides services to children with various delays from birth to age 3.

The child, who was 2-years-old at the time, was entitled to occupational, speech, and behavioral therapies, but she only received limited sessions of behavioral therapy during her seven months in the Early Intervention program and none of the occupational and speech therapies, the suit claims.

When the toddler turned 3 last year, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which operates Early Intervention for city residents, refused to provide makeup services for the therapies since she had “aged out” of the program.

The girl now attends a special education preschool. But the Education Department, which is responsible for overseeing special education plans for school-age children, has also declined to provide additional therapies to make up for what she missed during Early Intervention.

The family is “caught between two systems,” said Betty Baez Melo, the director of the early childhood education project at Advocates for Children, which brought the lawsuit along with Morrison & Foerster LLP. “Neither agency is taking accountability in order to provide the child with the services that she didn’t receive.”

The lawsuit contends that R.A. has a right to what are known as “compensatory services” under federal law to make up for lost therapy sessions. The family unsuccessfully attempted to secure compensatory services from the Health Department from an administrative law judge. (Advocates for Children is also involved in a separate federal lawsuit against the Education Department to expedite makeup services for school-age children.)

Receiving therapies early on is crucial for young children with disabilities or delays, according to experts, because their brains are still rapidly developing. Securing services early in a child’s life can also help head off the need for more extensive — and costly — special education services later on.

Though the lawsuit centers on a single child, Baez Melo said the case has implications for other families. About 58% of children who were eligible for Early Intervention didn’t receive all of the services they were entitled to between July 2018 and February 2022, according to an audit released by the state comptroller earlier this year. That period includes the onset of the pandemic, when the number of children receiving services dropped and providers scrambled to provide therapies remotely.

Spokespeople for the city’s health, education, and law departments did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

R.A.’s mother, a 29-year-old who lives in East New York and is identified in the lawsuit as B.A., said the process of securing services has been a distressing experience.

B.A. suspected her daughter might have a disability early on, as R.A. struggled to make eye contact, often repeated questions instead of answering them, had difficulty sitting still, and did not like touching or eating soft food.

The family hoped Early Intervention services could help with some of those challenges. The city initially offered teletherapy, a setup that would be difficult for the family to access since R.A. has trouble sitting still, and her mother does not speak English fluently, making it more challenging to follow a therapist’s instructions to deliver services to her daughter.

Although R.A. received some behavioral therapy, known as Applied Behavioral Analysis, it never amounted to the 20 hours a week she was supposed to receive, according to court papers. She also didn’t receive any of her required speech and occupational sessions.

Many families across the city struggle to secure providers, a challenge that is more acute in certain neighborhoods. B.A., an immigrant from Bangladesh, also wondered whether language barriers made the service coordinator take her less seriously.

“I didn’t do anything wrong — we started everything on time, but I couldn’t help my daughter,” B.A. said in Bengali during an interview that was interpreted by her sister. “She needs a lot of help besides what the [Education Department] provides.”

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

NYC’s budget deal restores some education programs

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

This story has been updated to reflect new information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what to know:

Still unclear how individual school budgets will be affected

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

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

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

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

Funding restored to child care for undocumented families

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

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

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

Mental health support program saved at last moment

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

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

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

City to pilot extended hours for pre-kindergarten

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions remain about the mayor’s savings plan

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

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

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

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

Looking ahead: Concerns loom as federal dollars dry up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preschool workers eye contract set by teachers union

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pay gap angers teachers and other support staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salary disparity for directors pushes them out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NYC school admission offers are out. Here’s what the numbers show.

2023-06-02T00:41:43+00:00

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Despite the stress of applying to New York City public schools, more children received offers to their top-choice schools across all grade levels, education department officials said Thursday.

New York City schools have long relied on the practice of sorting and screening many kids, leading to a Hunger Games-like mindset for many families. It has also resulted in one of the nation’s most segregated school systems.

This year’s offer data shows little change in terms of racial and economic diversity compared to last year.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said Nyah Berg, of the integration advocacy nonprofit New York Appleseed, who previously expressed concerns that changes to this year’s admissions cycle could lead to less diverse schools. “We have made a lot of progress over the past two years.”

As the pandemic forced many schools to drop or shift their admissions criteria, some schools have become more diverse. Though integration advocates had long been pushing for such changes, it only happened by necessity because attendance could no longer be held against students, and standardized tests were not administered as they typically were. Neither Mayor Eric Adams nor Chancellor David Banks has made integration a top priority.

“If we really want to create and foster diverse schools there’s a lot more to be done than tinkering here and there,” Berg said.

Still, she believed this year’s changes centralizing admissions for high school, in particular, made the process more transparent, and she’s hopeful the city will continue to ditch standardized test scores and attendance in screening applicants.

Here’s a snapshot of what offers looked like for different grades.

Status quo for specialized high schools

Once again, few Black and Latino students were admitted to New York City’s eight prestigious specialized high schools, which accept students based solely on a single admissions test.

Black and Latino students made up nearly 10% of offers for next year’s class, according to education department data released Thursday.

That’s about the same as the previous year and the year before that. Just seven Black students were admitted to Stuyvesant based on the admissions exam — and that number was higher than three other specialized high schools.

Black and Latino students make up about 66% of students citywide.

The small number of Black and Latino students at the city’s specialized high schools has long been the subject of fierce debate, with many blaming the disparity on the reliance of a single test for admissions. (The admissions method is governed by state law.) The Adams administration has made little indication that it plans to change the way students are admitted to these schools, largely considered the Ivy League of New York City high schools.

About 26,000 eighth graders took the Specialized High School Admissions test this year, down about 2,000 from last year, according to city data.

Little change at selective high schools

For admissions to other selective New York City high schools, little changed. The education department created a tiered system for the city’s selective schools — like Beacon, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Townsend Harris — based on seventh grade scores in core subjects. The changes were aimed to simplify the process but also raised the bar for scores needed to qualify for the top group, narrowing the group of kids with priority access to these coveted schools.

Banks stirred up controversy when discussing the shift: “If a young person is working their tail off every single day and they get a 99% average … that should be honored,” he said at the time. “You should not be thrown in a lottery with just everybody.”

There were some concerns that the changes would reverse some of the pandemic-era diversity gains seen when competitive schools could no longer rely as heavily on grades and other screening measures, like state tests scores and attendance. But more than 40 of these schools have programs that set aside a certain percentage of their seats for students from low-income families or in temporary housing, for instance. That meant if there were not enough students with top grades for “group 1” who met the eligibility requirements for a school’s diversity targets, such as a certain percentage of students from low-income families, then those seats went to applicants in the next tier.

Despite these shifts in selection criteria, the offers reveal that little changed in racial and economic demographics compared to last year when an 85 grade point average was the cutoff for the top tier instead of this year’s 90 GPA. Roughly 32% of offers at these schools went to Latino students, followed by 25% to Asian American students, 19% to Black students, and 17% to white students. Roughly 66% of the offers went to students from low-income families.

Overall, of the roughly 73,000 eighth graders across the city receiving offers this year, about 48% percent got into their top choice. That isn’t far from last year, when about 50% got their first choice or the previous year when 46% got their No. 1 pick.

About 75% applicants got into one of their top three choices, up two percentage points from last year.

The city extended offers three months earlier than last year. The goal, city officials said, was to let families know before private school deposit deadlines.

Number of screened programs drops dramatically at middle school

Following two years without selective admissions for New York City middle schools — as the pandemic upended state test scores and other screening criteria — Banks let each district’s superintendent decide whether to reinstate competitive middle school admissions.

Some families lobbied to bring back screens, while others pushed to ditch them, saying it was unfair to sort the city’s 10-year olds based on their academic performance from fourth grade.

After superintendents spent about a month deliberating with their communities, nearly all opted for fewer or the same number of screened middle schools as before the pandemic. Nearly 60 of 478 middle schools ended up reinstating screens for at least some segment of their incoming sixth graders based on their fourth grade marks; 24 of these programs used selective criteria for all incoming sixth graders.

That dramatically reduced the number of kids in screened middle school programs from about 16,510 getting such offers in 2020 to about 5,100 with offers for the coming school year, according to the data.

The breakdown of students by income in screened programs remained fairly steady, with about 60% coming from low-income families. The share of Asian American students jumped to 35%, up from 21% in 2020, likely based on the demographics of which districts opted for screened programs.

Overall, 74% of the city’s fifth graders received an offer for their top choice, and 92% got one of their top three choices.

Kindergarten offers slightly up

City data also reflected a slight increase in kindergarten applicants, with about 1,200 more children applying. Those figures included applications for spots in the city’s coveted “gifted and talented” program, which used teacher evaluations instead of the prepandemic exams to select preschoolers.

About 95% of families saw their children admitted to one of their top three choices this year — up 4% from last year — as more seats were available and as the city said it extended more offers to families interested in schools outside of their zone or district.

This year, applications to the gifted and talented program were included with general kindergarten admission. Officials did not release admissions data for the gifted and talented program Thursday.

In the past, the program has faced criticism for admitting small numbers of Black and Hispanic students.

The application process underwent multiple changes during the pandemic, with Adams and Banks reversing a plan to phase out the program and choosing instead to expand the track by 100 seats in kindergarten last year.

Applications up slightly for 3-K and pre-K

For the city’s youngest students, admissions data showed a slight uptick as the city saw more applicants and more children set to receive 3-K and pre-K offers.

Admissions to 3-K programs rose by 8% this year, as the number of applicants rose to roughly 41,600. That was up from just under 40,000 in 2022.

For families applying, 68% were admitted to their first-choice program, up 5% from 2022.

Nearly 61,000 children received offers to pre-K programs this year — a jump of 3% from the year prior. That came as applications were up more than 3,000 from 2022, though still well below pre-pandemic figures.

Among applicants, 84% were admitted to their first-choice program.

The numbers come as a consulting firm’s report found the city’s early childhood system — including 3K, pre-K, as well as infants and toddlers — currently had roughly 30,000 empty seats — many of which were not in areas where demand is high, according to officials. That meant some parts of the city would see waitlists for spots, while others had thousands of empty seats, officials said.

The city did not release the complete findings of the report Thursday, which it paid the firm Accenture more than $760,000 to conduct. But its prognosis echoes a common criticism from the Adams administration — that the supply and demand of seats have been misaligned in areas across the city.

Officials said that the findings pointed toward a need to look at enrollment projections and available seats within zip codes, redistributing seats to areas with higher demand.

Of the approximately 140,000 seats across the city’s early childhood system, between roughly 119,000 and 127,000 were projected to be filled in 2024-25, according to the report.

“The city is focused on matching seats to parent demand—and that’s not a bad thing—but they should also be working to increase parent demand, particularly among underserved communities where children currently have the least access to quality early education programs,” said Halley Potter, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “The Adams administration has not provided the needed investments in outreach, and that, combined with the lagging effects of the pandemic disruption to early childhood settings, is a recipe for inequity.”

The city’s free prekindergarten program has struggled this year, as delayed payments have caused some providers to shutter. Some officials and advocates, including City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, have criticized the administration for its handling of the early education system.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

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

NYC won’t slash school budgets at first, but mid-year cuts are still possible

2023-05-22T22:33:01+00:00

New York City schools won’t have to brace for budget cuts next school year — at least at first.

All schools will receive the same amount of money or more at the start of the 2023-24 academic year as they did this year despite some of the “fiscal challenges” facing the city, Chancellor David Banks announced on Monday during a City Council hearing about the education department’s proposed budget for next fiscal year.

But school budgets may not need the extra cushion this year. Unlike the significant drops over the past few years, the education department is projecting enrollment to largely hold steady next year, dipping by less than 1%

The move represents a shift from what happened last summer, when budget cuts tied to declining enrollment, sparked severe backlash, including a lawsuit, and forced schools to shrink staff and programming.

It also comes as Mayor Eric Adams has proposed cutting the education department’s budget by 3% next fiscal year, which begins July 1. That $30.5 billion budget is expected to include less spending on fringe benefits and cut a previously announced expansion of preschool for 3-year-olds.

The decision to start the new school year with steady budgets, however, doesn’t mean schools are completely immune from cuts. Banks said the city hasn’t yet decided whether schools will see cuts during what’s known as the “mid-year adjustment”— a practice put on pause this year using $200 million in federal COVID relief dollars.

Schools get money in the summer based on the city’s enrollment projections, and when the final tallies are taken on Oct. 31, schools could lose money mid-year if they’ve enrolled fewer students than projected — or get extra money if they have more children.

“If a school has 500 students, but by the middle of the year, they’ve dropped down to 200 students, we’re not going to make the commitment today to say, ‘No matter what, there’ll be no adjustment even at that point,’” Banks said during the hearing.

That might leave some school leaders with tough decisions. While principals might get the same amount of money as last year, they may be hesitant to hire more teachers or create more programming in anticipation of losing money during the school year.

One the one hand, some city principals said they understand the city’s desire to bring funding more in line with enrollment to avoid big disparities in per-student spending between schools.

“There are schools that are serving many fewer students than they were five years ago, and the city can’t afford to just fund those schools endlessly,” said a Brooklyn principal who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

But on the other hand, the principal wishes that the education department would make it easier for schools to plan by promising budgets will not be cut more than a certain percentage in a given year rather than having to make educated guesses.

And even if a school does not have to return money later in the year, it can be difficult to use before the spending deadline, especially to hire staff. If a school has an unexpected surplus in January, “all of a sudden there’s a spending spree and it’s not effective and efficient,” the principal said. “It doesn’t help to get money in November or January if you needed to hire a teacher in September.”

Schools are expected to receive their budgets by the end of this month, said Emma Vadehra, chief operating officer for the education department. When principals receive those budgets, Vadehra said, they might notice cuts to individual funding streams, such as Fair Student Funding, which is the city’s main school funding formula. (Schools with higher needs and higher enrollment get more money under the formula.)

Such drops will be backfilled with “other funding streams” to hold budgets steady, Vadehra said. However, officials did not clarify how schools will be able to use those funds. While Fair Student Funding can be used to hire teachers, money from other pots can sometimes be restricted for other uses.

The education department plans to use funding from multiple sources to keep budgets level at the start of the school year, Vadehra said. That includes a $160 million in federal stimulus funds that had been announced previously, as well as money from the state, which has boosted dollars for districts through its own school funding formula, known as Foundation Aid.

Several council members raised concerns about education department programs that are relying on expiring federal stimulus dollars, including preschool programming and expanded summer programming. Vadehra acknowledged that the education department does not yet have a plan on how to fund these initiatives once the money runs out in 2024.

“This is a major challenge,” Banks said to council members. “I mean, there’s a lot of great programs — even as we came on board — that have been built off of access to these stimulus dollars. The stimulus dollars are going away. We’re going to have to work very closely together to try to figure this out.”

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

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@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’s education budget could drop by $960M next year under mayor’s proposal

2023-04-27T00:19:25+00:00

The city’s education department budget would drop by nearly $960 million next school year under a more detailed budget proposal released by Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday, though city officials did not offer specifics about the impact on individual campuses.

Two-thirds of that cut, or $652 million, is the result of Adams’ decision to reduce the city’s contribution to the education department. Another $297 million is from a drop in federal funding, which is drying up as pandemic relief programs end.

Part of the city’s cut is tied to a mandate from the mayor earlier this month calling on city agencies to cut spending, including at the education department. That raised questions about whether schools would take a hit, but on Wednesday, Adams vowed that this specific cost-saving measure “will not take a dime from classrooms.”

Instead, that reduction — totaling $325 million — will largely come from recalculations on how much the city spends in fringe benefits, such as health insurance for teachers. (Officials emphasized this would not result in a loss of benefits or other services.)

“We had to make tough choices in this budget,” Adams said Wednesday. “We had to negotiate competing needs. We realize that not everyone will be happy but that is okay because that is how you get stuff done.”

The education department’s operating budget would total about $30.5 billion next year under the mayor’s plan, down by about 3%.

Some of the cuts were previously announced, including the elimination of a planned expansion of prekindergarten for 3-year-olds. Other impacts of the cuts may come into focus in the coming days as experts and journalists pore over reams of budget documents, which were released late Wednesday afternoon.

Adams has argued school budgets should reflect falling enrollment, but city officials declined to say what overall change they expect to individual school budgets next year. That question is likely to draw intense scrutiny after the City Council was heavily criticized last year for approving a budget that resulted in cuts to many campuses.

After the pandemic hit, Mayor Bill de Blasio used federal relief money to keep school budgets steady even as enrollment plunged. But as the spigot of federal money is drying up, Adams has started reducing budgets to line up with the number of students enrolled at each school, resulting in cuts on the majority of campuses. (Since the start of the pandemic, enrollment dropped about 11% in K-12.)

Next year, Adams plans to use $160 million of federal money to avoid deeper cuts to school budgets. Officials anticipate a much smaller enrollment decline than in recent years, which could insulate schools to some degree.

The budget is not final and must still be negotiated with the City Council. A final deal is due by July 1.

The proposed budget also includes funding for various other items, including services that advocates had been pushing for the mayor to include. Those are:

$3.3 million for keeping a chunk of the city’s new shelter-based coordinators, who are supposed to help families and children who are homeless navigate school enrollment and transportation. The funding for these coordinators was set to run out this June.
$9 million for a telehealth program for high school students who need mental health support.
$2 million for training up to 1,000 teachers in climate education.

The mayor’s budget received a mixed reception from advocates, union officials, and budget experts. Kim Sweet, executive director at the nonprofit Advocates for Children, praised the funding for shelter coordinators, but raised alarms about broader spending cuts — including to a program that provides extra mental health services to students at 50 high-need high schools, and another that provides free child care for undocumented families.

“We are concerned that the Mayor is proposing to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from our City’s schools at a time when there are so many unmet needs,” Sweet said in a statement, including high rates of chronic absenteeism and shortages in services for students with disabilities.

Still, Adams has argued that the city needs to tighten its belt due to costs associated with serving an influx of asylum seekers and potential economic headwinds.

Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the budget watchdog group Citizens Budget Commission, said her organization is worried the city isn’t properly planning now for big budget shortfalls that are expected in future years. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars of federal relief funding for the education department that will disappear in 2024 and could leave several programs and services unfunded.

“From our point of view there is still a major challenge fiscally for the city that’s not far off,” Champeny said. “We really should be taking action now.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

58% of NYC’s youngest children don’t receive all of their Early Intervention services

2023-03-01T00:29:38+00:00

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

The majority of New York City infants and toddlers who are eligible for specialized therapies have not received all of the support they’re entitled to, according to figures released Tuesday by the state comptroller.

From birth to age 3, children with developmental delays or disabilities are entitled to “Early Intervention,” a host of services that include speech and occupational therapy, or even psychological support.

But nearly 58% of New York City children who were eligible for those services did not receive all of the therapeutic support spelled out on the individualized plans, representing nearly 27,000 children.

That’s significantly higher than the 42% of children who did not receive services across the rest of the state during the period included in the audit, which ran from July 2018 to February 2022. The audit includes data from the onset of the pandemic, when the number of children receiving Early Intervention services dropped and providers attempted to conduct therapies virtually, a challenge for many young children.

The gap in services is particularly acute in the Bronx, where families have long pointed to problems securing Early Intervention services. More than two-thirds of children there did not receive all of the therapies they were entitled to, according to a Chalkbeat analysis, the most of any borough.

“We’re at a point where thousands and thousands of children are waiting for services and in some cases never receiving their services,” said Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children, a group that has pushed for reforms to the Early Intervention system. “We’re seeing statewide systemic violations of children’s rights.”

Children can be referred for early intervention services in a variety of ways, including by their pediatrician, day care provider, caregiver, or even by child welfare agencies. Securing services early on in a child’s development is crucial for addressing delays and disabilities and can head off the need for more complex or expensive special education services later.

“Early Intervention exists because the brain is most malleable in the first three years of life,” Dr. Liz Isakson, the executive director of Docs for Tots, an organization that helps ensure children with delays get connected to services, previously told Chalkbeat.

The comptroller’s figures show that nearly 12% of city students who were referred for services were never evaluated for them (compared with 17% across the rest of the state). Among children who were evaluated, 95% received an individualized family service plan spelling out what support their child needs. But nearly a quarter of city students had to wait longer than the required 30 days for their services to kick in.

The audit points to several factors that can prevent children from getting the services they need. In some cases, provider shortages make services difficult to acquire. Working parents may not be able accommodate sessions during regular business hours.

In other instances, parents may not consent to services, potentially due to stigma or mistrust of government agencies, though the audit urges state and local agencies to better track why so many children are not receiving services and investigate racial and geographic inequities.

“The Department of Health needs to address the underlying reasons why children are not receiving the services they are entitled to, why services are often delayed and how access can be improved,” Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement.

Advocates also contend that one source of ongoing service delays is that providers are continuing to lean on telehealth services even in cases where face-to-face support is needed.

“We’re creating a two-tiered system,” said Betty Baez Melo, who directs the early childhood education project at Advocates for Children. She noted that families in low-income communities have struggled to get access to providers who are willing to provide in-person services and argues the state should create financial incentives to encourage face-to-face services, a move supported by city officials.

The city’s health department, which administers the Early Intervention program, emphasized that children can miss therapies for a variety of reasons, including illness, vacations, or conflicting appointments. In those situations, city officials offer make up sessions, wrote spokesperson Patrick Gallahue.

“The time period of the comptroller audit covers the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which presented enormous challenges to our Early Intervention Program,” Gallahue wrote. “Still, our staff worked furiously to bring services to families who needed them.”

Health officials also emphasized that gaining consent for services during the pandemic was challenging without a face-to-face conversation, but still sought it through email and text messages.

A spokesperson for the state’s health department, which oversees Early Intervention programs across New York, did not answer a question about the provision of telehealth services in lieu of in-person therapies. Asked about the large share of students who don’t receive all the services they’re entitled to, state officials emphasized that Early Intervention services are voluntary.

“Parents have a right to accept or reject some or all of Early Intervention services recommended for their child at any time, for any reason,” spokesperson Jeffrey Hammond wrote in a statement. “Although the COVID-19 pandemic affected the Early Intervention program, the Department has since worked to strengthen outreach to families.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, details remained murky.

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

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

COVID vaccine mandate dropped for city employees, visitors to NYC public schools

2023-02-06T19:29:10+00:00

Chalkbeat New York is a nonprofit newsroom covering New York City’s public schools. Subscribe to our free newsletter to follow our reporting: ckbe.at/subscribe-ny

Visitors to New York City’s public schools will no longer have to be vaccinated, ending a year-and-a-half-old rule that had kept some parents out of school functions, Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday.

Adams also announced that COVID vaccines will no longer be required of city workers. That means that more than 1,700 employees who were fired for not complying with vaccine mandates can apply for open positions. As of last March, about 900 education department employees had been fired; a spokesperson did not provide a more recent figure.

That rule had invited various legal challenges and pressure from unions, including the United Federation of Teachers. Judges in several of these cases have sided with those who argued that the city’s rule was unlawful.

Vaccine requirements will also be lifted for private schools, early childhood programs, and daycare staff.

The changes will go into effect Feb. 10, after a vote from the city’s Board of Health, which is expected to approve the changes.

“With more than 96 percent of city workers and more than 80 percent of New Yorkers having received their primary COVID-19 series and more tools readily available to keep us healthy, this is the right moment for this decision,” Adams said in a statement. “I continue to urge every New Yorker to get vaccinated, get boosted, and take the necessary steps to protect themselves and those around them from COVID-19.”

Monday’s announcement represents the Adams administration’s gradual unpeeling of COVID-related rules established under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. And for schools, it marks the end of any major remaining COVID mitigations. Prior to this, Adams had ended masking rules, vaccine mandates for student athletes and prom attendees, daily health screenings and in-school COVID testing for students and staff, and had disbanded the city’s so-called Situation Room, which informed school communities of positive COVID cases.

Many parents have petitioned the city to end its vaccine requirement for school visitors. One parent previously told Chalkbeat that the inability to attend her child’s school was one of several factors that drove her family out of New York City.

NeQuan McLean, president of Brooklyn’s District 16 parent council, said he supports COVID shots, noting that he and his family members are fully vaccinated. But he felt the mandate made it hard for schools to “really engage with families like they needed to,” for parents and guardians who chose not to get their vaccines.

“This is really a move back to real, authentic parent engagement because you can’t really engage over a computer,” McLean said.

Earlier this school year, officials said parent-teacher conferences would happen virtually, but parents could request in-person meetings (though those had to happen during teachers’ contractual work days). Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the education department, said conferences will continue to be virtual by default “for the time being.”

Last month, Chancellor David Banks signaled that based on the advice of health officials, he could support lifting the requirement for school building visitors, such as parents, to be vaccinated.

Some are already criticizing the move. Dr. Jay Varma, an advisor for de Blasio during the pandemic, wrote that he was “shocked” at the news. He argued that as new people enter the workforce and unvaccinated teenagers get older, this change will mean more “illness, deaths, and costs,” since vaccination helps stem severe and fatal illness, as well as hospitalization.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But every step helps,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NYC vows to pay pre-K providers after lengthy delays

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Need for affordable child care

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Expanding smartly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Confusion and chaos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What comes next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NYC schools to move 1,000 central, borough staffers to district offices

2022-09-02T21:56:30+00:00

New York City’s education department will move 1,000 central and borough-level staff to district offices, Chancellor David Banks announced on Friday.

Staffers will be pulled from central leadership, First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg’s office, early childhood education, and from borough offices “to more effectively support schools in coordination with district superintendents,” according to a news release about the restructuring.

Borough offices — which a spokesperson said will no longer exist after the administration’s shake-up — each have traditionally served multiple districts. They’re staffed with people who are supposed to help schools with things such as assessments and screening, planning lessons, and analyzing student data.

Officials did not share what most of these 1,000 staffers currently do, or how exactly their jobs will change once they move into their new roles.

Staff will be moved to superintendents’ offices “to be used in direct support of schools,” said spokesperson Nathaniel Styer, who said that the change removes a bureaucratic layer in providing schools with direct support. For example, Styer said, social workers will be working with schools in “maximizing social-emotional support” for students.

About 100 of them are social workers from the early childhood division who, once moved to district offices, will focus on “high-need communities,” such as students who are living in temporary housing, officials said. City officials had promised last year to equip each school with at least one full-time social worker or access to a school-based mental health clinic; Styer said Friday that they’ve achieved that goal.

“As we continue the work to reimagine the education we provide, it is critical that our central and borough staff are moving closer to the communities, schools, students, and teachers they serve,” Banks said in a statement. “Our Superintendents are accountable for partnering with families and schools to meet the needs of their communities and improve the school experience of our students, and these personnel are being reassigned to support those efforts.”

The move represents Banks’ second shakeup of the education department’s bureaucracy and leadership. He first eliminated the nine executive superintendents appointed by his predecessor, Richard Carranza, and required district superintendents to reapply for their jobs. That process met with some backlash.

Friday’s announcement appeared in line with early priorities set by Banks. In his first official agenda-setting speech, Banks said he wanted to give superintendents more staff and resources and signaled that he was considering cuts at borough offices.

The city teachers union applauded the move.

“Any time we move resources closer to the schools, it is a win for our students and our school communities,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, in a statement.

The principals union did not immediately respond for comment.

Some central office staffers are already questioning what the move will achieve. One central office employee within the city’s early childhood division — an area where some of these 1,000 staffers will be moved from — said there’s still no clarity about what this plan will mean for her office.

“I have no words for their inability to create a clear plan,” said the staffer, who requested anonymity because she was not authorized to speak with the press. “It’s not clear what actually is happening.”

One example of what the reorganization will look like on the ground: This staffer was informed Friday that all of the city’s 185 early childhood instructional coordinators, who work directly with 3K and prekindergarten providers, will be excessed — which Styer confirmed, adding that there will be available jobs for each person. “Excessing” means the employee would lose their current job, but would continue earning a city paycheck while they reapply to jobs within the system.

Those workers will be encouraged to apply for new instructional coach positions as part of this reorganization, the staffer said — but she has yet to receive any more details.

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 schools lays out plan to enroll hundreds of asylum-seeking students

2022-08-19T21:51:56+00:00

As New York City sees a surge of new immigrants seeking asylum from Central and South American countries, officials announced Friday that they will provide extra enrollment help to hundreds of new students expected to attend city schools.

City officials estimate that about 6,000 such immigrants have entered the city’s shelter system over the past three months, which the administration has blamed, in part, on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sending migrants on buses to New York.

At least 1,000 new students are expected to enroll in district schools, including preschool-aged children. However, that figure is “fluid” and will continue to change, said education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer.

Many of these students may need extra support, such as legally mandated services for children learning English as a new language.

“Our public schools are prepared to welcome families seeking asylum with open arms,” said Chancellor David Banks in a statement. “We are working alongside our agency partners to set students up for success by addressing their academic, emotional and social needs, and ensuring there is no disruption to their education.”

As part of a city plan dubbed “Project Open Arms,” shelters will host “pop-up” enrollment offices, where education department staff will help new families sign their children up for school. Staff will also accompany families to Family Welcome Centers, which are city offices where people can enroll their kids and get more information about school.

Staff will give out backpacks and school supplies and connect new asylum-seekers with the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Clinics for medical care, officials said. The city also plans to work with community-based organizations that work with immigrant families so that they can provide families with “critical resources and services.”

Enrollment officials are placing students in schools with open seats that are near their shelters, and considering a family’s preferred choice of language instruction, according to the department. Children who are learning English are entitled to traditional English as a new language instruction, meaning their classes are in English but they’re supposed to get extra support and translation help during and outside of class. They can also choose bilingual programs or dual language instruction, but most city schools lack such programming, according to program data from last school year.

So far, students are concentrated in Districts 2 and 3 in Manhattan, District 10 in the Bronx, District 14 in Brooklyn, and Districts 24 and 30 in Queens, officials said. These new students range across ages and grades, said Yesenia Escalante, an education department enrollment counselor.

Students who enroll after the traditional admissions process has concluded tend to have higher needs, such as this influx of asylum seekers. In the past, late-arriving students have been sent to lower performing schools, raising questions about where these new immigrant students will be enrolled and whether they will be adequately served.

Enrollment has declined across the city, meaning there could be enough seats available across many different types of schools.

In Manhattan’s District 2, officials have been speaking with families at shelters, then connecting them to individual schools, said Kelly McGuire, superintendent for the district.

“Our schools have pulled together some of their office staff, they have folks who are enrolling students directly at the school site, and that’s kind of the critical piece in terms of evaluating who the students are, what their language needs are, their students with disabilities, making sure that they are getting connected with the services that they need,” McGuire said.

Kamar Samuels, superintendent of District 3, noted that they’re working with organizations and schools’ staff to ensure students “are feeling welcome.”

“We’re working with CBOs, we’re working with school staff to just make sure that we tap into all of the resources that we have regarding language and making sure that we have access to those languages,” Samuels said.

The new wave of students comes as schools across the city are seeing budget cuts due to projected declining enrollment, though a legal fight could eventually overturn those cuts. Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said that schools seeing an influx of new students, particularly those with extra needs, will be able to request more funding, such as to hire more staff — a process, he added, that’s not unique to this school year.

“You might need to immediately post and hire for an additional guidance counselor, or an additional (English as a new language) teacher, and if you need to do that, you’ll talk to your budget director, you talk to your superintendent, and you’ll get it posted very quickly,” Weisberg said of principals. “It won’t be, ‘Oh, gosh, you’re gonna have to wait a few months,’ and then do it then, because you need it right now.”

Advocates lauded the city’s effort to work across various agencies to address immigrant students’ needs.

However, they worried about historic barriers to adequate schooling for new immigrants, which have been the subject of a longstanding state-issued corrective action plan. For example, the city has for years failed to provide legally required services to all bilingual students with disabilities, in part due to a shortage of trained bilingual educators.

“We know there aren’t enough bilingual programs in the city for all of the English language learners that qualify for them,” said Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, director of the Immigrant Students Rights Project at Advocates for Children New York. “We also know schools don’t always inform families of their right to elect bilingual programs.”

Additionally, city officials should ensure that school workers and those at Family Welcome Centers are trained on the legal rights of immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, said Vanessa Luna, co-founder of ImmSchools, which trains schools on supporting immigrant families.

Rodriguez-Engberg and other advocates worried that there won’t be enough bilingual social workers to help these students, who may be experiencing varying degrees of trauma after fleeing their home countries and relatives or friends. City officials said they plan to evaluate every student’s social-emotional needs using screeners that the district launched last school year.

“We want kids to be in schools that can support them – schools that create a sense of safety for the child and for the family,” said Alejandra Vázquez Baur, an education policy expert who focuses on immigrant students for think tank Next 100. “That is critical for the child’s educational opportunities and also the child’s well being in the school.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enrollment is not dipping evenly across all grades.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer is probably both.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What can districts do to build up enrollment?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NYC slated to get 3,000 new child care seats this fall, Hochul says

2022-07-25T22:07:14+00:00

New York City is expected to see nearly 3,000 new child care slots start opening this fall in areas considered “deserts” for such programs, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday.

The state issued $70 million in grants to get new centers off the ground for this first round and are promising more to come, using money from federal COVID relief dollars. Of that money, nearly $17 million is going to 70 child care centers in New York City.

The grants are expected to help new child care providers in certain areas build programs by covering start-up and personnel costs, as well as with recruitment, training, and supporting staff in accessing COVID-19 vaccines, state officials said.

“Child care deserts” were defined as census tracts that have three or more children younger than 5 for each available child care slot, or no available child care slots. More than half of New York City is considered a child care desert, Hochul said.

Discussing her own experience as a young mom of having to leave her job due to lack of affordable child care, Hochul said the issue is personal for her.

“This really becomes not only an economic problem for families. It’s an economic problem for society,” she said at a press conference about the grant, held at the YM&YWHA of Washington Heights & Inwood. “The women are the ones having to stay home.”

Many have yet to return, she added.

There are roughly 1 million fewer women in the nation’s workforce compared to pre-pandemic numbers, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report from April. Many left due to extreme burnout and lack of child care, the analysis found. Nearly 60% of parents were unable to find child care as tens of thousands of programs shuttered, and more than a quarter of parents couldn’t afford existing programs, the commerce chamber found in a December 2020 study.

In terms of tackling affordability, Hochul previously announced an increase to the income threshold for families eligible for subsidized child care to $83,250 for a family of four, up from about $55,500. That takes effect in August and is part of a larger $7 billion investment in the child care industry over four years.

Tara Gardner, executive director of the Day Care Council of New York, which represents about 200 privately run but publicly funded day care providers, said that change “will lift a major burden for many families.”

But Gardner said there’s still a need for more infant and toddler care as well as care beyond 3 p.m. and summer months.

Hochul acknowledged the dearth of options for nontraditional hours for many workers, such as medical staffers, restaurant workers, hotel cleaners, and bus drivers.

Of the 12,000 new slots opening over the next few months, 592 will be for infants and toddlers, while 500 will be for nontraditional hours, meaning between 7 p.m. until 6 a.m. as well as on major holidays like Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

New providers choosing to address those needs get a bonus award on top of their base grant.

“The child care workers are the essential workers for the essential workers,” Hochul said.

Nora Moran, director of policy at United Neighborhood Houses, an umbrella organization for many subsidized child care centers, said child care deserts have long been an issue, and this is the first time in her memory that the state was explicitly targeting these areas through its procurement process.

“It’s important to make sure families have options when it comes to accessing child care,” Moran said. “For too long families who live in deserts had limited choices and had to travel outside of their neighborhoods to access care.”

She was curious to see whether areas like Elmhurst and Corona in Queens, where many more families will be eligible for subsidized care under the new income requirements, will also get new centers.

The state is still in the process of working with the grant winners on licensing them so does not yet have a final list of new centers.

About 1,700 applicants vied for this first round of grants. The next round earmarks $30 million in federal grant funding to help existing programs in child care deserts expand their offering for day care centers as well as school-age child care programs, with incentives for those working with infants and toddlers, children with disabilities, and programs that have nontraditional hours.

Applications for that round are open through Aug. 4, according to the state.

For another application round due by Nov. 30, the state has earmarked another $343 million in federal funds to help stabilize the industry.

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

Here’s Eric Adams’ plan for making child care more affordable

2022-06-28T21:41:59+00:00

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio dramatically expanded free preschool in New York City, an incredibly popular initiative that made it free for every 4 year old.

Now, Mayor Eric Adams is looking to leave his own mark on the early childhood education system, releasing a blueprint on Tuesday for making it easier-to-use for families and more streamlined for providers.

The 38-page plan calls for helping families access care more easily and expanding services to reach 41,000 more children in high-needs neighborhoods over the next two years. It also focuses on strengthening the workforce who serve the city’s youngest children.

“All the research shows that quality child care is essential,” Adams said Tuesday. “We’re going to tackle our child care needs head on.”

Asked by a reporter about universal child care, Adams suggested that is his ultimate goal. “We’re gonna get there — we’re gonna keep moving forward,” he said.

The needs are great. According to American Community Survey data, there are 315,000 children under 5 in New York City whose families meet the threshold for subsidized care‚ but only about 127,000 are enrolled in city-contracted programs or receive a voucher, according to the city’s blueprint.

Previously, the city announced a $100 million partnership with the anti-poverty nonprofit Robin Hood, dedicated to improving child care. Part of the initiative’s aim is creating a new office at City Hall to streamline what is currently a disjointed system involving multiple departments and agencies.

Here are some highlights and what to watch for as the city moves forward with its ambitious proposal:

Clearing the voucher backlog

One of the ways New York City wants to make care more accessible is by clearing a backlog of families waiting to be approved to receive subsidies through vouchers. The blueprint says the city is “committed to fully clearing the current waitlist by September.” City officials said about 7,000 families are currently on the waitlist, though not all of them may still need or want care. That’s down from about 35,000 on the waitlist in March, officials said.

In clearing the backlog, the city plans to first focus attention on applications from 17 community districts identified as having the highest needs, based on the percentage of children and families living in poverty, unemployment rates, and the availability of care in those neighborhoods. Families in those neighborhoods will not be placed on waitlists under the city’s proposal. The Bronx is home to the greatest number of priority neighborhoods, from Mott Haven to Highbridge and Bronxdale.

In addition to clearing the voucher backlog, the city wants to help families access care by advocating for changes at the state level, including removing roadblocks that disqualify parents for assistance if they make less than minimum wage and changing work hour requirements that can be onerous.

The city is also significantly reducing copays for families based on their income, so that families who used to pay $55 a week, for example, now will only need to pay $10.

Tax incentives

Adams, who fundraised substantial money from developers and lobbyists during his campaign, has championed tax incentives to help spur the creation of more child care spots.

The city budget allocated tens of millions of dollars in abatements to help fund construction and retro-fitting of spaces to open more child care centers and incentives to businesses that provide child care to their employees.

Some advocates have been skeptical this will make a big difference and would rather see the city focus its attention on existing centers — or on helping reopen centers that went out of business during the pandemic.

Nora Moran, director of policy and advocacy at the United Neighborhood Houses, said the city will need to work as a matchmaker between providers who want to expand and developers who want to make room for child care centers.

“There are a lot of high quality providers out there. They’re not often in the real estate business. So there’s going to need to be some support to connect those two,” she said.

Moran also questioned whether development would happen evenly across neighborhoods, like those with many New York City Housing Authority buildings, or NYCHA, which currently host some child care providers.

“Our providers are in NYCHA developments and they are located in neighborhoods that have different kinds of needs, and I don’t know if they even see this type of development in their neighborhoods,” she said. “It’s going to be important to see where, geographically, those get placed.”

Training and support for childcare workers

Low pay and trouble retaining staff are persistent problems in the child care sector. To help address those issues, the city wants to partner with CUNY’s Professional Development Institute to create a bigger pipeline of educators. The city also wants to help those already in the field obtain their credentials – including full scholarships, according to city officials.

As of 2019, estimates show that about half of child care workers who work in sites that receive public funding but are privately run are not licensed — which traps them into making lower wages. They also tend to work long hours and during the summer. Because of all that, finishing a degree or earning a license is often a struggle. The city did not address how the new partnership would address those barriers.

As far as addressing pay, the blueprint says the city “will partner with experts to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the entire sector — including compensation.”

Expediting background checks

One persistent roadblock to staffing child care centers is a backlogged background check process. Adams’ plan promises to add 40 additional staffers to the city’s health department “to deliver results sooner.” Sluggish background checks have previously hampered other services including after-school programs and special education pre-kindergarten centers.

Adams vowed the speedier checks won’t cut corners. “We’re going to continue to conduct thorough and rigorous background checks on our providers,” he said. “We’re not going to take away the quality of the product.”

Including undocumented kids

Undocumented children are typically ineligible for state and federal child care aid, but the city has set aside $10 million for child care vouchers for families to start chipping away at that gap. Efforts failed at the state level to expand care to undocumented children in the last legislative session.

“We will be providing vouchers for 600 undocumented children because a child’s future should not be based on documentation,” Adams said.

The funding will also help the city set up a system so those families can find child care without “compromising the confidentiality of their immigration status,” according to the city’s blueprint.

Changes in how providers are paid – and hopefully paying them more quickly

Advocates said one of the most urgent needs right now is to make sure that current child care providers who contract with the city are paid promptly. Currently, the education department is one of the slowest city agencies when it comes to registering contracts so that they can be paid, according to a recent report. About 60% of contracts for this fiscal year, which ends in July, are still outstanding. Waiting so long to be paid can be devastating for many providers.

“As we’re working towards expanding and improving the early child care system we really have to focus on stabilizing providers,” said Gregory Brender, director of public policy at the Day Care Council, which represents providers.

There are some encouraging action items in the blueprint, advocates said. They include making it easier for providers to access higher reimbursement rates and giving more flexibility in payments when children are absent – a problem that cost many providers funding during the pandemic.

Christina Veiga and Alex Zimmerman are reporters covering New York City schools. Contact Christina at cveiga@chalkbeat.org. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC ends mask mandate for children in preschools, daycares

2022-06-09T16:59:35+00:00

Masks will be optional for New York City children under 5 in preschool and daycare programs starting June 13 as COVID rates have begun to drop, Mayor Eric Adams announced Thursday.

The announcement comes several months after Adams lifted the mask mandate for public school students, a decision he stuck by even as COVID rates surged over the spring. But he kept the mandate in place for the children attending early childhood programs. Earlier this year, he pointed to data that showed younger children with COVID were hospitalized at a higher rate than older children.

Adams was expected to lift the mandate for children ages 2 to 4 in April but held off, saying he was heeding advice of public health advocates concerned about new variants and an uptick in cases. A legal challenge briefly put the mandate, but his administration successfully appealed that ruling.

“I have always said that the science will guide us out of the pandemic, and because we have followed the data, which shows that cases are steadily falling, we‘ve beaten back the latest COVID-19 surge,” Adams said in a statement. “New Yorkers stepped up when we needed them most and have put us on the path to lower risk.”

New York City’s COVID transmission rate is still considered high, according to the city’s coronavirus tracker, but the seven-day average of cases citywide began dropping in late May. On June 8, there were 840 cases reported among students and school staff, education department data shows. Still, Adams has urged New Yorkers to continue masking indoors.

“We still strongly recommend that New Yorkers of all ages continue to wear masks indoors and we will continue to make masks available for any child or school staff member who wishes to continue wearing them,” Adams said in a statement.

Adams’ decision to lift the mask mandate for K-12 students was met with disappointment by those still worried about contracting the virus and relief from those who had grown weary of masking.

Christina Veiga contributed to this story.

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

Here are education highlights from New York’s state budget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are highlights from the state budget.

NYC schools get $56 million less than proposed

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

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

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

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

Thousands more NYC families will be eligible for subsidized child care

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Districts will start purchasing electric buses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Private special education funding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More mental health and tuition help

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

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

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

Christina Veiga contributed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adams hopes to keep mask requirement for NYC children under 5 amid COVID uptick

2022-04-01T20:01:20+00:00

New York City Mayor Eric Adams hopes to keep a mask requirement in place for the city’s youngest students as the city sees an increase in COVID cases. But a Staten Island judge threw a wrench in that plan Friday by striking down the mandate.

Adams vowed to appeal the judge’s ruling in an attempt to keep the requirement in place for children under 5, leaving it unclear whether students in pre-K or daycare programs will be required to wear face coverings Monday. Those under 5 are the only age group not currently eligible for COVID vaccines.

The mayor had planned to remove the mask mandate for the city’s youngest children next week as long as COVID transmission remained low. But with an uptick in virus cases and with the more contagious BA.2 variant circulating, the mayor said his health advisors recommended changing course.

“We’re recommending to wait a little bit longer before making masks optional for this age group,” said the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan. “We’re looking for the earliest opportunity to do this safely and we can assure you the day is coming for your children.”

Earlier Friday, however, a state judge ruled that the city’s mask mandate for young children is “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable” and is therefore “void and unenforceable.” Adams indicated the city will appeal and try to block the judge’s decision, though a timeline for the city’s appeal or a possible ruling on it was not clear. The mayor said the city would abide by the court’s decision.

Adams’ attempt to keep the mask mandate for young children is notable because his administration has generally moved toward removing virus protection measures, including for bars, restaurants and gyms. Children under 5 are the last group of students covered by a mask mandate and the requirement for students in grades K-12 was lifted March 7, prompting criticism from some parents of younger children who urged the mayor to do the same for their kids.

Officials said they don’t plan to reinstate the mask mandate for students in grades K-12 despite the rise in cases, including among public school students and staff, but Vasan said it is his “strong recommendation” that people of all ages wear masks indoors for now “according to their level of comfort.”

Adams urged calm on Friday and characterized the uptick in virus cases as “slight.” He indicated the city would continue to monitor the situation and “update New Yorkers in a week.”

“We want to be prepared, not panic,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pre-K for all? NYC’s universal preschool push leaves behind students with disabilities, report finds

2022-01-20T10:00:00+00:00

This is part of an ongoing collaborative series between Chalkbeat and THE CITY investigating learning differences, special education and other education challenges in city schools.

The crowning achievement of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration is uncontested: universal pre-K.

The program guarantees free pre-K for 4-year-olds and has grown to include 3-year-olds in a dozen districts with plans to expand citywide.

But the city’s preschool programming has poorly served many students with disabilities, according to an analysis of 2019-2020 city data released Thursday by the nonprofit Advocates for Children.

The analysis is based on a first-of-its-kind trove of city data that is now required to be released annually under city law. It offers one of the most comprehensive windows yet into how well the city’s more than 30,000 preschool students with disabilities are being served, including patterns that correlate strongly with race and geography.

Among the findings: Black and Asian preschool students were less likely to be identified for services than their white peers. When Black and Latino students were identified for services, they were more likely to be funneled to segregated classrooms that only serve students with disabilities.

And roughly a third of preschool students weren’t receiving all of their legally mandated services. (Some of the figures may have been impacted by the pandemic, but because this is the first time the city has released much of this data, historical comparisons are not yet possible.)

“Children are missing out on special education services at a time when you can really have the most impact on their development and education,” said Betty Baez Melo, an early childhood education expert at Advocates for Children.

Department of Education officials pointed to a $22 million investment in special education allocated by the prior administration for preschool special education as a means to add seats, bolster services, and expand inclusive classroom settings.

“We know more needs to be done, and will work with Advocates for Children and families to ensure all students have access to a strong start and the services they need,” said DOE spokesperson Sarah Casasnovas.

Here are four takeaways from the new report:

1: Black and Asian students were less likely to be identified for preschool special education services compared with white students.

White students represented fewer than 20% of all pre-K students but more than 37% of those receiving special education services. Asian and Black students were both underrepresented compared with their share of the population, while the share of Latino students was nearly proportionate.

Those patterns are consistent with Early Intervention services for children from birth to age 3, but the reverse of trends in the city’s K-12 classrooms, where Black and Latino students tend to be overrepresented in special education. (Asian students are underrepresented in both special education preschool and school-age classrooms.)

There is significant debate about whether students of color are over- or under-identified as needing special education services. The Advocates for Children report does not definitively explain the racial differences at the preschool level, but experts and advocates point to several possibilities.

Getting special education services in preschool can be a time-consuming process that could disadvantage families who don’t have lots of time or resources. And unlike K-12 students, who may be identified for services by their teachers, preschoolers are not yet required to attend school, meaning more of the onus to seek special education services falls on parents.

Flatbush dad David Harrington said his family advocated for their son, August, at every step of the special education process, which was often confusing and beset by delays.

David Harrington with his son, August.

It took roughly five months after requesting an evaluation in December 2020 to hash out an Individualized Education Program that addressed August’s sensory needs, growing dislike of school, and habit of hitting himself when upset.

Even after August’s IEP was created, the family was told that the occupational therapy and one-on-one special education teacher promised on the learning plan weren’t available. August’s parents, who both work in education-related fields, ended up finding service providers themselves, likening the process to a “part-time job.”

Harrington, who is white, wasn’t surprised that white families were overrepresented in obtaining services.

“If the system requires that families carry the burden of the entire referral and enrollment process, then it is biased towards those with more flexible work schedules, experience making bureaucracies work in their favor, social networks that help them access specialized knowledge and relationships, and enough income to pay for expensive assistance,” Harrington wrote in a message.

“In Brooklyn and throughout NYC, those privileges are more likely to accrue inequitably to white families.”

2: Black and Latino students were more likely to be referred to segregated preschool classrooms that serve only special education students.

A majority of Black and Latino students with IEPs were referred to special education-only classrooms, while nearly half of Asian students with disabilities were as well. This compares to about 30% of white students with IEPs who were recommended for classes segregated from general education students.

Advocates for Children staffers said the trend of putting students of color in more segregated classrooms mirrors what’s happening in the older grades.

At the preschool level, though a lower number of Black and Asian students are identified for special education services, the children who are referred for services may have higher needs, requiring more intensive support.

For preschoolers with disabilities, it’s considered less restrictive to have them work with a traveling instructor known as a SEIT (special education itinerant teacher) in a general education classroom. Barely one in 10 Latino students with IEPs were referred for such services, while the rate for white students with disabilities was more than one in three.

Part of this may be because of geographical variations, including a longstanding shortage of SEIT providers in the Bronx, which may mean students are being placed based on availability of services rather than on the students’ needs.

When it comes to segregated classrooms, about 60% of preschoolers with disabilities in the Bronx were recommended for classes that serve only students with disabilities compared to nearly 31% in Brooklyn.

On the flip side, only 4% of Bronx preschool students were recommended for SEIT services compared to 37% in Brooklyn. Those differences were even starker across certain districts, the report found. Less than 3% of preschoolers with IEPs were recommended for SEIT services in District 9, spanning the South Bronx, whereas about 54% of preschoolers in South Brooklyn’s District 21 were referred for such support.

“Unfortunately, we do see trends where providers are unwilling or hesitant to travel to specific neighborhoods,” said Baez Melo. “The DOE needs to ensure that there are enough providers to work with all students to provide the services that are mandated.”

3: One in three preschool students with disabilities didn’t get all of their mandated services.

About 34% of preschool students with disabilities did not receive the services listed on their IEPs by the end of the 2019-2020 school year — meaning over 10,300 students were not in the appropriate special education classroom setting or weren’t provided with other services, such as speech or occupational therapy.

As New York City has struggled to provide enough preschool special education seats to families who are legally entitled to them, more than 1,500 students were not offered a seat in the correct classroom setting by the end of the school year, a situation that leads to many families simply keeping their children at home.

Four-year-old Devyn Maiga, of the Bronx, was among those who remained home for months last school year.

His mom, Dilia Tejeda, said that Devyn was eligible to start preschool in December 2020, but because of a shortage of special education seats, he wasn’t assigned to a classroom at the Children’s Learning Center in Harlem until March 2021.

“I did his IEP meeting early, so there was no reason why my son couldn’t go to school early if I did everything on time,” said Tejeda, 23. “The problem is they didn’t have a seat, and there was a lot of negligence.”

Tejeda said she couldn’t get DOE officials to return her calls for months about placing Devyn in a class with 12 students, as was outlined on his Individualized Education Program.

Devyn Maiga, 4, with mom Dilia Tejeda.

Through Advocates for Children, she filed a complaint with the DOE that prompted the education department to find a spot for Devyn within a few weeks.

Tejeda said her son was placed in a more restrictive setting than his IEP calls for with just six children in the class — few of them with verbal skills that could serve as a model for his delayed speech.

“When he’s around other children that speak, he challenges himself. He wants to do what they’re doing,” she said.

Among the service shortages in 2019-2020, roughly 39% of preschoolers who were recommended for SEIT services — or 2,661 children — never got the services, the report says.

And while fewer Black and Latino students were recommended to be paired with SEITs, those referred to work with those teachers ended up receiving the service at lower rates than white students, the report shows.

4: The share of NYC preschool students with disabilities recommended for segregated classrooms is high.

Roughly 43% of New York City preschoolers with disabilities were recommended for classrooms that exclusively serve students with disabilities during the 2019-2020 school year, the report found. That figure has long drawn concern from state education officials but has not dropped dramatically in recent years.

The state’s target is for only 18% of preschool students to be sent to settings that exclusively serve students with disabilities; the state average in 2019 was about 30%, officials said.

“These children are really being shortchanged,” state Board of Regents member Judith Chin said during the board’s Jan. 10 meeting. Chin, who represents Queens, urged state special education officials to immediately press Mayor Eric Adams on the issue.

“I want to make sure you don’t wait for the honeymoon period to be over,” she said.

Reema Amin contributed to this story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are highlights of Hochul’s budget presentation:

School aid

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

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

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

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

Mayoral control

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

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

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

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

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

Special education programs

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

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

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

Teacher pipeline, tuition assistance, and mental health

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

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

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

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

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

COVID ‘crisis moment’ for families with children in NYC pre-K and 3K programs

2022-01-07T22:00:10+00:00

This story was published in partnership between THE CITY and The Fuller Project, and it originally appeared in THE CITY on Jan. 7, 2022.

Families with children in city pre-K and 3K programs are grappling with lengthy quarantines and lack of access to testing following exposure to COVID-19 during the Omicron surge — without the “test-to-stay” program that’s letting K-12 students remain in the classroom with a negative result.

It’s a “crisis moment,” said MC Forelle, 35, a parent of two small children in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.

On Tuesday, Forelle learned her 3-year-old son had been exposed to COVID-19 in his classroom.

Under the Department of Education’s stated quarantine requirements, she is required to keep him home from the Bishop Ford pre-K center in Greenwood Heights for 10 days.

Forelle also decided to keep her other child, who’s 5 months old, home from day care as a precaution. That leaves the Cornell Tech researcher back in the position of trying to juggle full-time work from home and child care alongside her partner, like they did earlier in the pandemic.

“I do know that this is going to have some really long term effects for my career,” she said. “I’m not going to have much to show for the last year, not even to speak of the next few weeks. And I know this is going to have a big impact on me long term.”

Forelle’s frustrations largely lie with the DOE’s testing and quarantine program for early education. This week, the DOE began implementing a “test-to-stay” program for K-12 students, which allows children who’ve been exposed to COVID but test negative to return to school after five days.

Under test-to-stay, public school students receive two free take-home antigen tests, which their parents are asked to administer on the day the child receives the test and again on the fifth day after exposure.

But children in early childhood education programs are still required to quarantine for the full 10 days if they’ve been exposed to the virus — even if they test negative. And as of this week, families in DOE early education programs have not been provided with testing kits.

“The fact that the DOE has decided not to send at-home testing kits with Pre-K and 3K families is f–king wild to me,” said Forelle. “These are the only students that the DOE has that are not eligible to be vaccinated, and yet, they’re the only students who are also not eligible to take home at-home tests.”

Attendance at Bishop Ford was 68% on Thursday, the Department of Education’s website shows.

On Friday, state health officials released figures showing nearly 400 New York City children hospitalized with a positive COVID test at some point in the week beginning Dec. 26, many of them because of COVID-related symptoms. Among them, 55% are under the age of 5, and 91% of hospitalized children ages 5 to 11 were unvaccinated, according to the state Department of Health. Children under 5 have not yet been approved by federal authorities for any vaccine against COVID-19.

Meghan Groome, 44, a Park Slope, Brooklyn, resident who also has a 3-year-old enrolled at Bishop Ford, says she doesn’t understand why the “test-to-stay” policy would not extend to children in early education programs whose parents are especially in need of child care.

“As a science person, I’m baffled by that policy,” said Groome, who works at the New York Academy of Sciences. “As a mom, I just broke when I read that policy. Like, why do you hate toddlers and their families?”

The week before her school’s holiday break, Groome’s daughter had an exposure and was required to quarantine. Groome is the only earner in her household, and says that the quarantine requirements greatly impacted her ability to get work done because she had to provide round-the-clock child care all on her own to protect others from exposure.

Now, she worries what will happen if her daughter has to quarantine again for a 10-day period.

“This age group is not eligible for vaccination…and then also not eligible for the things that we know keep them safe and in school, which is the test-to-stay policy,” she said. “It feels like a really pointed policy at the working parents who have small children.”

Tests for the Symptomatic

Children in K-12 programs deemed exposed to the virus at school began to receive tests as of this week, and the DOE says that they will begin delivering testing kits to early education programs starting next week.

However, unlike K-12 students, early education students will receive at-home tests only if they are symptomatic, according to DOE spokesperson Sarah Casasnovas. Early education students who’ve been exposed to COVID-19 but are not currently symptomatic will not receive tests. But in any case, there will be no way to shorten the length of the 10-day home quarantine if they have an exposure.

“Nothing is more important than the health and safety of our school communities,” wrote Casasnovas in a statement to the Fuller Project and THE CITY. “We continue to maintain a hyper-vigilant quarantine policy for all early childhood students to ensure the health and safety of our youngest learners who are not yet eligible for the vaccine.

Some families have begun organizing efforts for parent associations to pay for expensive private testers to come to their schools to give them peace of mind about their children’s safety and the safety of other children and adults in their household. While this wouldn’t impact the 10-day quarantine requirements, it might allow families more flexibility when it comes to working in person or making child care arrangements.

Relatively privileged families, with the ability to work from home, have tended to be more proactive in reaching out to journalists to bring attention to parents’ plight.

State Senator Jessica Ramos (D-Queens), worries about the possibility that families in wealthier parts of the city could have access to testing resources not available to those in lower-income communities. “All of these things should be easily and readily available to everybody,” said Ramos, who has lobbied for the state to send every household free at-home tests in the mail.

Nicole Sokolowski, 36, in Forest Hills, Queens, made the decision when school resumed after the New Year to keep her 3-year-old home from his 3K program to avoid him picking up the virus.

Her decision proved prescient when a COVID exposure was reported in the classroom while he was home.

“We don’t have really a clear endgame in sight of when we would send him back,” said Sokolowski, who has felt her work take a hit because of having to provide full-time child care alongside her husband even though she works from home.

Access to child care has continued to be a major impediment to mothers attempting to stay or re-enter the workforce in New York City. Census Bureau data analyzed by the nonprofit Citizens’ Committee for Children showed that 41% of 25 to 54-year-old women in New York City with children in New York City were not working at the end of the last school year — when school for most children was fully or partially remote — compared to just 24% of men.

The majority of these women identified lack of access to child care as their primary barrier to participating in the workforce.

Sokolowski says she wishes the city had made more effort to ensure that parents with children in early education programs received tests this week and were given the same testing opportunities as older children. “I would have felt more supported if it was there,” she says.

NYCHA child care centers plagued by unsanitary and unsafe conditions, operators say

2021-10-25T13:51:55+00:00

This story was originally published on Oct. 25 by THE CITY. It was done in partnership between THE CITY and The Fuller Project.

Child care providers in buildings managed by the city’s public housing authority say despite years of fighting for better conditions, youngsters face unsanitary and at times unsafe conditions.

And the providers, grappling with massive economic blows due to the pandemic, contend NYCHA has often left them to pick up the tab for necessary repairs.

Dawn Heyward, deputy director of early childhood education at East Side House Settlement, whose program runs out of a Bronx NYCHA facility, said she’s been waiting five years for Housing Authority officials to provide air conditioning and heat to the center’s gymnasium.

Her center had to pay out of pocket to ensure consistent heating in classrooms by installing its own dual air conditioning and heating units, Heyward said.

“NYCHA is the most challenging part of my job,” she added. “Not the child care, but making sure when the children walk in this building they’re safe.”

Child care centers typically lack funds to pay for things like heating equipment, said Heyward, whose program is federally funded.

Issues like lack of heat and hot water, mold, leaks and pest problems go beyond the child care centers in NYCHA facilities. Reporting from THE CITY has found widespread issues with lead and mold in New York City public housing units, in addition to poor ventilation that may have helped fuel the spread of COVID-19 in public housing.

But some providers in the roughly 400 child care centers in NYCHA complexes say the city should pay special attention to the health risks posed to young children.

Hot Water Harm

“School should be a place where you’re safe…and where health and safety should be a priority,” said Yvette Ho, education director at the Jacob Riis Early Childhood Center in the East Village. “But that’s not necessarily the case because we’re working with NYCHA as our landlord.”

Ho said she’s seen clear examples of NYCHA mismanagement, including repeated failures to notify the child care center when leaks are scheduled to be fixed in the residential part of their building. This has led to random hot water shut-offs, resulting in the emergency closure of the center and parents having to take time off from work.

Every year when the building switches on the heat, Ho said, the steam pipes burst without warning, sending potentially scalding water raining down into the center.

Last year, she said, the fire alarm system detected the rising pipe temperatures, allowing the center to avoid any injuries to children. But as winter approaches, she worries that children at the center, who are as young as 1, could be badly burned.

“We’re putting Band-Aids over issues that could have been constantly maintained so that it doesn’t lead up to that — a steam pipe burst,” Ho said.

Massive Repairs Needed

Fixing the problems at Jacob Riis and other facilities is likely to be expensive. In 2019, over $130 million in repairs were needed in day care centers in NYCHA buildings, Chalkbeat reported.

“It’s no secret that there are capital issues at NYCHA,” said Nora Moran, director of policy and advocacy at the United Neighborhood Houses, a nonprofit that advocates for settlement houses throughout the city, including several with child care facilities.

Moran said investments in public housing from the federal government, in the form of infrastructure legislation like the Build Back Better bill, are needed to alleviate NYCHA’s massive repair backlog.

“When NYCHA is suffering, it has ripple effects to a variety of things in the community,” state Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Senate’s Committee on Children and Families and has been touring child care facilities throughout the state, told The Fuller Project and THE CITY.

Conditions like lack of heat at the East Side House Settlement and broken light fixtures in other facilities Brisport visited indicate inadequate NYCHA funding, he said.

Brisport believes the best way to ensure issues in NYCHA-managed day care centers are safe for young children and staff is to focus on federal legislative efforts. However, if the federal funding falls through, he says New York will have to make up a massive funding gap, estimated at $40 billion, elsewhere.

NYCHA did not immediately respond to questions about child care centers in its facilities.

‘A Systemic Problem’

Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams has said that if elected he would ask for tens of billions in federal funding to repair NYCHA facilities. In addition, Adams said he would create a monitoring program called “NYCHAstat,” to track spending and repairs status, according to Gotham Gazette.

Adams has not called for additional New York City funding for NYCHA, according to the Association for Neighborhood Housing Development.

At Jacob Riis, Ho says response time to maintenance calls has improved thanks to her team’s efforts over the years to build up relationships with local management. Still, much work remains to safeguard the children attending day care in NYCHA facilities.

“This is like a much bigger problem than one child care facility in one development in New York that they can fix like that,” Ho said. “This is a systemic problem.”

NYC makes last-minute agreement for preschool vaccine mandate exemptions

2021-10-01T21:45:38+00:00

Some preschool educators aren’t sure they will still be earning paychecks come Monday morning.

In the chaotic lead-up to the deadline for New York City school staffers to get the coronavirus vaccination or face unpaid leave, a process to grant medical and religious exemptions for preschool and day care workers was settled only hours before the mandate is set to take effect on Friday.

While staffers are required to submit proof of one dose by 5 p.m., applications for exemptions aren’t due until Tuesday. Then applicants have another 48 hours, until Thursday, to provide documentation supporting their request.

Though the number of exemptions will likely be small, most will not be approved until after the vaccination mandate kicks-in. That means those planning to apply for medical exemptions, and the centers where they work, might be in limbo next week.

The last-minute process is just the latest example of how New York City is scrambling to implement one of the country’s most expansive vaccination requirements for school staff. It has been particularly complicated for the city’s patchwork system of pre-K and child care centers, which are all governed by their own leadership, and may or may not be unionized — but still have to comply with city rules.

About 44,000 children are enrolled in centers that receive public money through contracts with the city, but are not public schools. That includes most students enrolled in the city’s free pre-K programs for 3- and 4-year-olds. Staffers in those centers — about 21,000 in total — were initially carved out of the city’s vaccination requirement for teachers. Then Mayor Bill de Blasio reversed course weeks later.

That left only about a month for employees to get vaccinated, for complicated negotiations over exemptions and accommodations to play out, and to plan for potential shortages if staff can’t or refuse to get the shots.

Centers that have the capacity to handle exemption requests on their own can do so, and may have set up their own processes earlier. But many centers are small, with just a few classrooms and no staff qualified to determine who should be exempt and who shouldn’t. For those, and any other centers where leaders don’t want to take on the decision-making, a new process was announced Thursday night, with the Day Care Council of New York agreeing to sort through applications.

“We believed it was necessary to have a centralized process both for employees and employers that was standardized and fair,” said Gregory Brender, director of public policy at the Council, which represents about 200 nonprofit preschool and day care providers.

The education department, meanwhile, has agreed to pay for substitutes for staff who are granted an accommodation or refuse to get vaccinated. That was a major concern for centers, whose budgets depend on city contracts that were negotiated before the vaccination mandate was announced.

Brender said that employees can use accrued time off while waiting for their exemption to be processed and will receive back-pay if their request is granted. It’s unclear just how long the Day Care Council will need to approve or reject applications. Brender said it will happen “hopefully pretty quickly.”

All of that makes it hard to know how many centers will be without teachers, directors, and other essential staff once the mandate kicks in.

A spokesperson for the education department pointed out that ultimately only .03% of the city’s own workforce ended up qualifying for an exemption, and that the department is helping centers find substitutes.

“We do not expect an insurmountable number of staff to seek exemptions,” said education department spokesperson Sarah Casasnovas. “There are robust supports in place for any program that needs it, and we are actively connecting sites with staff who are ready to fill in.”

While the city has assured that staffing needs will be met, District Council 37, the union that represents many teachers and other staff at contracted sites, has raised doubts.

“We are not confident there could be enough subs to backfill,” union spokesperson Freddi Goldstein said in an email last week.

NYC preschools pledge defiance, scramble for staff ahead of vaccination mandate

2021-09-24T21:33:42+00:00

One preschool director on the Upper West Side may have to combine classrooms to fill in for unvaccinated teachers. Another in Harlem anticipates being down a few staffers and hasn’t heard whether substitutes will come.

Yet another in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, plans to keep her teachers in the classroom — vaccinated or not. With the majority of her staff refusing the shots, the only other alternative would be to close, said Marina Kolmanovsky, owner of Buratino International Day Care.

“We will come back to work. And those who are not vaccinated will wait until the DOE or DOH shut us down,” she said, referring to the Department of Education and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “Who’s going to watch the kids?”

Preschool and day care centers across New York City are scrambling for Tuesday morning, when a mandate kicks in that requires their staff to be vaccinated against COVID. The teachers and principals unions are warning of a shortage of safety agents, cafeteria workers, and, at some schools, dozens of teachers. They’ve called on the city to delay.

But the city’s patchwork system of preschool and child care centers makes the requirement even more difficult for these centers to implement. Staffing and budgets have always been tight. With just hours to go until the mandate kicks in, key details for how it will be implemented have yet to be decided. There is confusion about who it even applies to.

And there are no firm figures for how many staffers are vaccinated, and how many might be missing on Tuesday morning.

“Based on our conversations, the majority of center-based staff are vaccinated. Some centers are 100%. Some are in the 80% range. But cumulatively across the 1,200 or so centers, the impact is going to be felt,” said Tara Gardner, director of the Day Care Council of New York, which represents about 200 nonprofit childcare and pre-kindergarten centers. “The staffing implications could be dire.”

The education department on Friday urged providers to write to them if they anticipate services for families will be disrupted, promising to help with a “rapid response” plan.

Most children enrolled in the city’s free pre-K programs for 3- and 4-year-olds attend centers that receive public money through contracts with the city, but are privately run. Some are unionized, but most are not. That leaves a tangle of rules and players to figure out how to implement the mandate, which was announced on Sept. 9.

Confusion reigns. District Council 37, which represents teachers and other staff at the sites, told its members in a blog post and email that the mandate doesn’t cover anyone not in an education department program — arguing instead that federal regulations apply, which allow teachers to submit to regular coronavirus testing rather than get vaccinated.

By Friday, the union changed course and said that only some Head Start programs, which receive federal funding to care for children from low-income families, are exempt from the city mandate.

A spokesperson for the education department, meanwhile, was unequivocal that contracted child care and pre-K centers are covered under the requirement. Operators on Friday afternoon received an alert from the city that echoed that position.

Contracted child care and preschool centers were initially carved out of the city’s vaccination mandate for teachers, only for Mayor Bill de Blasio to reverse that decision about three weeks later.

That left less time for teachers to comply with the mandate, and for negotiations about who should get exemptions and accommodations due to medical or religious issues, how to handle separations for staff who refuse the shots, and to plan for potential shortages.

On Thursday afternoon, Gardner said negotiations were ongoing. Part of the challenge is figuring out what an accommodation would look like for a teacher at a small center. The education department has worked out an arrangement to redeploy those with accommodations to a setting outside the classroom. But for independent providers, there are no central offices where they can send their staffers who can’t safely be in schools, and centers have been told they can only operate remotely in the event of bad weather.

“That still needs to be worked out with the unions,” Gardner said. “It’s a huge deal.”

She noted that many centers already operate on slim margins and struggle to find staff, who can often make more money elsewhere. Unlike education department schools, there is no central pool of subs. Operators have to find their own fill-ins and every additional expense is a strain on their budget.

On Friday, the education department told operators that the city will amend contracts to help pay for additional staffing costs and pledged to provide targeted help to centers that need more hands on deck.

George Penaherrera, director of East Calvary Day Care in Harlem, said all but one or two staffers at his center are vaccinated. But it will still be hard to fill in for them. He was already short a teacher, who went on medical leave because they were at high risk for complications if they get sick with COVID.

The education department sent a survey to directors to learn about their staffing needs. Penaherrera said he alerted the department that he needs two subs — and now will have to wait and see if they arrive. It’s typically not easy to find subs, he said, because his program runs for 10 hours instead of just the regular school day.

“It’s very hard for me to say right now how I’m going to patch up this hole that I’m in,” he said.

Most sites are not unionized. But among those that are, District Council 37 could not say how many of its teachers are vaccinated. Neither could the education department. Without that data, it could be hard to enforce the mandate, though contractors have been asked to fill out a survey affirming that they are in compliance.

Kolmanovsky, the Brighton Beach daycare owner, said only one of her nine staff members is vaccinated. With jobs potentially on the line, a second staffer has indicated they may get the shot this weekend. But others are adamant they will not, saying they’re concerned about long-term health effects. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have affirmed the shots are safe and effective.)

Meanwhile, Kolmanovsky said she knows her families depend on her center. So she plans to stay open.

“Does DOE want me to dismiss those kids? To send them home?” she said. “These are working parents who don’t have an option to stay home.”

Readers: We want to hear about how the vaccination mandate is affecting you. Write to us about your experiences at ny.tips@chalkbeat.org.

NYC expands COVID vaccine mandate to pre-K teachers, after-school workers

2021-09-09T20:13:21+00:00

Preschool and daycare workers, as well as after-school staff, will be required to get vaccinated, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday.

The new mandate includes 24,000 employees initially left out of the city’s requirement that all education department staff need to be vaccinated. Just like education department staff, preschool, day care, and after-school workers who contract with the city will need to receive their first dose by Sept. 27.

Other details of the mandate, including what will happen to employees who refuse the shots, still need to be worked out. Classes in New York City are set to begin Monday. Without an option to learn remotely, the nation’s largest school district will reopen to about 1 million students.

City officials also announced on Thursday efforts to step up vaccinations among school children. De Blasio said that vaccinations will be offered at more than 700 campuses when classes kick off next week. That includes every school serving students ages 12 and up, who are eligible for the shots.

The mayor stopped short of endorsing a vaccine requirement for children, even as Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the country, seems poised to do so. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said this week that a mandate for students is “certainly an option,” especially if COVID rates rise.

“We just don’t think that’s the right thing to do,” de Blasio said. “The most important thing right now is getting kids back in school. [If] there’s a family that’s not yet ready, I don’t want that family kept out of school. I want them in school.”

Given that young children are still ineligible for the vaccine, many educators and families were concerned about the lack of mandate to get the shots in the early childhood sector.

The new rule now includes educators who work in public preschool programs that contract with the city but are run by independent providers. Those programs make up a majority of seats in the city’s free Pre-K for All and 3-K programs, which serve 3- and 4-year olds.

It remains to be seen what will happen to contracted employees who refuse to be vaccinated, whether the city will grant religious or medical exemptions, and, if so, what the process will be for determining those exemptions.

Tara Gardner, executive director of the Day Care Council of New York, which represents the boards of more than 200 publicly contracted child care providers, signaled support for the mandate, even while those details remain unsettled.

“Young children that our Day Care Council members serve cannot be vaccinated, so it’s even more important that the adults who interact with them are protected through vaccination,” she said at a press conference. “There will certainly be questions about the implementation of the mandate, and the Day Care Council will work collaboratively… to address issues that staff members face and provide clarity on protocols.”

Many of the same thorny issues are also still being worked out with the United Federation of Teachers, which represents some 80,000 education department teachers covered by the vaccine mandate. The union recently filed a complaint, which is currently in arbitration, over how to implement the requirement.

One group of employees who work with students but don’t need to be vaccinated: school bus drivers. The education department said Thursday that there is no mandate for them. Recently released state guidelines call for school bus drivers to be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. In New York City, some of the most vulnerable children rely on school buses to attend special education programs.

City officials have emphasized vaccines as the most important layer of defense against COVID as schools reopen amid the highly transmissible delta variant.

But layering other mitigations are also crucial, health officials say, and city schools are also improving ventilation, employing two air purifiers in every classroom, mandating masks, and following three feet of social distancing “where possible,” as federal guidelines suggest. Additionally, schools are planning to conduct COVID tests for 10% of unvaccinated people in buildings twice a month, though students must opt-in to testing. Students will also be required to quarantine in certain cases when positive cases arise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Child care access

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

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

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

Eric Adams

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

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

Shaun Donovan

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

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

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

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

Kathryn Garcia

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

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

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

Ray McGuire

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

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

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

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

Scott Stringer

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

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

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

Maya Wiley

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

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

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

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

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

Child care affordability

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

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

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

Eric Adams

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

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

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

Shaun Donovan

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

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

Kathryn Garcia

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

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

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

Ray McGuire

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

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

Scott Stringer

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

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

Maya Wiley

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

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

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

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

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Early Childhood Education workforce

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

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

Eric Adams

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

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

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

Shaun Donovan

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

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

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

Kathryn Garcia

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

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

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

Ray McGuire

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

Scott Stringer

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

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

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

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

Maya Wiley

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

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

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

After-school and youth programs

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

Advocates have called for more stable funding for these programs to be built into the city’s budgets, so they and families can plan ahead. Many would also like to see summer youth employment expanded to become universal for any teen who wants a job, and for after-school care to be open to any student who needs it.

Eric Adams

As borough president, Adams said he allocated $2 million towards a pilot program to provide community organizations space in school buildings. He wants to expand that program, which will allow nonprofits to provide after-school opportunities like sports, especially in underserved areas. “Because when you really think about the cost, rental of space, use of a space — that is really some of the largest parts of actually having an overhead,” he said.

Adams has also called for schools to be open year-round with services for students and families. In addition, he would like to see a universal tutoring program but didn’t say how he would make it happen.

Shaun Donovan

Donovan has called for growing the summer youth employment program to include 150,000 slots. (According to advocate estimates, that would be enough to serve every youth who wants one.) He wants every high schooler to have at least one paid internship, apprenticeship, or other summer job before they graduate. He says those opportunities must provide exposure to “meaningful” careers. To make sure those opportunities are available, Donovan proposes to partner with organizations that already offer training and mentoring to high school students.

Kathryn Garcia

Garcia said she would expand after-school and other youth programs by tapping the American Rescue Plan, which earmarks billions of federal dollars intended to help students catch up from more than a year of interrupted learning due to COVID. She said nonprofits will be crucial partners in doing so and said she’d like to replicate models that incorporate work experience into their academic programs.

She said paid internships should be “available to anyone who wants it.” But she added that they should be “thoughtful opportunities” for youth “so that kids really have an idea about what the work world will look like.”

Ray McGuire

McGuire, a former corporate executive, promised to “leverage my relationships, both big and small,” to build a robust summer jobs program for any high schooler who wants a position. He would also like to see after-school and summer school programs significantly expanded to help students fill in gaps after two academic years interrupted by COVID. To do that, he said he’d like to funnel money to nonprofits to expand opportunities in theater, coding, academic recovery, and other areas.

Scott Stringer

Stringer proposes opening youth employment programs to any student who wants to participate. He has also proposed spending $200 million to make sure every child in K-8 has access to an after-school program.

“To do anything less is just a disservice, and I think creates an unequal education,” he said, adding that he’d like to build multiple years of funding into the city’s budget so that families and providers can be sure they’ll be able to operate in the longer term.

Stringer said that such a significant expansion of after-school programs would likely strain providers and that the city will need to find creative ways to alleviate that strain.

“There’s a pressure point because they can’t expand because of finances and their own capacity. And we need to leverage different relationships we have in the city, through procurement, through other means, to get them to a place where they can serve more people,” he said.

Maya Wiley

As part of a platform to reduce shootings, Wiley has called for doubling the number of summer youth employment programs to serve young people at the highest risk of gun violence. That would mean dedicating 10,000 slots to those young people. She said that communities with the highest unemployment rates also tend to suffer disproportionately from gun violence.

“We must make it easier to get a job than a gun in our communities,” she said.

She also supports more after-school programs “for all our youth” and wants to see school buildings used for programming “all year long.” She said she’d like to see longer-term funding assured for providers, “to ensure that we’re building and growing them appropriately and in ways that are meeting the needs of our kids.”

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This work was made possible with support from the Campaign for Children (C4C).

Applications to NYC’s free pre-K programs dropped 7% this year

2021-05-28T19:11:01+00:00

The number of students who were offered seats in New York City’s free preschool programs slipped, falling nearly 7% since last year, according to figures released Friday.

At the same time, the admissions process became slightly less competitive, with a record 91% of families admitted to one of their top three choices for the 2021-2022 school year.

Admission offers to the city’s prekindergarten programs, which are available to all 4-year-olds and have expanded significantly to include many 3-year-olds, have fallen in recent years. Just over 57,500 students received an offer this cycle, a nearly 12% drop since 2019.

Overall enrollment in the city’s traditional public schools has also trended downward, but plummeted 4% amid the pandemic, a loss of more students than the previous 14 years combined. In line with national trends, the largest declines came in the earliest grades — with an 8% drop in preschool programs for 3-year-olds and 13% at programs for 4-year-olds — as some families decided against enrolling in preschool in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Officials also pointed to declining birth rates as a contributing factor.

Still, families may still apply after the deadline and it’s unclear if falling coronavirus positivity rates, which have now dipped below 1%, could make parents more likely to send their children this year.

“Access to child care and early education services is a critical component of getting families back to work and putting New York City on the path to recovery from the pandemic,” Deputy Chancellor Josh Wallack said in a statement. Families who missed the deadline are still able to apply and join waitlists by visiting MySchools.nyc or by contacting programs directly. For more information, families can call 718-935-2009.

The decline in offers comes as the city is expanding access to programs for 3-year-olds, also known as 3-K, which is expanding this fall thanks to coronavirus relief funding. City officials hope to make the program universal by September 2023.

Free pre-K for all has arguably been Mayor Bill de Blasio’s most significant education accomplishment, though students with disabilities are not fully included. The city is often short hundreds or thousands of seats in specialized classrooms for students who need smaller settings or additional services, leaving some sitting at home.

“As the City continues expanding 3-K and Pre-K, the City must also ensure there are enough seats for children with disabilities who need preschool special education classes this coming year,” Randi Levine, the policy director at Advocates for Children, wrote in an email.

City officials also said that 42 preschool programs were part of an admissions program designed to enroll a more diverse group of students, up from 38 last year. The city’s schools are among the most segregated in the country and previous research has found that pre-K classrooms are less representative of the city than those in kindergarten.

Election watch: Getting NYC’s mayoral candidates on the record about their plans for preschool, youth services

2021-05-03T15:06:56+00:00

Where do New York City’s mayoral candidates stand on early childhood education and youth services? Chalkbeat wants to find out.

Between now and the June 22 primary, Chalkbeat — in partnership with the Campaign for Children — will dig into these topics and push the leading Democratic candidates to spell out their visions for educating the city’s youngest learners.

First up, our reporter Christina Veiga will moderate on May 5 the Campaign for Children 2021 Community Speak Out, which will focus on mayoral hopefuls’ views on universal access to childcare, youth services, and early childhood education.

Additionally, Veiga is conducting one-on-one interviews with the mayoral candidates on these issues. These interviews will be posted on our platforms in the coming weeks, and will inform a voter guide we plan to create specifically on the next mayor’s vision for early childhood education and youth services.

It’s a pivotal moment for these sectors. With more federal attention and resources being dedicated to early childhood education and care, the mayor will have power to prioritize using more funds to build and strengthen services in New York City.

Yet, there’s a lot of work to be done. While the city has made strides expanding pre-K, affordable infant and toddler child care options are still hard to come by. The annual cost of many child care programs for these youngsters consumes about 31% of median household income for all families with young children in NYC but can be as high as 65% in communities where median incomes are lower. And the system, in some ways, is broken: There is a backlog of families waiting to receive vouchers to help pay for care, even while seats in centers go empty.

The early childhood workforce also needs more attention. Child care work is predominantly staffed by women of color. They are among the lowest paid workers in the city. While there has been headway on salary parity between entry level early childhood educators in community-based organizations and in schools, seniority, longevity, and teachers in settings serving children with disabilities have yet to be addressed.

As Chalkbeat presses the city’s top mayoral contenders on their plans to address all these issues and more, please stay in touch by writing to us at ny.tips@chalkbeat.org. You can also sign up for Starting Line, our early childhood education newsletter, to stay on top of the latest developments in the sector across the country.

Racial, economic gaps are widening among NYC’s free pre-K programs, researchers say

2021-04-09T19:25:56+00:00

Mayor Bill de Blasio often touts universal pre-K as one of the main accomplishments of his tenure and as the centerpiece of his agenda to “fight inequality.”

Seven years later, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley have found that not all of the city’s free pre-K programs are equally strong, with racial and income disparities that might set the foundation for future education gaps.

The quality of programs serving mostly Black and Latino students has stalled or declined slightly, and is lower in census tracts with higher poverty levels, according to the Berkeley analysis released this week. Meanwhile program quality was improving at centers serving mostly white and Asian children, and was higher in wealthier neighborhoods.

The findings mirror the conclusions of a similar analysis conducted by Princeton researchers last summer.

New York City is home to one of the most segregated school systems in the country, and pre-K classrooms are even more segregated than those in the later grades, research has shown. De Blasio has been reluctant to tackle segregation in the nation’s largest school system. That aversion that could now drag down his foremost policy achievement.

“This raises the specter — despite the mayor’s admirable intentions — that his program hardens, rather than narrows, racial disparities in children’s early growth,” Bruce Fuller, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “How can this pre-K entitlement narrow inequities in early learning when quality tilts toward better off families?”

The education department countered that quality ratings of the city’s pre-K programs match or outpace national averages, and that the vast majority of programs meet the threshold for positive outcomes. Officials also pointed to family surveys that generally show parents are happy with Pre-K for All, the city’s free, universal preschool program for 4-year-olds.

“Pre-K for All is an invaluable model for the nation, and this study only considers one narrow measure of quality,” said education department spokeswoman Sarah Casasnovas. “We remain committed to understanding and addressing any disparities in access to high-quality early education, particularly as our city recovers from the pandemic that has disproportionately impacted communities of color.”

New York City uses two widely respected measures to rate pre-K quality: the Early Childhood Environment Rating scale, or ECERS, and the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, or CLASS. The Berkeley researchers traced these ratings from 2014 through 2019. The ratings systems look at factors such as classroom routines, how teachers support students’ thinking and language development, and whether facilities are appropriate for young children.

Most programs’ scores still fall within the range indicating they are effective when it comes to supporting student learning. But ratings for programs in low-income neighborhoods were lower, meaning the development of an average 4-year-old might lag three to five months behind their peers in more highly-rated classrooms, according to the researchers. The analysis also found that gains in quality were uneven, with programs serving the most white and Asian students enjoying the largest increases.

Fuller didn’t know what was driving the disparities, but suggested one reason could be teachers migrating from low-quality programs to higher-quality or better paying sites. It appeared that sites in public housing complexes scored lower on the ECERS — which focuses partly on the physical environment — due to cramped facilities and scarce outdoor play spaces, Fuller added.

Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the think tank The Century Foundation, where she has studied segregation in New York City’s pre-K program, said the paper should be “a call to action” for leaders in the city.

“We need to push for ways for more children of all backgrounds to attend racially and socioeconomically diverse early childhood programs together,” she said.

Part of the problem boils down to the country’s patchwork system of early childhood care, with low-income families attending subsidized programs that tend to offer longer hours year round. This, in turn, creates a segregated pipeline into universal pre-K classrooms.

The city has taken steps to encourage, and in some cases require, enrolling students from different economic backgrounds in the same classrooms.

Potter said integrating pre-K could be worth the effort, with studies showing that all students learn more in diverse classrooms, and that integration may even help reduce prejudice.

“The racial and socioeconomic diversity of preschool classrooms is a key component of their educational quality,” Potter said.

Jeanne L. Reid, of Teachers College at Columbia University, said the disparities in quality ratings may be driven by centers enrolling the lowest-income students, which tend to also serve mostly Black and Latino children. Those same programs may excel in serving families in ways not captured by the quality measures, such as by helping parents find jobs or providing support from social workers.

“There are other aspects of quality in a program that are important to families and support children’s healthy development and growth,” Reid said.

Her own research on the city’s universal pre-K program has shown that teachers in classrooms run by community organizations do not have the same access to planning and break time as their counterparts in pre-K programs in public schools. Also teachers in publicly funded but privately run programs — which make up the majority of pre-K seats — have historically been significantly underpaid. Only recently has the city been making progress in addressing those salary disparities.

The new findings show the city will need to step up support for centers run by community organizations, especially in the wake of the pandemic, Reid said.

“A lot of these organizations are operating with too few resources for the problems they’re trying to address,” she said, “and that’s only been more so with the pandemic and the devastation that people have experienced.”

Flush with federal cash, NYC promises preschool for 3-year-olds in every school district

2021-03-24T12:42:51+00:00

New York City will tap a massive infusion of federal pandemic recovery funds to make free preschool for 3-year-olds available in every school district, officials announced Wednesday.

With an expected $4.5 billion in stimulus money headed for the nation’s largest school district, Mayor Bill de Blasio can now build on what has been the most popular and arguably most successful policy of his administration: universal pre-K. The city plans to add up to 16,500 seats for 3-year-olds in the 2021-22 school year, bringing enrollment up to 40,000 by this fall.

“This is to me unquestionably one of the highest priorities we can have in this city and certainly one of the highest priorities within education. If you get early childhood education right, everything else works,” de Blasio said at a press conference.

The latest expansion builds on what de Blasio started in 2014 with universal pre-K for 4-year-olds, quickly ramping up to enroll more than 60,000 just two years into his tenure. In 2017, he took a more gradual approach in launching 3-K for even younger students, promising to make space for all of the city’s 3-year-olds by 2021.

That goal was derailed by COVID-19, which wiped out more than $700 million from the city’s education budget and put the build-out of 3-K on hold. The price tag to reach universal preschool for 3-year-olds was originally projected to run nearly $400 million in city funds, with an additional $700 million from state and federal coffers.

Officials did not immediately say how much this fall’s expansion would cost, and what portion of the funds would come from city, state, or federal sources.

“This is a game changer for families,” Chancellor Meisha Porter said at a press conference. Families who enroll in the program are expected to save $10,000 in child care costs, she noted.

Preschool for 3-year-olds is already available in 12 of the city’s 32 school districts, and the city planned to add four districts this year using $1 billion in coronavirus reimbursement funds previously promised by the Biden administration. Unlike the city’s massive program for 4-year-olds, the expanded 3-K program will still not be “universal.” To serve every 3-year-old, the city estimates it would need around 60,000 slots.

“This is an important and good use of federal stimulus funds, and a recognition that childcare is an essential part of recovery,” said Gregory Brender, director of public policy at the Day Care Council of New York, which represents providers.

Leaning on one-time federal funds for such a massive expansion raises questions about how — and whether — the city will be able to sustain the program. But de Blasio seems to be counting on its popularity with parents to bet that future elected officials will find a way to continue paying for it. Bi-partisan support for early childhood education has only grown in recent years. President Joe Biden is reportedly eyeing another spending package that calls for universal pre-K.

The mayor is deciding to expand 3-K over many other pressing and competing needs.

Advocates for children with disabilities have been quick to point out that those students have consistently been left behind the mayor’s promises to make preschool universal. The city has regularly fallen short by hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of seats in special education pre-K classrooms, forcing students to go without instruction and legally required services such as speech or physical therapy. Part of the shortfall is due to stagnant funding from the state, resulting in the closure of many programs serving children with disabilities.

“We have heard from families desperate for help because their children with autism or other complex disabilities were going without appropriate services because there were no available seats in the type of class they needed,” the nonprofit Advocates for Children noted in a statement. “Yet, the mayor’s announcement today will do nothing to help these children.”

Providers of these special education pre-K programs also say it’s difficult to recruit and keep teachers because they make far less than their counterparts in programs serving general education students. Those teachers have been left out of deals struck to raise pay for other educations in privately run but publicly funded programs — which make up the bulk of the city’s free seats.

“We want to reach every child in every way but that will take some time to put the pieces together,” de Blasio said about the gap for preschoolers with disabilities. “There’s lots of choices to make, always, within a budget.”

For some in the early childhood sector, the decision to double-down on universal pre-K raises questions about whether the expansion will come at the expense of seats for infants and toddlers in the city. Programs for the youngest children are the most expensive to run, and without enrollment of older students to offset costs, seats for babies can become unaffordable for programs to maintain. Others believe the city would be better off funding extended care in existing preschool programs, beyond the school day and year, for needy families.

Lack of childcare has become a major burden for families while the health crisis drags on, forcing many women out of the workforce. Having toddlers doing school on screens — whether families opted for fully remote or hybrid schedules —and the uncertainty for in-person learning because of frequent coronavirus-related building closures have also hurt working families. Pre-K enrollment was down more than other grades this year, with 13% fewer students, according to city data.

In a note to providers announcing the 3-K expansion, city officials acknowledged the need to get more children in classrooms to help working families.

“Access to the essential child care and early education services you provide is a critical component of getting families back to work and putting New York City on the path to recovery from the pandemic,” the notice said.

NYC’s messy process of subsidizing pre-K seats leaves centers feeling uncertain

2021-03-01T23:40:43+00:00

Families can now apply for New York city’s Pre-K for All and 3-K programs. But the backbone of the city’s heralded free preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds — independent providers who contract with the city — say they are facing an uncertain school year.

That is the case for Violet Rouse, who has taken care of children in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood for almost two decades. She spent last summer adding another classroom to her child care center, VernyKidz, in the hopes of expanding the 3-K program there.

Instead, the education department ended its contract with VernyKidz. Not only will she not be expanding, but Rouse may have to shut down her existing 3-K classrooms, taking away a significant chunk of her business.

“I’m basically scared we’ll have to close,” she said. “Eighteen years, down the drain. Like, ‘Boom.’”

Like VernyKidz, dozens of other preschool programs did not land contracts for the new school year, while others saw the number of seats in their programs significantly slashed. Providers have yet to finalize the number of seats they’ll be able to offer or how much the city will pay for them, since negotiations over those details only began last week.

With so much work left to be done, it’s impossible for families to know the extent of their options until enrollment is well underway.

Race against the clock

New York City’s early childhood system has been undergoing massive changes in recent years.

The city has been trying to streamline oversight of its publicly funded but privately run early education programs under the auspices of the education department, from the department overseeing child welfare. Community-based programs provide the majority of the city’s free pre-K seats — about 60% — with the rest run by public schools.

As part of the shift in oversight, the city awarded new contracts in a competitive bidding process last summer. So far, roughly 700 providers have won these contracts to serve children in publicly subsidized child care and preschool programs next school school year, an education department spokesperson said. Officials said the majority of programs already providing services — some 90% of them — had their contracts renewed.

But those contracts are only provisional, until the providers and the education department can negotiate a final amount that will be paid per child.

Working out the details with so many providers will have to happen quickly, and it’s not likely to be easy. Programs submitted their asking prices almost two years ago, well before the pandemic caused enrollment to crater by 13% year-over-year. It also took a chunk out of their budget with additional costs creating socially distanced classrooms, setting up remote school options, and buying protective gear such as face masks.

“No provider could have known at the beginning of 2019 how much hand sanitizer you need for a socially distant classroom,” said Gregory Brender, policy director at the Day Care Council, which represents providers across the city.

The process with the city has induced whiplash at points. Some were awarded contracts at a fraction of what the city previously paid them, and while the education department later readjusted some contracts, giving programs more seats, it remains to be seen whether the changes will be enough to keep centers open.

The city also opened a new bid last week for another round of contracts that officials hope to have in place in time for the next school year, giving centers like VernyKidz another shot. The city will have to sprint to award “hundreds” of additional slots for pre-K and 3-K, in 74 ZIP codes identified as hard-hit by the health crisis.

It will be a feat for the education department to finalize so many contracts in such a short amount of time. The original bidding process took more than a year for the education department to accept applications, sort through them, and pick awardees. Officials have just six months before the new school year.

Education department leaders said they’re up to the task, with experience negotiating new contracts on a yearly basis. A big chunk of the budgets, including promised pay raises for teachers, are already determined by collective bargaining agreements. Other recent changes, such as guaranteeing a portion of funding regardless of enrollment, will also lend to a speedy process, according to the department.

Are there enough seats where they’re needed most?

Advocates have been trying to get an understanding of which neighborhoods gained or lost seats, as well as an explanation of how officials are deciding which areas are more high-need than others with the latest round of contracts.

These micro trends are important to understand, according to Nora Moran, director of policy and advocacy at United Neighborhood Houses. Her organization has noticed that many of their members lost seats are in gentrifying neighborhoods — areas where public housing abuts expensive condos, such as Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Such extreme differences in family income can raise an area’s mean income and obscure pockets of need.

“We want there to not be child care deserts any more. We want there to be more access. And that can’t come at the expense of families in neighborhoods that maybe are gentrifying,” Moran said. “We don’t want the city to be kind of rearranging deck chairs and moving from one neighborhood to the other as opposed to the fact that citywide, there’s just not enough child care support.”

A spokesperson for the department pushed back on the idea that mixed-income neighborhoods were at a disadvantage, saying the city considered neighborhood demographics and also the economic status of children who have attended public programs in the past when deciding where to award pre-K seats. That led to more slots being added to areas such as school districts 5 and 6 in Manhattan, which include Harlem and Washington Heights.

Officials are still working towards a final tally, but said there have been more preschool seats awarded than there are children currently enrolled.

“The number of seats and providers fluctuates every year, but the bottom line is that there’s a seat for every 4-year-old citywide,” education department spokeswoman Sarah Casasnovas wrote in an email.

City leaders recently informed some programs that their seats will be restored. Before those changes, members of United Neighborhood Houses faced cuts of more than 500 childcare and preschool seats, potentially costing 125 jobs.

Will a second chance to land contracts help keep preschools afloat?

Providers who are awarded seats in this next round of contracts may get a late start at competing for enrollment, raising questions as to whether they’ll be able to hold on long enough to stay open. Education department officials said they’ll work with centers to make sure seats are full, and that enrollment typically stays strong throughout the summer and right into fall.

For Rouse, losing her 3-K contract has been a major blow after struggling to stay open through the pandemic. She is eligible to apply for the new round of contracts, and said she will try again to win back city funding. She doesn’t have much of a choice: Without the contract, she’s not sure how to keep her business afloat.

“I’m willing to do anything to stay open,” she said.

Most child care in the country is run by private businesses like Rouse’s. And like restaurants and gyms, they have been hard-hit by the health crisis. Even with plummeting enrollment as families kept their children home out of concern about the virus, or left the city entirely, Rouse paid to install a new hand washing sink at the school’s entrance and upgrade the air filtration systems. She applied for a state grant to cover these types of costs, but has yet to see any of that money.

Some of the VernyKidz families have written pleas to the education department to reconsider. Reading them on a recent afternoon, Rouse was reduced to sobs. But as much as families love her program, Rouse said she can’t compete with the free child care, offered through city 3-K and pre-K contracts. If she doesn’t win back the city’s business, she expects families will go to other education department classrooms rather than pay the steep price of private preschool.

“It just hurts. It really hurts,” she said.

Here’s how NYC will admit students to ‘gifted’ programs for 2021

2021-02-18T00:59:43+00:00

New York City will not test rising kindergarteners for admission to gifted programs, the education department announced Wednesday. Instead, students will be evaluated by their pre-K teacher or sign up for an interview.

Students will then be referred for admission and enter a random lottery for one of the 2,500 seats. There are 65,000 incoming kindergarteners, and typically about 15,000 vie for spots in gifted programs.

The change is for students entering school in fall 2021 only. It comes after the education department was left scrambling to devise a new admissions system for next school year. In a surprise vote last month, a citywide panel rejected a contract that would have allowed the city to continue testing preschoolers for admission to gifted programs, amid concerns about racial disparities in enrollment and the safety of administering an in-person test in the midst of a pandemic.

The education department did not share what criteria students would be evaluated on, which could raise questions about how students with different abilities, such as those who are learning English as a new language, might be judged.

The now-canceled admissions exam has long been blamed for driving segregation, with critics charging that tests for 4-year-olds are more likely to measure a family’s advantage than a student’s giftedness. Black and Latino students make up almost 60% of all kindergartners citywide, but only 14% of enrollment in gifted programs. At 43%, the greatest share of students in gifted classes are Asian. White students are also overrepresented at 36% of enrollment. Just over a quarter come from low-income families, compared with almost 70% citywide.

A memo written by education department officials this summer stated that sticking with the test this year would likely widen disparities because of the health crisis, which has fallen disproportionately on communities of color. Still, Mayor Bill de Blasio planned to forge ahead with the exam for one last year, pledging to scrap it after collecting ideas for reform from parents, advocates, and educators.

But the citywide Panel for Educational Policy, whose members are mostly appointed by the mayor and are largely thought to rubber stamp his policies, threw a wrench in those plans, voting to reject a contract extension that would have allowed the city to administer the exam this spring.

“We remain committed to finding a fairer and more equitable way forward to identify and meet the needs of students who would benefit from accelerated learning and enrichment, informed by a citywide engagement plan,” said education department spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon. “We believe deeply that wide scale changes are needed to address the racial disparities in who has access to [gifted and talented] programs.”

This year’s changes are no guarantee that admissions will be any more fair.

Parents will have to opt-in to consideration for the program, which could disadvantage families with little information or resources about how to navigate the application process.

If a student is enrolled in the city’s universal pre-K program, then the pre-K teacher will complete a questionnaire to determine whether the student should be referred for gifted admission. There are wide racial disparities in which students have been attending school in person this year, with white students overrepresented. Those with more time in the classroom with teachers could be at an advantage for referrals.

Students who aren’t in a pre-K program can sign up to be interviewed by staffers in the education department’s division of early childhood. With pre-K enrollment down by 13% this year, that could include a significant number of students. Interviews will happen remotely, opening up challenges for families who don’t have reliable access to internet or electronic devices.

M. Rene Islas, former executive director of the National Association for Gifted Children, said he was unaware of any empirical support for identifying such young students for gifted programs in a remote setting. In addition to issues with access to technology, he said that allowing evaluators to peer into the homes of young children could also introduce biases if, for example, a student is living in a crowded apartment.

“I’m really worried about that,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to help with equity.”

Both parent nominations and teacher referrals for gifted programs have been shown to result in underrepresentation of Black, Latino, and low-income students. However, those disparities are basically erased for Black children when they have a Black teacher — and many pre-K classrooms are led by women of color.

“They’re trading one inequitable screen for another,” said Allison Roda, an assistant professor at Molloy College, who has studied New York City’s gifted programs and has advocated for their reform.

Since gifted classrooms are already unrepresentative, another potential knock against the program becoming much more diverse this year is that children with a sibling already enrolled in a school with a gifted program will continue to receive a priority in admissions.

Even this year’s lottery system could have only a limited effect, if the pool of interested families isn’t diverse. In a typical year, the racial and economic breakdown of those applying for a spot in gifted do not reflect the city as a whole. There are ways to try to make lotteries result in more diversity, by giving certain students a preference in admissions, which some schools for gifted students do.

Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the think tank The Century Foundation and a proponent of reforming the city’s approach to gifted education, called this year’s changes only “marginally” more fair.

“At least it is no longer based on a single standardized test to be administered in-person during a pandemic. But it’s ultimately tinkering around the edges of a broken system,” she said.

New York City’s gifted classrooms are an outlier in many respects. Few other school districts start programming as early as kindergarten, and only about 10% use a model that separates children into completely different classrooms.

Islas said ideally children would have multiple ways to be identified for admission, with multiple entry points throughout a student’s time in school. Many districts start programming around second grade. He said that expanding access to gifted programs in student’s home schools, with support and training for teachers to meet their individual needs, could make the system more representative.

“There should be more investment there, as opposed to creating a few, finite magnet schools where only the privileged have an opportunity to learn,” he said.

O’Hanlon, the education department spokesperson, said the city looks forward “to a long-term transformation” of its gifted programs. In reality, it will likely be up to the next administration to take on that hefty task. De Blasio, who controls the education department, is in his last year as mayor. What to do about gifted programs has already become an issue among the crowded field of Democrats vying to replace him.

NYC sees steep drop in babies and toddlers with disabilities getting services during pandemic

2021-01-15T19:59:07+00:00

As New York City became the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic last spring, the number of infants and toddlers referred for evaluations due to possible disabilities plummeted, according to an analysis of city data released Friday.

At the same time, thousands of young children who were already receiving these services stopped getting them.

The analysis focuses on “Early Intervention” services, which are required by federal law, and are designed to ensure that children from birth to age 3 with disabilities or developmental delays get crucial help such as physical, occupational, or speech therapy.

The findings mirror a decline in referrals for special education services among school-age students and offer another grim window into how students with disabilities have struggled during the pandemic.

The decline among toddlers and infants is worrying because securing services early in a child’s life can make a significant difference in their development. Children who do not receive appropriate services early on in their development could result in more intense — and expensive — special education services later on, according to the report.

“Early Intervention exists because the brain is most malleable in the first three years of life,” said Dr. Liz Isakson, the executive director of Docs for Tots, an organization that helps ensure children with delays get connected to services. “I am worried about the infants and toddlers that never entered the system.”

Between last July and September, 15% fewer New York City children — representing about 2,900 infants and toddlers — received Early Intervention services compared with the same period in 2019. Some of that drop is likely explained by a decline in referrals.

Based on trends from previous years, the report indicates that between 3,000 and 6,000 fewer city infants and toddlers were referred for Early Intervention services than usual. In a typical year, about 33,000 city children receive these services. Although the number of children referred for services began to rebound in April and has since returned to pre-pandemic levels, advocates remain concerned about children who were not identified for services in the spring.

“Infants and toddlers cannot afford to wait for critically important Early Intervention services, said Kim Sweet, the executive director of Advocates for Children, the advocacy group that conducted the analysis. “The State and City need to take quick action to ensure children with developmental delays and disabilities get the services they need right away.”

With the closure of day care programs and drop in regular pediatrician appointments, the pandemic interrupted some of the ways children are typically flagged by experts for possible developmental delays and referred to services. Parents may have also been less reluctant to seek out help, possibly overwhelmed by the pandemic and suffering from the death of relatives, job loss, or supervising remote learning.

Even among families who were already receiving services, participating remotely appeared to be a significant challenge. Some families may not have found teletherapy services useful for their babies and toddlers, or they may have been logistically untenable for working parents. (While in-person services are now approved, families have been encouraged to participate remotely, according to the report.)

Technology access is also a barrier. Although the city provided about 450,000 iPads to school-age students who lacked technology access, city officials did not provide devices to children in Early Intervention, the report said. Some families who lacked a computer or tablet attempted to use cell phones, though some families found that “ineffective” for their infants and toddlers. City officials said they are working with the state, which also plays a role in overseeing Early Intervention, to “develop a mechanism to loan devices to families.”

Isakson worries the lack of technology access may further exacerbate existing inequities in the Early Intervention system. People who live in low-income areas of the city are less likely to be referred for evaluations, or receive services after an evaluation.

“The tech divide follows right along that,” Isakson said. “If you think about equity and school readiness and long-term effects of children arriving in kindergarten, that’s pretty substantial that devices were not provided.”

A city survey conducted between April and mid June found that nearly a quarter of parents receiving Early Intervention services were not receiving any of their services when they were contacted.

“Very early in the pandemic, we shifted all home-based Early Intervention services to a teletherapy approach in order to reduce the community transmission of COVID-19,” wrote Julia Morrill, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which administers the Early Intervention Program. “We have done our best to work with families in order to get children the services they need during this incredibly difficult time.”

The report includes a series of recommendations, including launching an outreach campaign to ensure children don’t fall through the cracks, providing technology to families who receive Early Intervention services, and providing “make-up” services to students who missed out. It also calls for increased funding for providers, especially as there may be an influx of students who are ultimately referred for services with greater needs that have gone unaddressed due to the pandemic.

NYC school reopening redux: What to know about heading back to class

2020-12-05T01:09:48+00:00

An estimated 200,000 New York City students are set to return to school buildings starting Monday, following a brief citywide campus shutdown amid rising coronavirus cases. Over the course of the week, schools will welcome back preschool and elementary school children, as well as those in District 75, which serves students with the most complex disabilities.

Even as buildings reopen, families should brace for individual classroom and school closures if coronavirus cases are identified. It’s also possible that positivity rates climb high enough to trigger a systemwide shutdown.

The reopening doesn’t change the fact that on a given day, the overwhelming majority of the city’s roughly 1 million public school students will be learning from home, and improving remote teaching has gotten little attention compared to the time and money spent on reopening buildings.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is no longer using the threshold he previously set for a systemwide closure — 3% positivity rate of coronavirus tests over a rolling seven-day average. But targeted closures are still possible. One positive case would result in quarantining that student or staffer’s class, while two or more cases could cause the whole building to close, depending on how those cases are related.

Public health officials and the mayor have repeatedly said there’s little evidence that schools are contributing to higher rates of COVID-19, and many experts believe that younger children are less likely to spread the virus.

But cases are clearly going up across the city. The city’s seven-day positivity rate reached 5.43%, according to data posted Friday. The numbers of students and school staff testing positive has also risen. Roughly 3,740 students and staff tested positive for the coronavirus between Sept. 14 and Dec. 3 — with cases identified among public school students and staff increasing 33% over the past two weeks, according to public data. That is still lower than the uptick citywide, which jumped about 46% during the same period.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in July that he would close schools when the coronavirus positivity rate reached 9% over seven days. When asked to confirm whether that still holds, City Hall and education department officials said to direct questions to the state. State officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment, again raising questions about whether city and state leaders are on the same page about what to expect should coronavirus cases continue to climb.

Here’s what we know about Monday’s reopening.

What grades are returning to school?

Not everyone who opted for in-person learning is heading back to the classroom. Only those in pre-K (including 3-year-olds) through grade 5 will return beginning Monday. (In K-8 and K-12 schools, only students in the elementary grades will be back on campus.)

On Thursday, students in District 75 schools start heading back. Those schools serve students with the most complex learning challenges, including some with autism and intellectual disabilities.

Middle and high school students who are not in District 75 will not return until the new year, at the earliest, but no firm date has been given.

Because of social distancing requirements, not all returning students will head back on the same day. Many schools will still operate on a hybrid schedule, with students in classrooms part-time, and learning remotely the rest of the days.

Who is returning?

There are some differences between racial groups when it comes to who is expected to head back to class. Almost a quarter of those signed up for in-person learning are white, a disproportionate share compared with a citywide enrollment of just 16% white students.

Almost 43% are Latino, about two percentage points higher than overall enrollment. Black and Asian students will likely be underrepresented: Only about 18% and 12%, have signed up for in-person instruction.

Some big caveats about these numbers: The percentages are based on last school year’s enrollment, since the city hasn’t provided figures for this year. Preliminary data in New York City, and trends across the country, show that public schools have likely lost a significant number of students. Among those who left, some groups of students may be overrepresented.

Also, the percentages provided by the city do not include demographics for an additional 30,000 students in pre-K classrooms at community-run organizations. Nor do they include 35,000 students who had been learning fully remotely in the fall and chose to switch to in-person learning.

Are children really returning five days a week?

Elementary school and District 75 principals have to let the education department know by Monday whether they can accommodate students full-time on campus, based on staffing and building capacity. Schools will still have to follow social--distancing guidelines. The mayor has said “most” schools will be able to offer five days a week in-person, but did not say how he arrived at that number. Many schools will likely have trouble scaling up the number of days that students can attend, given space and staffing constraints.

The education department also asked schools to prioritize high-needs students when determining who should attend more frequently.

“Schools should review their capacity to provide students with disabilities (especially those in special class settings, as well as specialized programs) full-time, in-person instruction within health and safety guidelines, to the greatest extent possible,” stated a memo sent to principals this week. “As long as all students with disabilities’ needs are met, other student groups can be prioritized for additional in-person instruction, including students in shelters, Multilingual Learners (MLL), students needing academic interventions, and others.”

Who can’t return?

Only students who had already been attending school in person or those who had signed up last month to do so can return to buildings.

In order to attend in-person classes, students must consent to be tested on campus for COVID-19. The consent forms can be filled out online or submitted to the school on the child’s first day back on campus. As part of this round of reopening schools, a random sampling of 20% of students and staff will be tested weekly for the virus. (Previously, testing was done on a monthly basis, and the percentage of those tested varied according to enrollment.)

Students in grades kindergarten and below are not included in testing. Students in District 75 schools will be tested starting Dec. 14, after originally being exempted from the program.

Parents can apply for exemptions for medical reasons or because a student’s disability would make it unsafe to test them.

What are some concerns about the city’s testing program?

Some parents have chafed at the idea of their children being tested at school, and want to be present for the procedure or allowed to have their child tested by their own pediatrician. But the mayor has stood firm on the city’s requirements.

It was not immediately clear how many consent forms have been returned as of Friday night.

There are some holes in the city’s testing protocol. Staff in pre-K classrooms run by community organizations which make up a majority of the seats provided through the city’s free preschool program, are not tested. Neither are those staffing Learning Bridges sites, which provide child care for students learning in the hybrid model on the days they are not on campus.

What about so-called orange or red zones?

The state has imposed additional restrictions on areas of the city that are considered “red zones,” which have the highest positivity rate of COVID-19 tests, and orange and yellow zones, which also are experiencing a spike in cases.

Some parts of Staten Island are under orange zone restrictions, which require additional testing to reopen schools. While de Blasio had expressed hope that those campuses could open as early as Dec. 7, that will not be the case for about 45 school sites located in a state-designated orange zone, according to information on the education department’s website.

However, the governor this week loosened orange zone requirements for keeping schools open, so it’s unclear what else needs to happen in order to reopen those campuses.

On Friday, the mayor said schools in orange zone could reopen sometime in the next week, but it was still unclear when that would happen.

“We have some additional work to do. We haven’t fixed the day yet,” de Blasio said during a radio appearance on WNYC. “We will do that very quickly, obviously.”

NYC elementary school students can head back to buildings Dec. 7, as de Blasio shifts reopening strategy

2020-11-29T19:39:36+00:00

New York City’s youngest students will return to school buildings on Dec. 7, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday in an announcement that also signaled a shift in his approach to school reopening.

After facing intense pushback over his decision to close school buildings more than a week ago, de Blasio’s new reopening plan will welcome back students in 3-K, pre-K, and K-5 on Dec. 7. (Only grades K-5 will return in buildings that serve up to eighth or 12th grade.) Buildings will reopen on Dec. 10 for all grades of District 75, which serves students with the most significant disabilities. The mayor offered no timeline to bring back middle and high school students. He said the city is “just not able to do that yet,” citing the need to scale up COVID-19 testing and keep the focus on the city’s youngest and also most vulnerable students for now.

In a major shift for the nation’s largest public school system, de Blasio said the city will no longer use a percentage positivity rate to shutter buildings across the five boroughs, as it did Nov. 19 when the city hit a 3% coronavirus positivity rate over seven days. Instead, 20% of students and staff will be tested in schools on a weekly basis, as opposed to the monthly testing program at schools citywide. The city will continue targeted school closures.

“It’s a new approach because we have so much proof of how safe schools can be and this has come from real life experience in the biggest school system in America right there in New York City,” de Blasio said. “We feel confident that we can keep schools safe.”

De Blasio also said he wants to bring students back five days a week at schools where there is enough space and staffing. Only students who were already participating in blended learning or chose that option when the city offered families one final chance to get some in-person learning would be eligible for this, the mayor said. Such a plan would still follow social distancing and require a reshuffling of students and teachers, but would allow those schools to have just two types of students: fully remote and fully in-person as opposed to hybrid students who are learning both remotely and in-person during the week.

It will be up to individual school leaders to decide if this is an option for them, and the city did not provide an estimate of how many schools might pursue this option.

“It’s still a herculean task for our principals and communities,” Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said.

In a statement, principals union president Mark Cannizzarro said the education department “must provide clear direction and adequate resources in schools where it is possible” to phase out blended learning, “and afford school leaders flexibility and discretion where it is not.”

Individual schools or classrooms will close under existing protocols: one positive case would cause that student or staffer’s class to quarantine, while two or more cases can cause the whole building to close. That means there will likely continue to be instability in terms of school building and classroom closures over the coming weeks and months. If school buildings hadn’t been closed citywide, 173 buildings — or roughly 11% of all schools — would still have been shuttered either for 24 hours or two weeks based on positive cases among members of their community, according to public data.

Since only students who have already signed up for in-person learning will be allowed to return to buildings, the mayor estimated that 190,000 children could return — and their families must sign consent forms for COVID-19 testing to do so. Students will not be allowed to return to buildings without consent forms.

Even if middle and high schools reopen, about two thirds of children will remain fully remote, according to city data, with higher rates of students of color choosing to learn remotely full-time.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the city teachers union, signaled support for the plan.

The union had put intense pressure on de Blasio and Carranza this summer over implementing stringent testing and safety protocols before reopening buildings. While it had backed the city’s 3% positivity rate trigger for closing schools, Mulgrew indicated a shift in approach, saying the union wanted the city to reopen schools in neighborhoods where the positivity rate had dropped and focus instead of closing buildings in hot spots instead of systemwide closures.

“We are supportive of a phased reopening of schools in other neighborhoods as long as stringent testing is in place,” Mulgrew said in a statement. “This strategy — properly implemented — will allow us to offer safe in-person instruction to the maximum number of students until we beat the pandemic.”

Some elected officials also signaled support for the plan, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who is running for mayor, said he was pleased that de Blasio listened to parents who pushed for buildings to reopen, but now the city must “make in-person education an option for the older students who are being left behind by the failed implementation of remote learning.”

Others believed there should be more support for the city’s most vulnerable students. In a tweet, Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander said the city should target in-person learning for “homeless students, kids with special needs.”

The move comes at a time when coronavirus cases are rising in the city, with the positivity rate over a seven-day average reaching 3.9%, according to the most recent city data. But many public health experts believe that schools are not contributing to higher rates of spreading the virus, and many other countries have prioritized keeping schools open while shuttering other businesses and institutions.

The number of school-based tests that have come back positive in schools has risen. As of last week, .28% of results were positive of the nearly 160,000 in-person students and staff who were tested. Overall, more than 3,000 students and staff have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to city data as of Nov. 24.

Schools that are in state-imposed orange zones will reopen in accordance with rules set by Cuomo. Orange zone areas have reached a 3% positivity rate based on state data of seven-day averages, which are calculated differently than the city’s average.

As of Saturday, parts of Staten Island remained in orange zones.

All students and staff must first test negative before reentering the building, which is not a requirement for other schools. These schools must also test 25% of students each week, with a different set of students tested each week.

Correction: This story incorrectly stated that schools in state-imposed orange zones must test 20% of its students each week. In fact, the testing requirement is 25%.

NYC preschools remain open, raising questions about safety and equity among staff

2020-11-19T23:01:14+00:00

Four-year-olds attending the city-funded pre-K program at Kuei Luck Early Childhood Center still went to school on Thursday. Four-year-olds enrolled at the pre-K program in the public school at P.S. 175, just a few blocks away in Rego Park, Queens, had to stay home.

As the city has now crossed Mayor Bill de Blasio’s school closure threshold, a 3% coronavirus positivity rate over a seven-day average, preschools find themselves in a tough spot. Those that operate in community-based centers operated by nonprofits or private businesses can remain open. Their counterparts in education department-run buildings must shut, raising complicated questions of safety and equity for staffers and families.

“If it’s not safe enough for teachers in [Department of Education] buildings, then it’s not safe enough for the teachers in my building,” said Alice Mulligan, who runs Our Savior’s Lutheran Preschool in Brooklyn, which is contracted by the city to provide free pre-K. “We want to stay open, but honestly my stomach absolutely turns at the thought of somebody on my staff getting sick.”

The city relies on programs run by nonprofits or small businesses to serve the majority of students enrolled in its universal, free pre-K initiative. The rest attend programs in public schools.

Providers are well aware that families depend on them for child care, and some centers also need to stay open to survive financially.

There are also equity issues at play. Teachers and staff who work in community-run preschools are more likely to be people of color, and they already are paid less than their public school counterparts. Some are calling for incentive pay for being asked to work while the rest of the school system’s employees stay home.

Overlapping authority between the city and state has created confusion over public school opening and closings. The same is true for these independently run preschools, which have been deemed essential businesses by the city and state, but are licensed by the city’s Department of Health and contracted through the city’s education department.

“We have rigorous health and safety practices in place to support these programs, and we are also closely monitoring the citywide test positivity average and will continue to update our guidance as the public health situation changes,” said education department spokesperson Sarah Casasnovas.

Programs can apply for a waiver to offer remote-only instruction. So far, only about 30 out of hundreds of providers have done so, the education department said.

Confusing and conflicting guidance

But the conflicting guidance given to community organizations and public schools makes it hard to make informed decisions about whether to stay open, said David Nocenti, executive director of Union Settlement, a nonprofit that serves more than 800 infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in East Harlem.

“Nonprofit community-based organizations like Union Settlement — as well as the families we serve — are struggling to prepare for the potential public school closure, largely because the city has not provided a defensible public health rationale for the decisions being made,” he wrote in an email.

It is a particularly confusing tangle of guidance given that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has set a less conservative threshold for keeping campuses open. The state permits schools to serve students until 9% of a community’s coronavirus tests come back positive over a seven-day average. The state has also allowed bars and restaurants to continue serving customers.

The mayor, on the other hand, set the city’s stricter threshold for shutting down schools this summer, when teachers, worried about the safety of their school buildings, threatened to strike. The influence of the United Federation of Teachers, the union that represents public school teachers, played a role in the city’s more stringent threshold, and that’s another long standing sticking point for the community-run pre-K centers.

Most community-run child care centers, often referred to as Community Based Organizations or CBOS, either do not have unionized staff, or their employees are represented by a different union, District Council 37. These workers are also paid less than their UFT counterparts in public school pre-K programs, though the city recently agreed to significant salary increases.

“I think it’s outrageous that they’re closing the schools and not closing the CBOs,” said Henry Garrido, executive director of DC 37. “It’s not as if COVID stops at the door of a CBO and doesn’t enter there.”

Gregory Brender, who works on youth policy issues at the nonprofit United Neighborhood Houses, said program leaders would like to see their staff compensated for continuing to work even as coronavirus cases rise.

“They’re already being paid less than the teachers in the department of education, while having to come into work during the school shutdown,” Brender said.

Financial and logistical strain

Other cities have prioritized early education during the pandemic. In Denver, only students in preschool through second grade have been attending school in person — though officials there decided this week to close down classrooms after Thanksgiving. In Michigan, the governor this week closed high schools and colleges, but elementary and middle schools can keep their doors open. Some elected officials have called on New York City to take a similar approach.

“Children not being in school, that causes a certain level of harm versus the statistics of the coronavirus itself,” said Kevin Kung, executive director of Kuei Luck Early Childhood center in Rego Park, Queens.

Yet, only about half of the center’s students are attending, Kung said. His center has private paying students that help subsidize publicly funded seats. Enrollment in his private program is down to just 14 though he has space for 60 children. That has created a financial incentive to stay open.

Kung hasn’t been able to pay his rent in full since this summer, after running out of the federal payroll protection loans. He is still waiting on state assistance, which was earmarked to help child care businesses reopen after the height of the health crisis forced New York City to shut down.

Meanwhile, his operating costs continue to spike. To bolster safety, Kung has upgraded the air filtration systems at his school and contracted with a company to provide on-site COVID testing.

He said he’ll keep an eye on the city’s infection rates and keep communicating with families and teachers to gauge whether they feel safe coming to school. For now, he plans to stay open as long as some students keep coming.

“We get messages, ‘Please try to stay open,’” he said. “We’ll have to take it day-by-day.”

It has already been difficult figuring out the logistics of having enough teachers for two versions of preschool — in person and remote. But many teachers have children in public schools and face child care challenges of their own, said Vaughn Toney, the executive director of Friends of Crown Heights, one of the largest child care providers in the city.

Still, Toney plans to keep the doors open at the 19 centers he oversees. While many students have chosen to learn online, others have parents who work in hospitals or as other essential workers and need in-person care.

Toney knows the challenges and risks of operating during a pandemic: Just this week, he had to close one center after two people there tested positive.

“Everyone has to do their part,” he said. “Our part is to serve the children of families, of those serving on the front line.”

The question is whether families will continue to feel safe bringing their children to community-based preschools if the rest of the public school system is closed. While the pandemic crested in New York City, Toney opened three emergency child care centers but attendance was low as families made other arrangements.

“No one showed up,” he said. “A lot of our parents, they chose to stay home.”

School closures can be hard on children — and adults. Here’s how to help ease the transition.

2020-11-19T01:38:17+00:00

New York City’s school buildings are closing Thursday, just as many children had started to get used to being back in classrooms.

Mayor Bill de Blasio warned last week that closures could be imminent, as the coronavirus positivity rate neared the 3% shutdown threshold. He outlined that as soon as the city hit that benchmark, based on a seven-day average, schools would close the following day. Mental health experts questioned that timeline, and why the mayor created an emergent situation that put parents on edge and did not provide the opportunity for all children who have returned to schools to say goodbye to their teachers. By making the announcement so late in the day, after most schools already closed for the day, few teachers were able to tell students in person what was happening.

While the majority of public school students were already learning remotely full-time, some 280,000 students were back in classrooms part-time. The building shutdowns may be a shock to them and their families, even though the closures were on the horizon as COVID-19 cases ticked up over the past several weeks.

On the plus side, those hybrid students have had the opportunity to meet and develop connections with their teachers — relationships that they can continue to foster in the remote setting, experts said.

“Fortunately, teachers and children have had at least some days and weeks to get to know each other before schools are forced to shut down again,” said Lesley Koplow, a clinical social worker and director of Emotionally Responsive Practice at Bank Street, “giving both teachers and children the beginning of a relationship basis to build on through the virtual interaction that will follow.”

Here are some other ways that schools and parents can help students make the latest transition to fully remote learning.

Have developmentally appropriate conversations with children

Don’t shy away from talking about pandemic-related school closures, advised Cindy Huang, a child psychologist and assistant professor of counseling psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

“Too many parents avoid it, but kids know what’s going on,” she said. “You just do it in developmentally appropriate ways. Explain what happens when COVID rates go to 3%. They’re kind of mini scientists because of this. The kids are really good at this — they are sitting in their classrooms, wearing masks, and learning to be socially distant.”

‘Find your calm’

The transition to all-remote might be stressful for parents and educators as they have to adapt to yet another new reality — and that can be hard on children. The mayor has yet to clarify how long schools might remain closed or what benchmarks he will use to re-open them.

“Right now it seems like it’s up to this man’s whims,” Huang said about the mayor’s process for closing schools. “It doesn’t help when the people dictating the decisions don’t have a clear plan. The uncertainty has a very adverse effect on mental health for parents.”

That, in turn, trickles down to children, who might internalize family stressors.

Huang has already noticed an uptick in parents needing more behavioral supports for their children and more children acting out this year.

“If adults start to feel outraged or upset and are really charged, children will feel it,” echoed Kevin Dahill-Fuchel, executive director for Counseling In Schools, which places social workers in high-needs schools across the city. “If adults can flow with it, and go with ‘Plan B,’ then it becomes more about finding ways to mitigate stress.”

Without being able to stay calm it’s difficult to then problem solve, experts said.

Parents and teachers should think about the following mantra: regulate (find your calm), relate, reflect and reason, said Silvia Juarez-Marazzo, a clinical social worker and adjunct professor at Brooklyn College who writes children’s books for immigrant families.

“When the adult is calm, he can give the child a reflective response; a response that comes from trying to understand what the child is experiencing and needs,” Juarez-Marazzo said.

Maintain routines

Keeping routines as consistent as possible is important since children learn by forming expectations, said Juarez-Marazzo.

“Routines have inherent flexibility, especially now; there is predictability and a rhythm, but small changes happen here and there,” she said. “The child needs to know that to be safe, we have to do things different again, and that it is OK to be upset and to miss them, but parents and teachers will find ways to keep some things they love, like story time, happening.”

Huang also stressed the importance of building new routines and expectations, especially as the pandemic isn’t likely to go away in the immediate future.

“This helps bring back some of the control parents are longing for,” she said.

Find ways to build community or create teachable moments

Schools and families can mitigate some of the blow by finding creative ways to address the closures, advised Dahill-Fuchel.

For example, to help younger children stay socially engaged, class parents or a school’s PTA could help facilitate small groups of children at a local playground, with a rotating group of parents watching them, he suggested.

For older children, this moment can be incorporated into academic lessons, he suggested.

“What does a 3% rolling average mean? There are maps with averages across the city. There are some high school students who might want to be politically active and see how those rates are different in different places. There are opportunities to have discussions about individual responsibility versus communal responsibility,” Dahill-Fuchel said. “Are there lesson plans that schools can put forward?”

Think about the whole family

Just as parents will need to give teachers some space and grace, teachers need to understand where families are coming from.

“We cannot expect to engage little ones in an hour of Zoom class with ABCs, but we can expect to engage him for a 15-minute child’s sing-along and dancing,” said Juarez-Marazzo. “We cannot expect that parents, overwhelmed by layers of personal and collective losses and by the stress of making ends meet and caring for their other children, [to] follow up on assignments. … But we can ask them to become part of that dancing and sing-along with their little ones.”

NYC children are back in schools. But working parents, including teachers, are still struggling with child care.

2020-10-06T23:41:20+00:00

New York City’s Learning Bridges program was launched to close child care gaps while students in the country’s largest school system return to classes part-time. But it’s not working for some of the very people it’s designed to help, like the Martinez family, a Staten Island mom who works as a public school teacher and dad who is an emergency room nurse.

The problem is that Ms. Martinez, who asked to withhold her first name for fear of retaliation, needs to arrive at her Brooklyn school by 8 a.m. Her son’s assigned Learning Bridges site doesn’t open until 9 a.m.

So Martinez and her toddler son are on the road by 7 a.m. They ride together for about 30 minutes to meet her husband at a midway point on the side of the road after his overnight shift in a Brooklyn hospital.

Martinez hands off her 3-year-old and heads to the classroom where she teaches fourth grade. Her son travels back home with his exhausted father, who watches him until the day care center opens. Pickup is just as impossible: Martinez’s day ends at 2:30 p.m., the same time her son’s day care center closes and while her husband is trying to catch up on sleep.

“I’m just very disappointed,” she said. “It’s not helping us.”

New York City reached the final phase of a staggered reopening of school buildings last week, with students in all grades returning to classrooms for the first time in six months. Yet many working parents are still facing a child care crunch they’ve contended with since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

In fact, it has only become harder for caregivers who must return to jobs sites while their children are only in school buildings one to three times a week — not to mention the tens of thousands of students in coronavirus hotspots who have already been forced to learn exclusively online after rising cases forced 103 public schools to shutter abruptly.

Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged in July to open 100,000 free child care seats to serve students on the days they aren’t in schools. The program has been slow to get off the ground, opening with only 30,000 slots, and after-school care is not guaranteed. By the end of October, 70,000 seats are expected to come online. Full capacity won’t be reached until mid-December, according to the city’s projections.

The city has given preference to education department employees and first responders, along with children in the neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID-19. It’s not clear why the center Martinez’s son was assigned to is operating for so few hours, when city guidelines call for early childhood centers to provide six hours and 20 minutes of care. For children in grades kindergarten through eighth, Learning Bridges sites are to operate from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m.

In nine ZIP codes where spiking coronavirus cases have forced school closures, Learning Bridges programs have also shut down, according to an email sent Monday to providers. City officials did not respond to questions about whether they plan to provide essential workers in the affected areas with emergency child care.

In many ways, Learning Bridges is meant to fill a similar need as the child care centers that were opened in March for the children of hospital staff, sanitation crews, grocery store clerks, and other first responders and essential workers. Called Regional Enrichment Centers, many were housed inside empty public school buildings. But that program, which served about 13,000 children, had a key difference: parents could drop off and pick up their children any time between 7:30 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Heather Alcorn, a single mom in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, relied on the enrichment centers for her young daughter. Some days, her daughter was the only preschooler in a classroom with two other adults. The girl learned to recognize letters and write her name as Alcorn worked in her Manhattan biology research lab. Alcorn said the centers were run safely and that she felt “spoiled” by the flexible and convenient hours.

When the centers closed so the buildings could be turned back over to teachers and principals as they prepared for the new year, Alcorn had to take a week of vacation time.

Now that her daughter has started pre-K, Alcorn said she is grateful for the days her little one is in the classroom and impressed with her teachers. But Alcorn is contending with a shortened school day of 5.5 hours and three days of remote learning during the week. To make it work, Alcorn has dipped into a bank of emergency child care days offered through her work.

She’s still waiting to hear whether her daughter has won a slot in the Learning Bridges program, or whether she’ll need to figure out some other long-term plan. Meanwhile, Alcorn said her only colleague with children left the state to be with family members who could pitch in.

“I feel alone with this,” Alcorn said. “It’s frustrating, and I don’t see how this is going to be sustainable.”

For some who can afford to pay for care, the slow rollout of the Learning Bridges program makes it hard to plan ahead.

Lisa Brassell has rearranged her work schedule as a supervisor in an engineering lab so that she can juggle remote learning for her daughter, who’s in second grade, and the shortened school day for her son, who is in pre-K.

Her husband, an essential worker with the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, tried to take time off work to pitch in, but was denied because he is considered an essential worker. He’s now weighing whether to take federal family leave to care for their young son, who needs help navigating therapies remotely for special needs.

In the meantime, the family, who lives in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, is still waiting to hear whether their children can enroll in Learning Bridges. Brassell considered signing up for some paid child care programs. But those require a months-long financial commitment that could end up wasted if the family gets a last-minute notice that they’ve scored a seat through the city.

“At this point, I just want to know if we have a Learning Bridges spot, and if we don’t, if we’re ever going to get one,” she said. “We kind of held on to hope that we would get something, and so far we haven’t heard anything except that received our application.”

7 things we still don’t know about the school year in NYC, but really should

2020-09-17T00:35:12+00:00

New York City students will begin to return to their school buildings on Monday, and they face a mountain of worries and unanswered questions.

Next week marks the first time that schools will reopen since the city became the epicenter of the coronavirus this spring, forcing its 1 million public school students to learn online. The city is attempting to become the only school district out of the top 12 largest in the country to re-open for in person learning. But education department leaders, principals, teachers, and parents are still scrambling to figure out what schooling during a pandemic will look like.

The unknowns are dizzying: Will the airflow in schools be working well enough to curb the spread of the coronavirus? Will school buses roll on time for students who need transportation, many of whom have special needs? How will students be disciplined for acting out over Zoom? How much live interaction will students have with their teachers on the days they’re learning online?

While coronavirus cases soared in the spring, New York City now has rates hovering around 1% over several weeks. Because of that, many public health experts support reopening schools. Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to shut down the nation’s largest school system again, though, if more than 3% of coronavirus tests come back positive over a seven-day period.

Students are expected to attend classes between one and three times a week, and learn online the rest of the time. City officials already delayed the start of school to give teachers and principals more time to plan for a year filled with new social distancing rules and staffing conundrums. In that time, fresh worries have sprung up as coronavirus cases were uncovered among staff who returned to buildings last week. Already, some teachers are refusing to enter their school buildings, working outside instead to demonstrate their distrust for the city’s back-to-school plans.

“We’re going to keep making improvements as we go along, we’re going to keep adjusting and figuring out what we need in terms of staffing,” de Blasio told reporters on Wednesday. “We’ve come this far. We’re going to keep doing what we have to do to make it better every single day.”

Here’s what we know — and what we don’t — about the start of the school year.

Has the city invested enough in improving remote teaching?

Much of the focus on reopening schools has centered on health and safety issues, which are crucial for in-person learning. But the majority of instruction this school year will be conducted virtually, since most students will only be allowed to attend school one to three days a week, and 42% of students — and counting — have opted for fully virtual learning.

While much of the reopening logistics focused on personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies, and ventilation, comparatively little energy has been spent adapting curriculum to suit the remote learning environment. And without the education department providing a wide array of materials and templates for strong remote teaching, schools are largely coming up with their own strategies. That will likely produce uneven results, experts say.

“The operational only accounts for at most half of the problem, and we have to talk about instructional quality as well,” said Tom Liam Lynch, who runs the website InsideSchools and has previously consulted with the education department on instructional technology. “There isn’t a lot of direction or leadership when it comes to this part of the conversation.”

Education department officials have said parents should expect to find a better virtual learning experience than when the system abruptly shut down in March. The city has held training sessions for teachers on a range of topics, including how to adapt core academic subjects like reading math and how to set up virtual science classrooms. And teachers now have a few months of remote teaching under their belts.

But some teachers said they were less excited in the training sessions the department was offering — if they’d heard about them at all — and were more interested in opportunities to learn best practices from each other.

“I wish there wasn’t so much reinventing of the wheel,” said Lynn Shon, a science teacher at Brooklyn’s M.S. 88. “We’re all busting our tails making different versions of the same thing.”

Will schools have enough teachers?

Staffing remains one of the biggest challenges for school leaders. In-person classes will be smaller because of social distancing requirements, and students learning remotely from home also need instruction. Meanwhile, educators have gotten medical accommodations to work from home or requested family leave to take care of children or high-risk relatives.

The union representing principals and other administrators said schools are short 10,000 teachers. The mayor said this week the city plans to shift 2,000 education department employees into school teaching positions to address the staffing shortage, and the education department said it’s searching for other ways to fill gaps. During a town hall with District 15 parents Wednesday night, Carranza said the city is working with the City University of New York to place adjunct professors and graduate students at schools. The city also backpedaled on its promise to offer live instruction to the hybrid students on their remote days — a shift that reduces some of the staffing pressure.

The math still doesn’t add up, and it remains to be seen how the flux of students from in-person to full remote, which students can opt into at any time, will affect the impossible puzzle of creating class schedules — another conundrum Carranza has acknowledged.

Students continued to opt into remote-only learning even as online teacher check-ins kicked off Wednesday, educators said.

On top of the staffing shortage, will we see teacher layoffs?

New Yorkers are bracing for a wave of layoffs to hit the public sector. As the city faces a $9 billion budget hole over two years, de Blasio was expected to send layoff notices this month to about 22,000 public workers across all city agencies. He backed off at the last minute at the urging of union leaders, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Those layoffs might still happen if state lawmakers don’t give the city permission to borrow $5 billion or if the city doesn’t get help from the federal government. City officials have refused to specify how many at the education department could lose their jobs.

Separately, the city is also facing a budget squeeze from the state, which is temporarily withholding 20% of regular payments to districts across New York but announced Wednesday that it won’t withhold any money at the end of this month. If Gov. Andrew Cuomo decides to make these temporary cuts permanent, that could result in $2.3 billion of cuts for city schools, and the city could see 9,000 teachers laid off, according to Chancellor Richard Carranza. Such a loss would force the school system to revert to full remote learning, Carranza has said.

City Hall did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about potential layoffs or when the mayor will make a final decision. Freeman Klopott, a spokesman for the state’s budget office, declined to say when exactly Cuomo will decide on whether to make the 20% funding cuts permanent.

How will students be graded?

This was a major flashpoint in the spring, when school buildings first shut down because of the coronavirus.

Many argued that the abrupt shift to remote learning left behind students lacking stable home environments, reliable internet connections, or laptops. The struggle to keep up was only exacerbated by the health crisis, which fell disproportionately on Black and Latino communities, and poor neighborhoods. For those reasons and others, parents, and advocates pushed to suspend traditional grading.

Others, however, argued that children who managed to do well under tough circumstances should be recognized with high marks. This was especially true for parents eyeing competitive middle and high school placements for their children, since grades are a major factor in winning admission.

In the end, the city moved to a system more like pass or fail.

The education department has not yet said whether that policy will stick this year, or if schools will be allowed to design their own grading scales.

How will middle and high school admissions work?

More schools in New York City use “screens,” or competitive admissions standards, than anywhere else in the country. The competitive admissions process helps drive New York City’s status as one of the most segregated school systems in the country, and many parents, educators, and students have been advocating to end or pare back screening well before the coronavirus hit.

Competitive schools often use grades, in addition to state test scores and attendance records, to make admissions decisions. But the city nixed traditional grades at the end of last year, state tests were canceled, and schools could not consider attendance records for admission decisions.

Without those most commonly used screens this year, it remains unclear how students will be selected for sixth and ninth grade.

Some parents have insisted that schools be allowed to look at students’ academic records from before buildings were shuttered because of the pandemic, or even from the year prior — when students were only in third and sixth grades. Others have argued that would be unfair, and the education department has released data that shows those measures are often not reflective of students’ performance later in their school careers.

The city promised to announce a decision by this summer on how admissions would work for rising middle and high schoolers. But parents, students, and schools are still waiting. The department, which has held multiple virtual meetings on the topic, has gathered “important ideas and feedback” and is still working to create a “fair and equitable” plan, a spokesperson said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the application process typically kicks off as soon as classes begin, with open house tours, and sign-ups for interviews and tests.

When will families find out if they score free child care seats?

Because of space constraints and social distancing mandates, children who attend school in person will only be in classrooms for 5.5 hours, one to three days a week. Parents trying to head back to work — or just get more work done from home — will face the same child care challenges as when schools first shut down.

De Blasio promised free child care for 100,000 students on the days they are not learning in school buildings, much like the city did throughout the course of pandemic for the children of essential workers. However, only 30,000 spots will open by the first day of in-person classes. And parents have yet to learn whether they’ve snagged a seat.

“We are finalizing assignments and will have more information to share with families over the next few days,” a city spokesperson said Wednesday.

Charter school students are not eligible to enroll, the New York Times reported, which leaves out about 13% of the city’s public school enrollment.

Those who do land a spot could still have a child care crunch: Getting to and from the centers may be difficult, as officials have not said whether transportation will be provided. And after-care will be offered on a site-by-site basis, but is not guaranteed.

Will all children have a device when school starts?

Families can request devices online here, which will be routed to their schools, or call 311, schools officials said.

When remote learning started in the spring, schools gave students devices from their own stockpiles. Additionally, over several months, the education department purchased and distributed more than 320,000 internet-connected iPads to students who lacked reliable internet access or technology. Some 30,000 iPads remained in the department’s coffers at the end of July, but officials did not say how many are left now. All of these devices can also now operate as hotspots, officials said, which can provide internet connection for up to five other devices.

The responsibility of purchasing laptops and tablets will fall once again to principals this year, as will the job of redistributing the DOE-issued iPads from the spring. School leaders and their union are concerned about having to buy new devices as they’re dealing with smaller budgets this year. They’re worried about meeting the demand — while many of their returning students may be set with devices from the spring, school leaders must account for newly enrolled students or students who no longer want to share one device between multiple siblings.

“I know that our schools, as they’re preparing for the start of the school year, have reached out to families and students to make sure that they do have a device, they do have connectivity,” Carranza told reporters Wednesday. “And if they don’t, then we’re in communication with them to provide them those, either devices or connectivity.”

NYC will hire 400 school nurses amid pressure from educators and families

2020-08-13T20:02:11+00:00

All New York City school buildings will have a full-time nurse by the start of the school year, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday, addressing a longtime concern of educators and families.

With the coronavirus pandemic lingering, officials said they will hire 400 more full-time nurses for K-12 schools, seeking to fill vacancies at 359 school buildings with additional hires to cover absences and retirements.

As of the end of 2019, 116 school buildings and 137 schools serving about 70,000 students were without a full-time nurse, according to an estimate from the United Federation of Teachers, the union representing New York City public school teachers. But a union spokesperson said that analysis was conservative: It excluded pre-Ks, District 75 schools, which serve students with the most significant disabilities, schools with on-site health clinics, or charter schools, which can be co-located in buildings with district schools.

The city will hire another 100 nurses to cover 2,000 early childhood programs, as well as child care centers the city plans to open when the school year starts. Officials said these nurses will provide more broad “geographic” coverage of programs, “prioritizing the zip codes hardest hit by COVID-19,” according to a news release from City Hall. The education department will also contract with a tele-health nursing provider to create a hotline for all child care programs, which providers can call for medical-related questions.

Officials said these nurses will work full-time and will be staffed through contracts issued by the city’s Health and Hospitals system. Their salaries will come out of the hospital system’s budget. But these nurses will not remain in school buildings permanently — the hiring agreement will only span the upcoming school year, said Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the education department.

“Health and Hospitals came to the rescue here,” de Blasio told reporters.

The mayor said he was confident the agency could hire the nurses with just a month before school starts, noting that the agency had quickly hired “thousands” of additional nurses this spring as New York became the brutal epicenter of a virus that has killed about 23,000 New Yorkers.

A spokesperson for Health and Hospitals did not respond to a question about how much the hiring of school nurses would cost.

Thursday’s announcement addressed just one concern of the unions representing teachers and principals, which have pushed back strongly on the city’s school reopening plans. In a statement, Chancellor Richard Carranza credited advocacy of parents and schools staff as why the city was addressing the nursing shortage.

Union leaders have asked for more specificity around health and safety measures, such as how contact tracing will work when a student or staffer tests positive for the coronavirus. They also want a guarantee that their schools will have all necessary personal protective equipment — the cost for which individual schools will not have to shoulder, the city has promised.

Both unions, which have been involved in the planning for reopening, are now asking the city to delay the start of in-person school, to give school leaders more planning time. After weeks of sharp statements against the city’s reopening plans, Thursday’s news drew a more conciliatory tone from the teachers union, or UFT.

“Parents and educators will be relieved, and the 70,000 students who have gone without will now have access to a medical professional if and when school buildings reopen,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, in a statement.

But concerns over pay disparities, already an issue among school nurses, are likely to remain — an issue that Councilman Mark Treyger, chair of the council’s education committee, immediately raised after de Blasio’s announcement. School nurses are staffed by both the health and education departments; Health and Hospitals is its own agency. Those staffed by the education department are represented by the UFT and make between $10,000 and $20,000 more than their counterparts, according to one estimate reported by Gothamist. In 2018, a staff nurse represented by the UFT made between $64,418 and $70,513, depending on years of experience.

The city made a similar promise before schools closed in March, though the plan was only to hire 85 additional nurses. Styer, of the education department, said the city had issued an emergency contract for these nurses, who were deployed to buildings briefly before they closed.

Carranza indicated that school nurses’ role in buildings generally won’t change, as they will remain “the medical expert on campus.” The city is requiring schools to create an isolation room, where students experiencing virus symptoms will be placed while they wait for a parent or guardian to pick them up. But those rooms will not be monitored by nurses, but instead by a staff person in the building, who will be required to wear personal protective equipment to do so. (That person, Carranza said, can also staff the room by standing outside of it.)

He also noted that with this hiring plan, some buildings in the Community Schools program, which provide wrap-around services, will have more than one health professional. That’s because schools in that program may be partnered with a community-based organization that already staffs the building with a rotation of nurses and doctors.

However, the city has levied a $9 million cut to Community Schools, meaning some schools could decide to reduce spending on such contracts.

NYC preschools can reopen. Expect teachers in masks and fewer teddy bears.

2020-07-07T21:59:49+00:00

Privately run child care centers in New York City can reopen as early as Monday, about three months after the coronavirus forced 3,000 programs to shut their doors.

Program leaders had been lobbying to reopen their businesses, arguing that child care is essential to getting the economy humming again.

Allowing programs to reopen means they may now benefit from state grants to help pay for the costs of rebooting child care centers, such as acquiring more space to comply with social distancing requirements.

Still, the sudden announcement on Tuesday sent operators scrambling to comply with new safety measures with little guidance from the city health department. And it’s unclear how many will be able to reopen quickly after extended closures wreaked financial havoc on centers, which mostly rely on privately paid tuition to get by. Some have already permanently closed.

“I’m just about to lose my mind right now, I have to say,” said Fela Barclift, who won’t be able to reopen any time soon because she already started construction over the summer to install more hand-washing stations in her child care center, Little Sun People in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “We don’t have support for reopening.”

Child care providers overseen by the state, such as those based in private homes, have been allowed to remain open throughout the pandemic. But the rest of the child care centers, including Barclift’s, which are overseen by the city’s health department, were ordered to shut down on April 6. Only some 125 centers contracted to serve the families of front-line workers continued operating, and the city officials have said they have not tracked any outbreaks linked to those programs.

On Tuesday, the city’s Board of Health voted to allow centers to reopen. Officials said that transmission of the coronavirus had been sufficiently curbed and that parents need safe child care options as the city steadily begins to reopen.

City programs will have to follow state guidelines, which call for limiting groups of children to 15, requiring staffers to cover their face, and staggering schedules for families to drop off and pick up their children. Programs are required to regularly disinfect surfaces, and to limit the use of toys that aren’t easily cleaned, such as plush toys or dress up clothes. Families and employees will have complete daily health screens, which ask whether they or anyone they are in close contact with have COVID-19 symptoms.

Face coverings are not required in the classroom for children younger than kindergarten age, and they are “encouraged but not required” for older children, according to the state’s regulations.

Beyond that, however, providers said they’ve been given little guidance for reopening — and no runway to plan. They’ll have to make sense of a maze of new and constantly changing requirements.

Before she can reopen her Park Slope child care center, Honeydew Drop director Fabiola Santos-Gaerlan said she’ll have to change some fundamental aspects of her program and figure out how to create new classroom spaces.

Typically, children of mixed ages play and learn together in a large, open room, she said. Now, she’ll have to break them up by ages, and divide an 800-square-foot space into various rooms. The temporary space dividers that she has priced out cost more than $1,500 each.

“We’re going to be so stressed trying to meet the guidelines,” said Santos-Gaerlan. “These are all things that we need to save for and plan for.”

She said she is applying for a state grant to help pay for the dividers, but isn’t sure when the money would come through. When the state first announced the grants, which are funded through federal stimulus money, it was unclear whether New York City programs would be eligible for the funds. That’s because the state requires programs to reopen by the end of July — but it was still unclear whether the city would allow programs to begin operating by then.

For other early childhood centers, the all-clear for reopening has come too late. At the Maple Street School in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, director Wendy Jo Cole has decided to continue to operate only virtually over the summer. There is too much that needs to be done to reopen safely, she said.

In the meantime, she has taken advantage of safety webinars offered by the state, has scheduled trainings with the school nurse for her staff, and is working on a plan to offer class mostly outdoors come September. But she wishes the department of health were more proactive in helping providers figure out the complicated logistics of reopening. Cole said requests for virtual meetings have gone unanswered.

“While we appreciate the permission to open, we need the support. Running a preschool in a pandemic is way different than running a preschool regularly,” Cole said.

Here’s how to help young readers, according to literacy experts from the new TV show ‘Let’s Learn NYC!’

2020-06-01T20:24:27+00:00

As a leader of the education department’s efforts to get New York City’s children reading by the end of second grade, Andrew Fletcher had to quickly adapt when the coronavirus pandemic closed school buildings.

His job, an intimidating one in typical times, is now even more daunting because of the abrupt shift to remote learning in mid-March. Nearly half of New York City’s third-graders — some 48% — are not reading at grade level in third grade, state test scores show.

As families struggled to access and navigate the technology — and saw first-hand how hard it is to teach children to read — Fletcher and the education department turned to WNET Channel 13, the local public station, to come up with a televised solution. Soon, “Let’s Learn NYC!” was born, aimed at children in pre-K through second grade. The weekday show, airing daily from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., beams public school reading coaches into the living rooms of students.

“We particularly wanted to target those younger grades, knowing this could be a great supplement to the remote learning work happening in schools and that it would be super easy,” Fletcher said. “A family could just turn on the TV and get access. No other devices would be needed, no connectivity, no cable. Just television.”

Officials estimate the channel is available for free to 99% of city families. The show ramped up to two hours of programming in June, and will continue airing through the summer. Educators film their own segments with whatever devices they have at home. They get help from their own families, who listen along to story times, share orange slices for a math lesson, or act out a puppet show about world cultures.

Given the array of approaches to reading instruction in each of New York City’s schools, Fletcher says the show takes an “agnostic” approach when it comes to curriculum, focusing on where kids should be and providing opportunities for review. He knows it can’t replace what happens in the classroom, but still helps bring a small sense of normalcy to an unprecedented time.

Andrew Fletcher

“It’s not fancy. It’s not animated. Kids are seeing — not necessarily their teacher exactly, but folks who they see in schools every day: New York City educators giving instruction very similar to how they do in school,” he said. “I feel like there’s an instant comfort level in the way we have done it.”

Chalkbeat spoke with Fletcher and one of the show’s stars, Anna Scretching-Cole, a literacy coach at P.S. 11 in the Bronx, for tips on how to help emerging readers stay on track during a critical time for their learning.

Here’s what they had to say about reading with your children and picking the right books, with some words of encouragement for worried parents.

What can parents of emerging readers do to help their children stay on track?

Scretching-Cole: Whenever I talk to teachers and parents, the one thing I tell them is just to read — not just to read to you child, but with your child.

Really engage them in the story, like, ‘Oh my gosh, why do you think this happened?” Asking simple questions, like ‘Would you do the same thing as this character?” And if you’re reading a nonfiction book, “Wow, did you know that information about ants?” Really trying to get them into the story with you is so important to help children develop that love of reading.

Fletcher: We really talk about it being interactive, so it’s like the story time segments that folks see on Channel 13. Of course, we pretend to be interactive on that because we can’t actually hear the kids talk back to us, although they do. I know they do.

What if a child doesn’t want to read?

Fletcher: It could be an access issue, but partly it boils down to finding books about topics that kids are interested in, and not saying that something isn’t fair game. For example, for a while, graphic novels or comic books were not something that teachers wanted to use or that were recommended. But I don’t see a problem with it. If Captain Underpants is what the child wants to engage with, why not? So it’s finding books that are of interest and – and this is a tough one for parents – making sure that it’s an enjoyable experience.

Sometimes parents stop the child every other word because there’s a decoding issue. It becomes more laborious and the child is just no longer interested.

Scretching-Cole: Challenge the child. Even my 4-year-old, when she says, ‘I’m so bored, I don’t want to read any of these books,’ my challenge to her is, ‘Well, I want you to write your own then. If these stories are boring to you, then you probably have a better story.’ Any way that you can get them interacting with letters and sounds is a win.

Fletcher: But also, make sure parents don’t ignore the print [in favor of using the picture to figure out a word]. We want parents to encourage children to use what they know about letters and sounds, to sound out, to blend the sounds of the letters they’re seeing represent. When they’re writing, to stretch words apart, to segment the words into different sounds to figure out what letters stand for those sounds as they write them – that’s what inventive spelling is all about. It’s just a balancing act with parents where they don’t get too obsessed with it where they drive their children crazy.

What about parents who don’t have the time or skill set to help their children learn to read? Many might be essential workers, or aren’t fluent in English. How can those students stay on track?

Fletcher: That’s a tough situation. The show is doing what it can. We’ve made sure that every episode has a lesson geared towards phonological and phonemic awareness, and phonics to a greater or lesser degree.

Take advantage of anything and everything the school is offering in terms of remote learning. A lot of teachers, and our coaches, too, are reaching out to do one-on-one tutoring work and small group intervention work. We just have to make sure families and schools are connecting to find out whether that’s happening.

For the summer, we’re looking into a volunteer tutoring situation that would go along, in a way, with our ‘Let’s Learn NYC!’. That would be available to students and families to deal with any learning loss from the spring and make sure kids are where they need to be in the fall.

Teaching reading is complex. We know that from the amount of kids who struggle. So it’s not just something a family member can easily do, and our job is to support them as much as possible.

Lots of research shows that kindergarten through second grade is a critical window of time for learning to read. How worried should parents be about the potential long-term effects of the prolonged school building shutdown?

Fletcher: I don’t think that ship has sailed. I don’t think we’ve lost so much time that we can’t get it back. We will have to work this summer to support the way we can via Channel 13, via, hopefully, this volunteering tutoring, and then hit the ground running hard in the fall. For K-2, we have to make sure kids learn how to decode, that they learn how to recognize words. Because if that doesn’t happen, we know by third grade, we’re just opening the door for increased intervention.

We have to be really careful when we get back, figuring out where kids are at, given the spring and summer, and how do we — not even remediate, how do we accelerate? We’ve got to figure out who needs what, fill those gaps to meet those needs, and move forward from there. We will have to be more focused than ever on the basics.

Scretching-Cole: At this point, I also want to make sure our kids are all right mentally. Because if they’re not all right mentally, they’re not going to learn the things that I’m teaching them. I think parents are going to have a really difficult task this summer – not an impossible one. Make sure they’re speaking with their child, make sure they’re all right – so that when September comes, they’re ready to hit the ground running. We’re in this together. We’re partners in this and we need everybody on board.

Families will need child care to reopen NYC, but preschools fear they won’t survive the coronavirus shutdown

2020-05-21T22:00:36+00:00

Whenever New York City is ready to begin reopening its economy after months of sheltering in place, child care will be essential for families returning to work. But independent preschools like Andre Farrell’s warn they might not be able to hold on that long.

Just three weeks after preschools and daycares were ordered to close as the coronavirus pandemic engulfed New York City, Farrell hit a financial wall. The director and owner of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Katmint Learning Initiative had no choice but to permanently shut down two of his three schools.

Katmint quickly shifted to online classes, but many families had logged off. The program is serving fewer than half the typical enrollment and Farrell has slashed tuition.

Child care in New York is a $4.2 billion industry, just over a third of which is supported by public dollars. While fundraising campaigns for restaurant workers and other sectors have grabbed attention, preschool programs say their struggles as small business owners has gone under the radar.

Many pre-K centers feel like they’ve been left to fend for themselves to keep their staff paid and, for those who manage to stay afloat, figure out what it might look like to finally reopen. They are turning to each other for help: The leaders of about 50 centers and schools have banded together to create the Brooklyn Coalition of Early Childhood Programs, a new advocacy group that is fighting for public support and recognition they say they have so far lacked.

“We feel totally alone,” Farrell said. “Do people even care? Do people even understand what we do for every neighborhood — not just in New York, but in every neighborhood in America?”

In New York City, roughly 40 preschools and daycares contracted with the education department are currently open to serve the children of front line workers. The rest were ordered to close on April 6. Schools that participate in public programs like universal pre-K have continued to receive their full payments, but independent centers like Farrell’s say they are in dire financial straits.

Farrell opened his first preschool about seven years ago in Bed-Stuy, where he grew up and is raising his own family now. Many parents felt like they had to leave the neighborhood to find a quality program, Farrell said, so he decided to create one himself — hand-picking teachers, building a curriculum that celebrates the culture of the surrounding historically black neighborhood, and offering extended hours to better serve the area’s working families.

After the coronavirus shuttered the centers, Farrell’s teachers tossed their “no screen time” rule and switched quickly to virtual learning, offering art classes and Spanish. Still, with parents now at home with their children, and many losing their jobs, enrollment plummeted from about 100 students to 40. Their staff of about 15 fell to just eight teachers.

Running a preschool or daycare is rarely a money-maker, even without a pandemic to contend with. Summers, especially, can be difficult to staff as families often sign up for care at the last minute. This summer will be the hardest yet, with in-person programs seemingly out of the question as the health crisis drags on.

Honeybirds Playschool, serving over a dozen children in a Bedford-Stuyvesant home, was already staring down a budget gap this year. Construction on the backyard play area set the program back $7,000. Then came the order to shut down.

“I really question how we’re going to pay our teachers, and how we’re going to be able to prepare for reopening — if and when that comes,” said Juliana Pinto McKeen, director of the school. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, frankly.”

Both Farrell and Pinto McKeen will be able to hold on for a little while longer thanks to the federal Paycheck Protection Program. Intended to help small businesses continue to pay their employees, both received a chunk of the $660 billion stimulus.

Though the loans can be forgivable, a national survey found that many child care providers are worried that taking the money could be risky when it comes to navigating the fine print and parsing out the rules attached.

Most independent operators are responsible for both instruction and running their businesses — everything from changing diapers to balancing the business ledger. They often lack the kind of back-office support that would help them make sense of a byzantine government program rolled out in a hurry.

Farrell was an accountant before getting into the business of early childhood education, and he still has had trouble understanding the terms of the program. And for all the headache of figuring it out, the financial boost is short-lived, covering about eight weeks.

“What happens to July, August, September, if we’re still not allowed to open?” he asked.

Besides the forgivable loans, the federal stimulus package called the CARES Act earmarked $3.5 billion specifically for the nation’s child care sector — a small fraction of more than $2 trillion in stimulus spending. New York was awarded nearly $164 million, and is using it to subsidize child care costs for low-income frontline workers, as well as to help centers pay for cleaning supplies and protective gear.

Lawmakers are negotiating the next round of federal spending. So far, $7 billion is expected for child care and preschools. That amount would only keep the country’s child care sector afloat for less than a month, said Rebecca Ullrich, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, and anti-poverty advocacy group.

Public money will be crucial to helping preschools and daycares reopen their doors because families are already tapped dry, Ullrich said. New York has among the highest childcare costs in the nation: Sending an infant to daycare can cost more than public college tuition. Now, with the economy shut down, one in three parents of young children in the state say they are skipping or reducing their meals.

“If we leave child care behind as a system now, we will be paying for it, in terms of our recovery, for years ahead,” Ullrich said. “If child care does not survive the crisis, there will be no going back to work… because people need child care to go to work.”

Compounding the financial pressure, city preschools and daycares feel like they have been left alone to try and figure out what a return to class might look like, without much guidance or communication from the Department of Health, which regulates child care facilities.

A Maple Street School student makes art.

Pre-pandemic, the relationship with providers and the health department could often be fraught. Recently, centers faced shortages of critical staff members because of a months-long wait in getting background checks cleared for teachers, therapists, and others. The backlog could make it a nightmare to rehire staff to make up for any layoffs, center directors fear.

Then there are countless other unknowns about welcoming students back to school. Will they need to change pick up and drop off routines? Who needs to wear masks, and when? What happens if someone at a preschool tests positive for the virus?

“We need guidance and support and from our licensing agencies — and from our city and from our country,” said Wendy Jo Cole, director of the Maple Street School in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

It is almost certain that reopening will not mark a return to normal, which will only add to financial pressures, with centers potentially operating at a fraction of regular capacity.

Cole had to cancel two of the school’s main fundraisers this year, which typically bring in more than $100,000 for scholarships for families, in an effort to make sure enrollment reflects the borough’s rich diversity. She is now thinking creatively about how to shore up her school’s budget, including developing online subscription packages, while anxiously awaiting the day they can reopen.

Even buying cleaning supplies will add to the bottom line — if providers can manage to secure them.

“Getting paper towels and bleach right now is not easy. Preschools are full of sneezes,” Cole said. “I love our school and it saddens me so deeply that we are in this place that we don’t know how, when, and if we can open.”

As fewer families applied to NYC’s free pre-K programs, more got their top choices

2020-05-13T21:40:38+00:00

It was perhaps a little less competitive to get into the city’s free pre-K programs this year: As the number of families applying dipped, the percentage who got into their top choice for the 2020-21 school year increased, according to education department data released Wednesday.

A record 77% of families received an offer for their first-choice Pre-K for All program, the city touted. However, the number of applications has tumbled recently: fewer than 62,000 families submitted applications, down by more than 3,000 from last year.

Most families — 90% — received an offer for one of their top three choices this year.

“Pre-K for All remains a bedrock of this city,” said Josh Wallack, a deputy chancellor at the city’s education department. “I’m so grateful to our dedicated teachers, staff, and providers who continue to make free, full-day, high-quality pre-K a reality.”

The education department gave two reasons for the decrease in applicants: a lower birth rate in 2016, and COVD-19. Uncertainty around the coronavirus was growing across New York City in the final two weeks that applications were due, which is typically when the education department sees a surge in submissions. The deadline was initially on the same day that school buildings closed in response to the crisis.

Parents who missed the application window can still add themselves to waitlists and, depending on availability, could begin to receive offers the same day. To sign up, or for assistance, families can visit myschools.nyc or call 718-935-2009.

Plans to extend pre-K to all 3-year-olds are on pause because of the pandemic. With the city expecting to lose billions, the expansion of 3-K for All into four new districts next year was cancelled.

Even though Mayor Bill de Blasio has made pre-K a pillar of his administration, advocates were quick to point out that thousands of children with disabilities consistently lack access. Year after year, the city has faced a shortage of seats for preschoolers who require services such as smaller class sizes, speech therapy, or accessible buildings.

“We are gravely concerned about preschoolers with disabilities who have a legal right to a preschool special education class but do not have one,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, said in an emailed statement. “Hundreds of preschoolers with disabilities were sitting at home prior to the pandemic and may have nowhere to go to school when buildings reopen.”

Pre-K for students with special needs is primarily funded by the state, but families and advocates point out that the city has promised a seat to every 4-year-old in the city who wants one.

The education department also announced that 38 programs this year changed their admissions process in the hopes of enrolling a more diverse student body. New York City schools are among the most segregated in the country, and pre-K classrooms have been found to be even less representative of the city than those in kindergarten.

Aiming for greater student diversity in NYC gifted programs, the Anderson School tweaks admissions

2020-04-24T00:05:31+00:00

The Anderson School on the Upper West Side, one of the city’s coveted gifted programs, will change its admissions policies this year in the hopes of enrolling a more diverse student body.

The education department announced on Thursday that students from northern Manhattan or the South Bronx will receive preference for 30% of seats at the school.

The priority applies to students who live north of 96th Street in District 3, which comprises the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem, those who reside in districts 4 or 5 farther north in Manhattan, or in 7, 8, 9, and 12 in the South Bronx. Parents got a peek at the changes earlier this fall, when the new admissions policy was accidently posted to the school’s website.

Brooklyn School of Inquiry is also tweaking its existing admissions priority to include students residing in certain school districts. The school will continue to give priority for 40% of its seats, with half going to students who come from low-income families, and half going to students living in districts 18 or 20 in Brooklyn.

Gifted programs citywide are starkly segregated. At Anderson, 12% of the student body is black and Hispanic, but those students make up almost 70% of public school enrollment citywide. Students from low-income families make up 15% of enrollment at Anderson, compared with more than 70% across the city.

A controversy was ignited last summer, when a school diversity advisory committee appointed by the mayor recommended phasing out gifted programs and replacing them with more inclusive enrichment models. About eight months later, Mayor Bill de Blasio has not acted on the recommendation.

Admission to gifted programs is based on the results of a single test, which is typically taken when children are about 4-years-old.

Many blame this admissions policy for contributing to school segregation. In the absence of action from the mayor, the coronavirus health crisis could force the city to reconsider admissions, said Laura Zingmond, a senior editor for the review website InsideSchools, if students are unable to take a test in person.

“We may have to alter and rethink admissions radically because of the pandemic,” she said. “We may have to confront an overhaul of admissions across the board for the next round. But we don’t know.”

It’s unclear whether the admissions changes at Anderson will have the intended effect, given gentrification in northern Manhattan, and the fact that disproportionately low numbers of black, Hispanic, and low-income students even take the gifted admissions test.

In District 5 in Harlem, for example, only 13 children earned a score high enough to apply to a citywide gifted program, out of 174 who took the test. That’s compared to Manhattan’s District 2, which spans Lower Manhattan and the Upper East Side, which had the highest number of test-takers. Almost 1,600 took the test, and 283 had a score that made them eligible for a citywide program.

Five other gifted programs and schools have admissions policies aimed at integration by offering priority based on whether students come from low-income families, are learning English as a new language, or lack stable housing. They are: P.S. 11, P.S. 77 Lower Lab School, P.S. 15, P.S. 110, and TAG Young Scholars, another citywide school.

Anderson is one of only five citywide gifted programs, meaning it is open to students from across the city who scored at least in the 97th percentile on an admissions exam. But since competition for these seats is so fierce, typically only students with near-perfect scores are admitted.

Other gifted programs are housed within city schools and require a lower score for entry. This year, 28,901 students took the admissions test, and 7,940 scored high enough to be accepted to a program, according to data released by the education department. Families were notified of their scores on Thursday, and those who are eligible can begin applying to programs. Acceptance notifications are expected in June.

“We are proud to offer an array of high-quality elementary school choices, and we join families across the city today who are celebrating their eligibility for one of our Gifted and Talented programs,” said education department spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon.

Here are the NYC schools with kindergarten waitlists for 2020-21

2020-04-22T20:37:51+00:00

Dozens of New York City schools have waitlists for the 2020-21 kindergarten class, including some campuses where attendance zones were recently redrawn to help relieve overcrowding.

P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights had 22 students on its waitlist, just a few years after a controversial rezoning shined a bright light on entrenched segregation in the country’s largest school system. The city shifted zone lines around the popular P.S. 8, where most students are white and affluent, sending some students to nearby P.S. 307, where most students are black or Hispanic and low-income.

The longest waitlist was at P.S. 40 in Manhattan’s District 2, with 27 students on it. The Gramercy school won a National Blue Ribbon this year for academic excellence, but enrolls disproportionately low numbers of students who are from low-income families, are learning English, or come from other backgrounds that could make them more likely to struggle in school.

In all, just over 200 students at 23 schools were placed on waitlists for the schools they are zoned to attend — surprising families since living within a school’s zone typically guarantees you a seat. (Almost 63,000 kindergarten applications were submitted this year.) Flushing’s District 25 had the largest number of schools with waitlists, with four.

Still, the number of students shut out of their zoned school has steadily declined since 2016, when more than 1,000 students were waitlisted at more than 60 schools.

There is often movement off of waitlists over the summer, as some families end up not taking seats, whether they end up moving or accepting other offers, including at gifted and talented programs. Offers for gifted programs are due out in June, according to the city’s website.

See the list of schools with waitlists below. An “s” means that fewer than six students were on the list.

School Name	2020 Zoned Waitlist Size
P.S. 040 Augustus Saint-Gaudens	27
The Queens School for Leadership and Excellence	26
P.S. 008 Robert Fulton	22
P.S./I.S. 78Q	21
The Academy of Talented Scholars	16
P.S. 527 - East Side School for Social Action	13
P.S. 184 Flushing Manor	13
P.S. 087 William Sherman	12
P.S. 024 Andrew Jackson	12
P.S. 009 Sarah Anderson	9
P.S. 195 Manhattan Beach	9
P.S. 169 Sunset Park	6
P.S. 165 Robert E. Simon	Suppressed
P.S. 009 Teunis G. Bergen	Suppressed
P.S. 020 Clinton Hill	Suppressed
P.S. 058 The Carroll	Suppressed
P.S. 094 The Henry Longfellow	Suppressed
Sunset Park Avenues Elementary School	Suppressed
P.S. 206 Joseph F Lamb	Suppressed
P.S. 020 John Bowne	Suppressed
P.S. 163 Flushing Heights	Suppressed
P.S. 253	Suppressed

NYC kindergarten waitlists 2020-21

NYC Department of Education

Kindergarten acceptance letters are out, and fewer students are getting waitlisted

2020-04-21T23:30:42+00:00

Kindergarten offers are out — and for almost 63,000 New York City families, Tuesday’s placements end a long wait to learn where their child will go to school next year.

About 71% landed at their top-ranked school, and 85% were admitted to one of their top three choices, according to the city’s education department.

Test results for those vying for Gifted and Talented programs will be released separately. Families can apply for a program once they have their child’s score.

But a small number of students were placed on waitlists for their zoned school: There were 205 students at 23 zoned schools who were not admitted. That represents a steady decline since 2016, when more than 1,000 children were waitlisted at 65 schools. This year’s numbers include children who live in a shared zone for multiple schools and those who applied to dual-language programs.

Children are automatically placed on waitlists for any schools they had ranked higher on their application but did not get into. Every kindergartener is guaranteed a seat at a city school, and there is often movement on waitlists over the summer.

Getting registered usually means visiting the school and presenting documents like a birth certificate, immunization records, and proof of address. But with campuses closed due to the coronavirus, superintendents and schools are still working on guidance for what registration will look like, the education department said. Schools will reach out directly to families with more information, spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon wrote in an emailed statement.

“We’re exploring options to give families greater flexibility and choice in registering their child,” she said.

Some families got an early look at their kindergarten offers, due to a glitch with the city’s online portal that briefly posted some notices this weekend, parents said. Those were quickly and quietly removed from the platform until official offers were posted Tuesday.

Families can begin accepting their offers by logging into the city’s MySchools online portal, calling 718-935-2009, or emailing ESenrollment@schools.nyc.gov.

Looking for a public pre-K program in NYC? Odds are that you’ll find a good one, officials say.

2020-02-14T22:39:16+00:00

Results are in: Children placed in one of the city’s free pre-K classrooms are likely to show skills linked to positive outcomes long-term. That’s according to two national assessment tools, results from which Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration announced Friday.

Children in the vast majority of these programs are more likely to demonstrate reading, math, and social skills, such as using expanded vocabulary, understanding shapes, and showing independence.

Roughly 95 percent of city programs that were evaluated met or exceeded the threshold that predicts positive student outcomes under the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale—Revised. It represents a 7 percentage point increase since 2016-17. This rating scale looks at how classrooms are set up to provide instruction. It also evaluates whether a space is clean and well-maintained with child-size furniture. Also factored in: whether meals and snacks are well-balanced, and whether children’s work is displayed throughout the room.

Additionally, 99.8% of pre-K sites met at least one of three thresholds for positive student outcomes under the Classroom Assessment Scoring System during the 2018-19 school year. That’s up nearly 1 percentage point since 2016-17. This tool looks at the quality of interactions between teachers and students and how well kids are emotionally supported. It zooms in on whether teachers are sensitive and responsive to students’ perspectives and work to create a positive classroom environment.

“The city’s steady progress on key indicators of pre-K instructional quality is very encouraging,” Bank Street College President Shael Polakow-Suransky, said in a statement, “and is the result of the deep work on the part of teachers, coaches, principals, center directors and the Division of early childhood to build strong professional learning communities.”

Most children in the city’s free pre-K program — serving some 70,000 children who turn 4 during the calendar year — attend schools run by community organizations. Teachers in these programs have historically been paid far less than their counterparts in classrooms run by the education department. Those providers have recently warned that the quality of programs would sag if the city didn’t close the wage gap, which could exceed $15,000 for starting teachers. Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council members recently struck massive deals to narrow those disparities.

The results released Friday reflected well on the pre-K initiative, the education achievement de Blasio touts most often.

“The first and most important thing is kudos to the Department of Education for collecting this data because many programs don’t, and it’s the only way for improvement to occur,” said Ellen Frede, co-director at the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

She added, “Could it be better? Yes. That’s the whole idea. We don’t collect the data to just feel good about the program. We do it to improve the program.”

But she said the results aren’t the only metric parents should consider. It’s even more important for them to visit pres-K classrooms, observe the interactions between teachers and students, and see the social-emotional learning is going on there, according to Frede. “I’m a firm believer in spending some time in the program, and asking, ‘Would I be happy if I were spending six hours a day here?’ ‘Would I have opportunities to play with my friends?’ ‘Would I be safe?’” she said.

The city said it has already seen tangible results from the program, based on third-grade state test scores last year from the first group who entered the city’s expanded pre-K program when it launched in 2014. Third-grade students who attended the city’s free pre-K programs outperformed students who did not. In addition, the gaps in test scores between white and black students and between white and Hispanic students were narrower for students in universal pre-K programs compared to those who were not in such programs.

“We know that when students get in the classroom at a younger age, they are set up for academic success in later years, and this is evidence that in New York City, Pre-K for All is a strong foundation for our students,” Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said in a statement.

The city’s free public pre-K programs save New York City families an average of $10,000 per year on childcare costs, city officials say.

Families are applying to that program can do so now through Mar. 16.

The city also runs a free pre-K program for 3-year-olds, which will be in 16 of its 32 school districts this September. It is expected to serve an estimated 26,000 children. Applications for 3-K remain open until Apr. 24.

Brownsville parents turn local supermarkets into ‘learning landscapes’ for kids

2020-02-07T17:55:48+00:00

This story was originally published on Feb. 7, 2020 by THE CITY.

A group of Brownsville parents was frustrated by a lack of local places to take young children.

Where, outside of school or day care, they asked, could their kids get some brain development stimulation, boost communication skills and have some fun?

With no obvious options, the parents created a program of their own.

Now “Learning Landscapes” is transforming two neighborhood supermarkets into scavenger hunt zones for little ones to explore as they shop with the adults in their lives.

During the program’s debut last week at the Food Bazaar on Junius Street, a half dozen youngsters picked up cards, illustrated with smiling cartoon animals, and went on the hunt. Kids now can do the same at Cherry Valley on Mother Gaston Boulevard.

They scoured aisles looking for signs that matched the pictures — like a pink bunny that leads to a sign on the glass of the frozen produce case asking, in Spanish and English, “What healthy foods do you see?”

Meet Blake the Bumblebee

Chrystie Cloud, who is 5 1/2, and her sister Cailynn, 3, searched the supermarket for one of the characters, a cat. Accompanied by their mom, María Solórzano, they asked store workers for clues.

Chrystie cleverly — though incorrectly — guessed they might find the cat in the cat food aisle.

“Kitty cat! Where are you?” Cailynn called out.

As she shopped, Solórzano asked them questions from English- and Spanish-language signs throughout the store, like “How many bananas do you think are in this bin?” and “What do you see that’s the color orange?”

Learning Landscape signs at the Brownsville Food Bazaar come in English and Spanish. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Featured on some signs is Blake the Brownsville Bumblebee, who’s named after nearby Blake Avenue and serves as the Learning Landscapes mascot. He and the other characters were designed by Made In Brownsville, a local creative agency.

“He’s smiling cause he’s happy to live in Brownsville, he’s got his ’fro, he’s ours,” said neighborhood mom Bashirah Okeh, who helped develop the program.

Colors, Weights and Measures

Okeh serves on the family advisory board of the local early childhood organizing group United for Brownsville, convening once a month with other caregivers to provide insight into early childhood development issues, from child care to early intervention.

About two years ago, moms, dads, grandparents and other members on the board were brainstorming about how to create more learning opportunities for young kids.

“We all sat down, we were thinking like, there’s not enough activity, not enough tools for the children to learn, maybe we could create signs and put them on bus stops, put them on laundromats,” said Evelyn Velazquez, a mother of four.

They eventually settled on supermarkets.

“The parents can come in and make it part of their process, like, ‘Let’s take a trip to the supermarket and turn it into a game,’” said Okeh. “It’s an outing for the kid too, and be like ‘Hey, I did something fun with Mommy today.’”

After the advisory committee members rated markets in the neighborhood for qualities such as friendliness, accessibility, fresh produce and low pricing, United for Brownsville Co-Director Kassa Belay pitched the idea to the two markets — and got two yeses.

Cailynn, 3, jumps on a sign in the Learning Landscapes scavenger hunt at Food Bazaar in Brownsville, Jan. 30, 2020. Photo: Claudia Irizarry Aponte/THE CITY

“It’s a way to bring public spaces into learning experiences, not just in school,” said Belay.

Parents, he added, “wanted to find a place in the community where they could have organic types of learning.” Belay said he hopes to expand Learning Landscapes throughout Brooklyn.

The grocers have quickly adjusted to their double role.

“I was an elementary school teacher for years, and I know the importance of getting children excited, getting them enthusiastic about learning,” said Suzanne Kuczun, a Food Bazaar representative. “And what better place than a place filled with numbers and colors, and weights and measures?”

Okeh said the parents had accomplished “something that has not been done before.”

“Usually, people in marginalized communities are being acted upon and convened upon from people from outside who think they know what’s best for us and our community,” she said. “But we are setting the priorities for what we want in our community and what we feel is best for our children, and we are changing the narrative of Brownsville.”

Registration is open for NYC’s public pre-K, 3-K programs — if you can get through

2020-02-05T22:01:58+00:00

It’s time to apply for the city’s free pre-K and expanding 3-K programs — that is, if the education department’s application portal is working.

As the admissions process officially kicked off Wednesday, parents who flocked to the MySchools portal were greeted with messages telling them the site was down. Others who called the pre-K hotline were met with a two-hour wait time, according to parents who voiced frustration on Twitter.

“We’re currently making updates to our school directories, and the site is unavailable during this brief process,” read a message parents received from MySchools when they tried to log on the morning applications launched. “Please come back again soon.”

Families will have plenty of time to submit applications, where they can rank up to 12 programs — and when they apply should have no bearing on their lottery number, school officials said.

Those with children born in 2016 — meaning they’ll turn 4 by Dec. 31, 2020 — can apply to free pre-K programs through Mar. 16. Families with children born in 2017 — meaning they’ll turn 3 in the 2020 calendar year — have until Apr. 24 to apply for 3-K.

Hey @nycmayor @NYCDOE, maybe ask your provider to NOT upgrade their site on a day when millions of NY parents are trying to register for 3K? Esp when progs as vital & needed as 3K & Pre-K were trickled out to the neighborhoods of NYC. I'm currently bussing out of district for 3K. pic.twitter.com/QjmXroH6eY
— Dyan Stephens Brown (@bedstuymommy) February 5, 2020

Admissions are not first-come, first served, according to a tweet from the education department’s Twitter account.

“Families will not receive any advantage by applying earlier or later, and you can edit your application at any point during the application period,” education department officials wrote, and they directed parents to a hotline.

If you’re applying for 3-K or Pre-K, please note that https://t.co/0QkSKz1REo is currently functioning but experiencing some slow speeds. We're working to resolve this. Please call 718-935-2009 if you need assistance. Apologies for any inconvenience. Thanks for your patience.
— NYC Public Schools (@NYCSchools) February 5, 2020

Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to announce an expansion of free 3-K at his State of the City address on Thursday to include District 1, serving Chinatown, the East Village and Lower East Side, as well as Greenpoint and Williamsburg’s District 14.

These areas had not been announced previously as being part of the city’s rollout for next year, the mayor said Wednesday.

This fall, the 3-K program is poised to serve 26,000 children across five boroughs in 16 of the city’s 32 districts. The figure includes all 3-year-olds served citywide in Head Start and child care programs, which had been operating under the Administration for Children’s Services but are now under the education department’s purview to create a single early childhood system for families.

“3–K and Pre-K for All are unlocking the potential of every child and creating more opportunity for families,” de Blasio said in a statement.

But some families take issue with calling it pre-K for All, and are concerned about the expansion of 3-K when there’s a looming shortage of nearly 2,000 seats for preschoolers with disabilities.

“If my child was [typical] he would probably already be in a school,” said Juanita Lopez, a mother of a 3-year-old with autism who has struggled to find a seat for her son. “Because he has special needs it feels like there are so many hoops you have to jump through to get any kind of assistance.”

3-K and pre-K enrollment specialists — experts about programs offered in each neighborhood — should be available to help families throughout the process, officials said. For now, though, parents may have to contend with the long wait times.

Here are the neighborhoods that are expected to have 3-K in September. (The districts with asterisks will be new this fall.)

> District 1 (Chinatown, East Village, Lower East Side)*

> District 4 (East Harlem)

> District 5 (Harlem)

> District 6 (Washington Heights and Inwood)

> District 7 (South Bronx) and District 23 (Brownsville)

> District 8 (Country Club, Pelham Bay, Throgs Neck, Castle Hill, Soundview, Hunts Point)

> District 9 (Grand Concourse, Highbridge, Morrisania)

> District 12 (Central Bronx)*

> District 14 (Greenpoint, Williamsburg)*

> District 16 (Bedford-Stuyvesant)

> District 19 (East New York)

> District 23 (Brownsville)

> District 27 (Broad Channel, Howard Beach, Ozone Park, Rockaways)

> District 29 (Cambria Heights, Hollis, Laurelton, Queens Village, Springfield Gardens, St. Albans)*

> District 31 (Staten Island)

> District 32 (Bushwick)

Alex Zimmerman contributed reporting.

NYC education officials exploring dual language programs for 3-year-olds

2019-12-06T21:27:12+00:00

As dual language classrooms expand across the five boroughs, the city’s youngest learners might be the newest group to get such programs.

Education department officials are “exploring the possibility” of piloting dual-language learning for 3-K, the free preschool program for the city’s 3-year-olds available in 12 districts, a department official confirmed. This comes on the heels of expanding dual language programs for the 4-year-olds in the city’s Pre-K for All program, which currently offers about 100 dual language programs. There are a total 671 bilingual programs in 13 languages from Pre-K through high school in New York City.

“We know it is something that school leaders are asking about and families are asking about,” Mayra Chong-Qui Torres, director of multilingual education within the department’s division of early childhood education, said during a meeting last month for Citywide Council on English Language Learners, a parent-led advisory body for students learning English as a new language.

Half of the children in dual language classes speak English at home, while the other half speak the “target” language. Students are taught in both. On top of offering Bengali, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish, and Russian, the city this year added French, Haitian-Creole, Hebrew, and Japanese for the pre-K program.

If the pilot launches, the city’s education department would most likely expand existing pre-K dual language programs that have 3-K classrooms, but officials said they are still in the early phases of figuring out details. School officials want to take a closer look at the existing programs to better understand what supports, coaching and other guidance would be needed to implement dual language for the younger learners.

“We are working with a small group of programs that serve a high number of (students learning English as a new language) at their school,” Chong-Qui Torres added. “They already have a pre-K dual language program, they’ve opened 3-K, and so they kind of want to build a future system.”

If the pilot moves forward, it could be “pioneering” on the part of the nation’s largest school district, said Ellen Frede, senior co-director at the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. A handful of other school districts have dual language options available for 3-year-olds, such as Perth Amboy, N.J. and San Antonio, Frede said.

Dual-language immersion has been found to have some long-term academic benefits. One study found that kindergartners in a dual-language setting gained the equivalent of one year of reading instruction by eighth grade, compared to students who received English-only instruction.

While the biggest challenge is finding enough qualified teachers — a common roadblock for bilingual education— it’s still worthwhile, she said.

“If you have dual language for your 4-year-olds, then you absolutely should have dual language for your 3-year-olds because it doesn’t make sense to put them in English immersion and then put them into dual language (the next year),” Frede said, noting that having a 3-K option would make it a more “seamless transition.”

There is not a wealth of research on good dual-language instruction for very young children, noted Frede. And along with finding the right teachers, it will be critical to find the right teaching model, said Robert Slater, a senior fellow at the research center within the American Councils for International Education.

Because of their age, teaching 3-year-olds can require a different instructional approach than what’s needed for other students, Frede said. Teachers should ensure children understand what they’re referring to — so, pairing language with “concrete action and materials,” Frede said. The “sportscasting” technique is a typical one, she said: That is when a teacher narrates their own actions and the child’s. For example, that could involve the teacher talking to a student about a large tower he or she is building with blocks and describing the long rectangular piece they’re about to grab.

“You want to be doing this in both languages though because ‘rectangular’ is probably not a word they know in either language,” Frede said, simply because of their age. “It takes a lot of systematic approach to this.”

City education department officials said they were committed to dual language for pre-K students.

“Multilingualism and multiculturalism must be fostered and celebrated in classrooms from the very beginning,” department spokesperson Isabelle Boundy said in a statement.

NYC boosts salaries for 1,500 non-union pre-K teachers in community-run programs

2019-11-18T20:47:21+00:00

Alice Mulligan got on the loudspeaker at her Brooklyn preschool Monday morning to make an unexpected announcement: her teachers would be getting significant raises.

“Everybody started screaming,” recounted the director of Our Saviour’s Lutheran Preschool preschool.

She added, “They so deserve it.”

Moments earlier, city leaders announced a $57 million agreement to boost pay for teachers in publicly funded but privately run preschool programs that aren’t unionized. That would raise salaries by October 2021 to about $69,000 for certified teachers with master’s degrees — the same amount first-year teachers in public schools earn.

It follows recent pay deals with unions representing pre-K workers. Since most centers aren’t unionized, however, those agreements did not apply to about 1,500 teachers who will soon see a salary bump.

New York City depends on a mix of public schools and privately run centers to provide enough seats for Pre-K for All, the ambitious universal preschool program launched by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014. Most of the roughly 70,000 children enrolled in programs for 4-year-olds — 60% — attend a community-run classroom.

But the city’s contracts with those programs assumed much lower salaries than those in public school pre-K classrooms, and that meant that many of the most qualified teachers in these centers would ditch them for the higher paychecks afforded by the education department. The pay gap was particularly striking because many teachers in community organizations are women of color, while most public school teachers are white.

“We would lose experienced teachers at rates that produced alarming problems for community based providers,” said Susan Stamler, executive director of United Neighborhood Houses, an organization that represents 42 neighborhood settlement houses and advocates for policy change. “This is an important step for the workforce.”

This spring, as de Blasio eyed a run for the White House, union teachers had threatened a strike over the pay gap. But the walkout was called off after the city and providers agreed to come to the bargaining table.

Though pay inequities have persisted for years, the city’s ongoing overhaul of the contracting system for early childhood programs helped spark an intense wave of activism. In an effort to create a more streamlined system for early childhood education, the responsibility for publicly funded preschool and childcare programs is shifting to the education department and away from the Administration for Children’s Services, the city’s child welfare agency.

Advocates seized the moment, arguing that the shift provided an opportunity to correct historic inequities in the workforce. They won support from City Council members, who threatened to hold up budget negotiations if a deal was not struck.

“I think there’s a great sigh of relief that the administration, the City Council, they’ve been true to their word,” said Jennifer March, executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children, an advocacy group. “And everyone will benefit, which is a good thing.”

Between the deals for both union and nonunion teachers, the city expects to spend $84 million by 2023, when the raises are phased in completely. Support workers who don’t belong to a union will also see their paychecks grow, though far more modestly. A 2% boost will kick in September 2020, with a 2.75% increase in October 2021.

The question now is whether teachers in community organizations can keep pace with their counterparts in public schools, who are represented by the United Federation of Teachers. There is reason to think they will. With the latest agreements, contracts for pre-K workers are in the same bargaining cycle as the more powerful teachers union. That means private pre-K workers will likely benefit from the pattern that any UFT contract sets — and the union deals help set the table for non-union salaries.

“That is the larger, important implication of the way this was done. It means parity will always be front and center,” March said.

Council members demand more details on NYC lead inspections in schools

2019-11-14T00:27:46+00:00

City Council members pressed education department officials Wednesday on the robustness of lead inspections in schools and pushed them to release records of past work to remove the toxin.

The questioning was part of an hours-long oversight hearing of lead laws and regulations, which focused on how New York City agencies have fallen short in eradicating childhood lead exposure. It comes nearly a year after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a renewed plan to eliminate childhood lead exposure by 2029, and a few months after the education department found and fixed lead hazards in 1,860 classrooms before the start of the school year.

Lead exposure at a young age can cause long-lasting developmental delays, is linked to problems with learning, and can cause aggressive behavior. Even after officials testified, Councilman Mark Treyger, who oversees the council’s education committee, remained unhappy with the answers.

“It is clear to me we have a lot more work to do,” Treyger said.

Following a WNYC investigation on lead hazards in schools, the education department conducted a systemwide inspection of classrooms this summer in buildings built before 1985, which are most likely to have lead paint, and that serve children in first grade and younger. For the first time, the department posted results online, but says it has regularly tested classrooms for years by requiring custodians to report peeling paint, which result in chips or dust that children can ingest. Following a custodian’s report, an outside company is supposed to conduct its own test, which includes so-called XRF scanning, or X-rays, to detect lead levels.

Experts have said this protocol follows the letter of the law, but could be improved in several ways, such as testing for lead dust from the start and using an XRF scanner in every classroom whether or not paint is peeling. Treyger, who has advocated for this sort of proactive XRF testing, raised the point again during Wednesday’s hearing, saying the education department’s current procedures are “inaccurate.”

The city hired Ernst & Young to review the city’s lead protocols and will provide a final report by the end of the year, said Kathryn Garcia, the city’s senior advisor for citywide lead prevention and commissioner of sanitation. In August, Chalkbeat requested copies of any contracts with Ernst & Young on this review, but has not yet received any records.

Treyger also pushed Wednesday for the education department to test school hallways. After pressure from city officials, the department said it would test libraries and cafeterias this fall and next month will begin inspecting auditoriums, bathrooms, and gyms in buildings with young children.

Just as Wednesday’s hearing began, officials announced they had inspected 880 old school buildings with young children and found hazardous lead conditions in 326 cafeterias and 171 libraries. Officials removed, sealed, and painted over the deteriorating walls. Students have been allowed back into these areas, according to the education department, since the walls are “covered and inaccessible,” though final dust wipe clearance and more extensive cleaning that started last month won’t be done until the end of the school year.

During the hearing, Treyger questioned whether records of past inspections exist. They do and date back to 2004, said Rana Khan, deputy chief of school operations.

“We’ve asked for those records previously, and they have not been turned over to us,” Treyger said. Chalkbeat filed an open records request in July for inspection data over the past five years, which the city has since delayed. During his own testimony, City Comptroller Scott Stringer said he will subpoena the education department for those records if they don’t release them voluntarily by next month.

Education officials were also asked about their coordination with other city agencies on lead. For example, when a child’s blood test shows high lead levels — anything above 5 micrograms per deciliter — their pediatrician is supposed to report it to city health officials. Then, city inspectors try to find potential sources for the lead by testing places where the child spends a lot of time, such as their apartment or, in some cases, their school. In this case, education department officials would oversee testing inside their schools. Treyger asked if families whose children attend those schools are notified when a classroom is found to have hazardous lead during one of those health-department-prompted investigations. Khan said no.

“That’s a problem, and that has to change,” Treyger said.

Matthew Chachere, a longtime attorney who for years has advocated for stricter enforcement of lead violations in private housing, said it is an “inherent conflict of interest” to allow the education department to visually inspect its own buildings when the health department alerts them to a case of possible lead exposure. Health officials said it is more efficient to have education department staff do their own inspections.

“Suppose there is a child with an elevated level of blood, and the health department said (to an apartment owner), “We have a report, and we will let you do a visual inspection of your apartment,’” Chachere said during his own testimony. “I don’t think anyone would accept that paradigm.”

City officials could not answer a question from Councilman Stephen Levin on whether a school was ever the sole source of lead exposure for any child who had a high level of lead in their blood. Corinne Schiff, deputy commissioner for environmental health, said she would find the answer to Levin’s question but suspected the number was “minuscule.”

I made sure New York City’s pre-K classes were filled with play. Then I became a kindergarten teacher and the fun stopped.

2019-11-08T14:57:24+00:00

New York City’s Pre-K for All initiative is truly a delightful, play-based program based on developmentally appropriate practices for young children. I know this well because for two years, I was a consultant for the city’s education department making sure that pre-K classes were high-quality and joyful places.

As a program evaluator from 2016 to 2018, my job was to visit pre-K classrooms to make sure that they adhered to guidelines set forth in the two assessment tools that the city is using to measure program quality.

Part of that work involved listening to conversations between teachers and children and assessing the classroom culture. Did children frequently laugh and smile? Did teachers respond to children’s needs sensitively?

I would also check if programs were providing the children with ample materials devoted to art, music, block play, dramatic play, physical education, and math and science — materials that children could use independently in open-ended ways, not just as directed by a teacher.

And one very important aspect of my work was calculating the number of minutes in each program devoted to unstructured play. The city requires programs using education department funding to allocate one-third of the school day to unstructured play — two hours and seven minutes a day of free play in a standard, full-day program. Programs that fell short would get dinged in the reports I wrote after each visit.

I left this role and took on a kindergarten teaching position not far from New York City, in Nassau County on Long Island, after two years. What I saw and experienced as a kindergarten teacher shocked me as I learned firsthand that kindergarteners in my school spent very little time engaging in any form of free play. Additionally, my classroom looked almost nothing like what I used to see in pre-K classrooms, though the children were only a year older. Gone were the blocks, the dramatic play center, the sand table, and almost every type of manipulative that typically fills a pre-K classroom.

Instead of watching children engage in explorative, self-directed play, our days were filled with one teacher-directed lesson after another mostly focusing on phonics, literacy, and math. Some of the children could not hold a pencil properly or did not yet know the alphabet but were expected to complete curriculum-driven worksheets frequently. I had to give my kindergarteners sight word quizzes on a weekly basis and perform standardized reading-level assessments several times during the school year. Children, who are designed to move and wiggle and squirm, were expected to sit still for long periods of time either on the carpet or at their desks. And whereas New York City pre-K programs mandate physical education on a daily basis, my students only experienced it three times a week. (My son, who had entered kindergarten at the same time in a different school, only had physical education twice a week.) It was hard for me to follow these strict school-based mandates that went against what I knew was best for children, but while my immediate supervisor agreed with me to a large degree, there was little we could do.

My experiences as a kindergarten teacher are not unique. A 2009 report by play advocates found that many New York City kindergartens offered little time for free play and were devoid of materials such as blocks, dramatic play props, and sand and water tables. More recently, a 2016 study concluded that kindergarten had indeed become “the new first grade” in terms of the academic skills expected of students.

Recent research has found that the changes to kindergarten have not been bad for students’ learning or their emotional development. Yet like so many other educators, I know firsthand the power of what happens during unstructured time. Observing pre-K classrooms, I saw that when children play “store,” they learn about counting, money, and simple addition or subtraction. When children are given time and access to materials that encourage expressive language such as human and animal figures, puppets, dolls and pretend telephones, they are communicating with their peers and their teachers, developing crucial language skills that are an important precursor to early literacy. And when children build LEGO towers or large “cities” with wooden blocks, they are developing spatial, math, and problem-solving skills, not to mention fundamental social skills such as sharing and working together.

I could see that by replacing these activities with worksheets and Smartboard presentations, I was depriving my students of opportunities for joyful learning — and I knew that their options to make up the play time were limited. A good portion of my kindergarten children were from immigrant families and from low-income households. They arrived at school at 7:30 a.m. to eat breakfast and did not go home until well into the evening, having gone to after-care or academic support programs directly after the school day ended. Most lived in apartment buildings without backyards or access to nearby playgrounds, limiting outdoor play. Some said that they had few toys at home, besides the iPads that they cited as a main form of entertainment. I quickly realized that unless children experienced free play in my classroom, many would not at any time during the day.

There was no designated time in the daily schedule for free play at all, but sometimes I would sneak in choice time during the day where kids got to play freely with puzzles, math manipulatives, and building toys. It was during these moments that I would see my students’ eyes light up as they were finally able to exercise some agency.

But no teacher should have to do what they think is best for his or her students secretly, behind closed doors. I wished that my school administrators understood what I had seen: that play is far from frivolous; with training, educators can encourage discovery, experimentation, and creativity in kids; and laughter is the sound of children learning.

Farah Akbar is a former classroom teacher and Pre-K program evaluator. She is currently a freelance writer.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

NYC Head Start teachers approve contract that will raise salaries for some by $15,500

2019-11-04T23:51:27+00:00

Members of DC 37’s Local 95 has voted to approve a new contract that will substantially raise salaries for some teachers working in New York City Head Start programs.

The deal is the second in recent months that aims to close the pay gap between pre-K teachers working in publicly funded but independently run programs and those in public schools.

The union announced on Monday that the contract was ratified by a 162-26 vote. Under the agreement, certified teachers with master’s degrees will see their pay increase by more than $15,500. By Oct. 2021, they will earn $68,652, which is in line with starting salaries for public school teachers.

Head Start programs are primarily federally funded, but the city also contributes to costs and some Local 95 members teach in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Pre-K for All program.

Most of the union’s 2,600 members are support workers, such as custodians, cooks, and assistant teachers. They stand to gain a one-time $1,000 bonus.

Queens to get 300-seat, $42M public preschool, created in partnership with local science museum

2019-10-31T18:57:22+00:00

A 306-seat, $42.4 million public pre-K center is expected to open in Flushing Meadows – Corona Park, Queens, by the fall of 2021, bringing much-needed relief to the overcrowded areas of Elmhurst and Corona, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday.

The new pre-K center promises to offer 4-year-olds a science, technology, engineering, art, and math curriculum — sometimes called STEAM — that will be run in partnership with the New York Hall of Science. Pre-K families will also get free memberships to the popular Queens museum.

It’s the first program of its kind to focus on early childhood science and technology education in collaboration with a major cultural institution, city officials said.

The center will participate in the education department’s “diversity in admissions” program to ensure that District 24’s “emergent multilingual learners” and students from low-income families are represented. The community will determine the specifics of the admissions priorities.

“It promises to be a program… that will be a true reflection of our community,” said State Sen. Jessica Ramos. “Many times communities of color like ours don’t think these STEAM careers of the future are for us.”

The new center is being built atop a parking lot in Flushing Meadows, but because the lot sits on parkland, it required Albany’s approval, and Ramos helped pass a bill to get the project done.

Officials agreed the process to approve the project has been a difficult one, and the 2021 date comes two years after it was originally scheduled to open, according to a previous report from DNAinfo.

As the community awaited the new pre-K center, the education department opened roughly 300 pre-K seats in September 2016 to meet the demand of the overcrowded District 24. Most of those new classrooms were in trailers, and served students at Corona’s P.S. 7, P.S 28 and P.S. 16, the report noted.

Those trailers will remain in use until the new pre-K center opens, and then those schools will get new outdoor play spaces when the trailers are removed, education department officials said on Thursday.

“Queens lacks seats that are required for the number of children,” Queens Borough President Melinda Katz noted. “We are exponentially growing in population and tourism and all that comes with it.”

The new center will be among the largest education department-run pre-K programs — opened across the city as part of de Blasio’s ambitious pre-K expansion. Universal pre-K for the city’s 4-year-olds across the five boroughs as well as free pre-K for 3-year-olds in several districts are the centerpiece of the mayor’s education agenda — as well as his overall legacy.

“How do we become the fairest big city in America?” asked de Blasio at the ceremony breaking ground for the center. “It starts the very first day a child steps in the classroom.”

He touted that the city has seen some benefits from free pre-K in the state test scores of last year’s third graders, the first group to participate in the universal pre-K program. The third graders in the program outperformed their peers and saw narrower gaps in scores between white and black students, as well as white and Hispanic students.

City, labor leaders announce deal to close pay gaps for NYC pre-K teachers in Head Start programs

2019-10-03T21:34:30+00:00

Hundreds of New York City pre-K teachers who work in Head Start programs could receive a significant pay boost under a proposed labor agreement announced Thursday.

The deal with District Council 37’s Local 95 marks the second recent labor agreement aiming to close the salary gap between teachers at publicly funded but independently run preschool programs, and those who work in public schools. Earlier this year, early childhood teachers had threatened to strike over the disparity, but called off the action at the last minute after the city and preschool operators agreed to come to the bargaining table.

If ratified by members, certified teachers with a master’s degree would see their pay increase by more than $15,500 by October 2021. That would bring their pay to $68,652, in-line with starting salaries for public school teachers. It’s unclear how many teachers would qualify for the biggest raises: A city spokeswoman said there are about 550 teachers represented by Local 95, but that figure includes uncertified educators.

Local 95 represents about 2,600 teachers and support staffers — such as assistant teachers, janitors, and cooks — who mostly work in Head Start programs. Though Head Start is primarily federally funded, the city also contributes money, and some Local 95 members are teachers in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Pre-K for All program. The agreement is expected to cost the city $7 million through 2023.

The deal represents “well-deserved wage parity that we fought so long for,” Linda McPherson, president of Local 95, said in a statement. “With this agreement, my members are now able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Advocates and teachers have pushed to close the pay gap, which is all the more glaring given that many who work in community-run centers such as Head Start are women of color, while most public school teachers are white. The problem was exacerbated, preschool operators say, when the education department kicked off universal pre-K, and qualified teachers left in droves for the higher salaries afforded in new programs in public schools.

André Lake — who leads the Head Start Sponsoring Board Council, which represents providers — called the agreement “momentous.”

“It facilitates employee recruitment and retention,” he said in a statement.

The proposed contract comes on the heels of an agreement with Local 205, which represents teachers in preschool programs that are run by community organizations. (Both locals were previously part of District Council 1707, which recently merged with DC 37.) Community organizations serve a majority of students enrolled in the city’s universal preschool program. The first of a series of raises under Local 205’s agreement began to take effect this week.

A majority of the Local 95’s members are support workers, and they will receive a less generous boost than their peers in Local 205. Local 95 members are in-line for a one-time $1,000 ratification bonus — $800 less than their counterparts received. Members in Local 95 would also receive cost of living increases as determined by the federal government.

But most pre-K teachers still won’t see pay gains, since the majority of those working in publicly funded programs do not belong to a union. City leaders have insisted that the recent labor agreements would serve as a template for paying the rest of the workforce, but haven’t provided details for when non-union teachers can expect a raise, or how much it might be.

Jennifer March, the director of the advocacy group Citizens’ Committee for Children, said the most recent deal represents “progress,” but she wants to keep the pressure on the city to ensure that all teachers benefit equally from pay raises.

“We urge continued work,” she said in a statement.

NYC preschools are training teachers what to do if immigration authorities come knocking

2019-09-11T20:59:23+00:00

An unexplained absence can set off alarm bells for Marnie Montalvo, a pre-K teacher at Little Star of Broome Street on the Lower East Side.

Many of her students come from immigrant families, so her mind races to the possibility that a child didn’t make it to school because a caregiver was detained or deported.

“If you don’t see a certain child coming to the school, or you don’t see the parent, you’re wondering,” she said. “And when you see them, it’s a relief. I’m like, ‘OK. Good. They’re here.’”

In New York City, more than a million children have at least one foreign-born parent. And the Trump administration’s ramped up immigration enforcement and pursuit of policies that make it harder to remain legally in the country have put immigrant families on edge — undocumented or not.

In this climate of fear, misinformation and rumors can spread in online messages and through word of mouth. But preschool centers are in a unique place to pass along information to families, who may be more likely to trust the advice they get from staff who take care of their children all day.

That’s why the Chinese-American Planning Council, a social services provider that enrolls about 300 children in publicly subsidized preschool programs in New York City, is making sure all of its school staffers are ready with information, and even step-by-step plans in the unlikely event immigration agents come knocking.

“We’re trying to avoid families really fearing and avoiding getting services,” said Mary Cheng, director of early childhood services for the council.

At Little Star, a planning council center that is tucked into the basement of a public housing tower, a sign on the front door declares in English and Chinese that the school is a safe space for immigrants.

The council caters to many Chinese and Asian immigrants, a community that has been hit especially hard by stepped up federal enforcement actions in New York City. Deportations here jumped by more than 150 percent in 2018, compared with 2016, and Chinese immigrants make more than 20 percent of court proceedings — the largest of any other nationality, according to a report by the comptroller’s office.

Immigrant families have also had to navigate ever-changing and stricter federal regulations. Carlyn Cowen, who heads policy and public affairs for the council, said the effects were immediate when news broke that the administration was considering a harsher interpretation of the “public charge” rule, which could make it harder for immigrants to get a green card if they’ve used certain government benefits.

Previously full of of families looking for help enrolling for food or health assistance, the center’s waiting rooms emptied out in the immediate aftermath of the public charge proposal. Some began to pull out of programs for preschool, healthcare, and housing, Cowen said — all anti-poverty programs that have been proved to impact a child’s performance in school.

“Literally, in order to keep providing our services, we need to do more to address the climate of fear,” she said. “In a lot of ways, it really just became a necessity.”

The council has taken steps to make sure preschool staffers have the most up-to-date information about immigration issues, with training for directors and email blasts to teachers. School staff could direct families to other organizations that focus on immigration issues, but Cheng said some might be reluctant to follow up.

“They only trust certain people,” Cheng said of the families the council serves.“What tends to happen a lot of times is the families say, ‘Yeah, I’ll reach out to them.’ But they don’t trust in their own level of [English] proficiency or they don’t trust the outside program. So they’d rather hear from us.”

The council is also making sure its daycare centers are ready if immigration agents land at their doorstep, training key staff members in what the laws are, which questions to ask, and even how to read a warrant.

“We are a front line for a lot of the families,” Cheng said.

Preschool teachers across the country who were surveyed by CLASP, an anti-poverty policy organization, said the fear many of their families face has spilled into the classroom. Teachers noted longer bouts of separation anxiety after children were dropped off at school, an uptick in aggressive behavior, and, for one little boy in Georgia, such intense stress that he began biting his fingers until they bled.

The council has relied in part on guidelines recently drafted by CLASP, which stands for the Center for Law and Social Policy, to help early childhood providers support immigrant families. Rebecca Ullrich, a policy analyst with CLASP, said her organization heard from centers across the country that were feeling the pressure put on foreign-born parents, but were unsure how to take action.

Unlike public schools, many preschools are independently run and don’t have support from a central agency. In New York City, the education department has been quick to reassure immigrant families that they are safe on campus, no matter their documentation status. But most students attending universal pre-K here are enrolled in a community center-based program like Little Star.

“People had this looming sense that it was possible someone could come to their center but had no idea what they would do, or could do,” Ullrich said.

CLASP’s guide has a step-by-step script for interacting with immigration agents, and tips for marking property as private to deter authorities.

Ullrich called it “worst case scenario” planning, since preschools are usually considered sensitive locations by immigration authorities. Like churches and hospitals, agents are supposed to refrain from accessing them except in certain cases, like when someone might pose an immediate threat to safety.

“This is ultimately an issue that early childhood programs are contending with all over the country,” Ullrich said. “You can’t care for and educate a young child if they don’t have enough food to eat, they’re in unstable housing or they’re living in fear of their parent being taken from them because of immigration enforcement.”

All 1,860 NYC classrooms posing lead risk get the all-clear, as new school year begins

2019-09-03T23:03:54+00:00

Ahead of the first day of school, the city has fixed up about 1,800 classrooms that posed a risk for lead exposure to young children, the education department announced Tuesday.

The classrooms, located in buildings constructed before 1985, tested positive for lead this summer after thousands of rooms were found to have peeling paint, which puts those exposed to it — especially young children — at risk for ingesting the toxin. Independent contractors sealed deteriorating walls and painted over them. Final dust wipes were taken to test for any remaining lead before the rooms were cleared for use, according to the department, which had promised to complete the remediation before school started.

Lead exposure, most commonly ingested through dust from chipping paint, is linked to learning disabilities, developmental delays, and behavioral problems. Young children — especially those under the age of 3 — are at greatest risk, since they’re more likely to be on the ground and put dust-laden fingers or paint chips in their mouths.

In June, a WNYC reporter found hazardous levels of lead in four schools, raising concerns in a story about the department’s testing protocol. That same week, the department did a sweep of tests and for the first time released their data, which will now be kept in a database online. (You can easily search for your school here.) The department continued testing rooms throughout the summer, including for the first time first-grade classrooms, and it announced that it will require checks three times a year.

Previously, the city tested only early childhood and kindergarten classrooms, LYFE Centers for children of students, and District 75 special education classrooms with young students. Custodians were not required to formally log inspection results.

For months the department has asserted that its custodians routinely checked for chipping paint in classrooms in older buildings, where students younger than 6 will spend time. Chalkbeat is awaiting an open records request seeking details about inspections over the past five years.

The department announced last week that it would also begin testing common areas for lead. Environmental health experts had raised concerns about excluding these areas from testing, as did dozens of council members in a letter to the education department. In his defense of how the city currently looks for lead in classrooms, Mayor Bill de Blasio said common spaces don’t pose a major risk because students spend most of their days in classrooms, and “you don’t get lead chips in your mouth walking through a hallway.”

But eating paint chips isn’t how most children contract lead, experts have said — it’s through ingesting lead dust. That can happen in any space students spend time in, though the risk is greater the more time that is spent in a lead-exposed space. People can also track lead dust between common spaces.

Officials said Tuesday they will inspect and test cafeterias and libraries that serve students younger than 6 in older buildings and will complete that work by next school year. School hallways aren’t part of the testing protocol just yet, but education department officials said they are “working on a plan to address additional common spaces.”

Still, experts have said there are more ways to make testing more robust, including X-ray scanning all classrooms — even before paint starts to chip — so the city knows where the lead exists. The city has hired Ernst & Young to review its testing protocol and expects the company’s audit to be completed by the end of the year.

Revealing 900 more NYC classrooms had lead, city will now test common areas, too

2019-08-29T19:37:20+00:00

Following criticism that its lead paint protocols were not strong enough, New York City’s education department announced Thursday that testing for the toxin will now be done in school common areas.

The announcement came as officials revealed that about 900 more classrooms were found to need remediation for peeling or deteriorated lead paint this summer — about double the number revealed last month after an initial round of inspections the week of June 24.

The new numbers reflect lead testing done for the first time in first-grade classrooms, in addition to the thousands of 3K, pre-K, kindergarten, and District 75 special education rooms, and LYFE centers for children of students. These inspections for lead hazards took place while school was out in buildings constructed before 1985.

Inspections done in July and August also include rooms that weren’t previously on a custodian’s radar, such as a 4th grade room that will now be used for kindergartners, a department spokeswoman said.

Of the 8,428 classrooms that were inspected this summer, a total 1,858 needed remediation, which involves hiring a contractor to seal peeling paint and then paint over it. The education department has promised classrooms will be fixed by the start of school next week. All have been remediated, and about 75 of those are awaiting a dust wipe test for remaining lead, according to a department spokeswoman.

Remediating a room usually involves covering walls and floors with plastic, and ensuring contractors have enough properly trained workers on the job, said Tom Neltner, a lead paint expert at the Environmental Defense Fund, who has conducted trainings for inspectors and contractors tasked with cleaning up deteriorating paint.

“It’s possible, but it’s a real undertaking,” Neltner said of remediating the roughly 1,800 classrooms over the summer. “I’m just glad to see they’re taking it on.”

Principals were notified Thursday of the new results, and affected families would be made aware on the first day of school. After the first round of results were released, before letters were sent out, some families reported feeling in the dark about the news or what to do next.

School leaders in buildings found to have lead will receive a list of classrooms that are cleared for children under the age of 6, a department spokeswoman said. By the end of September, principals will be required to tell the department which classrooms they will be using, since “over-the-counter” school registrations are ongoing and could require schools to open new sections of a grade.

The numbers released Thursday, coupled with data the education department released last month, came in the wake of a WNYC investigation that found hazardous levels of the toxin in four schools and raised concerns about how officials inspect buildings.

While this is the first time the education department has made inspection information publicly available, officials assert that testing protocols have been in place for years. School custodians in older buildings are supposed to look for peeling paint in classrooms with children younger than 6 – considered the most at risk for ingesting lead paint in the form of chips or dust. If deteriorating paint is found, inspectors are brought in to test for lead, and if positive, the paint is remediated.

Experts in environmental health recently told Chalkbeat that the department appears to be following federal law, but protocol could be more robust to match Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “vision zero” effort on eliminating childhood lead exposure by 2029 — including testing common areas, such as hallways, gyms, and auditoriums; X-ray scanning all rooms for lead even before paint starts to chip, and checking for lead dust before remediation is complete.

With last month’s release of inspection data, the education department said it will require custodians to check classrooms at three points during the year, and the department will update information about inspection results online after those sweeps.

Amid pressure this month from City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Education Committee Chairman Mark Treyger, the department said it will now test common areas but did not say more Thursday about when and how that will take place.

“I certainly welcome this reversal, but our job is not over,” said Councilman Mark Treyger, who also wants the education department to test for lead dust before remediation is over, and to communicate with principals about inspection results.

A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office, Jane Meyer, said that until now, the city’s “primary focus has always been on where kids spend the most time – classrooms. As part of our recent efforts to achieve vision zero for lead in New York City, we will enhance our protocols around common space with new inspections, testing, and remediation guidelines.” This, Meyer said, is in addition to the lead abatement that goes on when schools undergo capital projects. She said the city would soon elaborate on the revised protocols.

New York City has also ordered an audit from firm Ernst & Young to review its lead protocols. The audit is expected to be completed by the end of the school year.

Sam Park contributed data analysis for this story.

Below is a database of which classrooms tested positive and negative for lead, and whether they were remediated.

Mayor de Blasio touts higher test scores for NYC students in universal pre-K

2019-08-22T23:33:51+00:00

Five years after launching the nation’s largest expansion of pre-kindergarten, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio can now boast about test score benefits for children who participated.

Students who attended Pre-K for All programs in the 2014-15 school year outperformed their peers who were not on this year’s New York state exams, according to city officials.

They said pass rates were 2.8 percentage points higher in English and 1.1 percentage points higher in math for students who participated than for students who did not. They also said gaps in test scores between students of different races and ethnicities were smaller among those who attended pre-K that year.

The results offer one of the first signs of whether the city’s investment in free, universal preschool for 4-year-olds is paying off with improved academic performance. (There is already evidence that the program has led to healthier children.) They also bolster one of the mayor’s central talking points on the presidential campaign trail, where he often touts his early childhood education record.

“We’re able to say way more definitively than ever that pre-K for all is working, it’s reaching deep into our communities,” de Blasio said at a press conference Thursday at P.S. 69 in the Bronx, which he visited on the initiative’s first day of classes in 2014. “It’s changing children’s lives, achieving something that could not be done without that early start.”

The results do not necessarily mean that the program changed individual students’ outcomes. It’s possible that the students who enrolled in the first year of Pre-K For All — when an additional 33,000 children were served — were different from those who did not in crucial ways. City officials acknowledged, for example, that they did not control for factors such as family income.

Dale Farran, who has studied pre-K programs elsewhere and is a professor emerita at Vanderbilt University, said it’s impossible to draw conclusions about the impact of pre-K without a more specific analysis.

“I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer here, I really don’t,” she said. “I think that people make their commitment to pre-K out of values. And if they’re really doing it because they want to see, longer term, better outcomes, then they have to design better studies to see if that’s true.”

Plus, test scores offer only one limited measure of students’ academic skills, a point that Chancellor Richard Carranza emphasized Thursday. “Test scores are but one of many, many measures that we look at,” he said.

Noting that policy initiatives in later grades also influence student test scores, Steven Barnett, a co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from the results. Still, he said the city’s scores offered an encouraging sign — and that anything else could have undermined the national push that is leading to more children every year being enrolled in free preschool.

“From San Antonio to Seattle, you have positive impacts there as well. But New York City is the biggest, at the biggest scale, and so that counts more,” Barnett said. “If test scores had gone down and achievement gaps had gone up, then people would be making a lot of noise about how universal pre-K at scale doesn’t work.”

As pre-K teachers celebrate pay raises, day care union seizes the moment to reach more schools

2019-08-19T16:23:11+00:00

All of the teacher groups that Jennifer Corre follows on Facebook were buzzing with the news: A just-announced deal would significantly boost pay for unionized pre-K teachers working in community-run classrooms.

Thanks to a decision Corre and her colleagues made just days earlier, the deal between the city and the union representing many preschool teachers meant they would get a raise — and a big one at that.

The Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, preschool staff had recently joined District Council 1707, the union that brokered the agreement. Corre rushed to tell Oksana Grebenyuk, the education director at the school where she teaches, Early Childhood Development Center Kaleidoscope.

“I got excited. I told Ms. Oksana, ‘We’re going to get a pay raise,’” Corre said.

Most independent preschools in New York City are not unionized. But on the heels of a $15 million labor agreement that has been hailed as historic — and with a pending merger with its much larger counterpart, District Council 37 — the union that represents daycare workers and preschool teachers is seizing the moment to try to grow.

The new deal will boost salaries by as much as $20,000 over the next three years for teachers with advanced degrees and certification, bringing their pay on par with starting salaries in public schools. Corre is certified with a bachelor’s degree. Teachers like her will see their salary go up by about $17,000.

The agreement was ratified in early August. Now, union recruiters are knocking on center doors, launching a text message campaign, and setting up tables at city events for new hires in publicly funded programs. They’re also showing up at centers like Kaleidoscope, which had taken it upon itself to reach out to the union.

So far, only a handful of new centers have come on board.

“This is a start for us,” said Indira Mohan, an organizing director for DC 1707. “Our intention is to touch all of the centers, nonunionized, to let them know, ‘Hey, this is an opportunity here for your employees to benefit.’”

Grebenyuk has been running private preschools for a decade now, and she began to expand Kaleidoscope just as the city’s universal preschool program for 4-year-olds, Pre-K for All, rolled out in 2014.

Enrollment boomed, but Grebenyuk struggled with teacher turnover. Some realized they could earn more for the same job at a public pre-K, and they left for public schools as soon as they got the required credentials.

In order to make room for so many students in Pre-K for All, new classrooms were opened in public schools. But mostly, the city contracted with independently run centers, like Kaleidoscope, and providers say they are funded at rates that assume much lower salaries for their teachers. Pre-K teachers in public schools are public employees, so they are represented by the powerful United Federation of Teachers; it affords them higher salaries and a benefits package.

Kaleidoscope offers paid days off on federal holidays and a few weeks of paid vacation a year. Grebenyuk tried offering health insurance, but the plans she could afford were of little use to her teachers, so they opted out and she dropped it.

“It’s very hard to keep the professional teachers, who are certified, because they’re looking for benefits, they’re looking for more money,” said Grebenyuk. A couple years into Pre-K for All, she said her teachers were earning their credentials and seeking employment at public schools.

Pre-K teachers in public schools earned as much as 60 percent more than their community-based counterparts, depending on years of experience. City leaders have said the union deal will serve as a template for how eligible teachers at Pre-K for All centers would be paid, union membership or no, so it’s possible non-unionized preschool staff could eventually see their pay go up, too.

One day this past spring, Grebenyuk and other independent preschool directors working with the city program gathered to air their grievances. Someone mentioned DC 1707, and Grebenyuk decided to reach out. The issue of pay parity has been simmering for years in the city, but negotiations with the city had not yet begun.

A DC 1707 representative visited the school and made his pitch. The staff was on board. Rather than taking a staff vote, Grebenyuk, on behalf of management, simply recognized the union — officially on June 30.

Kaleidoscope is one of about 300 independent pre-K centers in New York City are members of DC 1707, out of a total of more than 1,000 similar independent programs, both for-profit and nonprofit, participating in Pre-K for All. To date, the decision to unionize is relatively uncommon, and management’s voluntary recognition of the decision rarer still.

Nationwide, an estimated 10 percent of teaching staff in community-based early childhood programs are unionized, according to the Center for the Study of Childcare Employment, based at the University of California, Berkeley. In New York City, union shops range from some of the largest social service providers in the city to centers that have just a handful of teachers, such as Kaleidoscope.

The extra pay Grebenyuk’s teachers receive won’t come from her own budget, but rather through her contract with the city. The center is now bound to union agreements around work issues and job protections, which plenty of managers would rather avoid. For teachers and support staff including custodians and cooks, union dues are on a sliding scale based on income, with the highest coming in around $45 a month, according to DC 1707.

Corre can expect a $4,000 pay boost in October, the first of the three raises that will kick in under the recent deal. Beyond a little extra financial security, she said the raise has shaped how she feels about her job, four years in.

“It’s definitely about respect,” she said. “And that’s really important to me.”

Here’s what NYC parents can do if they’re concerned about lead exposure in classrooms

2019-08-06T23:54:21+00:00

Nearly a week after the education department revealed it had to fix peeling lead paint in nearly 1,000 New York City classrooms, some parents are still trying to figure out what the news means for their children.

The Department of Education did send letters to principals this week detailing some of the dangers of lead exposure and how lead paint is identified. But some staff and parents feel the letter raises more questions than answers.

Two pediatricians who have worked with children exposed to lead spoke with Chalkbeat about the dangers of lead and offered tips on what parents can do if they fear their children are at risk.

What’s so dangerous about lead?

Exposure to lead can impact development, especially in a child’s growing brain, said Dr. Helen Binns, professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University and director of the lead evaluation program at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

Lead settles in the bones, where it can remain. But the most critical “target organ” is the brain, said Dr. Morri Markowitz, director of the Lead Poisoning Treatment and Prevention Program at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx. As a result, “we worry about the effects on a child’s ability to learn and play when their brain has been affected.”

Lead exposure can cause learning disabilities and behavioral issues, according to the Centers for Disease Control, which says there is no “safe” level of lead in the blood.

How are children exposed?

The metal can enter the blood through consuming paint chips and inhaling or licking lead dust.

Lead dust, which can come from peeling paint or even soil, is the “most common pathway” for lead exposure in children because children spend a lot of time on the floor touching and exploring things, Binns said. Dust can be tracked in on shoes and blown in from the window, and can contaminate carpets, furniture, and floors.

“At age 3 and 4, a certain percent of those students will be putting things in their mouth,” Markowitz said. “Even with the 6-year-olds, there are kids sitting in classrooms for an unknown period potentially being exposed.”

In the case of New York City classrooms that were found to have peeling lead paint, it’s not known how long children were exposed. The records of any past inspections, which Chalkbeat has requested, have not yet been made public. The education department says its custodians regularly check for deteriorating paint in classrooms with kids younger than 6 in buildings built before 1985. (Older buildings are more likely to contain lead-based paint.)

To keep lead dust from accumulating, “you can do a really good job just with good cleaning with soap and water,” Binns said. “It will really lower the lead dust levels, so your environmental services teams at the schools are your real partners at keeping any of the dust from coming in.”

My child’s class is on list of affected New York City schools. What should I do?

Ask your child’s pediatrician for a blood test to check their lead levels, Binns said.

You can also reach out to public health officials, since they are likely to have a better sense of where and how your child may have been exposed, Markowitz said.

Since last June, city health officials have required doctors to report any detection of lead in a child’s blood, according to the city’s health department. Last year 3,866 children younger than 6 had at least 5 micrograms of lead or per deciliter of blood. That’s the level at which the city is required to investigate the source of exposure. The number has steadily dropped from about 14,000 children in 2010, city data show.

Parents should also consider if their child is prone to putting non-food items in their mouths, if they suck their thumbs or bite their nails, or swallow things that aren’t food. That can help them assess the risk of lead exposure since “one child can be fine where another has ingested a lot of lead in the same risky environment,” Binns said.

She added that children with developmental delays are more likely than others to put things in their mouths that are not food.

What if classrooms in my school are affected? What should I do?

It never hurts to speak to your pediatrician, the doctors said, and try to find out if your child spent any time in affected classrooms.

School officials should also determine the condition of common areas, such as gyms, hallways, cafeterias. The education department’s evaluation for lead focuses only on classrooms, according to its protocol.

What if I’m a teacher?

The district should keep teachers informed about inspection results and make information easily accessible for teachers so they know the condition of their classroom every time an inspection happens, Markowitz said. In New York, teachers can also now report deteriorating paint conditions to the department.

Lead ingestion is “dangerous at older ages as well,” Markowitz said, but the concern is more focused on children because of the potentially life-changing effects. In adults, elevated lead levels can contribute to neurological damage, such as fatigue and hearing loss, and other physical problems, such as gastrointestinal issues and reproductive problems, according to the New York State health department.

Pregnant women should be particularly cautious because even a low level of rising lead can be a risk factor for preeclampsia, which is characterized by high blood pressure and can cause serious complications to pregnancy, according to Binns.

Regular hand-washing, actively wiping dusty surfaces, and refraining from nail-biting can make a big difference.

What happens if my child tests positive?

First, the source (or sources) of exposure should be identified — and they may not be limited to school. Binns explained: “You have to go through the full evaluation to see if you’re getting it at home [or] at grandma’s house,” or from using cookware or spices that have been noted to have traces of lead. (Here’s a list of lead-based consumer products to stay away from.)

Next, parents can help children change their potentially dangerous habits, such as putting non-food items into their mouths, Markowitz said.

Nutrition can play a role in remediation, too. Parents should ensure children are eating foods rich in calcium and iron, since bodies will absorb less lead if they’re getting other essential metals that humans need. Binns advises having fruit with every meal because Vitamin C can increase the absorption of iron.

“What I tell the families is, healthy eating is good for everybody all the time, but it’s really the iron part I’m focusing on with them,” she said. She added that constantly engaging with your child — playing games and reading books — helps promote brain development, even if your child has been exposed to lead.

Is it safe to send my child to school?

The education department said yes, that all of the affected classrooms would be fixed and safe to attend by the first day of school. Markowitz said eliminating lead hazards in all affected classrooms would mean hiring enough EPA-certified contractors to do the remediation — that is, sealing chipped paint and repainting.

Union members approve a contract deal that includes massive raises for some pre-K teachers

2019-08-02T16:04:46+00:00

Some preschool teachers will see their pay increase by as much as $20,000 after union members voted Thursday night to approve a labor agreement that has been touted as historic.

The deal with District Council 1707’s Local 205 significantly boosts salaries for about 300 teachers who work in publicly funded but independently run programs, bringing them on-par with starting salaries for public school teachers.

That is a major step forward for advocates who have long fought for pay parity between both groups of teachers, who are represented by different unions but have the same credentials — and have played a major role in rolling out Mayor Bill de Blasio’s highly touted universal pre-K initiative.

“We never thought this day would come,” said Kim Medina, the executive director of DC 1707. “It was always a constant fight for us because the mindset was that our childcare providers…were not teachers. They were babysitters.”

The salary gap nearly sparked a strike earlier this year, but it was called off at the last minute when city leaders and management representatives agreed to come to the table.

Esther Morrison, a teacher in the Bronx who is in line for the biggest raise, said she is “so thankful.”

“We do the same exact thing the other teachers do,” she said. “We should get paid the same amount of money.”

The rest of the union’s almost 4,000 members, including assistant teachers, janitors, and cooks, are in line for a $1,800 bonus and yearly salary increases of about 2.75%. Also included in the deal are reductions in healthcare costs that apply to all members.

Medina said the agreement passed by a 3-to-1 margin. She was brought to tears describing the room where about 600 members had gathered to vote in Tribeca.

“It was a beautiful moment,” she said. “Many of them stayed til the count was done and they were just cheering. And it wasn’t just teachers. It was teachers’ aides and custodians and bookkeepers.”

Preschool directors have charged that vast difference in paychecks makes it hard to keep teachers, who leave to make far more money in public school classrooms. The churn, advocates argued, put on shaky ground de Blasio’s signature education initiative — free pre-K for all of the city’s 4-year olds, and now some 3-year-olds, too. Most of the city’s Pre-K for All programs are housed in community organizations.

Teachers posed the pay gap issue as being at odds with de Blasio’s pledge, both as mayor and now during his long-shot run for the White House, to create a more fair system for working people. Many of the pre-K teachers in community-run programs are women of color, while a majority of those in higher-paid public school positions are white.

Advocates have said that they hope the new salary boost will encourage assistant teachers and aides to get their credentials to lead their own classrooms and benefit from the raises.

The ratified deal is not a new contract, but an extension of the current one. Significantly, it’s now timed to expire at the same time as contract for the United Federation of Teachers, meaning DC 1707 could benefit from any gains negotiated by the far larger and more powerful union.

Despite the vote for ratification, there was a current of dissatisfaction among support staff who received far less generous perks while barely earning more than minimum wage and working in programs that, unlike public schools, do not close for the summer. Many said they are struggling with healthcare costs and wished for more affordable plans, though the agreement calls for a “significant” reduction in co-pays and a 10% reduction in co-premiums.

“I want to see everyone get a raise,” said David Bennett, a custodian at Friends of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, as he headed in to vote.

“A raise we can live off of,” said Gladys Guzman, a teacher at the same center. “Why are we getting pennies?”

Despite having similar concerns, Marie Thompson, a 16-year cook at Utopia Children’s Center in Harlem, said she voted in favor of the deal.

“It’s not fair, but it’s something,” she said.

With the extension now in place, the union will pivot its attention to a new contract for Local 95 members, who work in centers that are largely funded through federal Head Start contracts. Officials have said that the deal approved Thursday will serve as the template for the next round of negotiations.

City leaders have also said that the agreement could set the stage for increases for a still larger group of teachers: those who aren’t unionized. They make up a majority of teachers in the city’s universal pre-K program and have been galvanizing support for raises through online petitions and other advocacy.

“The advocacy will go on,” said Alice Mulligan, the director of a non-unionized program in Brooklyn. “The whole thing is just so disgraceful.”

Over 900 NYC classrooms serving the city’s youngest children have deteriorating lead paint, new data show

2019-08-01T01:01:36+00:00

More than 900 New York City elementary school classrooms have tested positive for lead after inspections revealed the presence of peeling, chipped, or otherwise deteriorating lead paint, according to new data released Wednesday night by the education department.

The troubling results mark the first time the department has ever released statistics on lead paint in classrooms and were discovered during inspections of 5,408 classrooms in aging buildings in the wake of a WNYC investigation that found evidence of dangerous lead levels in four schools. The city pledged to make the classrooms safe before the school year begins this September and announced several changes to improve testing.

In all, the education department searched for lead paint in 797 school buildings built before 1985 that serve students under the age of six in pre-K and kindergarten. Officials found deteriorating lead paint in 302 of them — or nearly 38%.

In a separate battery of tests, the city released a new round of inspection reports for water faucets in schools, which revealed that 80% of roughly 500 examined buildings contained at least one faucet with elevated lead. Officials said problems with nearly all of those faucets have already been addressed.

“Our schools are safe, and this summer we’ve enhanced our protocols and strengthened communication with families around the steps we take to prevent lead exposure for kids under six,” said Miranda Barbot, spokeswoman for the education department, in a statement.

It’s unclear how the 938 classrooms that need remediation compare to past annual inspections. While custodians are supposed to flag peeling or chipped paint in these classrooms, the results have never before been publicly released or catalogued in a database. The city has not yet fulfilled a Chalkbeat open records request filed last month for inspection reports from the past five years.

Brooklyn posted the highest number of school buildings testing positive for lead paint, with 114 buildings, followed by 90 in the Bronx; 48 in Queens; 29 in Manhattan; and 21 in Staten Island. Two school buildings — P.S. 108 in Brooklyn and P.S. 49 in the Bronx — each had a dozen classrooms test positive for lead paint, the highest figure for a single school building.

Exposure to lead can have devastating consequences for children who may eat paint chips or inhale tainted dust. Lead can interfere with brain development, cause aggressiveness or inattentiveness, and impede academic achievement. But simple interventions, like making sure children have access to nutritious food, can help treat the effects and even improve school performance.

Officials have vowed to formally log inspections three times a year, record the results in a centralized database, and create an online tool for logging complaints. In addition to testing pre-K and kindergarten classrooms, starting this coming school year, custodians will begin checking first grade classrooms for lead-based paint. A spokesperson for the United Federation of Teachers called it a “good change” and said the union will monitor results.

The database is a “really great start” at making information available to families, said Dr. Morri Markowitz, director of the Lead Poisoning Treatment and Prevention Program at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx. But he raised concerns about how robust the training will be for custodians — will they move all the furniture away and look behind radiators, for example? In general, he said the city’s testing methods don’t fully remove the risk of lead exposure.

“To me, the first survey that should be done in all those classrooms is not a visual inspection — it should be, is there any lead paint on any of the surfaces? Markowitz said. “On the doors, the walls, the baseboard, and the ceilings. Anywhere in that room.”

XRF testing, which uses X-Ray technology to locate lead underneath layers of paint, should be done across all school buildings even without chipping paint, said Reuven Frankel, a private attorney who regularly represents clients in lead exposure cases. It’s a method the city is using to detect lead in 135,000 NYCHA units, and officials said Wednesday they have been assessing that option for classrooms that serve children under the age of 6. He likened the city’s plan to “playing Russian Roulette” with children because the city isn’t eradicating the risk before it could be ingested.

The city’s Department of Health, which also bears some responsibility for monitoring lead exposure in children, deferred questions about the data to the education department. But spokesman Patrick Gallahue said the department’s “protective protocols help to ensure that schools remain safe.” The Environmental Protection Agency says that lead paint that remains intact and undisturbed “is usually not a problem,” but paint on surfaces that gets a lot of wear and tear, such as banisters or window sills, can be hazardous.

At the least, students in affected classrooms should get blood tests, Markowitz said. While New York health care providers are required to test 1- and 2-year-olds for lead in their blood and assess children annually for risk of lead exposure up to the age of 6, reports have found that children often go untested in New York City and that wouldn’t capture all children in these buildings.

When asked if the education department would be reaching out to families with children exposed to the affected classroom, a department spokesperson appeared to put that burden back on families, pointing to the new online database and emphasizing that remediation work is done year-round.

Mayor Bill de Blasio — who was appearing in his second presidential debate Wednesday when the results were publicly released — has come under withering criticism for failing, like previous administrations, to inspect for lead paint in public housing facilities. This oversight is just one example of mismanagement that recently led to the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee NYCHA, the public housing authority.

The city has previously faced criticism, too, for its handling of lead testing in school water faucets, after news reports revealed the education department was not following standards recommended by experts.

The department changed its methods, and the results of the latest tests were also released Wednesday. Less than 5% of the almost 50,000 evaluated taps had elevated levels. This is the second inspection process since 2016. The education department said in a statement that all but 15 faucets had been remediated, stressing that any sources of drinking or cooking water that are found to be contaminated are immediately taken off line.

If your school has been affected and you want to speak with a reporter, please write to ny.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Samuel Park contributed data analysis for this story.

The city looked at all 797 school buildings built before 1985 that serve students under the age of six in pre-K and kindergarten. Officials found 486 schools with deteriorating paint, 302 of which had at least one classroom where deteriorating lead paint was discovered. In this searchable database, you can find data for every school in which the city found deteriorating paint. This database includes the results for the classrooms in those 486 schools and indicates whether lead paint was found in each classroom. City officials have pledged to remediate any classrooms with lead paint by the start of school in September.

City officials have also released the latest round of lead testing data for water faucets for roughly 500 schools, a fraction of the total that will eventually be tested. In the following database, you can find the results for every school that reported at least one faucet with lead levels above 15 parts per billion, the standard under state law. Officials said they have already remediated all but 15 fixtures with elevated levels.

Pre-K teachers prepare to vote on ‘historic’ pay deal — but some say it leaves them behind

2019-07-31T23:52:00+00:00

On a recent morning in Chinatown, Ivett Merlano led a group of giggling toddlers as they marched and raised their arms rhythmically to a counting song. She would spend the next several hours at CPC Chung Pak daycare monitoring lunch, herding students to play centers, wiping little noses, and leading story time — all of the regular tasks that are part of a preschool teacher’s day.

Except Merlano doesn’t have an advanced degree and isn’t certified, so she makes little more than minimum wage as a teacher’s assistant.

This Thursday, she’ll have the chance as a member of District Council 1707’s Local 205 to vote on a labor agreement that would provide her with a bonus and modest raises over the next three years. But she plans on voting no.

While the proposal could shower significant raises on teachers with master’s degrees and certification, Merlano said it doesn’t do enough for support workers like her and her colleagues who work at community-based preschools that are publicly funded but independently run.

“They’re not doing the right thing for everybody,” Merlano said. “We work hard like the other teachers, and why don’t we have the same salary and pension, vacation, everything?”

City officials and labor leaders were triumphant when they announced the tentative agreement in early July, hailing it as a “pathway to pay parity” that would finally bring the compensation of community-based teachers in line with starting salaries for their counterparts in public schools. That pay gap had pushed union members to the brink of a strike earlier this year.

For about 300 lead teachers, ratification would mean a significant win: they will earn up to $20,000 more over the three-year agreement.

“This is a profound moment,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said when the deal was first proposed.

But another 900 classroom aides and assistant teachers, plus 3,000 support staff, including cooks, janitors, and bookkeepers, will see a far less generous boost.

Under the proposed agreement, those members would receive a one-time bonus of $1,800 and wage increases of 2.75% a year. The union and city have also sweetened the proposal with promised “significant” reductions in healthcare co-pays and a 10% decrease in co-premiums, savings that apply to all members.

The union has touted the proposal as “historic” and making “strides” for members — so much so, it has convinced some centers that previously were not unionized to join DC 1707. Labor leaders have been busy visiting sites across the city and phone banking to drum up support, and have often highlighted the needs of their support staffers when making their case.

“Of course, everyone should be recognized for the work that they do and be respected,” Kim Medina, executive director of DC 1707, said at a recent press conference. “With this, it was not just the teachers, it was everybody that was included.”

The agreement is not a new contract but an extension of the current one, timed to expire at the same time as the labor agreement between the city and the powerhouse United Federation of Teachers, the largest local in the country. DC 1707 would then be well-positioned to benefit from any precedent of bigger gains the UFT negotiates with the city.

“As always, the deal is subject to the union’s ratification process, and each individual will have the ability to be heard,” city spokeswoman Laura Feyer wrote in an email. “We look forward to the vote and to addressing the recruitment and retention issues in this incredibly important sector.”

Even if the extension passes, however, a current of dissatisfaction may remain among some of those charged with making the mayor’s signature education achievement a reality. This week, de Blasio touted the city’s expansion of free pre-K as a centerpiece of his long-shot run for the White House, saying affordable childcare is a needed “redistribution” of wealth benefiting underserved communities.

His focus on equity has come under criticism from some teachers — mostly women of color, a bedrock of the Democratic base — who work in the community-based centers and have earned far less than their public school counterparts, who are mostly white.

“I’m ashamed to say I make exactly the same as high school students who work in fast food,” said Lisa Zhang, who fills two part-time roles, as a classroom aide and clerical worker, at Chung Pak. Though she’s deeply committed to working with young children, at 27, Zhang wants to be able to move out of her mother’s home. She’ll be voting no.

The staffers at Chung Pak represent just one site out of hundreds that belong to the union, but a down vote would not be unprecedented. In 2016, members rejected a contract they said was not generous enough, forcing city leaders to cancel a celebratory press conference.

Assistant teacher Tai Bo Wong wishes the fight for pay parity would extend to all the workers who make a preschool possible and run well. After more than two decades in the classroom, Wong said she still makes just $15.30 an hour and works year-round.

Tai Bo Wong, an assistant teacher at CPC Chung Pak daycare, said she’s voting to reject a union deal because it doesn’t go far enough for support staffers.

Pre-K advocates hope the dramatic raises for certified teachers will stem the churn of teachers who leave community organizations for bigger paychecks in public schools — and also encourage assistant teachers like Wong to earn the credentials needed to lead their own classrooms.

Wong has started to take university courses toward her degree with the help of a union program. But she’s taking just one class a semester, finding it hard to juggle full-time work with night courses and caring for her elderly mother. Wong is planning to vote to reject the proposal.

“I want them to fight for more,” she said. “Everyone thinks it’s a lot of money. It’s nothing.”

Merlano, the assistant teacher who led her toddler class in song, said the union should demand better benefits beyond pay, such as more paid leave for programs like hers that don’t break for the summer, making it hard for her to visit family in Colombia or ever rejuvenate.

“It’s difficult to work with children all day long,” she said. “Sometimes my back hurts a lot. My knee.”

Whether the contract extension passes or not, the education department will be responsible for addressing any rifts among teachers and staffers in community organizations.

Until recently, Programs like Chung Pak were overseen by the Administration for Children’s Services, but that has shifted to the education department. In doing so, the city is aiming to create a seamless system of care and ensure quality across the board, while acknowledging that children begin learning from a very early age.

For educators, though, the switch in oversight has only served to highlight the inequities that many see in how preschool programs in public schools and community centers are funded and how their staff is paid.

Mary Sikarevich, the director of Chung Pak Daycare, said a truly unified system will have to wrestle with wide differences in not only paychecks, but also working hours and benefits like health care costs, compared to public school staffers.

“We do exactly what they do, and yet…” she trailed off. “There’s no parity. None whatsoever.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated when the transfer of early childhood programs to the education department occurred.

As battle for higher pre-K wages continues, NYC pushes back deadline for contracts

2019-06-11T22:35:13+00:00

Organizations that want to bid on New York City contracts to provide pre-K services now have until next month to submit their proposals after the city pushed back the deadline in the face of scrutiny from officials and the early childhood education community.

While the city says the extension is designed to give providers more time to grapple with changes to the contracts, advocates hope city leaders will use the window to negotiate a city budget that addresses providers’ biggest concern: the yawning pay gap between pre-K staff at community-based organizations and those inside public schools.

“It gives a great opportunity to the DOE to really make sure they get things right,” said Gregory Bender, director of children and youth services for United Neighborhood Houses, which represents childcare providers.

The extension from Thursday until July 15 follows criticism of the terms of new requests for proposals issued this year after oversight of the publicly funded birth-to-five programs shifted to the education department. Providers bidding on the new contracts were concerned about changes to how children would be enrolled in centers and how they would be paid for their services.

The city originally released contracts for bidding in March but made changes to them late last month, after backlash from pre-K providers, all five borough presidents, and Comptroller Scott Stringer.

The controversy over the contracts came amid the larger debate about the pay gap between teachers who work in community programs compared with educators in district schools, which can run as high as 60% and led to threats of a strike this spring. About 60% of children enrolled in the city’s free Pre-K for All program — which has become a major talking point during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s presidential run — attend privately run programs.

City Council leadership has vowed not to pass a budget unless it closes the salary gap.

The extra time is “critical” for the programs that want to submit proposals but are contending with the changes, said Jennifer March, executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, in a statement. March urged city leaders to use the extra time to negotiate equal pay among providers at community organizations and public schools.

Providers will receive follow-up calls and emails from the education department about the change, said Isabelle Boundy, a spokesperson for the education department.

Those who have already submitted applications can retract their documents and submit new ones, according to the department.

City Council leaders are demanding higher pre-K wages — and it could lead to a budget showdown

2019-06-07T20:05:47+00:00

New York City Council leaders say they will refuse to approve a city budget this month unless it raises salaries for community-based pre-K providers to match those of teachers at public schools.

It’s a shot in the arm for pay parity among the organizations who provide early childhood education to 60% of pre-schoolers in the program, compared to teachers at public schools. Providers advocating for change often point to starting salaries: new teachers in community organizations make about $42,000, compared with $59,000 in public schools.

While some council members have previously shown support for pre-K providers, the latest comments appear to set up a budget showdown over pay parity. Councilman Mark Treyger, who oversees the council’s education committee, said he and his 19 council colleagues on the budget negotiation team are in “unanimous” agreement, and they want the money added immediately, not phased in over multiple years.

“This is not just about posturing; this is about reality,” said Treyger in an interview with Chalkbeat on Friday. “I mean it when I say — and I don’t take these words lightly — that a number of these programs are on the brink of collapse if we do not resolve this issue once and for all.”

The early childhood education world in New York City has steadily beat the drum for years about equalizing pay between community and school-based providers of pre-K, even before Mayor Bill de Blasio rolled out his lauded universal pre-K program, said Susan Stamler, executive director of United Neighborhood Houses, which represents childcare providers. But the Council’s apparent support, coming as City Council negotiates with the mayor over his multi-billion-dollar budget proposal, could mark a turning point.

“It is new to have salary parity rise up to the level that it did, and it’s the first time that we have ever heard the council leadership talking about needing to have parity in the budget,” Stamler said.

Treyger announced the council’s firm stance during a rally of advocates for pay parity Thursday on steps of the education department. Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who also attended, told reporters that the politicians are “fighting” for equal salaries for all staff members, not just teachers.

But the push will likely be a tough one. In painting a grim picture for the city’s finances, de Blasio forced city agencies to propose cuts to their own budgets over the past several months. The Day Care Council, which represents providers that rely mostly on city funding, estimated it would cost $438 million over the next five years to bring community-based teachers on par with their public-school counterparts. But, as Johnson and Treyger pointed out, that figure does not include salaries for other staff, such as janitors. Treyger argues that the cost could be covered by using millions in income tax revenue, which the city has said still fell below projected numbers.

The pay parity issue has heated up for months as the city plans to shift oversight of the program to the education department and, because of that, has released new contracts for providers to bid on. Those moves have raised concerns among providers about funding, and in particular, how salary disparities would be addressed.

The matter almost led to a one-day strike last month but was cancelled at the 11th hour after the city agreed to begin meeting with union officials who represent thousands of private pre-K teachers. A City Hall official said conversations are ongoing.

And the issue has attracted the attention of other top city leaders, including Comptroller Scott Stringer and all five borough presidents, who have said the city should scrap its plans for taking over childcare programs and start over to address major funding concerns from providers.

The city recently made some significant changes to its contracts including to increase the minimum amount of funding that the operators will receive regardless of their student enrollment.

For the mayor’s part, City Hall officials said early childhood educators “play a critical role” in making Pre-K and 3-K function, but a spokesman did not say whether pay parity is expected to be resolved in the budget.

“We’ve listened to the concerns of community-based organizations and made changes to the early childhood RFPs in response, and we’ll continue to work together with these organizations to recruit, retain, and grow a talented workforce that serves New York City’s children and families,” wrote Will Baskin-Gerwitz, a spokesman for the mayor, in an email.

Some New York City pre-K teachers set to walk off the job in scaled-back strike

2019-04-26T23:06:44+00:00

Thousands of pre-K teachers in New York City are set to strike on Thursday, but the union representing educators who work in community-run centers stopped short of calling for all of its 7,500 members to walk off the job.

Teachers are expected to rally on Thursday at noon on the steps of City Hall. But the decision to dial back the size of the action raises questions about how many teachers will join and could soften the impact of the union’s action.

Driving the work stoppage is a demand for higher pay. The teachers represented by District Council 1707 work in community-run centers and earn up to 60 percent less than their peers in public school classrooms.

Whatever the size, a strike threatens to tarnish Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature educational achievement — free, universal pre-K for all of the city’s 4-year-olds — just as he weighs a bid for the White House. While the teachers aren’t city employees, the city holds the purse strings for their pay. That’s because the centers they work in, mostly nonprofits, are largely funded through city contracts.

The pay divide is especially glaring because teachers in community-run centers are often women of color, while the majority of teachers in public schools are white. Ultimately, teachers are required to earn the same credentials regardless of the setting they work in.

“My members understand that this administration only gives lip service to women of color,” union leader Kim Medina said at a recent rally on the steps of City Hall.

Medina had said she hoped to work out the union’s differences with the city to avert a work stoppage. De Blasio suggested a day ago there was “real dialogue happening” and said there was “a good chance” of coming to an agreement.

But on Friday, the union tweeted that its members would strike — if only some of them.

The problem: Some members are covered by a labor agreement that prohibits a work stoppage. That agreement covers most members of Local 205.

The local’s bargaining agreement runs through 2020, but teachers are hoping for a raise now because the city is in the midst of “re-bidding” its early childhood education contracts — and because the mayor and council are currently negotiating next year’s budget. Advocates say it’s the perfect moment to build in extra funding for pay parity.

A union spokesman said DC 1707 had hoped that the Day Care Council of New York would reopen its labor agreement to renegotiate pay. Reopening the contract, the union believes, would afford their members protection from being penalized for walking out.

But the Day Care Council, which represents the boards of nonprofit providers, refused.

“We cannot enable disruption of essential child care services for families and their providers,” Nilesh Patel, an attorney for the council, wrote in an email.

The contract governing Local 95, whose members work in centers funded mostly through federal Head Start dollars, is expired. Those members — who number about 3,000, according to the union — are being encouraged to walk off the job.

A partial strike is surprising, given that members of both locals voted last month to approve a work stoppage. Still, it’s possible many teachers governed by the no-strike clause will leave their classrooms anyways. Many have tacit backing from their employers, who say the salary gap makes it hard to hold onto teachers who could make tens of thousands of dollars more working in city classrooms.

“They’re not necessarily taking a position on the action because it’s an action that’s coming from the workers,” said Gregory Brender, co-director of policy and advocacy at United Neighborhood Houses, which represents childcare providers. “But the goal of salary parity is something that they strongly” support.

Alan van Capelle, head of the nonprofit Educational Alliance, which enrolls hundreds of students in its preschools, recently told Chalkbeat that he plans on paying his teachers for the day they’ll miss while demonstrating.

“I absolutely support the right of our teachers to go out on strike to achieve what I truly believe is rightly theirs,” van Capelle said. “I’m sick and tired of our agency and our talented staff doing the work, and not getting adequately compensated.”

Even non-unionized teachers are planning to join the action.

Alice Mulligan, who runs a pre-K center in Brooklyn where teachers aren’t unionized, has launched a grassroots effort to organize schools like hers. She recently told Chalkbeat that she is encouraging her staff to walk out, and she expects other operators to do the same.

“I really feel like this is our chance,” she said. “This is our moment now, and I think it’s going to require a full, focused effort. And we’re up for the fight.”

This New York City charter network is taking its lessons to toddlers

2019-03-08T20:59:26+00:00

Preschool is already too late, if you ask Ian Rowe.

The head of Public Prep charter schools in New York City believes that, when it comes to setting students up for academic success, the key is starting earlier. Much, much earlier.

That’s why the network has teamed up with a pair of nonprofits to start getting children ready for school when they’re just toddlers — a full two years before even enrolling in pre-K. The unique partnership sends trained mentors to meet with families in their own homes, helping moms and dads guide their child’s earliest learning experiences.

“We found ourselves having to play catch up in kindergarten, and that was always a challenge,” Rowe said. “If we could get to our kids earlier, then obviously we would have a headstart and get better outcomes.”

Public Prep has five single-gender campuses in the South Bronx and on the Lower East Side, serving mostly children who come from low-income families. Poverty can have profound effects on students, setting them back academically and making them less likely to start kindergarten with the early math and literacy skills they need to succeed in school.

Rowe felt his network needed to start tackling those opportunity gaps before they have a chance to open. So Public Prep turned to the nonprofits Parent-Child Home Program and Rising Ground to work with prospective students and families at their own kitchen tables and on living room floors.

These aren’t the types of parent conference visits that teachers may arrange in students’ homes. Rather, they are part of a range of home visiting programs that rely on trained professionals to establish long-term bonds with families. Done well, research has shown they may eventually boost high school graduation rates, raise test scores, and teach students to more effectively regulate their emotions in the classroom.

“Home visiting, it’s the ‘pre’ preschool,” said Karen Howard, vice president of early childhood policy at the D.C. advocacy organization First Focus. “Just with preschool, it’s not enough. When they fall behind, they’re really behind.”

Public Prep’s program works with the younger brothers and sisters of current students, starting when they are 18 months old. Since siblings receive an admissions priority at charter schools, the hope is that the little ones will eventually enroll in Public Prep — and that, if they do, they’ll be better prepared to learn from the first day of classes.

Ysmeiris Novas couldn’t find a preschool near her Bronx apartment for her youngest daughter, Hadasa Florian. When she found a flier for the home visiting program in her older son’s backpack, Novas called right away to join. She didn’t hesitate to let a stranger in her home since she already trusted Public Prep schools: Her two older sons are enrolled in the network.

On a recent visit, little Hadasa scanned a pile of wooden blocks on the kitchen table, picking out the pieces she needed to build a horse. Novas nudged her four-year-old to name the different colors she saw and recalled the time mother and daughter saw a real horse at the zoo.

During this playtime session, Hadasa learned to follow instructions and a few new words — such as “screwdriver,” which she needed to connect block pieces. But Novas picked up some skills, too: putting into practice what she has learned from a home visitor who helped guide their interactions. Nova said she is already seeing results for her daughter.

“I’ve noticed that she likes to learn, and it’s because she’s seeing through the program how she’s learning,” Novas said. “If not for this, she wouldn’t know so much.”

The interactions are timed to meet toddler attention spans: They take place for half an hour, two times a week. Visitors bring age-appropriate books and toys for the families to keep, using the materials to model the kinds of interactions that form the foundations of both academic and social learning.

That could mean asking open-ended questions about what might happen next in a story, elaborating on answers rather than just saying “no” to a child’s request, and offering comforting physical contact. The home visitor is also there to explain what’s developmentally-appropriate to expect from a child’s behavior or when meting out discipline.

In homes where parents face economic challenges, or are isolated without much support, such moments can get pushed aside.

“We really focus on the quality and quantity of parent-child interaction,” said Sarah Walzer, the head of PCHP. “If we do that piece, what emerges at the end of the program is a child who has the social-emotional and language skills to walk into a classroom.”

Ultimately, PCHP wants parents to have positive experiences that will turn them into advocates for their child’s education.

“They’ve very successfully been their child’s first teacher, and now they are a critical support as their child moves through school,” Walzer said.

The partnership is one of just a few across the country that link schools with home visiting programs. PCHP works with some districts on Long Island that pay for home visits using federal money dedicated to serving low-income students. And in Massachusetts, money is funneled to school districts and home visitors are considered district employees.

Still, teaming up in this way is rare. Walzer offered some theories for why: Upfront costs are steep, and the runway for returns is so long that results may not roll in until after a school superintendent is long gone.

Public Prep, however, thinks the investment is worth it. The network raises private money to pay for its program, which costs up to $5,000 annually per child. Though the price is significant, Rowe hopes the payoff will be, too.

While PCHP has not yet obtained the federal government’s highest stamp of approval for effectiveness, a host of studies have shown that students in the program have stronger social skills and higher test scores. Other research has found that children who participated in the PCHP model were significantly less likely to be referred for special education services — potentially yielding savings of $200,000 per student.

“It sounds expensive but if done properly, we’re saving a huge amount down the road,” Rowe said.

New York City officials aim to eliminate childhood lead exposure by 2029

2019-01-28T21:33:25+00:00

Following criticism of the city’s handling of lead in public housing, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday a series of efforts designed to stamp out childhood lead exposure by 2029.

The LeadFreeNYC plan, which would cost $50 million in city money over the next four years, includes mandating more lead inspections in private housing and connecting exposed children with a nurse who will coordinate follow-up care.

The move comes after reports of children living in public housing being exposed to toxic lead, opening up the city to scrutiny from federal housing officials.

“This whole public debate caused us to go back and look at everything: private housing, public housing, shelters, products that people buy — everything,” de Blasio said during a press conference on Monday.

De Blasio’s plan does not, though, include any specific education-related steps for children dealing with the lasting effects of lead exposure in school.

Parts of the program still require City Council approval. The proposal would require annual lead inspections of apartments in one- and two-family homes and test all 135,000 NYCHA apartments where there could still be traces of lead. The plan would also provide dedicated nurses to children with elevated blood levels to connect them with support services such as nutritional counselors.

The full proposal can be found here.

Lead exposure is often the result of children ingesting lead-based paint chips or dust, which is why infants and toddlers who crawl and play on the ground are the most vulnerable.

Under state law, New York doctors are required to test all 1- and 2-year-olds for lead exposure. But the required tests often fall through the cracks — statewide, a Reuters investigation found only 55 percent of children were actually tested in 2016.

The statistics in New York City are better, according to city estimates, with 80 percent of New York City children tested at least once by age 3. Part of de Blasio’s proposal, which is already underway, involves health officials cross-referencing birth records and blood test results, and encouraging the families whose children still need testing to see a doctor.

Research backs up the city’s proposal to assign patients a nurse, since follow-up care, including monitoring patients’ nutrition, can help reduce children’s lead levels.

Studies have also widely found that children can suffer from developmental delays for years after lead exposure. But beyond connecting children to follow-up nurses, the plan doesn’t address what the city or the education department can do to support lead-exposed students, except that schools will be able to access an improved vaccination registry that will show a child’s history with lead testing.

New York City attorney Reuven Frankel, who has represented tenants in lead-related cases, said the proposal doesn’t address the education of children who are suffering from developmental delays related to lead exposure because, in his experience, they need comprehensive exams to nail down their academic needs beyond a traditional assessment for special education.

“The reality is that there are thousands of kids who have already been poisoned, and there is nothing being done to help them,” Frankel said.

In the report published Monday, the city says it will expand resources for enforcement, “proactively audit” lead records that landlords are required to keep, and create a database of the 200 buildings that pose the top lead exposure risk. Some housing and environment advocates applauded the plan, while others remained skeptical that the city would set up enforcement.

“Uncontrolled, lead-laden, construction dust has been a problem for too long,” said Brandon Kielbasa, director of organizing for Cooper Square Committee, a group that, in part, advocates for environmentally healthy affordable housing and liked the administration’s plan. “Overall, enforcement is key for combating dust contamination and all lead issues.”

New York City gets a gold medal for pre-K quality and access, new report finds

2019-01-23T06:30:59+00:00

New York City’s pre-K program earns high marks when it comes to quality and access, according to a new report that ranks early childhood education in major cities across the country.

That’s according to CityHealth, a policy advocacy group, and the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, an authority on pre-K research.

The city is one of only five that were awarded CityHealth’s highest ranking — a gold medal — for meeting at least eight of 10 benchmarks for effectiveness and having high student enrollment. The report evaluated pre-K programs in the country’s 40 largest cities.

“I think New York City should be very proud of their program, and it really is a model for other cities,” said Ellen Frede, senior co-director of the institute and co-author of the report.

New York fell short on two measures: teacher training and education requirements for classroom assistants.

The knock on teacher training is surprising, given that the city often touts its dedication to professional development as one of the major factors contributing to program quality.

Also surprising: The report gives New York City credit for pay equity, which measures whether pre-K teachers are paid similarly to their K-12 colleagues. Only in city-run classrooms do early childhood educators earn the same as teachers who work with older students. But most pre-K students attend community-based programs, where teachers can earn as little as 60 percent of the salary paid to those who work for the city.

“It’s equity to some extent. There is work to be done there in New York City,” said Albert Wat, senior policy director for Alliance for Early Success, who peer-reviewed the report.

Still, New York City is far ahead of many other cities such as Indianapolis, where enrollment is low and programs show few of the marks of high quality. Education department spokeswoman Isabelle Boundy called the city’s early education efforts a “game-changer.” Since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office, the city has made free pre-K available to all 4-year-olds and has begun to expand the program to 3-year-olds.

“As New York City continues to increase access to free, full-day, high-quality early education, our programs are on par with gold-standard programs across the nation,” she wrote in an email.

The rankings are awarded by CityHealth, a non-profit funded by the de Beaumont Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, which notes the long-term health benefits afforded by pre-K. In New York City, a 2017 study showed improved health outcomes for low-income children after the launch of universal pre-K. Other studies, however, have shown mixed results.

You can read the full report here.

Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect that Ellen Frede was a co-author of the report.

Even after a court victory, few charter schools are expected to join New York City’s pre-K push

2019-01-15T20:54:34+00:00

When visitors come to The Renaissance Charter School in Queens, Principal Stacey Gauthier often insists they stop by the pre-K classroom.

Gauthier raves about the nurturing teacher. She marvels at the progress that students make in recognizing letters and numbers, and swears by the ease with which they transition to kindergarten.

Her program stands out for another reason: It’s in a charter school.

“This is really, truly a labor of love and a strong philosophical belief that pre-K is a wonderful thing,” Gauthier said.

Few charter schools have joined New York City’s efforts to make pre-K available to all of the city’s 4-year-olds. A recent legal victory for Success Academy, the city’s largest charter network, seemed poised to change that. In November, the state’s highest court ruled that charter schools should have more freedom to run their pre-K programs without the city dictating curriculum or other requirements — a significant ideological win for the charter sector.

But the decision is unlikely to open the floodgates for New York City charter schools looking to start pre-K programs. Advocates say the lawsuit didn’t resolve more significant barriers that hold charter schools back, including a crunch for funding and space and, this year at least, a tight turnaround for getting programs running.

“Until we settle these larger financial issues, you’ll continue to see limited participation from charter schools,” said James Merriman, chief of the New York City Charter School Center. “It’s going to be very, very hard for them.”

Success took the city to court over a 241-page contract that the city requires to receive funding for pre-K. The document regulates everything from curriculum to field trips, and Success argued that was an overreach of the city’s authority.

The disagreement struck at one of the core philosophies of charter schools: that they should be free from the bureaucracies of school districts. In a press release touting the court decision, Success said their victory meant the city education department “cannot micromanage charter school pre-K programs.”

Soon, the city is expected to release a new request for proposals for charter schools interested in starting or expanding pre-K programs. Operators will have the chance to bid for those contracts — the first test of whether Success’s legal victory will help change the landscape of pre-K providers.

Observers don’t expect a sea change, however, citing familiar issues in the charter world that are left unresolved by the court battle: per-student funding, and finding space for classrooms.

“Unfortunately, the decision a lot of schools make is it’s too onerous to try to make happen,” said Ian Rowe, the chief executive officer of Public Prep, one of the dozen or so charters that offers pre-K.

While the city is required to provide charter schools with space in public buildings or help pay their rent, that rule doesn’t apply for pre-K. When Public Prep charter decided to launch its pre-K, Rowe said the school had to carve out space in their existing buildings. Public Prep serves about 80 pre-K students at its Bronx campuses, and hopes to start serving students at its Lower East Side location next year.

As it stands now, Rowe said he relies on private dollars to supplement Public Prep’s early childhood efforts, which he called “not sustainable.”

In kindergarten, charter operators can rely on receiving about $15,000 per student — but in pre-K, the figure falls closer to $10,000, according to the New York City Charter School Center. Meanwhile, class size and staffing requirements for pre-K means more money needs to be spent on salaries.

“For an age when one could argue you have the greatest opportunity for influencing student behavior and attitudes, you get the least amount of money,” Rowe said.

Another factor contributing to the budget squeeze: Under state law, pre-K is not considered a grade like kindergarten is, so schools don’t receive the same type of supports for children who come from poor families, have special needs, or may be learning English as a new language, said Gauthier, the Renaissance principal.

Education department spokesman Doug Cohen said funding for pre-K is determined “based on a detailed analysis around specific needs and operational expenses of each program.”

The education department “works with all our pre-K providers to ensure they have appropriate funding,” Cohen wrote in an email.

This year timing is also a factor. Though Success fought its pre-K battle for years, the network won’t be starting a program soon, saying there simply isn’t enough of a runway to get a program up and running for 2019-2020.

“Hundreds of New York City children missed out on pre-K education at Success Academy over the past three years because of this legal battle,” the network said in a press release. “However, it’s a victory for younger children and their families.”

Families are already researching their pre-K options, and applications are due in March. Yet the city hasn’t released its request for proposals for charter schools interested in pre-K, and it’s unclear when operators would get word that their program has been approved — creating a time crunch when it comes to recruiting families and hiring teachers.

Rowe said he is still determined to expand Public Prep’s pre-K classes, and hopes to apply as soon as the opportunity is available, unlike many other operators.

“I think most charters have given up,” this year, he said.

Cohen, the education department spokesman, said the city is “currently in the process” of drafting a new contract for funding for pre-Ks in charter schools and that officials are “continuing to analyze” the impact of the court decision. As for charters already operating pre-Ks, the city will “issue more guidance in the coming weeks” about what the court decision means for them, Cohen wrote.

With charter operators facing headwinds in the the state legislature, concerns about pre-K might get pushed to a back burner. Recent midterm elections ushered a new Democratic majority into office, and with it, a bleak future for the expansion of charter schools in New York. Advocates are likely to focus their efforts pushing for an increase in the cap on how many charter schools can operate in New York — just seven charters are left.

“People are worrying about those things,” Gauthier said. “I’m not sure if people are going to be jumping on the pre-K wagon.”

Amid questions over new transit program, de Blasio downplays challenges of rolling out universal pre-K

2019-01-04T20:53:55+00:00

When Mayor Bill de Blasio launched universal pre-K in 2014, he said it had “taken the dedication of an untold number” of supporters and that his administration had “pushed so hard” to make it happen.

But on Friday, he appeared to downplay his signature education achievement as he faced questions about why the rollout of a new low-income transit program, called Fair Fares, went over its Jan. 1 launch date and won’t be immediately accessible to every low-income New Yorker.

“When we came in, there were about 20,000 kids in full-day pre-K,” de Blasio said when a reporter asked him how his administration was able to roll out the “massive” universal pre-K program in under a year.

“Over a two-year timeline we got it up to 70,000, but it was based on an existing application and the parameters were already known,” he said.

His comments raised eyebrows as observers noted how massive a lift universal pre-K required.

Fair Fares, de Blasio said, is a brand-new program and important details had to be hammered out — like determining the parameters and rooting out potential fraud by making sure the program reaches those who are eligible.

“There were a lot of things we had to put into place that were from scratch that just weren’t true with a program like Pre-K,” de Blasio said.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson added that Fair Fares could potentially reach 800,000 people — far greater than the 70,000 children who are enrolled in universal pre-K.

De Blasio’s downplaying of the pre-K rollout stands in stark contrast with his past language. When de Blasio’s administration officially expanded pre-K, officials described the move as monumental — “the largest and most ambitious expansion of pre-K of any city in the nation’s history.”

Within nine months of expansion efforts launching, about 31,500 four-year-olds were registered for pre-K programs — a little more than the number of New Yorkers who will have first access to half-priced Metro cards under Fair Fares after six months of work.

Also in that nine-month timeframe, 1,655 public schools and community-based early childhood centers were ready to provide pre-K programs with 1,000 new pre-K lead teachers, according to the city’s announcement in 2014. Fire, health, buildings, and education officials conducted inspections and site visits to 6,000 pre-K centers the summer before the September 2014 launch.

The de Blasio administration is continuing to expand pre-school for three-year-olds and plans to offer it through a dozen districts by 2020.

With lead exposure rampant in NYC public housing, a new focus on lead’s impact on education

2018-11-27T16:37:11+00:00

The recent revelation that New York City has allowed children living in public housing to be exposed to toxic lead could have pronounced consequences for the schools those children attend.

The dangers posed by lead poisoning, which include behavioral problems and impaired brain development, are grave and long-lasting. But studies show these effects can be mitigated with swift, early treatment. Here’s what we know about the impact of lead poisoning on student learning — and about what the city’s education department says it is doing in response to the current crisis.

‘No safe level’

Lead exposure at home can typically be traced to paint, which was manufactured with lead until the 1970s. Children are exposed to it if they eat paint chips or inhale dust from those chips.

It also exists in water that flows through lead pipes and in soil, which young children can unintentionally eat, according to the American Pediatric Association.

There is no “safe” level of lead — any exposure can have negative effects on the body.

“Once it’s in the body, it’s very hard to get rid of it,” said Morri E. Markowitz, director of the Lead Poisoning Treatment and Prevention Program at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx.

The effects are multipronged. Physically, anyone exposed to a high amount of lead may feel abdominal pain and constipation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hyperactivity is another symptom, tough to immediately notice in young children since it’s common for them to run around, Markowitz said.

Those exposed to high levels of lead may also feel mental and psychological changes: depression, irritation and a sense of distractedness.

Depending on the severity and length of lead exposure in a child, it can result in “quite debilitating” neuropsychological effects, according to Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital in Maryland. That includes poor performance in school and problems in developing social relationships.

Lead exposure has also been linked to misbehavior in school.

The effects of lead exposure can be minimized if a child has a nutritional diet because their bodies will absorb less lead if they’re eating other essential metals that humans need, like calcium and iron, Markowitz said.

That’s one reason why lead exposure is more likely to affect children in poorer families — lack of access to adequate or healthy food.

And poorer families can face greater obstacles avoiding led at the source, either because of a financial barrier or if the problem exists in subsidized housing.

Treatment is possible — if caught early

Lead poisoning was once thought entirely irreversible. But depending on the level of lead in a child’s blood, treatments do exist but vary, Markowitz said.

The first plan of attack is to get rid of the source so that the child is no longer ingesting lead. But this is a challenge for families who rely on public housing, where it’s beyond residents’ control to make such maintenance changes.

Another option is to reverse behavior -— stop the child from eating paint chips, for example, he said.

Children who test positive for a high amount of lead in their blood can also receive chelation therapy, Markowitz said. This medicine, taken orally, binds with the lead and leaves the body through urine.

But this medication is recommended for children who have blood-lead levels of 45 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood or higher. A child’s blood-lead level is considered unsafe if it’s 5 mcg/dL or above, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Research has found that taking the extra step to curb children’s lead exposure even after it has happened — and monitoring their behavior and health — can actually help boost test scores.

A study published this year focused on a group of children with high lead exposure from Charlotte, North Carolina in the 1990s. They received coordinated interventions designed to reduce lead exposure, encourage healthy habits, and provide information on nutrition, among other treatments.

For elementary and middle-school students, test scores went up moderately and they were suspended for fewer days when compared to children who didn’t get this help. The students who got treatment were also less likely to be cited for committing a crime in school. Such efforts are costly but they help avoid the need to address lead’s effects later on, which can be even more expensive.

More testing and education needed

Because of increasing evidence on lead’s negative impact on children’s development, many states have made it a priority to attempt catching lead exposure early — in part because blood tests, the easiest way to determine lead poisoning at present, typically only work for a few years after exposure.

“By the time you’re at school, the lead in the blood is gone — it’s gone elsewhere,” Markowitz said. Lead doesn’t sit “around in the blood for five years,” he said, but migrates to the bones or the brain, where lead can remain for two to three years, continuing to do damage.

That’s why — like many states — New York requires doctors to test young children for lead exposure, Markowitz said.

New York health care providers are required to test 1- and 2-year-olds for lead in their blood. They’re also supposed to assess children no less than annually for risk of lead exposure up to the age of 6 and to decide whether they need a lead blood test.

Despite these rules, reports have found that millions of children go without getting tested. In New York State, just 55 percent of children who were supposed to undergo testing actually got it, according to a Reuters investigation in 2016 — and those who are most at risk may be the least likely to get tested, owing to inadequate access to health care or lack of knowledge about lead dangers.

Other reasons might include children missing appointments, parents not following up on test referrals from doctors, or some doctors not ordering the tests — for instance if they’re unaware of the mandates.

One clear solution could be spreading more education and awareness to parents about the importance of catching lead exposure early. To date, the Department of Education has largely focused on the risk of lead in schools, sending letters to families about detailed lead test results within its buildings.

But students are most likely to be exposed to lead outside of school — even as children are bringing the impact of that exposure to classrooms, where it has the potential to undo schools’ best efforts to boost academic success. Schools thus have an invested interest in battling the perils of lead.

The city’s education department shared with Chalkbeat a letter parents have access to, with subsections that tell parents about lead’s health effects, where it can be found, and whether a child should be tested.

But given recent revelations about widespread exposure to lead in public housing, affecting some of the city’s most vulnerable populations of students, schools may need to join the battle to combat the severe danger that lead poses to students’ social and emotional health and academic prospects.

Department officials did not respond to a follow-up question: whether students are explicitly taught in class about the dangers of lead exposure outside of school.

But similar to other research, Markowitz and his colleagues conducted their own study and found that regular intervention, including improving nutrition and reversing behaviors that reduce lead exposure, can over time reverse lead’s effects on children’s cognitive functions.

“There is the possibility that the brain can get better,” Markowitz said.

How social studies can help young students make sense of the world

2018-07-12T04:01:04+00:00

This story about social studies instruction is part of a series about innovative practices in the core subjects in the early grades. It was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — One of the longtime goals of public education is to produce young people capable of participating in the democratic process. Experts say that requires regular and high-quality social studies lessons, starting in kindergarten, to teach kids to be critical thinkers and communicators who know how to take meaningful action.

Yet, as teachers scramble to meet math and reading standards, social studies lessons have been pushed far back on the list of academic priorities, especially in the early grades.

“Without social studies, we lose the civic mission of public schools,” said Stephanie Serriere, a former early-grade teacher who is now an associate professor of social studies education at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus. “Ultimately, we can’t prepare children for living in a rich, diverse democracy if we don’t expose them to the controversial topics inherent in our democracy.”

Time spent teaching social studies has declined in the last two decades, particularly since the 2001 passage of No Child Left Behind, which favored a focus on math, reading, and accountability as a way of addressing the country’s growing achievement gap between rich and poor children. Social studies in the early grades was especially affected by that legislation: kindergarten through second grade became reading, writing, and math crunch time in preparation for the testing that begins in third grade.

“Social studies is like the lima beans on the curricular plate of the elementary student’s day,” said Paul Fitchett, associate professor and director of curriculum and instruction for the doctoral program in education at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “Research shows that teachers coming from elementary ed programs feel the least competent in teaching social studies, compared to math, English language arts and even the sciences.”

Because social studies isn’t an academic priority in many states, teachers often receive inadequate training from teacher-prep programs on how to teach the subject; once they begin teaching in the classroom, according to the National Council for the Social Studies, teachers need continued professional development to allow them to master the skills of effective social studies instructions. Often, educators say, that training is lacking.

Because social studies teaching continues to be given short shrift, educators sometimes seek instructional help in the form of sessions organized outside of school.

On a rainy Saturday morning this spring, 40 teachers and school administrators sat on folding chairs in the basement of a Brooklyn school for an all-day workshop on how to talk about race in the classroom. Organized by Border Crossers, a nonprofit group that trains teachers, administrators and parents how to explore race and racism, the event was led by trainers Ana Duque and Ben Howort, both former teachers.

“I do this work because, as a former kindergarten through third-grade teacher, and as a parent, I learned that when children have the language to explain race and racism, good things can happen,” Duque told the group. “There’s something about race that’s so fundamentally uncomfortable in our culture.”

The workshop began with a discussion of racism from both historical and current perspectives, how it shows up in schools and classrooms today, why and how students of color were first denied equal educational opportunities, and how students of color continue to reap unequal opportunity from public education in the U.S. After lunch, participants split up into small groups and practiced applying the day’s lessons to various fictional classroom scenarios.

“Racism cannot be solved in a six-hour workshop,” Howort told the group. “But hopefully you’ll leave with a lot more questions, a sense of urgency to catapult yourself into new knowledge.”

When it comes to dealing with sensitive issues like race, class, equity, and gender, Duque, who teaches elementary school social studies curriculum development at Hunter College School of Education, said she wants her student-teachers to understand that social studies is not a skill to be practiced but rather an opportunity for inquiry and exploration.

“If you, as the teacher, come into the classroom trusting that children have knowledge about the world already, then they can build an understanding of the world with you, the teacher, to guide them,” she said.

When social studies aren’t part of the early-grade curriculum, she noted, the impact lasts through generations. “I’m finding that children don’t fully understand what’s happening in the world; they’re not given the time or space to process what’s happening because a) no one’s talking about it, and b) no one’s helping them connect what’s happening today to the systems and patterns of the past,” said Duque. “So now I’m seeing student teachers, products of No Child Left Behind, who never experienced rigorous social studies in their schooling either, so they don’t even know how to teach it. When I ask them to take part in inquiry, research or exploration, they don’t know how to do that.”

Experts recommend that, starting in preschool, students receive daily social studies lessons in order to fully develop the skills needed to become engaged citizens who are ready for college and careers. Common Core standards, however, tucked social studies into English Language Arts, relegating it to side-subject status rather than a discipline unto itself. That makes it even harder for teachers in the early grades as they work to meet Common Core standards while getting students test-ready for third grade.

“In kindergarten through second grade, teachers are focused on getting kids to read. Sometimes they’re using social studies as a reader — the word is integration, they’re integrating social studies into reading and language arts — and we’ve seen that done very poorly,” said Serriere, adding that there are some notable exceptions. “Most states either don’t test social studies, or the social studies test doesn’t really count toward adequate yearly progress.”

In an effort to bring social studies back and make it more coherent and challenging, the National Council for Social Studies in 2013 published the C3 Framework, an inquiry-based guide for states to use as a supplement to the Common Core standards. The C3 framework — the three Cs refer to college, career, and civic life — includes curriculums in civics, economics, geography, and history. Serriere said C3 is being used across the country. Critics say the framework waters down meaningful social studies instruction and fails to adequately inspire students to civic action.

Back at the Border Crossers training, Erica Davis, a workshop participant and assistant principal at a small New York City public elementary school, said she signed up for the workshop because it felt like important work. “But I’m positive that if we did this in my school, there would be blocks,” said Davis, who noted that discussions at her school about race and gender quickly become stiff and closed. And yet, she added, when conversations about race and other sensitive topics aren’t part of everyday classroom teaching, children aren’t prepared to handle difficult subjects.

“We don’t have these conversations in our schools. We don’t make it comfortable. For example, we freak out when kids use the N word but we don’t support them to have further conversations about it,” said Davis. “So anyone who’s moved through the American school system just isn’t equipped to handle these issues.”

As teachers and administrators progressed through the day’s work, the two trainers repeated a mantra: “How often are we willing to misstep, to misspeak?” Howort asked the group. “When having conversations about race, you’re going to step in it — it’s just going to happen. It’s a continuous learning process.”

Indeed, as teachers discussed sensitive subjects like the complex power dynamics within schools and classrooms or white teachers teaching students of color, for instance, tempers flared at several points in the day as participants struggled to find the right words to talk about these issues.

Social studies, said Serriere, is the place to incorporate sensitive conversations in the early grades. “If we listen to children and pay attention to what they’re bringing into the classroom, we realize it’s full of issues about race, class, gender, money — all those things,” she said. “So if we have an emergent curriculum in which we’re asking, ‘What’s on your mind? What isn’t fair? What bothers you? What could be improved in society?’ It might start very small, but I am confident, based on my experience in elementary classrooms, that all these issues are present in even the most homogeneous classrooms.”

Folding in difficult conversations about sensitive issues in the early grades is crucial preparation for delving more deeply into various social studies disciplines in the later grades. History, for example, with its accounts of wars, slavery, intrigue, and fierce battles for rights is full of social and ethical issues including religion, race relations, gender roles, cultural differences, and the merits of different political and economic systems.

As early as kindergarten, when children are at an age at which they like talking about themselves, students may begin discussing identity. “Any opportunity you can give them to talk about themselves [you should use], but in the context of some kind of social identity where you define it, give them some language,” said Duque. “Then they get an awareness of who they are within the context of other people.”

First- and second-graders are ready to discuss stereotypes, the ways in which people categorize each other, and they are also able to think about re-categorizing people based on a variety of criteria. “The world categorizes people based on race, and if we never challenge or address it, then kids assume that’s the right way to engage with the world,” said Duque. “Personally, I think all these issues should be part of early-grade curriculums. And it’s important that there is also an active, purposeful relationship with families so they are involved in the conversations.”

At the workshop, Howort wrapped up the day with a bit of advice: Once a teacher decides to take on sensitive issues in the classroom, it’s crucial to have a support system. “You’ve got to have allies as teachers, so when you mess up, you have someone you can discuss it with. Set up your system so you don’t burn out,” Howort told the group.

Social studies remains a low priority in many school districts and will likely remain so until districts or states mandate daily or weekly social studies instructional time, similar to English and math instructional time requirements, said Fitchett of the University of North Carolina. That may be a tough sell, he acknowledged.

“Social studies can tend to be a political hot potato,” he said. “It can ruffle a lot of feathers in terms of how it’s being used. But who doesn’t want children to be part of the democratic process? Who doesn’t want young people to be critical consumers of the world around them? Maybe I’m too optimistic here, but I think that — across parties — most people want that.”

How to help struggling young readers

2018-07-10T04:01:17+00:00

This story about early reading instruction is part of a series about innovative practices in the core subjects in the early grades. It was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

BRONX, N.Y. — The end of third grade is a turning point for young readers; it’s where skilled readers take off, finally able to competently read a variety of texts, and struggling readers teeter off track, often unable to ever catch up. This crucial juncture, and its far-reaching implications for those who don’t meet the mark, is why some educators are focusing their literacy efforts on the school years that come before third grade — hoping through innovation to offset what could be a terrible and lasting deficit in children’s reading skills.

Last year, in tests of the nation’s public school fourth graders, just 23 percent of Hispanic children and 20 percent of African-American children scored “proficient” in reading. Among low-income students in general, just 22 percent of fourth-graders were proficient readers. The repercussions of not learning to read are magnified for poor children: Research shows that low-income children who cannot read at grade level by third grade are six times more likely to become high school dropouts.

“In this country, we have the ability to get 90 to 95 percent of kids reading successfully — if only we’d implement scientifically based methods,” said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a think tank that advocates tougher teacher evaluation. “Yet we routinely only prepare between 60 and 70 percent of kids to be successful readers.” Teacher-prep programs, she added, bear a large part of the responsibility here: Many teachers-in-training receive just one course in how to teach reading — a teaching task which experts agree is extremely complex — before heading into the classroom.

“It’s a source of deep frustration for a lot of people, including myself, that we fail to adequately prepare teachers to teach reading,” Walsh said. “It’s simply malpractice.”

Children do not come wired to learn how to read: It is an acquired skill. A teacher must be able to synthesize a deep well of research, master a variety of instructional methods and then be able to deploy this knowledge daily to meet each child at his or her own reading ability level.

At P.S. 218 in the Bronx, a high-poverty public bilingual school where nearly 90 percent of the students are Hispanic and 32 percent are English language learners, early-grade teachers have spent the last three years learning how to do a better job of teaching students to read — and they are seeing results.

On a recent spring day, 16 kindergarteners, some sitting on small chairs, others cross-legged on foam mats on the floor, trained their eyes on a large yellow easel pad. Miss T., known outside the classroom as Rosy Taveras, tapped a hand pointer below each word on the pad as, together, they read aloud:

“My New Pet

I wanted a new pet.

A pet that could fly.

So I got out a net

and chased a butterfly.”

Taveras showed flashcards with the words “OUT” and “SO” spelled in large block letters.

“Gimme an O, gimme a U, gimme a T! What’s that spell?” she asked, cheerleader-style.

“OUT!” yelled her students.

“Take a look at these cards,” Taveras said. “Now turn to your neighbor and ask: ‘How did you know it was ‘HOW’ or ‘SO’?’”

The students mumbled to each other for several seconds.

“Now I need a friend to find ‘SO’ and ‘OUT’ in the poem,” Taveras said. Small hands shot up. “Ephraim, you’re up.”

This is shared reading, a finely-tuned teaching practice that offers Taveras the opportunity to model fluent and expressive reading while her students join in. If the practice is done well, kids will feel like successful readers, and be eager to learn more. Although Taveras is the teacher in charge, she is closely monitored by reading coach Xiania Foster, who provides feedback after each chunk of the daily reading lesson.

Taveras has been a teacher for four years, all of them at P.S. 218. “When I went to college [to study teaching], they tell you: ‘Here, this is the lesson plan for reading, for math, etc.,’ but once you get to the classroom, you realize there’s no way this is going to cover everything,” she said. “You can’t just go black and white. You have to differentiate for each student, and always keep in your mind: what movement can I do for the students who don’t know the language, what visuals can I bring so they have a better understanding of the lesson? These are not things they teach you in college.”

Sarah Gonser for The Hechinger Report.

Foster, Taveras’ instructional coach, has been coming to P.S. 218 for three years, part of a partnership between the school and Early Reading Matters, a teacher-training program. ERM focuses on showing public school teachers who work in New York City’s high-poverty schools how to skillfully get students in the early grades to read at grade level. The program is currently working in 32 schools in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, with plans to expand to 62 schools by 2021.

So far, results are promising. Averaged across 15 schools during the 2016-17 school year, the nonprofit reports an approximately 11 percent boost in the number of students reading at grade level — from 33 percent reading at grade level in the fall to 44 percent by the beginning of summer. The figures do not include students who missed more than 28 days of class each year.

The program is research-based, said Lynette Guastaferro, chief executive officer of ERM’s parent company, Teaching Matters. If teachers hope to create eager readers, especially among kids who struggle to learn the skill, their chances of success will be far greater if key principals of balanced literacy become second nature, an essential part of their teaching practice. These techniques include how to create strong, guided reading instruction, how to select and appropriately use high-quality texts, and how to assess each child’s reading level to better target guided and independent reading.

When Sergio Cáceres became principal of P.S. 218 four years ago, he decided to focus on the school’s youngest students. “If you want to have an impact in the later grades, you need to start with K to 2,” he said. “That’s the foundation of learning.”

After an initial assessment, he determined that early reading instruction was one of the school’s glaring weaknesses. “We have very good teachers but they did not know how to teach reading,” Cáceres said.

In 2014, Cáceres’ first year at the school, just 19 percent of the students tested as proficient on the statewide English Language Arts test, compared to 31 percent statewide. “Early literacy is difficult to teach well, especially when it comes to teaching students who are struggling readers, and unfortunately, it’s a skill teachers don’t come prepared with,” said the principal. “Especially so for kindergarten through second grade.”

Without high-quality and targeted support, research shows, many teachers decide to quit. The rate at which teachers leave the profession — generally about 8 percent nationwide — is 50 percent higher at high-poverty schools and 70 percent higher in schools serving primarily students of color. At P.S. 218, almost 40 percent of teachers have less than three years’ teaching experience.

When the district superintendent asked P.S. 218 to consider implementing the ERM teaching model, Cáceres didn’t hesitate, even though it would clearly mean extra hours and effort for Cáceres and his already overworked teachers. He appreciated ERM’s research-based approach to teaching reading and he was also swayed by the financials: Normally, hiring a reading coach would cost approximately $1,250 per day, but ERM training and three years of in-school coaching won’t cost the school a penny; it is all funded by grants. In addition to the ERM training, the school received a Universal Literacy Coach, part of New York City’s Universal Literacy Initiative, a citywide effort to get 100 percent of all second-graders reading at grade level by 2026.

“So we worked to align Early Reading Matters with the U.Lit coach and, wow, what a powerful combination,” said Cáceres. “It was very rigorous.”

Back in Taveras’ classroom, Foster, the reading coach, checked in with the teacher. “Your timing: It’s getting much better,” Foster said quietly. Taveras nodded, her eyes scanning the room. Her students were split into small groups, each working at prepared stations where they reinforced their reading skills by playing with objects like play dough to shape out letters, multicolored Unifix cubes to form short words, and a word-based memory game on the rug. “We talked about shortening your lesson to 15 minutes and you nailed it,” said Foster.

Taveras headed to her desk where five children were waiting to do small group work. “Pull out your flashcards with the words ‘IS’ and ‘MY’,” she instructed the group. Foster pulled up a chair to observe. The extra attention helps children deepen their grasp of specific letters and sounds.

As one of ERM’s 10 coaches, Foster works in five schools, each at a different stage in its three-year relationship with the program. After an intensive multi-day training session for teachers and principals at ERM’s headquarters, schools receive 30 days of coaching over the first two years. That number decreases to 15 days in the third year. (P.S. 218 purchased another 15 days this year to provide reading instruction training for new hires and to continue strengthening the skills of existing teachers.)

Foster works individually with teachers to develop targeted teaching strategies, help create reading lessons, and train teachers and administrators to assess and monitor growth, of both students and teachers. She often starts with a school’s lead teachers — frequently modeling teaching skills and techniques in the classroom — who then share lessons learned with other teachers in the grade.

“Probably the hardest part of my job is changing mindset, because the kids can do a lot, but sometimes teachers and administrators aren’t aware of how much kids — even struggling students — can accomplish,” said Foster. “So part of my work is encouraging teachers to say, OK, I’m going to read this text, even though it’s hard, and the kids can grapple with it.”

Because reading proficiency has such a huge impact on later learning, the challenging task of teaching young children to read must be “job one for elementary teachers,” according to a 2016 report by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Yet just 39 percent of the nation’s 820 teacher-prep programs cover the essential components of effective early reading instruction.

“Poor teacher prep for reading has been going on a long time,” said Cáceres, the principal at P.S. 218. “Yet I haven’t met a teacher who can’t master it. But the schools that perform well, they all have high-level coaches. After that, success depends on two things: the quality of the coaching and how open a teacher is to receiving professional input.”

‘We didn’t have options’: A new Staten Island charter school aims to fill a gap for students with dyslexia

2018-07-03T20:58:24+00:00

Laura Timoney knew that New York City’s first charter school designed for students with dyslexia would become a reality when she and its other founders were able to envision a full day in the life of a student.

“We named her Juanita Henderson, and still just smile whenever we think of her,” said Timoney, who works on education issues in the Staten Island borough president’s office. “She’s so excited and looking forward to coming to school, learning, looking in microscopes.”

If all goes according to plan, Bridge Preparatory Charter School will begin serving its real students on Staten Island in fall 2019. The elementary school was approved by the Board of Regents in June, and it’s set to be the first charter school in the state — and among only a few public schools nationwide — devoted to educating children with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities.

The goal is to provide another option for families who have long fought for more choices closer to home. Staten Island is the borough with the highest share of students with disabilities, and while district schools have been steadily adding resources to help students with literacy issues, many parents of children with dyslexia send them to private schools in Brooklyn or New Jersey.

To succeed, though, Bridge Prep will have to navigate a few considerable challenges.

A few, like finding space, are familiar to charter schools in New York City. Others, like convincing parents that their educational model will work best for their children — who may have sizable academic and emotional needs thanks to their frustrations with reading — may be more specific to Bridge Prep.

“We’ve gotten branded as the dyslexia school,” founder Timothy Castanza said. His hope, though, is that the school will be able to attract a mix of students. “Struggling with literacy in general, something that so many students do struggle with, means that you should come to this school.”

While designing the school, Castanza traveled to Jacksonville, Florida, to visit a magnet school that almost exclusively serves students with language-based learning disabilities and to Pittsburgh to visit the Provident Charter School for Children with Dyslexia.

Bridge Prep plans to use the Orton-Gillingham instructional approach, a popular method of teaching students who have trouble with reading, spelling, and writing. Each class will be 12 to 13 students so instructors can cater to children’s individual needs, Castanza said.

Timothy Castanza, Rose Kerr and Laura Timoney celebrate the approval of Bridge Prep.

The school also plans to use the “triad method,” designed by Rose Kerr, a former Staten Island principal. Instead of students leaving their classrooms to receive extra help, additional teaching assistants and literacy coaches will rotate through the classrooms (called triads) to help students, joining the assigned general education or special education teacher and any paraprofessionals mandated for students.

The model is costly, and the five founders of Bridge Prep are continuing to search for additional outside funding — part of why the school’s planning process has taken several years. (GRASP Academy, the dyslexia-focused school in Jacksonville, spent about double what a typical elementary school in that district did in 2015, according to the Florida Times-Union, though per-student spending in Florida is generally far below that of New York.)

The overarching goal, they say, is to help students at the start of their academic careers, putting them on the right track for later success.

Opportunity Charter School, another charter school designed to serve mostly students with disabilities in Harlem, came under fire last year for not being able to meet its academic benchmarks. But Opportunity has operated as a middle school and high school, and its students enter having to catch up. Maggie Moroff, the special education policy coordinator at Advocates for Children of New York, said Bridge Prep’s decision to open an elementary school means it might avoid some of those issues.

“It’s never too late to help a struggling reader learn to read, but it does get more difficult the longer the student is left without appropriate evidence-based interventions,” said Moroff.

It’s hard to know exactly how many students in Staten Island or New York City have dyslexia. The city’s annual special education report in 2016-17 said about 77,000 students have a learning disability. Of all students with disabilities enrolled in the city’s district schools, nearly 130,000 were receiving all of their recommended services, while almost 50,000 were denied some of the services that they were legally entitled to.

In 2016, the city announced it would increasing the number of reading coaches in each school through a new Universal Literacy Program. That may be helping, Moroff said, but some students still find themselves without needed support.

“If kids didn’t have private attorneys, then what they ended up doing was just struggling in school and not getting the support they needed, falling farther and farther behind and getting a hodgepodge of services,” said Moroff.

Ayelet Schwartz, a Staten Island mother whose daughter has dyslexia, saw that firsthand.

Despite having a diagnosis of her daughter’s condition, Schwartz said the teachers at her local district school didn’t take her seriously. So Schwartz sued the Department of Education to reimburse her for the cost of sending her daughter to a private school for students with language-based learning difficulties, two hours away.

“I’ve heard kids say, ‘I’m so stupid, why can’t I read? I’m so mad at my brain!’” said Schwartz, whose daughter is now middle-school aged. “My daughter didn’t want to go to dance anymore, didn’t want to go to school. She would cry, throw her books, say ‘I’m an idiot,’ things like that. So it took a lot of work to undo all of that.”

Having a local school with experience helping students like her daughter like Bridge Prep would have saved her family from years of struggling, she said. “We didn’t have options,” said Schwartz. “If this school works, I’m all for it, because we need options here on Staten Island.”

Economically integrated early childhood settings are good for kids, yet they are rare

2018-01-26T12:48:19+00:00

Two studies suggest that bringing together children from low- and higher-income families in early childhood settings — an arrangement that rarely happens — could help bridge achievement gaps.

The benefits of socioeconomic integration is well documented among school-aged children, but it is just beginning to be explored among the preschool and younger set — in part because child care in the United States tends to be divided along class lines. Yet some research suggests that the same promise exists for the youngest students as it does when older children are integrated by family wealth.

One study in Connecticut found that children from low-income families in economically integrated preschool demonstrated much larger language growth than their counterparts in classes primarily composed of children from low-income backgrounds.

A larger study from the National Center for Children and Families at Columbia University looked at data from 11 prekindergarten programs and found that children in classrooms with, on average, a higher socioeconomic status generally learned more than those in classrooms made up primarily of children from low-income backgrounds — an association that held true regardless of a child’s own background.

This study, which controlled for factors such as teaching quality, discovered that all children can benefit from socioeconomically diverse classes. Children in relatively high-wealth classrooms that had some socioeconomic diversity fared better in gaining skills related to understanding language than those in high socioeconomic classrooms with little income diversity.

In New York City, staff at the handful of child care centers that have successfully brought together children of different economic backgrounds say the benefits extend not just for the children. Even when the income difference among families is modest — and even when the overall socioeconomic status of the class might be low-income — parents of different backgrounds learn from each other and staff benefit from having a range of families, from those who might need support beyond child care to others with resources to offer.

This is one reason why Head Start programs, which are designed for preschoolers of families living in poverty, reserve a few spots for families above the poverty line as well.

In 2010, when New York City was gearing up to reform its subsidized child care system under an initiative called EarlyLearn, an early vision of the reform encouraged subsidized child care centers to enroll some children whose families were not eligible for subsidized care, and who would pay privately as a way to “better serve children and ensure the economic sustainability of the system,” as well as “to be reflective of the community served.”

The 2011 Request for Proposal made the same request “to promote socio-economic diversity.” It also promoted classrooms filled with both children whose families were eligible for subsidized child care — or had incomes within 275 percent of the federal poverty line — and children whose families lived in poverty, meeting the eligibility requirements for Head Start.

In the end, that vision has gone largely unrealized, with most EarlyLearn centers having separate classrooms earmarked for either Head Start or subsidized child care.

Meanwhile, some subsidized centers do enroll private paying families, but they receive little guidance from the city on how to make it work. Some centers mix students from different backgrounds in the same classes, but in part to ease record-keeping and compliance with various regulations, others keep the children whose parents pay privately in separate classrooms from the children whose families receive subsidy for child care — creating economic segregation, rather than integration, within the centers.

“There have been so few resources provided to early childhood leaders in terms of program development,” says Laura Ensler, founder of the FirstStepNYC early childhood center in Brownsville, Brooklyn. “Program quality comes from creating a diverse population.”

This story is adapted from a forthcoming report by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School that looks at subsidized infant and toddler child care.

After an early childhood overhaul, paying families are bringing diversity to some New York City child care centers

2018-01-23T21:42:34+00:00

When New York City reduced funding for the Magical Years child care center in 2012, staff there lobbied to gain back the seats they would have to cut.

Their effort fell short, so they turned to another funding stream: families in the neighborhood, Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, who were desperate for high-quality child care spots and who could pay for it.

Today, Magical Years is a vibrant space with toddlers singing songs in Spanish, Chinese, and English, and with a waitlist numbering in the hundreds. At any given time, nearly two thirds of infants and toddlers come through the city’s child care system, bringing in as much as $425 a week in city funding; the rest are from families that pay $250 a week for their spots.

In a city where early childhood programs are highly segregated by race and class, Magical Years suggests that the city’s recent early childhood overhaul might inadvertently have laid the groundwork for integration.

Families who might otherwise never brush elbows actively mingle and learn from one another At Magical Years, said Ann Goa, the center’s former director, adding, “We can see the connection and communication that parents have” with each other.

The changes at Magical Years represent an unintended consequence of a massive overhaul to how the city manages early childhood education, known as EarlyLearn. While there have never been many slots for infants in subsidized child care centers, the initiative reduced those spaces even more. The city started sending more children younger than 3 into less expensive programs run out of providers’ homes and paying some existing child care centers for fewer spots.

Like Magical Years, a handful of other centers in that position who were also in gentrifying neighborhoods responded by actively recruiting local paying families to help supplement the lost revenue. As a result, some, but not all, have created rare oases of integration — something that research suggests benefits poorer students and doesn’t harm other students.

Across the city, it’s unclear exactly how many paying families are sending children to child care centers that are otherwise city-funded. The city does not track this number, which is likely to be small because there are relatively few subsidized centers that serve infants, and many of those are in very high-poverty neighborhoods with few families able to pay for care.

But where this dynamic has played out, it has had an impact. At Magical Years, typically 14 of 42 seats are filled with paying customers, some of them employees at NYU Langone, the large health and social service organization that oversees Magical Years.

Magical Years places toddlers whose families pay privately in the same classrooms with children whose families are in EarlyLearn, paving the way for socioeconomic and racial integration.

But other centers funnel children from private-paying families into classrooms separate from their EarlyLearn classes.

At a Friends of Crown Heights center in the gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, for example, a handful of infant and toddler rooms are reserved primarily for “private pay” families. These rooms appear to be more racially diverse than other rooms in the center.

Center administrators — who operate 20 early childhood programs under a $42 million contract with the city — explain that the decision was largely driven by a desire to simplify bookkeeping. Different funding sources come with different regulations, they say, so it is easiest to group all children whose spots are paid in the same way together.

If a city representative wants to see the medical records of all the children in the EarlyLearn program, for instance, having those children in one classroom makes it easier for the center to comply, according to Hugh Hamilton, director of program development.

“It is for accounting purposes,” Hamilton said, adding that when the children at their centers play outside, staff at Friends of Crown Heights say, kids of all backgrounds come together.

To some researchers who study early childhood education, this approach is a mistake.

“Programs that are segregated by race/ethnicity and income are rarely, if ever, of equal quality,” write Jeanne Reid and Sharon Kagan of the National Center for Children and Families at Columbia University in their 2016 report, “A Better Start: Why Classroom Diversity Matters in Early Education.”

As the city takes an increasing interest in both early childhood education and integration, people who have experienced the wrenching changes that affected Magical Years are debating how spots for poor children should be handled.

Vaughan Toney, president of Friends of Crown Heights, says he’d like to see the city reinstate all of the subsidized infant slots lost during the EarlyLearn transition. Families with the means to pay privately, he says, have other options, while some low-income families that his organization serves have to travel to Friends of Crown Heights centers because their neighborhoods have no early childhood centers.

Kathleen Hopkins, vice president of NYU Langone’s community programs, has a different take. Though Magical Years’ private-pay slots reap far less revenue than the subsidized ones, Hopkins says the center wouldn’t want to switch those slots back to city-funded ones and risk losing the diversity that exists now.

“Families share strengths and assets and learn different cultural beliefs and value systems, and that just enriches the environment for the children,” she said.

Hopkins said she would rather see the center expand to make space for more of everything — more subsidized and more private slots. “Segregated centers are never a good thing,” she said.

This story is adapted from a forthcoming report by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School that looks at subsidized infant and toddler child care.

Here are the next districts where New York City will start offering preschool for 3-year-olds

2017-10-12T21:02:41+00:00

New York City officials on Tuesday announced which school districts are next in line for free pre-K for 3-year-olds, identifying East Harlem and the eastern neighborhoods of Queens for expansion of the program.

Building on its popular universal pre-K program for 4-year-olds, the city this year began serving even younger students with “3-K For All” in two high-needs school districts. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he wants to make 3-K available to every family who wants it by 2021.

“Our education system all over the country had it backwards for too long,” de Blasio said at a press conference. “We are recognizing we have to reach kids younger and more deeply if we’re going to be able to give them the foundation they need.”

But making preschool available to all of the city’s 3-year-olds will require an infusion of $700 million from the state or federal governments. In the meantime, de Blasio said the city can afford to expand to eight districts, at a cost of $180 million of city money a year.

Funding isn’t the only obstacle the city faces to make 3-K available universally. De Blasio warned that finding the room for an estimated 60,000 students will be a challenge. Space constraints were a major factor in picking the next districts for expansion, he said.

“I have to tell you, this will take a lot of work,” he said, calling it “even harder” than the breakneck rollout of pre-K for all 4-year-olds. “We’re building something brand new.”

De Blasio, a Democrat who is running for re-election in November, has made expansion of early childhood education a cornerstone of his administration. The city kicked off its efforts this September in District 7 in the South Bronx, and District 23 in Brownsville, Brooklyn. More than 2,000 families applied for those seats, and 84 percent of those living in the pilot districts got an offer for enrollment, according to city figures.

According to the timeline released Thursday, the rollout will continue next school year in District 4 in Manhattan, which includes East Harlem; and District 27 in Queens, which includes Broad Channel, Howard Beach, Ozone Park and Rockaways.

By the 2019 – 2020 school year, the city plans to launch 3-K in the Bronx’s District 9, which includes the Grand Concourse, Highbridge and Morrisania neighborhoods; and District 31, which spans all of Staten Island.

The 2020 – 2021 school year would see the addition of District 19 in Brooklyn, which includes East New York; and District 29 in Queens, which includes Cambria Heights, Hollis, Laurelton, Queens Village, Springfield Gardens and St. Albans.

With all those districts up and running, the city expects to serve 15,000 students.

Admission to the city’s pre-K programs is determined by lottery. Families don’t have to live in the district where 3-K is being offered to apply for a seat, though preference will be given to students who do. With every expansion, the city expects it will take two years for each district to have enough seats for every district family who wants one.

New York City wants to know: How effective is its training for pre-K teachers?

2017-09-11T22:40:05+00:00

In New York City’s breakneck effort to offer free preschool to all 4-year olds, officials have banked on teacher training as a key way to ensure that quality keeps up with access.

About three years into Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature education policy achievement, the education department and New York University are partnering to study whether that teacher training is doing the trick. One of the first studies of its kind of New York City’s high-profile program, the results could be used to fine-tune the city’s training programs to increase their impact on student achievement.

“The question for us is, ‘How do we make pre-K better, as fast as we can?’” said Josh Wallack, a deputy chancellor for the education department and a principal investigator for the study. “This study will point us in the right direction, we believe.”

Pre-K for All now enrolls about 70,000 students — providing free public preschool to any family who wants it, according to the city. When launching its program, the city homed in on research from pre-K initiatives in Boston and Tulsa that showed teacher training and coaching had an outsize impact on student performance.

“The mayor and chancellor believe that the evidence is in: We know that high-quality pre-K leads to improved student outcomes,” Wallack said. “So our research agenda really focuses on the methods we use to help programs improve quality, and one of the ways we do that is through teacher training.”

The NYU study will use measures of student behavior such as self-regulation, third-grade test scores, and how often students are held back to track the impact of the city’s different teacher training programs. The city assigns its pre-K providers to four training tracks, each with a different focus.

Those tracks are: Pre-K Explore, which focuses on math; Pre-K Thrive, which emphasizes child behavior and working with families; and Pre-K Create, which is arts-driven. A fourth track, Pre-K Inspire, gives schools more flexibility to choose what type of training they receive from the city.

The study will compare outcomes of students who attended schools in the Explore, Thrive and Create tracks to those who attended schools that choose the Inspire track. About half of all pre-K sites participate in the Inspire track, according to figures provided by the education department.

“Our expectation is that some of the models may support teacher development and kids’ learning more effectively than other models,” said Pamela Morris, a principal investigator for the grant, and vice dean for research and faculty affairs at NYU Steinhardt. “Understanding that process will be important.”

One common pitfall of teacher training is that educators often struggle to put it into practice in their classrooms. The NYU study will also measure how well pre-K teachers use the skills they learn.

Funded by a $5 million grant from Institute of Education Sciences — the research and data arm of the U.S. Education Department — the five-year study is designed to be a partnership between the city and NYU. School district-university partnerships are common, with the goal being to produce research that helps districts improve their practices.

“It really infuses the system with a huge amount of research to build this quality infrastructure,” Morris said.

Russ Whitehurst, former director of the Institute, said there is often another reason why such partnerships are necessary: to gain access to data that can otherwise be difficult to get. The need for data can create pressure on researchers to work collaboratively with districts, he said.

“It’s the nature of how these things work,” said Whitehurst, who is now a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. “You sort of have to play nice to get someone to want to partner with you.”

Wallack said the city has experts who can help crunch data for the study, but the bulk of that job will be in the hands of NYU researchers, who Wallack said would retain their independence.

“It’s just important to emphasize that, in the end, NYU will really be running the analysis here — and the analysis will be based on objective measures,” he said.

NYU and the education department have partnered in the past, and Morris said the city has proven itself to be committed to transparency. She said a “very strong” advisory board would help “ensure the research integrity.”

“I would not be engaging in the partnership if I didn’t think the city would be open,” she said. “They’ve been really terrific about seeing where the data leads them.”

Bank Street heads to East New York to help child care providers play to their strengths

2017-08-15T21:54:50+00:00

One little girl would simply repeat anything that was said to her, rather than answer basic questions like, “How are you?” Another toddler seemed more active than the other children — maybe too active. But Sherease Alston, who has run a child care center from her living room for the past six years, was often met with skepticism when she would share her observations with parents.

The hard part isn’t noticing when a child may have a developmental issue, she explained. It’s getting the child’s parents to recognize it, too.

“It’s hard for parents to see sometimes because they’re in denial,” she said.

A cold call from a leading education school helped change that. With the help of the new Guttman Center for Early Care and Education at the Bank Street College of Education, Alston came up with a strategy to help parents see what she sees. Now, she asks them to log their children’s behavior at home, so those logs can be compared against ones kept by the daycare, Little Minds at Work.

“It was easy to see once it was all documented,” Alston said. “It was an easy tool to use to open that door for our parents.”

New York City is in the midst of a massive push to expand access to early childhood education — and to make sure quality keeps up. Site evaluations and teacher training have been a centerpiece of the city’s free pre-K program, which now serves 70,000 4-year-olds and is expanding to enroll 3-year-olds, too.

The city is slated to bring its pre-K model to children as young as six weeks old, with plans to transfer responsibility for publicly funded childcare programs from the Administration for Children’s Services to the education department. Making that shift will require the city to turn its attention to a vast network of providers like Alston — those who are already working with infants and toddlers in their communities.

That’s where the Guttman Center is focusing its attention. Working with providers on the ground in low-income neighborhoods, the Center wants to help them solve problems and improve their care.

“We really wanted … to have the input of the community, acknowledge the exceptional range of abilities that already exists, and partner with them,” said Director Robin Hancock. “The beauty of having all these perspectives in the classroom is people are constantly hearing from other corners in the field.”

Across the country, early childhood advocates have taken a similar approach, working to meet providers where they are — and build on their strengths. In Colorado, for example, community organizations have trained the aunts, neighbors and other caregivers who form an often invisible network of care. The state has also paid special attention to helping Spanish-speaking providers earn early childhood credentials.

In New York City, the scale of the challenge is huge. ACS currently oversees programs that serve about 20,000 children ages 3 or younger. A recent report by the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs found that home-based providers especially struggle with a labyrinth of safety and compliance requirements, understanding what is developmentally appropriate for very young children, and enduring long hours for low pay.

Guttman’s work represents one step in helping child care workers navigate those issues. The first cohort of providers was drawn from East New York — one of two neighborhoods (along with the South Bronx) where the city is launching its pilot for free pre-K for 3-year-olds this fall. The Guttman program was created for even younger children, from infants to 2-year-olds.

Providers meet on Saturdays every other week for a semester, and coursework centers on topics like building partnerships with families and caring relationships with students. Group discussions are paired with on-site coaching.

“The goal really is for them to be able to look at their own practice and to understand what’s working and what is not,” said Margie Brickley, a program director for the Bank Street Graduate School of Education, who helped develop the Guttman curriculum.

Ultimately, the program hopes to create a community of support for providers who often find themselves working in isolation. Already, some have opened up their sites to visits from other providers to observe good practices in action and share ideas.

“The first 36 months of life are critical for cognitive development and we’re building the foundation for learning,” said Johannah Chase, then an associate dean at Bank Street. “It’s part of the reason why we’re putting so much of our energy into child caregivers.”

Kiara Dash, an assistant at Little Minds at Work, reads to Thravis Ealey. (Photo: Christina Veiga)

On a recent morning at Little Minds at Work, five squirmy toddlers and an infant gathered on a rug made of giant foam puzzle pieces. Sunlight streamed in through two windows facing a quiet residential street. The group sang about their feelings and assistant Vanesha Mayers playfully wiggled one boy’s fingers and toes as they counted to 20.

Before joining the Guttman program, Alston said she took a more academic approach to working with the very young children in her care — which often led to frustration for both her and the kids. Guttman helped her refocus her curriculum around play and building relationships.

“That was an eye-opener,” she said. “They helped me understand their needs.”

Brickley said Alston’s struggle is common. Often, providers simply “water down” programs meant for older children even though infants and toddlers have very different needs.

On the other hand, Alston said she is adept at juggling the business and regulatory aspects of her business — something she can help other providers learn.

Hancock, the center’s director, said the program was built to recognize providers’ different abilities and fill gaps as needed. That tailored approach respects the knowledge providers already bring to the table, she said, and helps create a culture of trust.

“We really want to make sure to help providers build confidence that they are experts,” she said. “They know their environments and they know their children best.”

Correction: This post has been updated with the correct spelling of Johannah Chase’s name.

Highs and lows from New York City’s annual school surveys of parents, students and teachers

2017-08-07T22:20:33+00:00

New York City’s annual school survey is full of highs — 99 percent of teachers think students are safe in their classes — and lows — the schools chancellor still hasn’t reached peak approval ratings from her first year on the job.

More than 1 million parents, students and teachers responded to the survey for the 2016-2017 school year, which the education department called a record high.

The surveys often paint a sunny picture of the nation’s largest school system, and the responses are used in the city’s School Quality reports. But it’s hard to make year-to-year comparisons of the data because of changes to the questions and given responses.

Almost all of the 72,400 teachers who responded to this year’s survey said students are safe in their pre-K-fifth grade classes. That was the highest positive response of any survey question.

The high marks come after Mayor Bill de Blasio declared last year the “safest school year on record.” That claim, which some of the mayor’s critics have disputed, is based largely on a decrease in the seven major crimes categorized by the NYPD.

Also earning high marks: the city’s Pre-K for All initiative, which provides free, full-day care for 4 year olds. About 98 percent of parents reported they “feel good about the way that their child’s pre-K teacher helped their child adjust to pre-K.” The city hopes to expand the popular program to 3 year olds, starting with a pilot in two school districts this upcoming school year.

Now for some low points.

Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña’s popularity among teachers is a mixed story: 55 percent of teachers said they were satisfied with the chancellor. That is up from last year, when teacher satisfaction dropped to 52 percent. However, that’s compared with 60 percent of teachers in 2015, after her first full year on the job.

The education department compared the chancellor’s performance to 2013, when a meager 27 percent of teachers approved of then-Chancellor Dennis Walcott, who was on his way out as then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg finished his third term.

As for students, only 49 percent said their peers behave well when teachers aren’t watching (kids will be kids?) and 52 percent said teachers support them when they feel upset. Only slightly more than half, 55 percent, agreed their teachers ask them hard questions most of the time.

Update: This story has been updated to reflect Carmen Fariña’s approval rating over time.