Chalkbeat

As shelter limit for migrant families nears, NYC schools try to prepare

2023-11-29T23:37:59+00:00

New York City schools have started preparing for a massive reshuffling of students as early as next month, as thousands of migrant families face a new limit on shelter stays, education officials said during a Wednesday city council hearing.

Approximately 2,700 families have received notices since Oct. 27 that they’ll either have to reapply for shelter or find alternative housing within 60 days, according to a City Hall spokesperson. That means families will have to leave their shelters as early as Dec. 27. For families who do reapply for shelter, there’s no guarantee they’ll end up in the same site, or even the same borough.

Mayor Eric Adams has argued that the limits are necessary to relieve severe overcrowding in the city’s shelter amid an unprecedented and ongoing influx of migrants, many of whom are seeking asylum. Case workers will help families figure out next steps, according to city officials.

But educators and advocates have sounded the alarm for months that the policy could have devastating educational consequences.

Preparations are underway to try to minimize the disruptions and inform families of their rights, especially in Manhattan where the shelters are concentrated, Education Department officials said on Wednesday.

“What we’ve started to do is look very closely at where those students are located, engage principals, engage superintendents,” said Flavia Puello-Perdomo, an Education Department official who oversees students in temporary housing. “While we can’t fully control all the implications of the 60-day rules … as much as possible we’ll ensure every family is aware they have the right to stay in their schools.”

Federal law requires school districts to provide transportation for homeless students so they can remain in their schools. The city Education Department offers school buses for homeless students in kindergarten to sixth grade, and MetroCards for older kids. But arranging that transportation can take a long time, and the city’s sprawling school bus system is notoriously unreliable, according to advocates and educators.

Many families may opt to transfer rather than enduring that uncertainty and a potentially grueling commute.

One Manhattan school is getting ready to call all of its migrant families to ask if they’ve received the notices and walk them through their options, according to the principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But the principal said no amount of preparation will prevent the massive disruptions ahead.

“It’s going to be like musical shelters,” the principal said. “All these kids who we’ve spent the last 10 months building relationships with … we’re going to break that bond.”

Schools brace for logistical challenges

During Wednesday’s council hearing on immigrant students, Education Department officials offered a glimpse at the huge logistical challenges schools and families are facing as the 60-day deadlines hit.

The first task will be figuring out which families have even received the notices and where they are headed.

Staffers who work with the newly-arrived families said it’s possible some will leave the city or find their own apartments, but others will have no option other than reapplying for shelter.

“I’ve visited the shelter near me,” said the Manhattan principal. “My assumption is that if they had a better option, they would’ve already used it.”

The Education Department doesn’t have a data-sharing agreement with Health + Hospitals, the agency that administers many of the newly-created Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, or HERRCs, where migrants are residing. That means schools won’t get automatic updates when children transfer from one shelter to another, officials said.

It could fall largely to schools to track down families to figure out if they’ve received a 60-day notice, where they’re moving, and whether they’ll need transportation – an especially daunting challenge given many of the newly-arrived families still may not have reliable phones.

The Education Department employs roughly 100 community coordinators who work directly with families in shelters – but that’s far short of the more than 360 shelters now operating across the city, according to an Education Department official.

Delays in figuring out where families have transferred will lead to delays in arranging transportation or finding new school placements.

Families face long commutes, school transfers

Even if the communication between schools and families is seamless, families who have to leave their shelters will face the tough decision of enduring a longer commute or transferring schools.

The Manhattan principal said several families have already switched shelters, and opted to remain at the school – but their attendance has suffered.

Schools across the city are already struggling with elevated rates of chronic absenteeism and the problem is even more severe for students in shelters, over 70% of whom were chronically absent last school year. The reshuffling from the 60-day notices will likely make that worse, the principal argued.

Transportation is especially challenging from the newly-opened shelter at Floyd Bennett, a former airfield in southern Brooklyn. The emergency shelter, which officials say can accommodate 500 families, has drawn fierce criticism from advocates who say it’s inappropriate for children, and some families have refused to stay there.

Education Department officials said on Monday that roughly 195 children staying at the shelter have registered for school. But Glenn Risbrook, the Education Department’s senior executive director for student transportation, acknowledged it’s in a “transportation desert” and said the agency has arranged for a coach bus to connect families to public transportation so they can get to school.

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

What’s in a name? Students at NYC’s largest school for newcomer immigrants push for change

2023-12-05T18:48:01+00:00

The name of New York City’s largest public school for immigrant students succinctly describes who it serves: Newcomers High School.

The school, located near a cluster of newly opened homeless shelters in Long Island City, Queens, has lived up to its name, enrolling perhaps more migrant students over the past two school years than any other in the city. Its roster jumped from roughly 800 two years ago to more than 1,400 now, according to Education Department records.

Often, over the school’s 30-year history, the name has served as a badge of honor, especially when Newcomers won national recognition for its academic achievement. The school is one of about 20 across the city designed to provide more targeted support and help new arrivals acclimate to life in the U.S.

But as New York City grapples with political and economic tensions surrounding the ongoing influx of migrants, the school’s student government wants a name change.

“The brand ‘Newcomers’ does not identify us any more,” Brianna Segarra, a senior and the student government president, said at a recent meeting of the city’s Panel on Educational Policy. “We are hurt by it, by all the people in the U.S. who are against migration.”

The name, she worries, “puts a target on us.”

Changing the name of a New York City school isn’t easy. It involves securing the approval of the Parent Association and principal, soliciting public comment at a community education council meeting, and getting a final sign-off from the chancellor.

Students pushing the name change at Newcomers are still in the early stages. They haven’t come up with a replacement name and haven’t yet begun the process of gathering input from all kinds of people with a stake in the school, said teacher and student government adviser Aixa Rodriguez.

Principal Elizabeth Messmann, who couldn’t be reached for comment, said in an email to staffers on Monday that the School Leadership Team, a body composed of staff, parent and student leaders, has begun discussing “rebranding the school.”

There’s also likely to be pushback.

“The fear [is] that if we change the name, will it change the character of the school?” said Rodriguez. “Are we killing the legacy of the last 30 years?”

A sweatshirt design raises questions of belonging

Student government leaders say they began considering the idea of a name change while designing the annual school-branded sweatshirt.

Demand for the Newcomers hoodie was through the roof this year.

Many new arrivals lack winter gear, and were excited to add a warm item to their wardrobes, student leaders said.

But when the student government began gathering feedback on this year’s design, they heard the same thing again and again from peers.

New York City Public Schools Chancellor David C. Banks poses for a photograph with students from Newcomers High School.

“They said the name was really big. They said, ‘I don’t want the name ‘Newcomers’” featured so prominently,” said Lindsay Abad, a senior and student government secretary who hails from Ecuador. Students worried it would make them vulnerable to “suffering a hate crime or something like that.”

The influx of migrants that began in summer 2022 and has included roughly 30,000 students has spurred bursts of generosity as well as vitriol, with protests against new shelters springing up across the city.

Students are acutely aware of that charged political climate, said Rodriguez, the teacher who advises the student government. They’ve also confronted some of it head-on.

Students confided in staff that they’ve heard insulting comments on public transit, Rodriguez said. They’ve also heard them during sports games at other schools.

“They don’t want to be associated with something that feels negative. They want to belong,” Ridriguez said. “When they’re going on a train or a bus to a game, they don’t want that attention.”

Several students also said they were hurt by a New York Post article suggesting that swelling enrollment had forced students from a school that shares the building to relocate to another campus across the street.

An Education Department spokesperson denied that claim, but the story still stung, students said.

Many Newcomers students felt the implication was “we are here occupying a space that is not ours,” said Mary Barcarse, a senior and student government chairperson originally from the Philippines.

That’s not to say the enrollment boom hasn’t posed real challenges, said Rodriguez.

Class sizes have ballooned, while class rosters are constantly in flux as new students arrive and others leave due to transient housing situations, Rodriguez said. Many of the new students are carrying significant trauma while juggling competing responsibilities like a pressure to work or care for siblings, she added.

Students say they were steered to Newcomers

Some students said the discussion about the name “Newcomers” has pushed them to reconsider a more fundamental question about educating immigrant students: whether they should be enrolled in separate schools in the first place.

The student government leaders who spoke to Chalkbeat said they didn’t feel like they had much choice about where to enroll and were pushed towards Newcomers.

“They said, ‘You’re from Ecuador, you go to Newcomers,’” Abad recounted.

There can be advantages to attending a school populated exclusively by immigrant students: classmates who can relate to your experiences, teachers who are seasoned in supporting language development, and a climate that’s inclusive and welcoming, students and staff said.

But there are also drawbacks. With fewer native English speakers, students at Newcomers said they feel like they’re missing out on critical chances to improve their English. And because the school focuses so many of its resources on language support, some students felt it offered fewer options for acceleration, electives, and specialized tracks than other high schools.

Regardless of which model works best, students said they wished they’d gotten more choice in where they enrolled. They worry that many of the new arrivals are getting funneled into a similarly narrow range of schools.

The name “Newcomers,” they argue, reinforces the idea that immigrant students only belong in one type of school, and that only one type of student belongs at schools like Newcomers.

Students also said the name doesn’t feel entirely accurate. At least 50 members of the school’s senior class were born in the U.S. and are citizens, but recently returned to the country after time abroad, according to Rodriguez.

“They feel it labels them,” she said, “in a way that doesn’t reflect every single person who walks in this door.”

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

Migrant families and schools brace for wave of shelter evictions

2024-01-08T10:00:00+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Thousands of migrant families with school-aged children will begin having their time in city shelters run out starting Tuesday as the first 60-day eviction notices, which the city began passing out in October, start to expire.

Among those whose time runs out Tuesday is Joana, 38, a Venezuelan mother who asked that her last name not be used. She said in recent days she’s been having hard conversations with her 8-year-old daughter about what’s in store.

“I try to explain to her as gently as I can the reality,” Joana said in Spanish. “So she can understand why we’re leaving this place, where her school bus comes to get her, where she’s lived for a year, and where she feels like it’s part of her home.”

The shelter evictions for families with children mark the beginning of yet another city policy shift on homelessness, as Mayor Eric Adams struggles to contend with a ballooning shelter population driven largely by the arrival of more than 160,000 migrants, which cost the city $1.4 billion last fiscal year.

Through the end of December, 122,700 people were living in shelters, including over 68,300 migrants, the vast majority of whom are families with children.

Thus far only adults without children have been subject to the Adams administration’s attempts to eject migrants from city shelters. The city has limited their stays to 30 days. In order to reapply for another stint afterwards, adults must now brave long lines in the cold for hours and sleep on the floor of various waiting rooms for more than a week, with limited access to food and showers, before they can secure another cot.

To date, most families with children have been spared this kind of disruption. Adams has repeatedly said his administration’s goal is for no families with children to sleep on the streets — but exactly how family evictions will be carried out is still unclear.

Since the city unveiled its family eviction policy in October, about a third of migrant families in the city’s care have been hit with 60-day eviction notices, or around 4,800 families, a city spokesperson said.

Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for the Adams administration, said families who have nowhere else to go when their time in shelters ends will be directed to return to the Roosevelt Hotel, the city’s main intake center, to request another 60-day placement. The city will try to place families in or near the school district where kids are currently enrolled in schools, she added. No child would be forced to change schools, as is required by federal law.

But up through last week, those instructions still hadn’t been communicated to families directly in writing. Several 60-day notices distributed to families reviewed by THE CITY only said that the city would help send you to another location, and if you had any further questions you could talk to staff at the hotel. Parents who spoke with THE CITY said social workers had told them about the option to go to the Roosevelt Hotel.

Joana said that’s where she planned to do Tuesday: pull her daughter out of school for at least for the day and head to the Roosevelt Hotel to try to get another shelter placement.

“I’m trusting in God that we’ll have another place to stay,” she said in Spanish.

Mamelak reiterated Mayor Adams’ frequent plea that with 33,000 migrant children enrolled in schools since June of 2022, the city still needs more help from the state and federal governments.

“While we are grateful for the assistance from our state and federal partners, for months, we have warned that, without more, this crisis could play out on city streets,” Mamelak said. “It is crucial — now, more than ever — that the federal government finish the job they started by allowing migrants to immediately work, and to come up with a strategy that ensures migrants are not convening on one, or even just a handful of cities across the country.”

‘I have no idea what to do’

The evictions are slated to begin at the Row Hotel in Midtown on Tuesday, which has rooms for 1,000 families. Forty families will run out of time on the first day, and another 250 families will see their shelter stays expire during the first week, according to Josh Goldfein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, who is in direct communication with city agencies on behalf of the Coalition for the Homeless.

After the Row, other families at other Midtown hotels like The Stewart, The Watson, and the Wolcott will see their time run out, expanding to around 100 families ejected per day in the coming weeks, Goldfein said.

Ahead of the evictions, residents of The Row who spoke with THE CITY described a mix of anxiety, dread, and resolve.

“The kids have already missed so much school,” said Yeisi Zerpa, a 26-year-old Venezuelan mother of four, who said she’d had to pull the kids out of school to apartment hunt ahead of her eviction date Tuesday.

“If every 60 days I’m going to leave the shelter and get back in line, that’s going to be stress all the time, the kids won’t be able to go to school,” she said in Spanish.

With the help of a kind woman she’d met while begging for change and subsequently become friends with, she’d managed to find a room her family of six would share in a Bronx apartment.

Zerpa is still waiting for her work permit to come through, and was looking for work cleaning houses, but wasn’t sure how she’d pay the rent going forward.

“I have no idea what to do,” she said, adding she was still trying to figure out if she should keep her daughters at the same school or transfer them to somewhere closer. In the weeks ahead of her eviction, she said social workers at the Row offered little guidance.

“No one has helped us to find a rental,” she added. “You ask the social worker a question and they don’t know anything. You don’t have the help of anyone there.”

City officials didn’t return a request for comment about how many people had moved out ahead of their evictions this week. But several other families who spoke with THE CITY said they had managed to secure alternative living arrangements ahead of their final days at the hotel.

Lorena Espinosa Castro, a 36-year-old mother of two from Peru, was moving out trash bags of her belongings on a recent afternoon, headed to a studio apartment in Corona that she’d rented for $800 a month through a friend. In nearly a year in New York City, Castro had managed to find work as a server in a Mexican restaurant not so far from her new apartment.

“The truth is I always wanted to get out of there,” Castro said in Spanish. “I couldn’t cook. My girls, we didn’t eat well. It’s our moment to be more independent. I fought for it.”

“The help of the government is over,” she said.

At some Manhattan elementary schools with large populations of migrant students, families have already started disappearing as the deadlines for the 60-day notices approach.

“Since about two weeks prior to the vacation, we’ve lost a lot of students,” including around 10 this week alone, said a teacher at a Manhattan elementary school that’s enrolled a large number of migrant families, including many living at The Row. The teacher spoke on the condition of anonymity and asked that the school not be named for fear of retaliation.

Watching students who have been at the school for months and built connections abruptly drop off of the school roster is wrenching, the teacher said.

“There’s something really special about watching students grow in a space and become acclimated and familiar. So it’s hard when they’re moved,” the teacher said.

Many other migrants who spoke with THE CITY ahead of their eviction dates said they hadn’t been able to find anywhere else to go and planned to return to the Roosevelt Hotel hoping for another place to stay.

Piedad, a 49-year-old mother who asked that her last name be withheld, expressed a fear that they’d be sent to the far off tents at Floyd Bennett field, where families live in a quasi-congregate setting miles from the nearest neighborhood — a concern shared by many families in recent days.

“We’re hoping, with God’s will, we’ll get another shelter, and not the tents,” she said in Spanish.

‘We’re adding to these kids’ trauma’

Since October, the city has been issuing 60-day notices to families that have been staying in shelters run by the city Health and Hospitals system for more than a year, as well as many more recently arrived families, including all those at Floyd Bennett Field.

So far, the approximately 8,800 migrant families living in shelters overseen by the city’s Department of Homeless Services, which is subject to more strict state oversight, have been spared the shelter evictions. In November, however, city officials requested permission from the state to expand the policy to those families as well, according to Anthony Farmer, a spokesperson for the state’s office of Temporary Disability Administration. As of last week, the state had still not granted that request.

Goldfein and other advocates have looked at the daily chaos unfurling outside the city’s reticketing site in the East Village and fear a similarly dire situation could await families with young kids later this week.

“We’re certainly very concerned,” Goldfein said. “We asked about that and they believe they have it under control. But we’ll see.”

Schools are also preparing for another destabilizing shuffle, the Manhattan teacher told THE CITY, as some students leave and new ones come in.

“All year is just constantly readjusting to try to catch students up, readjust the dynamics of the classroom, rebuild community,” the teacher said. “It’s a heavy load for teachers.”

One Education Department source familiar with planning for the 60-day notices called the educational impact on children would be immense. “We’re adding to these kids’ trauma,” the source said.

Unlike the Department of Homeless Services, which has a data sharing agreement with the Education Department so schools can directly look up where homeless students have been transferred too, Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs large-scale family migrant shelters, has no similar arrangement. Schools will thus be flying blind come Tuesday.

“The only thing these children have consistently in their lives is school,” the source said. “So now you’re taking them out of shelter, you’re putting them someplace else. They’re not gonna be in school for a few days easily. They have to adjust to a new environment and if they’re lucky, they figure out how to get back to that school.”

The Education Department has been recommending families bring information about their schools with them to the Roosevelt Hotel, so that they might be placed in the same borough as their child’s school.

Nicole Brownstein, a spokesperson for the Education Department, said schools had been working directly with emergency shelters, “to support all students and their families and ensure there is no gap in services, whether they transition to a new school community or choose to stay in their current school.”

The city has touted their 30-day policy for adults for reducing the number of people who return to seek another 30-day placement to just 20% of those who had their time run out.

But Goldfein with the Legal Aid Society said if the city really needed to move people around, it could reassign them directly from their current hotels, instead of sending them into a lurch of uncertainty at the Roosevelt Hotel, where it’s not clear where they’ll end up or how long it will take. He described the situation as a “logistical nightmare merry-go-round.”

“There’s a bigger question of why do you need to do this,” he said. “Do you need people to move just to harass them? To push them to move out?”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

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

NYC sends families from tent shelter to sleep on school floor during storm

2024-01-09T22:38:29+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Officials hastily moved hundreds of families living at the Floyd Bennett Field migrant shelter in Brooklyn early Tuesday evening as a powerful storm with wind gusts exceeding 60 miles per hour hit the city.

The families were bused to relatively nearby James Madison High School, in Marine Park, to rest as best they could in chairs or on floors. By 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning the winds had died down and families were bused back to Floyd Bennett, according to the city’s Office of Emergency Management.

Despite that scheduled departure time, an alert sent by the school late Tuesday afternoon advised students and their parents that classes would “pivot to remote” on Wednesday.

The sudden move by the Adams administration drew ire from all sides, with homeless rights advocates and the migrants themselves decrying the disruption for families, and local parents slamming the city’s use of the public school.

People living at the field shelter made of tents described a chaotic and stressful day that included: learning of the impromptu evacuation just hours before it was slated to occur before 4 p.m. racing back to the Floyd Bennett after picking up their children from schools to try to catch the buses to Madison; and crowding in the school’s auditorium and cafeteria with hundreds of others spending the night in chairs or on the ground.

“They want us like animals sending us from here to there,” a 31-year-old mother of three from Venezuela told THE CITY in Spanish, asking that her name be withheld out of fear of retribution for speaking out. ‘’This is craziness.”

She noted that she was thankful for the help of the city for a place to stay — “but this isn’t how children and families should be treated.”

A group of migrants race into James Madison High School in Brooklyn after city officials evacuated Floyd Bennett Field during a rainstorm, Jan. 9, 2023.

In an impromptu press conference early Tuesday afternoon to announce and explain the evacuation, city Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Zachary Iscol, said the agency started notifying families at the shelter at 11 a.m that buses would take them to Madison High School that evening.

By that time many families had already left the shelter for the day for jobs and school, though word spread of the planned evacuation on WhatsApp groups.

“We are doing this out of an abundance of caution because of the high winds,” Iscol said.

Iscol said that tents shelters for migrant adults on Randall’s Island and Creedmoor Psychiatric Facility were not slated for evacuation because both had more protection from the wind and pilings dug into the ground that made them more sturdy than the Floyd Bennett location.

“It’s a really complex operation,” he added.

Spokespeople for OEM, the mayor’s office, and the city’s hospitals system, which runs many migrant shelters, didn’t respond to requests for comment immediately about the lack of cots for the migrants staying at the high school.

Critics of Mayor Eric Adams’ handling of the arrival of migrants denounced the rapid move out of hundreds of children and families.

“The need for the city to find temporary shelter for the people already in temporary shelter demonstrates that the site was not adequately set up for extreme weather on top of the hardship this isolated and inadequately serviced location, miles from the nearest neighborhood school, already imposes on its residents,” said city Comptroller Brad Lander, a regular critic of the mayor.

‘It’s overwhelming’

The evacuation Tuesday came the same day evictions began for migrant families staying in the Row Hotel in Manhattan, as part of the city’s new policy limiting shelter stays for some migrant families to just 60 days.

Around 40 families were forced to leave Tuesday, officials from the city’s Health and Hospital corporation said, with the number expected to quickly ramp up to around 100 families per day. About 4,800 families have received 60-day notices that will force them out of hotel rooms in the coming weeks, city officials said.

Maria Quero, 26, who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant with her first child, said she’d begged her social workers at the Row to let her stay until after she gave birth. She’d presented a doctor’s note to staff, she said, but was denied an extension.

Pregnant migrant, Maria, leaves the Row Hotel shelter after receiving an eviction notice, Jan. 9, 2024.

Instead she trudged across Midtown with her husband from the Row to the Roosevelt Hotel Tuesday morning to ask for another 60-day placement while hoping to still make her prenatal doctor’s appointment later that day.

“I can’t be sitting down a lot, my hips are hurting,” she said in Spanish. “It’s overwhelming, it’s really stressful.”

By that evening Quero said she’d be reassigned to a shelter in Brooklyn.

Asked about Quero’s situation at the Tuesday press briefing, Dr. Ted Long, who oversees migrant shelters run by NYC Health and Hospitals, said: “We look forward to helping Maria.

“They deserve that stability — that stability can never be in the hotel room,” Long added, speaking generally about why the city has set 60-day shelter stay limits for families. “It can only be with our help, how we get them to complete their journey.”

‘Everyone is feeling sad’

Staff at James Madison — the alma matter of both U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer — said they first learned of the plan around noon Tuesday. They were told that the migrant families would arrive after students left Tuesday afternoon and would be gone by the time school starts Wednesday morning.

“It’s an enormous logistical challenge, but if you throw enough bodies at it you can do it,” said a staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Sixteen-year-old junior Spencer Katz said students learned about the evacuation Tuesday afternoon, and most of the discussion focused on whether or not school would be canceled Wednesday.

“I was expecting some people to be racist,” Katz said, but “I was pretty pleasantly surprised by how cool everyone was about it … Every single person I know has an immigrant as a parent or grandparent, so everyone was pretty understanding.”

As supportive as some students were, local Republican Councilmember Inna Vernikov denounced the use of the school in a video on X directed at Adams. “This is unacceptable!” she posted. “Stop this now and take the migrants into Gracie Mansion!”

The shelter has already proven a lightning rod in the GOP-leaning district and word of migrants moving into the school drew ire of right wing commentators and some residents. Video posted to X by a reporter for The New York Post showed a woman who identified herself as “an agitated mother,” heckling the migrants, yelling they were “taking over” her kids’ school.

“How does it feel that you kicked all the kids out of school tomorrow?” she yelled. “I hope you sleep really well tonight.”

The Adams administration also faced pushback from homeless rights advocates at the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless, who issued a joint statement slamming the city’s hasty evacuation as “traumatic and disruptive.”

“This last-minute evacuation further proves that Floyd Bennett Field — a facility mired in a flood zone, miles from schools and other services — has never and will never serve as an appropriate and safe place to shelter families with children,” the group said.

An earlier wind storm in mid-December also caused chaos for migrant families, many of whom described a sleepless night with crying children, or were terrified the tents would collapse.

A 38-year-old mother of three, who asked that her name not be published to avoid repercussions from staff at the shelter said the latest commotion at the tents were stressful and exhausting for families.

“It’s not a life, it’s not good for the kids,” she said. “Everyone is feeling sad.”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

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

Brooklyn high school baffled by media frenzy over migrant families’ one-night stay

2024-01-12T02:59:30+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Students at James Madison High School Madison returned to classes Thursday without fanfare, after the school received hate calls and even a bomb threat for serving as an emergency shelter Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning for migrants with children.

The families living in tents in an airfield arrived at the school after 5 p.m. on Tuesday to wait out a heavy rain and wind storm, and left the school before 5 a.m. Wednesday morning. Even before their departure, the migrants’ presence and the principal’s decision to shift to remote classes on Wednesday immediately became a talking point for right-wing pundits nationwide.

But parents, staffers and students who spoke with THE CITY expressed shock that the school had made it into the national spotlight, for what they saw, in the scheme of things, as a relatively minor disruption.

“I understand the frustration. No one wants their kids to be displaced out of their school, but it was just one day,” said Marsha Thompson-Miles, a mother of an 11th grader at the school and the head of its Parent-Teacher Association.

“In America we have so much and we have to deal with so little. Wars are raging around the world and we don’t really feel the effects of it,” she said, adding she felt pride that the school had provided a space for families in need.

“For one night people didn’t have to deal with rain and wind and the elements. They felt safe and warm,” she added.

While pundits raged about a supposed “takeover,” students had one day of remote lessons on Wednesday, with after-school activities canceled and a dance scheduled for that evening postponed.

School officials said the NYPD had thoroughly inspected the building and custodians gave it a deep clean before students and staff returned on Thursday.

A staffer who asked not to be named said Wednesdays tend to be a shorter day for students, and that the lingering impact of the storm would have made it difficult for some students to get to school in any event.

“It has been pretty quiet here,” the staffer said. “We went remote for one day, that’s it.”

Hate calls and a bomb threat

As 70-mile-an-hour gusts of wind bore down on New York City Tuesday, officials hastily evacuated 1,900 parents and children from a tent shelter located at the remote Floyd Bennett Field, busing them to the high school to shelter in the school gym, auditorium and cafeteria in chairs and on the ground for the night.

While their stay lasted for less than 12 hours, prominent conservatives treated the migrants’ presence at the school as nothing less than an invasion, with talk radio dedicating hours to the topic while Elon Musk tweeted that migrants “will come for your homes” next. Angry commenters followed suit, flooding the school’s Facebook page after officials announced the day of remote learning.

“They are putting these people over our students,” one commenter said. Another added: “That school needs to be disinfected.”

The vitriol wasn’t just online. A woman identifying herself as an “agitated mother” heckled the migrants as they entered the school in the rain Tuesday evening. And during a Zoom call hosted by Principal Jodie Cohen and Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol, the two were shouted down by several outraged parents, several attendees said.

By Wednesday, city officials said the school had received “a torrent of hate calls and even a bomb threat,” Iscol said at a press briefing that morning. He added, “we don’t foresee us using James Madison High School again.”

Later on Wednesday, Assemblymember Michael Novakhov (R-Brooklyn) held a rally outside the school where he invoked the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, saying that “they wanna bring more and more people who rely on the government and vote for them.”

Republican Councilmember Inna Vernikov, who represents parts of southern Brooklyn, made the rounds on national television to complain that “our kids are really being punished.”

On Thursday, Curtis Sliwa, who ran against Mayor Eric Adams in the 2021 mayoral election and has been rallying against migrant shelters over the last year, blocked traffic outside of the Kings Plaza Shopping Center while calling for the Floyd Bennett shelter to close.

“Now the parents and the children who go to Madison High School have to be penalized,” he said. “Nobody’s happy about the situation.”

James Madison High School junior Akib Chowdhury said he wasn’t disrupted by migrants staying in the school’s gym during a storm, Jan. 11, 2024.

“It was kind of sad to see,” he said, when the migrants “just want a better place, a better place to live.”

‘Kind of crazy’

The neighborhoods of Marine Park, Madison, and Midwood surrounding the high school have trended Republican, voting heavily for Trump in 2016.

But members of the school community pointed out James Madison’s diverse student body; out of 3,700 students, 500 are English language learners; 19% are Asian, 16% are Latino and 10% are Black, according to Department of Education statistics.

Others pointed out the school’s history as the alma mater of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders and a place that’s long been a haven for immigrants of all kinds, from Holocaust survivors to Russians fleeing communism.

“Madison High School has always been a melting pot,” said Steve Kastenbaum, a veteran radio reporter and alumni of the school.

“People within the alumni community were quite frankly appalled that some people in Brooklyn exhibited the vitriolic rhetoric that was aimed at these people who were seeking shelter in a storm.”

A few students leaving the high school Thursday afternoon expressed their own trepidation about what had happened there.

“They put them over us students which is kind of crazy,” said a 15-year-old.

Another student lamented the school no longer felt safe for her. “It doesn’t feel like my safe space. It usually feels like my safe space.”

But many others took the remote day in stride, and said they felt their voices had been missing from the national news about their school. Zola Zephirin, a senior, said many students were upset by how things appeared on television and online.

“The hostility towards the migrants was definitely uncalled for,” she said. “These are people, they have families, they come here and attempt to make a better life, just like many of the students at Madison.”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

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

Almost half of migrant families who got 60-day eviction notices moved out of NYC shelters

2024-03-01T19:34:40+00:00

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Beatriz, a Venezuelan mother of two young girls, got a 60-day notice to leave their Midtown migrant shelter last November.

The next day, she said, she was out hunting for apartments.

Working under the table in an Irish pub in Hell’s Kitchen, she’d been able to save some money, pooling it with her boyfriend and a cousin and his family. It was enough for the upfront costs to rent a three-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights they would all share. By the time her 60 days ran out, Beatriz and her girls had already moved out of the shelter.

“We’re totally thankful,” Beatriz, who asked that her last name be withheld fearing immigration consequences, said in Spanish. “We’ve been given so much.”

Beatriz is among the first swath of migrant families with children to see their time in city shelters run out under a newly implemented city policy for migrant families in certain shelters. Notices started coming due in early January, and of the around 7,500 parents and children who reached their 60-day limit, half have moved out, according data through late February from the mayor’s office.

A further breakdown of the data released by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander’s last month on the 60-day policy found that of about 4,750 families who’d had their time expire through early February, 29% of them, or about 1,300 families, reapplied for shelter and were transferred to new shelters. The remaining 16% stayed in the same shelter where they were originally placed.

Among those who’ve gotten the notices are families like Beatriz’ who came in the fall of 2022 and had more than a year to find work and make connections in New York City.

But many who received the notices have entered the migrant shelter system since the rule has been in place, like families living at the sprawling tent facility at Floyd Bennett Field, or those at a recently opened family shelter in an old warehouse in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill, who’ve had much less time to get their bearings in a new country.

Migrants leaving the Row Hotel stored their belongings on the sidewalk before heading to a new shelter, Jan. 4, 2024.

The mayor’s office didn’t return a request for additional comment on the new data, but members of the Eric Adams administration have repeatedly defended the shelter stay limits, crediting them for driving down costs. They also say the policy is keeping the number of migrants in city shelters — which hovers at around 64,000 people — from continuing to grow. The numbers have even slightly dipped in recent weeks, despite more than a thousand newcomers arriving each week.

For adult migrants who are subject to strict 30-day shelter limits, with days or weekslong waits to get another cot, many have resorted to sleeping on the streets or trains, in overcrowded mosques, or unsanctioned commercial spaces. This week, Gothamist reported on one couple living in a school bus.

The Adams administration has repeatedly said its main goal is not to have families with children sleeping on the streets. In all, city officials said they’ve given 9,100 families shelter eviction notices so far. While some like Beatriz have landed on their feet, critics of the 60-day policy say many more parents and children who can’t afford to move out have been put through unnecessary turmoil.

“The 60-day shelter limit for families with children is one of the cruelest policies to come from City Hall in generations, evicting families from shelter in the middle of winter, and displacing kids from their schools in the middle of the school year,” said Lander, who has promised to investigate the policy. He pointed out City Hall has relatively little information on what happens to migrants when they leave shelters.

“Where did those nearly 2,500 parents go? Were they in a dangerously overcrowded basement? Were they sleeping on the street? We have no idea.”

‘Families going dark’

Schools with migrant students forced to move because of the 60-day rule have been grappling with the logistical and emotional fallout of the disruptions.

“Just said goodbye to another four newcomers who are moving away after being with us for a year,” said one Manhattan principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Lots of tears from the kids and adults.”

Upper West Side parent Naveed Hasan, who sits on the city’s school board, the Panel for Educational Policy, has been part of an informal group of parents, school staff, and local elected officials working to find students who disappear suddenly from classes.

“It’s really like families going dark and then leaving people really confused. Where are they, and how can we help them?” Hasan said. “And I think this is sort of the intended effect of a policy.”

Testifying at a City Council hearing Friday, Molly Schaeffer, the head of the city’s office of Asylum Seeker Operations, said that 90% of children who were evicted in the month of January remained in their same school, though she didn’t give specifics. “We really did prioritize education and the education of the youngest children when making these types of choices and moves,” she said, adding the office tried to keep families in the same borough as their youngest child’s school.

Migrants leaving the Row Hotel stored their belongings on the sidewalk before heading to a new shelter, Jan. 4, 2024.

Schools that recently got influxes of new students are already seeing them transferred to shelters in other parts of the city, leaving staffers with whiplash.

“In a month we had more than 50 students…and now I don’t know what’s going to happen with them,” said Carolina Zafra, a teacher at P.S. 46 in Clinton Hill, among several schools in the area that received a sudden surge in students, following the opening of a new shelter for families in a converted warehouse.

School staffers knew the new students were subject to the 60-day shelter stay limit, but were holding out hope that city officials wouldn’t enforce it, Zafra said.

The school wrote letters for families to bring back to the shelter showing they were enrolled in a nearby school in the hopes it might get them a reprieve. But when teachers came back from mid-winter break this week, they found that many of their students had already been moved. Zafra has one student who’s now commuting to the school from Manhattan and she heard about another living by JFK airport.

“I’m more concerned about all the emotional distress those children already experienced and now again moving them from something I thought was settled for them,” she said.

One mom who arrived from Venezuela in December and enrolled her two kids at P.S. 46 said her family was transferred from the Hall Street shelter to a shelter in Midtown Manhattan last week.

The mom, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she never considered transferring her kids to a new school, even though her commute is now close to an hour.

“They have a lot of patience with the children,” she said of the school, in Spanish. “I didn’t want to change their school because they feel good there.”

Homeless students in New York City are entitled to transportation under federal law so that they can remain in the same school if they move. Kids and parents in temporary housing are eligible for free MetroCards, and younger students can also get assigned to school bus routes, though that process can take some time.

But the mom said their MetroCards are still pending, and since the family has no income to pay the fares, they often have to sneak through open emergency gates. Her husband has already received a fine for doing so.

Still, the Venezuelan mom considers herself lucky compared to other families from the school who were placed in shelters even further away, she said.

‘I felt such relief’

Among those 16% of families who’ve been able to remain in their shelters, according to the data from the comptroller, many are living at the remote tent shelter located at Floyd Bennett Field. Some describe their extended stay there as both a blessing and a curse.

Geraldine, a 38-year-old mother of three from Venezuela, who moved into Floyd Bennett Field last December, said getting used to the tents was a challenge: the long walks in the cold across a vast marshland to the nearest bus stop, the bathrooms and showers in trailers outside of the living quarters, the lack of privacy and constant cries of collicky children. The disruptions during severe weather have also been hard, like the January evening when the city evacuated thousands of residents to a nearby school due to high winds.

Venezuelan migrants Geraldine, Jhon and their daughter Yorliannys, leave the Floyd Bennett Field family shelter for the day, Jan. 25, 2024.

Still, as her eviction date approached she prayed the family would get to stay put, dreading the disruption of packing up and starting again somewhere new. The family collected their belongings the night before their mid-February move-out day, still unsure what would happen. But when her husband checked in with staff the next morning, he was told they could get another 60 days in the same cubicle.

“I felt such relief,” Geraldine said, who asked that her full name not be used to protect her family’s identity. “We didn’t have to go all the way to [Midtown] with the kids,” she said, referring to the process of reapplying for shelter at the Roosevelt Hotel. Instead their kids continued at their schools without interruption.

“The idea is to finish our time here, save up money and move out,” she said.

‘I feel good, and I’m afraid, at the same time’

Beatriz’ hunt for their new home was difficult, as it is for many New Yorkers. She fronted $500 to someone promising an apartment and spent a day standing in the rain outside what she thought was her new apartment in Astoria before realizing it was a scam.

When a rental finally came through, she and her daughters moved out little by little, shuttling their belongings on the subway over the course of several days. After the winter break, Beatriz pulled her kids out of school and transferred them to ones closer to their new Crown Heights home, unable to make the bi-borough commute. Her 7-year-old daughter seems to be adjusting, while her 11-year-old is having a more difficult time.

“She misses all her friends from class,” Beatriz said.

Beatriz relishes being able to cook for herself and the family again, something she couldn’t do for more than a year living in a hotel room. She’s enjoying the privacy and peace of having their own place. But she also feels the anxiety of so many New Yorkers living paycheck to paycheck, that a little disruption could lead to an inability to make rent and send her back to shelter.

“I feel good, and I’m afraid, at the same time,” Beatriz said. “And the fear, because if one of us loses our job, god willing, how would we pay rent?”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

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

They thought graduation was near. Instead, several immigrant students were pressured to transfer.

2024-05-20T14:33:24+00:00

Genesis Callero thought she was nearing the finish line.

The 18-year-old senior had made quick academic progress since arriving at the Cyberarts Studio Academy in Park Slope, Brooklyn — CASA, for short — from Ecuador last year knowing no English. She had passed four of her five required Regents exams and earned more than enough credits to graduate, according to Genesis and a school staffer familiar with her transcript.

All that remained was the English Language Arts Regents exam, the only Regents test newly arrived immigrants aren’t eligible to take in their home language. Students learning English as a new language often need extra time and support to pass, according to educators. Still, Genesis was optimistic that she would get her diploma this school year and had even taken a professional graduation portrait.

High school graduation photos of Genesis and Karen Callero.

So the teen was blindsided when school officials, including principal Valrie Wauchope, summoned her to a meeting just over two months ago and delivered devastating news.

Neither Genesis nor her sister Karen, 17 and also a senior, would be able to graduate from CASA, Genesis recalled the school officials saying. They told the girls they would need to transfer and recommended New Dawn Charter High School, a transfer school geared toward older students at risk of not graduating.

“They told me no, they can’t help me in this high school,” Genesis said in Spanish, recalling her meeting with CASA officials. “It seemed to me like something unfair.”

The family felt they had no choice but to transfer. Within days, Genesis and Karen left CASA.

The teens were not alone. According to interviews with the families of six immigrant students from CASA — all seniors who had recently failed the ELA Regents exam, according to families and staffers — Wauchope recently told their children they would not graduate if they remained at CASA and counseled them to transfer immediately.

“If he stays, he won’t graduate,” the mom of another 17-year-old senior at CASA told Chalkbeat in Spanish, recalling what the principal told her. The mom asked to remain anonymous because she fears jeopardizing an active immigration case.

Genesis Callero, 18, on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Brooklyn, New York.

All of the families have since taken their children out of CASA, according to interviews and school records obtained by Chalkbeat.

Wauchope, who is in her first year as principal at CASA, didn’t respond to phone calls or an email seeking comment. Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said, “We take allegations of students being pushed out of their school very seriously and investigate all formal complaints when they arise. Every student has the right to remain in their school through graduation and be immersed in a supportive learning environment.” Tull didn’t immediately say whether the department has received complaints about CASA.

Three staffers at the school, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, contend the students would have been able to graduate from CASA with more time. Immigrant students often fail the ELA Regents exam on their first attempt but can pass with extra time and support. Just 27% of city English language learners passed the ELA Regents in 2023, according to state data. Under New York law, students can remain in school through the academic year they start at age 21.

The staffers suspect students were pressured to transfer because if they did not graduate this school year, it would harm the school’s four-year graduation rate — a key performance measure for city principals. CASA’s four-year June graduation rate in 2023 was 75% last year, lower than the 81% citywide average.

Karen Callero, 17, on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Brooklyn, New York.

“They’re our best students. They come to school every single day, pass their other Regents exams,” said one staffer, adding that some students are homeless and haven’t been in the country long. “This is all because they can’t pass their English Regents on time. To push them out … it’s disgraceful.”

The staffers said they worry the situation will continue with future students learning English as a new language.

Annette Renaud, a longtime parent activist and former CASA Parent Association president who remains involved at the school supporting several relatives enrolled there, said she reached out to some of the families of immigrant students after learning about the situation from staff. She’s hoping the students can be reenrolled at CASA.

“I don’t know how many doctors, lawyers, sanitation supervisors, home attendants … we pushed out the door.”

Graduation pressures weigh on administrators

Several school administrators from across New York City told Chalkbeat that high school principals often face intense pressure to improve their four-year graduation rates. That pressure can be particularly acute for schools like CASA that have absorbed large numbers of newly arrived immigrant students amid the influx of roughly 36,000 migrant students over the past two school years.

CASA’s population of English Language Learners surged from below 40 in 2018 to nearly 100 out of its 300 students last year, according to city data. English Language Learners often take longer to graduate and finish high school at lower rates than their peers.

For English Language Learners who began high school in 2017, roughly 56% graduated in four years, jumping to 67% in six years.

That’s compared to 80% of all students in the 2017 cohort who graduated within four years and 87% within six years.

In recent years, “schools that have never really seen a high population of immigrant students were suddenly seeing these populations, and there were some growing pains there,” said Liza Schwartzwald, Director of Economic Justice and Family Empowerment at the New York Immigration Coalition, an advocacy organization.

But she stressed that “it is still incumbent on the school” to seek out some of the many resources available to better support newcomer students.

The allegations at CASA represent an “egregious example of the wrong way to go about doing this work,” she said.

The facade of John Jay High School campus in Park Slope, the building that houses Cyberarts Studio Academy.

Schools have alternatives to help immigrant students

To be sure, some older teenagers still learning English may benefit from a school more specifically tailored toward serving older newcomer students, particularly if they are in danger of aging out of the system and severely behind on credits, educators and advocates said.

But that wasn’t the situation for students counseled to transfer out of CASA, all of whom were 19 or younger, had passed at least some of their other Regents exams, and had accumulated all or close to all the credits they needed to graduate, according to staff and families.

Educators said that the school, which has hired several English as a new language teachers in recent years, was more than capable of shepherding the students to passing the ELA exam. They just needed a little more time.

“We would be able to get them to that passing rate within that time 100%,” said one CASA staffer. “No doubt in my mind.”

Schools have other avenues for supporting immigrant students struggling with the ELA Regents that don’t involve forcing them to transfer, said Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, the Immigrant Students Rights Project Director at Advocates for Children, a nonprofit that works on behalf of vulnerable kids.

They can refer students to extra night classes at Young Adult Borough Centers without un-enrolling them, and there is an appeals process specifically for the ELA Regents test for English Language Learners who fail the exam but score close enough to the cutoff.

“There are several options,” Rodriguez-Engberg said. “You don’t just ask a student to leave.”

Families struggle with fallout of being pushed out

The immigrant students who left CASA had different backgrounds and academic profiles, but all of them were making progress at the school and none wanted to abruptly leave in the spring of their senior year, according to interviews with the students and their families and records reviewed by Chalkbeat.

Sisters Genesis Callero, 18, and Karen Callero, 17, talk to each other while at a park near where they stay on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Brooklyn, New York.

One student, a 17-year-old recent arrival from Venezuela, quickly won admiration from staff and students since enrolling last fall for his gregarious demeanor and inspiring story, according to his family and staffers. The boy’s mom asked not to use his name because the family has an open immigration case.

On his most recent report card, issued around the time he left the school in March, he earned an 85% average and comments from teachers praising his “excellent progress,” “consistent participat[ion]” and “initiative,” according to a copy reviewed by Chalkbeat.

The teen recounted his grueling immigration journey in a student-produced film that played on TVs in the school’s main office and hallways, according to a video reviewed by Chalkbeat.

The family was devastated by the news he couldn’t remain at the school.

The boy’s mom said she asked Wauchope about alternatives that would allow her son to remain at CASA, like enrolling him in night classes for English or taking longer to graduate. Wauchope didn’t budge, and the mom agreed to withdraw her son.

“I felt it was something bad they did to him,” she said. But in the moment, she felt powerless. “Sometimes out of fear, we’re migrants, we don’t say no, we do what they say.”

That didn’t stop the woman from continuing to advocate for her son. She went back for a second meeting with Wauchope, telling the principal she thought the decision was unfair, she said.

She also visited an enrollment center and asked them to reenroll her son at CASA. She was told the school was now full and could not accept any more students, the mom said.

The boy was crushed but told his mom, “If it’s to graduate, it’s okay.”

He has since enrolled at New Dawn, but frequently drops by CASA to say hi to classmates and teachers.

“It hurt me very much because I see him now, he doesn’t want to go to class,” his mom said. “It destabilized him totally. It flipped his world upside down.”

The news landed just as hard for Carolina, a 19-year-old senior from Guatemala. Since arriving at CASA three years ago, she had made significant academic, social, and linguistic strides.

The teen, who asked to use only her middle name for fear of immigration consequences, struggled at first to acclimate to her new school and country.

“But after some time passed, I adapted. I understand and speak English,” she said.

Carolina’s attendance had faltered this year, and she still needed to pass two Regents exams, according to transcript information shared with Chalkbeat. But she was hopeful she would soon graduate and planned to apply to college or join the Army.

When Wauchope told Carolina she wouldn’t be able to graduate from CASA and counseled her to transfer in late February, the teen was crestfallen over the idea of leaving her home of three years.

“I couldn’t adapt to a new school or new people,” she recalled pleading in the meeting.

She and her mother begged for the chance to stay at the school, promising to redouble the teen’s efforts to pass the exam. But Wauchope held firm, according to the family. (One CASA staffer noted the teen is technically still on CASA’s roster, likely because she was never officially unenrolled. But Carolina’s mother said she wasn’t aware of that.)

Despite her misgivings, Carolina eventually decided to give New Dawn a try.

She set out for the school, which is a farther commute than she’s used to, on a Friday morning last month, and arrived after classes had begun, according to the teen and her mom. While Sara Asmussen, New Dawn’s founder and executive director, said the school “accepts students year-round with no intake requirements at all,” Carolina said staff at the school asked her, in English, to come back on Monday.

Carolina never went back. She hasn’t returned to that school, or any other, since.

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

On the hot seat in Washington, Chancellor Banks defends NYC schools’ response to antisemitism

2024-05-08T19:42:54+00:00

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New York City schools Chancellor David Banks defended his record on antisemitism during a tense congressional hearing Wednesday, maintaining that schools have consistently responded to troubling incidents with both education and discipline.

Banks joined school leaders from Montgomery Country, Maryland and Berkeley, California, along with an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney, in a hearing convened by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about “confronting pervasive antisemitism in K-12 schools.”

Wednesday’s hearing came in the wake of previous high-profile committee hearings with university leaders that helped lead to the resignation of multiple college presidents. Republican members of Congress say the hearings have shown that higher education leaders have failed to adequately address antisemitism on their campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas. They used the hearing to press K-12 leaders like Banks about similar concerns.

When he introduced the panel, GOP Rep. Aaron Bean said that the aftermath of last year’s attack revealed “some of the ugliest” ideas, and that “our education system has failed” to stop those ideas.

“Jewish students fear riding the bus, wearing their kippah to school, or even just eating and breathing as a Jewish student,” Bean said.

Banks, who presides over the nation’s largest school system with more than 900,000 students and roughly 150,000 staff members, acknowledged that the system’s diversity means “our classrooms have not been insulated from the global stage.”

“There have been unacceptable incidents of antisemitism in our schools,” he said.

Banks emphasized both an education-focused response, including the introduction of several new curricula on preventing hate crimes and on the Holocaust and Jewish history. But he also said that Education Department officials have “removed, disciplined, or are in the process of disciplining” 12 staff members related to incidents of antisemitism.

At least 30 students have been suspended for their roles in antisemitic incidents, he said.

The incidents of hate in city schools following the Oct. 7 attack have not just been directed towards Jewish students, Banks noted. Out of a total of 281 incidents of religious bias in city schools since Oct. 7, 42% involved antisemitism, while 30% were directed against Muslim students, he said.

Asked by Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat and former Bronx public school principal, whether the city could combat antisemitism while simultaneously confronting other forms of bias, Banks said: “Not only can we, but we must.”

Banks rebuts claim about antisemitism among school’s students

Several of the most heated exchanges at Wednesday’s hearing focused on the fallout from a raucous student demonstration at Hillcrest High School in Queens — Banks’ alma mater — where students filled the hallway demanding the ouster of a teacher who posted a picture on social media shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks holding a sign that read “I Stand with Israel.”

After the demonstration, Banks called the “the notion … these kids are radicalized and antisemitic” the “height of irresponsibility.”

When Rep. Burgess Owens, a Utah Republican, challenged him about that comment, Banks told Owens he stood by it, and argued that “the entire school was not radicalized.” He added that “the kids who were responsible, who led that effort, engaged, clearly, in an act of antisemitism, and I dealt with that.” A “number” of these students were suspended, the chancellor said.

Banks also stressed that he removed Hillcrest’s principal, Scott Milczewski, midway through the year over concerns about his leadership. Milczewski was moved to a job in the Education Department’s central bureaucracy.

Several representatives grilled Banks on why Milczewski was still employed by the city’s Education Department and accused him of misrepresenting Milczewski’s status.

“How can Jewish students feel safe in New York City schools when you can’t even manage to terminate the principal of ‘Open Season on Jews High School’?” demanded Rep. Brandon Williams, a Republican from New York.

Banks responded that while he didn’t think Milczewski was fit to continue leading Hillcrest, employees have due process, and the chancellor doesn’t have the authority to terminate someone just because he disagrees with what they’ve done.

Banks also faced heat over Hillcrest from New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who noted that, earlier in the hearing, Banks appeared to answer “yes” to a question about whether staff members about Hillcrest had been fired, despite his continued role working for the department.

“That’s concerning to me that you have him in a senior position,” she said.

(Rep. Lisa McClain, a Michigan Republican, asked Banks, “So, you fired the people?” Banks replied, “Yes, we moved people, absolutely.”)

Emerson Sykes, the ACLU attorney, warned that while schools are required by federal law to respond to “hostile” educational environments, certain criticism of Israel and its government are protected under the First Amendment.

“Firing may be appropriate in certain circumstances,” he said. “But I think we need to think about how we can address antisemitism, change hearts and minds, make children safe, without only looking to the most punitive tool in our toolbox.”

Lawmakers highlight allegations of rampant antisemitism

Lawmakers raised concerns about the climate at other New York City schools in recent months.

For example, they brought up allegations of unchecked student antisemitism at Origins High School in southern Brooklyn that are now the subject of a federal lawsuit.

Among the claims in the lawsuit are that dozens of students marched through the hallways chanting “F*** the Jews.

Banks said Education Department officials found “no evidence” in their investigation of mass marching through the hallways with hateful chants. But he did say they found other “deeply troubling” antisemitic incidents at the school. He said he couldn’t comment further because of the ongoing litigation.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, asked Banks about a map of the Middle East in an elementary school classroom at P.S. 261 in Brooklyn that omitted Israel. The school’s Arabic arts program receives funding from a foundation tied to the Qatari government, and Foxx expressed concern that the foundation was pushing unvetted materials into city public school classrooms.

Banks, however, said that the map wasn’t provided by the Qatari foundation. The teacher found it on her own during a visit to Jerusalem, he said. And while Banks thought the map was antisemitic and had the map removed, after talking to the teacher, he said that she didn’t intend it to be antisemitic. (The map had been hanging in the classroom for more than a decade.)

Near the end of the hearing, Banks repeated a criticism that he had leveled in the days before his testimony: that the event was designed to produce “viral moments” rather than actual solutions to complex problems.

He also blamed the problem in part on young people’s emotional but misguided responses to what they see on social media.

“Ultimately, if we really care about solving for antisemitism, it’s not about gotcha moments,” he said. “It’s about teaching.”

Bowman and Connecticut Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Democrat and another former educator, emphasized the need to combat other forms of discrimination, including Islamophobia, alongside antisemitism.

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

Aspen Ideas fest for teens: Brooklyn students tackle mental health, immigration, rats

2024-05-06T22:43:30+00:00

Kimberly Gil knows what it’s like to struggle with mental health and not have a place to turn for support.

Gil, a 16-year-old sophomore at the High School for Social Justice in Bushwick, Brooklyn, immigrated to the U.S. as a kid and struggled to acclimate. She often felt like she couldn’t talk to her family about what she was going through. It’s a familiar story among her classmates, Gil said.

“Many of our students have lost a loved one. They’ve gone through sexual harassment, sexual assault, depression, self-harm,” said Gil. But when it comes to bringing up those topics with their families, many teens are concerned “they won’t believe me, or they won’t be there for me.”

That sense of isolation is what drove Gil and seven classmates to come up with a new approach to supporting student mental health: creating a space in school where kids can share what they’re going through with fellow teenagers.

Gil is a member of the school’s team for the second annual Aspen Challenge – a youth version of the famous Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado where teams of public school teenagers choose a pressing social challenge and come up with an innovative solution. Her team was among 20 high schools last month presenting their ideas on various issues from mental health, to rats, to immigration.

The team from the High School for Social Justice in Bushwick presents at the Aspen Challenge. Sophomore Kimberly Gil is second from left.

Gil’s team opted to tackle the ongoing youth mental health crisis at their school by transforming an empty classroom in their school into a wellness space staffed by teen volunteers who have undergone training as peer counselors, with adult supervision.

“This is a way where they can come and express how they truly feel without feeling ashamed,” said Gil.

In the first few days since the space opened up last month, they’ve already seen a steady stream of students coming to vent about grades and stress at the end of the marking period, said sophomore Grace Sewpersaud, 16.

Rats, immigration, and discrimination

Students in this year’s contest chose between five potential challenges: mental health, immigration, discrimination and bias, the environment, and rats.

The top honor, which included a trip to this summer’s Aspen Festival, went to students at Multicultural High School, a school in Cypress Hills geared toward recent immigrants. The team developed a website and workshops to connect newly arrived immigrant students with resources like legal help, support applying for financial aid, and access to free day care.

A team from Brooklyn Technical High School, called the Brooklyn Eraticators, took home an honorable mention for their multi-pronged plan to get the city’s largest high school to help bring down the rat population in Fort Greene.

The plan involved an education campaign to get students to discard their food waste in compost bins, which are taken out more frequently than other trash and are less likely to attract rats, student organizers said.

Teens at Sunset Park High School, meanwhile, drew on their own experiences watching immigrant family members face discrimination to devise a series of know-your-rights workshops for undocumented kids and adults.

Lizbeth Acevedo, a 16-year-old sophomore, said she’s seen her immigrant parents face discrimination since she was young. “So I guess this was a way for us … to cause the discrimination to stop.”

Teens talk parents and mental health

The topic that drew the most attention from the teen problem-solvers was the ongoing youth mental health crisis – a problem that has spurred city officials to launch their own novel approach: a free, online therapy program for kids 13-17.

Teams tackling mental health at this year’s Aspen challenge talked about pervasive anxiety, depression, and stress among their peers – and a lack of understanding or even direct opposition from their parents about accessing treatment.

The team at Brooklyn High School for Law and Technology focused one prong of their plan on educating parents about teens and mental health. The group proposed bringing parents into workshops to help ease some of the stigma, misunderstandings, and fears that adults may bring to conversations about the mental health of their kids.

“When I spoke to my family about when I wanted to have therapy and I felt like I needed help, they felt like I was telling them that I was crazy, and that I needed medications to calm me down, and that they were going to throw me in a psych ward,” said Ariana Garcia, a 17-year-old senior.

Parents are often still carrying their own burdens and traumas that may influence how they perceive their kids’ mental health, added Haajra Ali, a 16-year-old 11th grader. “It just depends on how we can help them so they can break the cycle,” she said.

Gil, the student at Bushwick’s High School for Social Justice, said she was not too hung up on the results of the contest.

“To be honest, we don’t really care about Aspen,” she said. “We’re more into actually doing something with the school. For us, it’s a really big thing that we’re able to put this up for people.”

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

NYC to restore a controversial admissions boost for Manhattan students, Banks says

2024-05-03T19:04:48+00:00

Schools Chancellor David Banks intends to bring back a controversial admissions bump for Manhattan eighth-graders at some of New York City’s most sought-after high schools, he told parents this week.

The rule, which was scrapped by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2020, gave students from Manhattan’s District 2 first crack at a half dozen selective schools in the district, including Eleanor Roosevelt, NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies, and Millennium High School. The district spans much of lower and midtown Manhattan along with the Upper East Side and is one of the city’s most affluent.

School integration advocates lauded de Blasio’s move. They argue that, in conjunction with other reforms, removing the district priority has significantly increased the share of Black, Latino, and low-income students at several of those schools.

But other parents have been forcefully pushing to restore the priority, saying that without it, district students have less of a chance of getting into coveted local schools and that some frustrated families are pulling out of the public school system altogether.

Banks, who has final say over school and district admissions policies, said at a raucous District 2 town hall Thursday night that he met with a group of those parents, including members of the local Community Education Council and the pro-screening group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, known as PLACE, on Wednesday.

“They shared the effects of removing the priority to District 2 families,” he said. “And we are committed to granting D2 some kind of priority. I’m looking at various models as we speak,” he said. Details will be finalized before the start of the next admissions cycle this fall, he said. Applications are typically due in early December.

The announcement drew immediate plaudits from supportive council members at Thursday’s raucous town hall meeting, as well as boos from some members of the audience.

“I think that’s a huge win,” said Craig Slutzkin, a parent on District 2′s Community Education Council and PLACE member who met with Banks earlier this week. “It shows he understands the needs of District 2 families.”

The announcement set off alarm bells for school integration advocates, who worry reinstating the admissions priority could roll back significant progress diversifying some competitive high schools.

“It’s extremely frustrating and concerning and sad to hear that he meets with this really small group of constituents and then decides to reverse a policy that was extremely effective at opening access and opportunity for some of our most marginalized student groups in the city,” said Nyah Berg, the executive director of Appleseed NY, a group that advocates for school integration.

“For me, it’s fundamentally just not sound policy.”

Banks rolls back pandemic admissions reforms

The reinstatement of District 2 priority would represent another reversal of a de Blasio pandemic-era admissions reform meant to chip away at racial and economic segregation in the city’s stratified public middle and high schools.

Banks halted a de Blasio plan to phase out separate elementary school gifted and talented classes, and he allowed local superintendents to bring back selective screens at middle schools, which were banned during the pandemic.

Banks’s announcement about District 2 priority came the same day that New York’s appellate division ruled a lawsuit filed by student integration advocates could proceed. The suit claims that the city’s segregated school system denies Black and Latino students their constitutional right to a sound, basic education.

The District 2 admissions priority, which school officials introduced in the 1990s as an effort to keep middle class families from fleeing public schools, has long attracted intense criticism from integration advocates.

In general, the city’s system of high school choice aims to give students from across the city equal access to high schools. There are some schools that grant borough preferences and others that prioritize students from the surrounding neighborhoods, but the District 2 priority was unique in giving a district-wide bump at some of the city’s most-sought after schools.

In practice, the rule virtually guaranteed that students outside of the district would not have a shot at getting into a handful of coveted high schools, no matter how stellar their academic records.

Eleanor Roosevelt offered 100% of its seats to District 2 students in 2017, while Baruch College Campus High School was 98% District 2 students, Chalkbeat reported in 2018.

In the months leading up to de Blasio’s 2020 decision to scrap the District 2 priority, several principals of schools included in the policy spoke out against the practice.

“The lack of diversity among students, faculty and staff is a disservice to our community as a whole,” Eleanor Roosevelt principal Dimitri Saliani wrote in a 2020 email to parents, according to the New York Times.

Removing District 2 priority, in conjunction with broader changes to the admissions system for selective high schools and initiatives from individual schools to set aside more seats for underrepresented students, has made a significant impact at several schools.

In the span of a single year, Eleanor Roosevelt went from sending 1% of its offers to students outside District 2, to 62% after the district priority was removed. The share of offers going to low-income students jumped from 16% to 50%.

Over time, the changes have profoundly shifted the demographics of schools like Roosevelt, which is now 27% Black and Latino and 37% low-income students. The school was 12% Black and Latino and 19% low-income students in 2019.

The NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies jumped from 14% Black and Latino and 28% low-income students in 2019 to 20% Black and Latino and 43% low-income students in 2022. A similar change happened at Baruch College Campus High School.

At Millennium High School in lower Manhattan (which gave priority to students living or attending school south of East Houston or West Houston Street) and School of the Future in Gramercy, the numbers of Black and Latino and low-income students have stayed relatively flat. And at the NYC Museum School in Chelsea, the share of Black and Latino and low-income students decreased.

District families have mixed reactions

Slutzkin cited intense demand from district parents to bring back the rule, saying he heard from roughly 1,000 people in support of a petition to reinstate it.

He also pointed to the fact that only 55% of District 2 students got an admissions offer at one of their top three high school choices last year, the lowest rate of any district in the city, according to Education Department data.

“No families should be forced to have excessive commutes to go to schools that meet their needs,” he said.

But Gavin Healy, another parent on the local education council, said the relatively low rate of top choice matches for District 2 students likely has to do with families disproportionately selecting a small number of highly-competitive schools on their application.

“Manhattan has room, it’s just not at the schools that some of the families in the district want,” he said.

Slutzkin argued that schools with open seats in Manhattan may have low graduation rates and would not meet the needs of high-achieving students, saying it’s “incumbent upon the Education Department to work on those schools and get them to be schools that are desired.”

Proponents of the D2 admissions priority have also argued that some district families are pulling out of the public school system and enrolling in private school because they’re not getting into their top choice public schools.

One Manhattan principal of a school that formerly offered District 2 priority wasn’t surprised that officials plan to reinstate the policy.

“I get the sense that the battle to keep students in the public schools for financial reasons is a big one,” said the principal, who spoke anonymously because they weren’t authorized to talk to the press. “They need to put up dams, and this is one way.”

Healy said he was “not worried about the threat of people leaving,” adding that the district is also seeing an influx of new students, including asylum seekers.

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

NYC schools chancellor to student activists: Don’t allow ‘discontent to morph into hatred’

2024-05-02T22:48:58+00:00

New York City schools Chancellor David Banks sought to strike a balance between affirming students’ rights to protest and disavowing hate speech as he responded to college campus unrest and previewed his upcoming testimony before Congress.

Citing his own history of involvement in student activism and social justice — including in the movement to divest from apartheid-era South Africa when he was a college student — Banks told reporters on Thursday that he supports student activism “at the highest level.”

But he urged activists not to “allow that discontent to morph into hatred for anyone.”

Banks was on the scene Tuesday night at Columbia University as police raided a building that demonstrators had occupied. He later made his way to City College of New York, where police cleared a tent encampment and made hundreds of arrests.

He said he was troubled by an experience at City College in which roughly a dozen protesters “surrounded” him when he tried to enter the quad and barred him from entering, telling him, “We own the quad.” He said he was disappointed by graffiti he saw on the campus the next morning that said “Death to America,” and “Death to Israel.”

The protests and police backlash have garnered international attention, and have been closely watched by many city high school students, some of whom are considering attending the colleges at the center of the tumult.

Banks’ comments Thursday previewed the message he intends to deliver next week before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce — the same committee that has grilled college presidents from Columbia, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and MIT in recent months.

Banks is expected to appear alongside district leaders from Maryland’s Montgomery County and Berkeley, California, to share their responses to antisemitism in K-12 schools.

New York City’s school system, the nation’s largest, has seen multiple flare-ups over the Israel-Hamas war, including a raucous student demonstration at Hillcrest High School over a teacher posting a photo with an “I Stand With Israel” sign, a citywide student walkout calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and allegations of unchecked student antisemitism at a Brooklyn High School — allegations officials have denied.

Banks emphasized that his approach has leaned on convening community members, including assembling an interfaith council, while developing curricula on Jewish and Muslim history and reviewing the disciplinary code with city principals.

His own background “as a Black man who is keenly aware of trauma and pain and oppression that my own people have suffered in America” has given him “an affinity for both the Jewish and the Palestinian people,” he added.

Banks expressed concern that the questioning from the Republican-led committee, which includes New York representative Elise Stefanik, would be more focused on “viral moments and empty soundbites and cheap political talk” than substantive solutions.

“Putting a spotlight on any particular individual and sometimes trying to create gotcha moments is not how you ultimately solve problems that you really, deeply care about,” he said. “I would ask for Congress to figure out a way to bring people together from across the nation to help to solve for this insidious level of hate.”

Banks acknowledged that the city’s response to tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hasn’t been “perfect,” but said he’s proud of the efforts so far.

He also expressed confidence in his own ability to go toe to toe with his congressional questioners, noting that he’s “from New York,” and that squaring off with Brooklyn Councilmember Lincoln Restler, a progressive Democrat, during council hearings was good preparation.

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

College campus unrest has some NYC high schoolers rethinking their next steps

2024-05-02T00:48:48+00:00

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As tensions reached a boiling point on college campuses in recent days over pro-Palestinian student protests and encampments, many New York City high schoolers were watching closely.

For juniors and seniors weighing their college plans, the events are offering critical information about the cultures of the campuses they may soon be joining — and in some cases swaying their decisions.

And some have been directly affected by the fallout from the protests and overwhelming police response at City College of New York and Columbia University.

The High School for Math, Science, and Engineering, known at HSMSE, is located on the Harlem campus of the City College of New York, steps away from a student-led tent encampment that NYPD officers raided late Tuesday night, sparking violent clashes with protesters and leading to nearly 200 arrests.

As the tumult arrived at their doorstep, the high school canceled in-person classes Wednesday, following the lead of City College.

“I think the way a college reacts to such a big issue like the protests right now can be kind of indicative of the way they react in the future,” said Gabriela Picazo, an 18-year-old senior at HSMSE, who plans to attend Brown University next year, one of the few colleges that reached a deal with protesters to end its tent encampment.

Students at HSMSE said the pivot to remote classes Wednesday posed some challenges, particularly for last-minute preparation for Advanced Placement exams that start this week. But they understood the decision was meant to keep them safe.

“It’s kind of dystopian seeing this area that’s supposed to be a safe space where we go eat and relax being flooded with cop cars and all the hostility there,” said one senior at the school, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share his opinion on the situation freely.

Students were expected to return to in-person classes Thursday, but were told not to enter the campus quadrangle during the school day, according to a notice from the school’s principal obtained by Chalkbeat.

New York City’s public school system has seen its own controversial student protests, including a raucous demonstration at Hillcrest High School over a teacher posting a photo holding an “I Stand With Israel” sign, and a citywide walkout in support of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Protests and backlash prompt reflection on college plans

The protests on campuses across the country, as well as the response from administrators and law enforcement at colleges, have been top of mind for New York City high schoolers preparing to enroll in college. Many have been particularly gripped by the response at Columbia and City College, prompting some Jewish and Muslim students, as well as other applicants, to reconsider their options.

Seniors at The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology in the Bronx (left to right): Kennedy Betances, Safa Al-Omari, and Hawa Fisiru.

Hawa Fisiru, a senior at The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology in the Bronx, plans to attend Columbia this fall. The university’s history of student activism was a selling point: Fisiru participated in Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and helped collect food for residents affected by a Bronx apartment building fire that killed 17 people in 2022.

Fisiru decided to enroll before pro-Palestinian student protestors launched an encampment, but said she’s “glad to be part of a student body that is, you know, really doing things.”

Despite the upheaval there, Fisiru is not having second thoughts about committing to Columbia. She received a full scholarship, and remaining in the city will allow her to stay close to family.

Still, Columbia’s response has left her concerned about what the mood on campus will be when she arrives this fall.

“I would have loved to, like, you know, have a calm freshman year, but I can’t help what’s going on, and I support what the students are doing,” she said. “I feel like they’re fighting for humanity and for what is right.”

But Safa Al-Omari, who is also a senior at The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, is still deciding where to attend college. She has been leaning toward attending City College, though she’s also considering Hunter College.

Al-Omari, who was born in Yemen and came to the United States in 2016, said she wants to do more research about City College’s response to pro-Palestinian protesters before making a final decision.

“Being Middle Eastern, I have a lot of feelings about what’s going on,” Al-Omari said. “I would not want to go to a college that is arresting students based on them speaking for people who are suffering.”

Meanwhile, a Jewish family told CNN they opted against Barnard College, which is affiliated with Columbia, even though it had been their child’s first choice.

Bronx senior Kennedy Betances is also trying to decide between City College, which offered a generous financial aid package, and Fordham University, which she feels might be a better fit, since she hopes to become an environmental engineer.

She wants to learn more about the reaction to student protesters on each campus before making a decision.

“I can also see myself involved in activism on campus, and I wouldn’t want the institution that I committed to, that I’ve worked at, that I’m taking out student loans for, to just like, essentially turn their back on me, and leave me in the dust,” Betances said.

Picazo, the HSMSE senior planning to attend Brown University next year, was disheartened by news that dozens of student protesters were arrested last December at the university. But she was encouraged to learn that Brown struck a deal this week with student protesters to end a recent encampment without police involvement.

“It does kind of reassure me about the community that I’m going to join in the future,” she said.

Her classmate, 17-year-old senior Orlena Fella, said being so close to the City College protests has made her realize she wants to be around some of that same political activism when she’s in college.

“I started to realize that I do hold some value in just having that space for discourse and having students that do take a side or share out their perspective and feel comfortable doing so,” she said.

For some high school juniors getting ready to apply to college next year, watching sharp backlash to pro-Palestinian student protestors at some colleges could also raise uncomfortable questions about how they should approach their own college applications.

One Brooklyn high school junior, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize her college applications, said she’s involved with the Palestine Club at her high school, but is wary of including that on her resume because she fears it will hurt her application.

“Everyone I’ve spoken to said to not because colleges may ‘throw my application out the window,’” she said.

The tumult on college campuses comes as the city school system faces its own ongoing questions about its handling of student protests and antisemitism.

Schools Chancellor David Banks is slated to testify next week before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce — the same Republican-led committee that recently grilled Columbia President Minouche Shafik on her response to campus protests.

In recent days, Banks has touted a number of efforts to address bias and educate students about the conflict, including an anti-hate crime curriculum, initiatives to teach Jewish and Muslim history, and a review of the discipline code with city principals.

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

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

Eric Adams commits $500 million to partially avert fiscal cliff for NYC schools

2024-04-19T17:01:03+00:00

Mayor Eric Adams is cobbling together more than $500 million in city and state funding to plug a hole in the Education Department’s budget left by the federal COVID relief funding that’s expiring this year, he announced on Friday.

The money will prop up a range of education programs that were set to be cut because of the disappearing federal dollars, including hundreds of social workers, an expansion of free preschool for 3-year-olds, and new staffers working in homeless shelters.

By far, this marks the city’s largest commitment to date to replace the dwindling pandemic aid. Adams previously found $80 million to continue funding Summer Rising, the city’s summer school and recreation program, for one year.

Adams indicated that the city was able to restore programs through a variety of funding sources, and he credited the city’s “strong fiscal management” and “booming” economy.

“We are sticking our fingers in the cushions of our couches, finding every quarter we can find,” Adams said at a press conference Friday at P.S. 34 in the East Village, flanked by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, D-Queens, and schools Chancellor David Banks.

“We won’t be relying on temporary funds,” he added. “You can’t have a ‘cross your finger’ government and hope for the best.”

The announcement came as city officials were pushing state legislators to finalize a deal extending mayoral control of city schools, a major priority for Adams.

The city received more than $7 billion in one-time federal education funds during the pandemic and is spending roughly $1 billion of those dollars this school year on ongoing initiatives that ran the risk of being cut when the federal aid expired this summer.

The $514 million dollar commitment will temporarily stave off some of those cuts for another year, while making longer-term investments in other programs. It won’t, however, cover the entire $1 billion fiscal cliff set to hit this summer, meaning significant cuts are still expected.

The final, adopted budget agreement between the City Council and Adams isn’t due until June 30, leaving time for changes.

Still, Council Speaker Adams, who has sparred with her former Bayside High School classmate Mayor Adams in recent months over budget cuts to schools, libraries, and more, struck a celebratory note Friday.

“If I could still do backflips like when we were in high school, this would be the moment,” she said.

15 programs get new sources of funding

City officials committed to new funding for a total of 15 programs currently funded by federal aid.

The initiatives that will get committed city funding for more than one year include: roughly 450 social workers and 60 school psychologists; dozens of school staffers who work with families in homeless shelters; 113 new community schools that partner with nonprofits to provide extra services to families; new internship and career preparation programs in high schools and new literacy initiatives, including Banks’s signature NYC Reads program and dyslexia screening, according to city officials.

The city will also give multiple years of dedicated funding to bilingual education programs, an expansion of the Public Schools Athletic League, and translation and interpretation services.

Several other big-ticket education programs funded by federal pandemic aid will get city funding for next year, but don’t have committed funding in future years.

Those programs include: A roughly $92 million expansion of 3-K, the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds; additional arts programs; the Learn To Work program that supports students at risk of dropping out; the Project Pivot program partnering schools with community organizations to reduce violence; and money to support the city’s “Affinity” high schools, which receive support from outside organizations like the Urban Assembly.

Adams has been dogged by criticism for scaling back proposed expansions to the city’s early childhood system, including former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to offer universal pre-K for 3-year-olds — a plan that relied on the one-time funds. Adams said the city will spend $5 million on outreach efforts for prekindergarten and 3-K as thousands of seats remain unfilled, and $8 million will go toward improving a portal for families applying for child care vouchers.

But officials have only committed to funding the 3-K expansion for one additional year.

“Our goal is to look for ways to fund it in the long term,” said Jacques Jiha, the city’s director of the Office of Management and Budget. For his part, Adams vowed that all families who want a 3-K seat will have access to one.

The city has also not reversed $170 million in cuts to early childhood education enacted in earlier versions of Adams’ budget.

Rebecca Bailin, the executive director of New Yorker United for Childcare, a group lobbying for expanded 3-K and pre-K, said the mayor’s decision “is a step in the right direction,” but “falls entirely short of the investment and infrastructure needed to fund a truly universal 3-K and pre-K.”

The city will also commit $56 million to increase the pay for providers of special education pre-K programs, which have long struggled to adequately pay staff and have seen major seat shortages as a result. Though that amount is less than the roughly $96 million in federal pandemic aid the city spent on special education pre-K this year, the city is separately committing $25 million for special education pre-K to create classes and help provide services in district schools such as speech and occupational therapy in an effort to rely less heavily on outside providers.

Adams had previously vowed to offer a pre-K special education seat for every child who needed one, which is required by law, but the city has still failed to provide seats for hundreds of students.

Cuts still ahead

New York City’s efforts to ease the impact of the fiscal cliff have been far more successful than other municipalities, according to Banks.

“Across the country, school districts are taking very painful measures to adjust to the loss of their stimulus funding,” Banks said, citing layoffs in Washington D.C., Houston, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. ”New York City has not laid off any staff, and there has been no reduction to school budgets.”

But there are still painful cuts likely ahead.

Among the items covered by stimulus money that city officials did not commit to propping up is $175 million in “hold harmless” funds to prop up the budgets of schools that lost enrollment during the pandemic. School budgets are usually tied to enrollment, but officials paused that practice during the pandemic and have been gradually phasing it back in.

That money went directly into the budgets of nearly 600 schools, with some receiving as much as $1.7 million more than they would have this school year.

Advocates for Children, a group that works with low-income families, has mounted an aggressive campaign to convince city officials to restore expiring federal dollars, and largely celebrated the mayor’s announcement.

Still, the organization pointed to some programs that remain in limbo, including restorative justice programs that offer alternatives to suspensions, some mental health supports, and an initiative that provides subsidized child care to undocumented families.

“Students and their families rely on these programs, and we cannot afford to lose them,” wrote Kim Sweet, the group’s executive director.

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

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

Don’t scale back sports access, advocates and students tell NYC

2024-04-17T21:43:47+00:00

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In late 2022, New York City’s Public Schools Athletic League made a bold promise: By the following spring, every public high school student would have access to all 25 sports the league offers.

To reach that goal, officials proposed expanding a program called “individual access” that allows students without a particular sports team at their school to try out for that team at a nearby campus.

The expansion was a game-changer for schools like the Urban Assembly Bronx Academy of Letters that don’t have enough students to reliably field a wide variety of sports teams, said David Garcia-Rosen, the dean and athletic director of the 470-student school.

“In spring of 2023, every single kid in New York City, no matter where they went to school, had the opportunity to play whatever sport they wanted to play,” Garcia-Rosen said.

But Garcia-Rosen, a veteran advocate for sports equity in city schools, is worried that the Education Department is quietly laying the groundwork to scale back the initiative. And he’s gearing up for a fight. The dispute over individual access is the latest chapter in a long-running fight over sports equity in New York City schools.

Despite previously pledging to open individual access to “all” students, the PSAL updated its website in February to describe the individual access program as a “pilot” for students at schools with fewer than six teams in “targeted districts.”

That language is in line with the stipulations in a 2022 legal settlement about sports equity. But it excludes the vast majority of city students.

An Education Department spokesperson said the PSAL is now prioritizing individual access requests from kids in schools with the least access to sports. The spokesperson said roughly 1,500 students participated in individual access this year, but didn’t share how many kids participated last year.

Officials concluded that guaranteeing individual access beyond what was required by the legal settlement “moved us away” from the goal of increasing sports access for entire schools, the spokesperson said.

To better achieve that goal, officials have expanded the number of new teams by 222 over the last three years and created 20 shared-access programs between schools.

“There has been no scaling back of our commitment to providing equitable access to PSAL sports, and students and families have told us that they want access to teams at or close to their home school,” said spokesperson Nathaniel Styer.

But Garcia-Rosen said that approach demonstrates a “complete lack of understanding of how to solve the problem,” because equity isn’t achieved by simply expanding the number of teams. He noted that small schools often can’t sustain the teams because of their low student numbers.

Garcia-Rosen filed a complaint Wednesday with the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights alleging that curtailing individual access disproportionately harms Black and Hispanic students.

A long-running fight for sports equity

Black and Hispanic students are disproportionately clustered in small schools like Bronx Letters, meaning they’ve historically had far less access on average to a wide variety of sports.

Just 38% of Black and Hispanic students go to a school with 20 or more teams, compared to 61% of students who are white, Asian, multiracial, or belong to other groups, according to research compiled by Garcia-Rosen.

A major milestone came in 2022, when the city agreed in a legal settlement to add 200 new teams in future years and expand a “shared access” program that allowed small schools in the same geographic area to combine sports programs.

The city also committed to offering individual access to students in schools with under six teams and couldn’t participate in shared sports programs because of their location.

But Garcia-Rosen argues that those steps alone won’t erase the equity issues.

That’s why universal individual access — what Garcia-Rosen calls the “holy grail of equity” — is so transformative.

“It’s really simple, and it’s done all over the country,” he said. “If you go to a school that doesn’t have the team you want to play, you could try out [at] another school in the district.”

Students, educators report positive results

Students at Bronx Letters, a public school for students in grades 6-12, are accustomed to not knowing year to year whether there will be enough interested students to field a given team.

This school year, Bronx Letters didn’t have enough kids for a girls basketball team.

But 15-year-old sophomore Jayla Jerez, an avid player, was able to join the team at South Bronx Prep, just a five-minute walk from her school, through the individual access program.

“It was just a great experience,” she said. “I felt good to be able to play and get more used to being on the court and being more open to socializing with people.”

Bronx Academy of Letters student Jayla Jerez, wearing number 20, playing on the South Bronx Prep basketball team through the city's individual access program.

Jerez values basketball and wants to keep playing. If she can’t participate through individual access, she might have to consider transferring schools, she said — an option she is not relishing.

Losing a guarantee to individual access for all students could also change how schools communicate with families about sports options, he said. Last year, Garcia-Rosen could promise prospective families that their kid would have access to every PSAL sport at Bronx Letters. He even printed a banner advertising that option.

Without that same assurance for next year, he said, “when a family comes to pick a high school, I can’t guarantee them that they come to this school and have access to every sport.”

Setting up the individual access program requires clearing some administrative and logistical hurdles, but administrators have largely reported positive results, Garcia-Rosen found.

He said he reached out to athletic directors and principals across the city, and 49 of the 51 who responded said they supported maintaining universal individual access.

One athletic director from Manhattan, who asked to speak on the condition of anonymity, told him “it has definitely taken a lot of work to get this program off the ground but it is working and students are playing. It will only get better as we invest in it more!”

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

Delays in free MetroCards for homeless NYC families threaten school attendance

2024-04-16T21:41:29+00:00

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Widespread shortages and delays in the distribution of free MetroCards to parents of homeless New York City public school students are frustrating families trying to get their kids to school, according to several sources.

Schools are supposed to provide parents of students in temporary housing free 30-day MetroCards each month so they can accompany their children to school on public transit, according to city policy.

But schools are struggling to get an adequate supply of MetroCards from the Education Department’s Office of Pupil Transportation, according to a survey of schools in Manhattan’s District 3 conducted last month by City Council Member Gale Brewer, D-Manhattan.

The problems mount as the city also confronts a record number of homeless young people, driven by the arrival of an estimated 36,000 migrant children over the past two school years. Without the free MetroCards, some families have stopped sending their kids to class altogether, while others have resorted to hopping turnstiles and risking tickets, according to an April 5 letter from Brewer to Mayor Eric Adams sharing the results of the survey.

Fifteen schools in the district, which includes parts of Harlem and the Upper West Side, reported not receiving all of the MetroCards they’d requested. Some orders fell dozens of MetroCards short, and refills arrived months late, according to the survey.

“We have families who are struggling to get their kids to school because their only source of transportation is the MetroCards we provide for them,” said April Diaz, the parent coordinator at P.S. 242 in Harlem.

The school, which recently enrolled around 50 newly arrived families living in shelters in addition to its other families in temporary housing, received a shipment of parent MetroCards in December, but didn’t get a refill until last week, despite weekly follow-up messages to the Office of Pupil Transportation requesting them, according to Diaz.

In the meantime, attendance suffered, Diaz said, and families can’t afford to pay police tickets for hopping turnstiles.

The 100 new MetroCards that arrived last week were quickly snapped up, and attendance has already improved markedly, Diaz said.

It’s not clear exactly how widespread the problem is, and some schools said they’ve received an adequate supply. But the issue isn’t confined to District 3, according to Jennifer Pringle, the director of the Learners in Temporary Housing Project for the nonprofit Advocates for Children.

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said that as of March 27, all Metrocard orders had been processed and shipped.

“We appreciate the Council Member’s partnership in this work and are reviewing the letter,” she added.

The Education Department has already given out roughly 62,000 MetroCards this school year, a more-than-threefold increase from the 20,000 MetroCards given out during the 2021-22 school year, officials noted. Spending on the MetroCards just through February this year is 55% higher than the total for all of last school year, officials added.

Nearly three-quarters of students living in homeless shelters missed at least 18 days of school last year, according to Advocates for Children.

Students’ need for transportation help surges

The transportation needs have grown even more acute since January, when Adams implemented a 60-day limit on shelter stays for newly arrived families. As a result, many families have had to move to shelters or find alternate housing further away from their children’s schools.

Roughly 1,000 families evicted from their shelters under the 60-day rule have left the city’s school system entirely or switched schools. But the vast majority — roughly 82% — have kept their kids enrolled in the same school, according to data from the City Council.

Many of those families likely now face longer commutes. Students in shelters are entitled to yellow school bus service under city policy, but it can often take weeks to get a route assigned, educators said.

As of last December, even before the 60-day rule took effect, nearly 1,400 homeless students had applied for a school bus but were still waiting for a route — more than double the reported figure from December 2022.

The Education Department received an additional 413 busing requests from students affected by the 60-day notices between January and March, according to the Council.

Orders for new MetroCards from schools during the months of January and February “far exceeded our projected inventory,” an Education Department spokesperson said.

The parent MetroCards are especially critical for families with children too young to take public transit on their own and for parents who don’t yet have the income to afford their own MetroCard, educators and advocates said.

Administration officials promised that families displaced by the 60-day rule would get the transportation help they needed to keep their kids in the same school. But Brewer said the long waits for buses and the delays in free MetroCards undercut that promise.

“I don’t want to be told by the administration” that families evicted from their shelters under the 60-day rule “can live anywhere,” said Brewer. “They can’t.”

One Venezuelan mom forced to move from a Brooklyn shelter within walking distance of her child’s elementary school, P.S. 46, to a Manhattan shelter due to the 60-day limit told Chalkbeat in February that she didn’t want her son to miss any school. But she couldn’t get a free MetroCard right away from the school. So the family decided to sneak through an open emergency gate, and her son’s father received a ticket.

Tickets and arrests for fare evasions have skyrocketed across the city over the past year as officials send more police officers into the subway system.

Schools, advocates want an improved MetroCard process

Schools are supposed to fill out a form through the Education Department’s Office of Pupil Transportation each month to request MetroCards.

But Pringle said the form is buried in the Education Department’s website, and multiple schools told Brewer’s office they didn’t receive any response after filling out the form.

Other schools said they were told there is a shortage of funds for the MetroCards, while Diaz, the P.S. 242 parent coordinator, said her school heard about backlogs, vendor issues, and delivery issues.

Pringle called the situation “ridiculous” and argued the system should be streamlined.

Lyle, the Education Department spokesperson, said “we are committed to providing every available resource to meet our families’ needs and ensure all students can get to school each day, as well as our families for students in temporary housing.”

This story has been updated to include comments from the city Education Department.

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

Eric Adams cuts $100 million from Education Department, despite partial reprieve

2024-01-17T00:12:06+00:00

A new round of budget cuts announced Tuesday won’t hit New York City schools as hard as Mayor Eric Adams initially outlined, but will still add up to more than $100 million for next fiscal year, including further cuts to early childhood education.

Adams said last fall that the Education Department, like other city agencies, would have to trim its budget by 5% of the city’s contribution in January, following a previous 5% cut in November.

But during Tuesday’s announcement of the preliminary budget, Adams said the city’s fiscal situation has significantly improved since last fall, thanks to higher-than projected revenues and lower-than-projected spending on supporting the influx of migrants and asylum seekers.

As a result, several city agencies including the Education Department got full or partial reprieves from this month’s 5% cut. New cuts to the Education Department totaled about 0.6%, according to budget officials.

Still, the Education Department will face more than $100 million in new cuts starting next fiscal year, on top of the $600 million in cuts announced in November.

The new cuts include $50 million from the city’s prekindergarten and 3-K programs. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio dramatically expanded the free program for the city’s 3-year-olds using an infusion of one-time federal pandemic aid, but 3-K struggled to fill the new seats. Adams already announced in November a $120 million cut to the early childhood education budget next year, and the new $50 million cut outlined Tuesday could involve eliminating unfilled seats, according to budget documents. Budget officials said Tuesday that about 30% of 3-K seats are unfilled.

Those reductions represent “the biggest cuts to early childhood in more than a generation,” said Gregory Brender, chief of policy and innovation at the Day Care Council of New York, an organization that represents roughly 200 child care centers and other programs. “When you look at the magnitude, it’s hard to not see it having a drastic effect on services for children and families.”

Brender acknowledged that some seats are unfilled, but argues the city should be doing much more to fill them, especially given the high cost of child care and the city’s broader affordability crisis that is driving some families away.

The new cuts also include $51 million in reduced spending on non-staff costs in some central offices, according to budget officials. They didn’t elaborate on what those cuts will entail.

Advocates have raised alarms that a smaller Education Department budget could affect a range of day-to-day services. Hundreds of fewer staff on hand could mean it will “take longer for immigrant students to get a school placement, for students who are homeless to get a bus route, and for students with disabilities to get services,” Kim Sweet, executive director at Advocates for Children, said in a statement.

Additionally, though the city’s Education Department is expecting to chip in $80 million to run Summer Rising — which had largely been funded through federal COVID relief dollars — the popular program will still see a big cut. The Education Department runs the morning instruction while the Department of Youth and Community Development oversees the afternoon enrichment, which is run by community based organizations. The city is calling for a $20 million cut from DYCD’s budget for the program.

Aside from Summer Rising, the preliminary budget offers no other commitments to use city money to replace expiring federal pandemic aid – leaving the fate of hundreds of social workers, staffers supporting homeless students, and other programs up in the air.

“At a time when we have a youth mental health crisis, record-high student homelessness, systemic violations of the rights of students with disabilities, and an increase in newly arrived immigrant students enrolling in our schools, we cannot afford to roll back these important programs,” Sweet said.

Overall cuts to Education Department less than expected

Adams attributed the rosier fiscal picture to “responsible and effective management,” including previous cuts that helped balance the budget as well as the city’s new policy limiting shelter stays for migrant adults and families. That directive, which forces people staying in shelters to either reapply for space in a different shelter or find an alternate housing arrangement, has slowed the pace of migrants entering the shelter system, Adams said.

In the days leading up to Tuesday’s preliminary budget release, Adams had reversed several of the cuts announced in November, including a $10 million cut to community schools, citing the improving fiscal conditions.

But critics have contended that the budget situation was never as bleak as Adams claimed, and have accused the mayor of implementing unnecessarily draconian cuts to ramp up the pressure on the state and federal governments to increase aid to the city.

“Setting your house on fire and then putting it out doesn’t make you a hero,” Ana Maria Archila and Jasmine Gripper, co-directors of the New York Working Families Party, said in a statement.

Adams’ preliminary budget announcement came the same day that Gov. Kathy Hochul released her own budget plan, which includes $2.4 billion in aid to the city to provide housing and other basic services to migrants.

Adams said the city is still reviewing Hochul’s budget. He floated the possibility of canceling another round of budget cuts that’s supposed to come in April if aid from the state is sufficient.

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

NYC schools Chancellor David Banks to testify at U.S. House hearing on antisemitism

2024-04-11T21:56:41+00:00

New York City schools Chancellor David Banks will testify at a U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing on antisemitism next month, he told reporters Thursday.

Banks said that he received a letter from the committee, which conducted high-profile hearings last year with the presidents of elite colleges, asking him to testify at a May 8 hearing under the threat of subpoena.

The committee, chaired by North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx, also invited two other school districts that Banks declined to name. A spokesperson for the committee confirmed Banks was invited but didn’t immediately provide other information about the hearing.

“We look forward to joining the committee and sharing how New York City Public Schools continue to deliver an environment of tolerance and respect for the largest and most diverse school district in the nation,” Banks said at a Thursday roundtable with reporters.

The nation’s largest school system, like districts across the country, has dealt with a surge in tensions following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

The city’s Education Department is currently under investigation by the federal Education Department for its response to incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Hillcrest High School in Queens, Banks’ alma mater, made national news in November after students staged a raucous protest calling for the ouster of a teacher who posted a picture of herself on social media holding a sign that read “I Stand With Israel.”

Banks condemned the protest and said several students were disciplined for their part in the affair. But he stressed that many teens at the school, which has a large Muslim population, were seeing images on social media “on a daily basis” of “children and young people in Palestine … being blown up” and struggling to cope with their grief and anger. He vowed to turn the incident a “teaching moment” and ultimately replaced the school’s principal.

Staff at Origins High School in southern Brooklyn recently alleged that rampant antisemitism from students was going unchecked by administrators — an accusation that city Education Department officials strongly disputed.

In January, following complaints from some students and educators about a lack of opportunities to talk productively about the Israel-Hamas war in school, Banks committed to offering new training for school leaders on holding difficult conversations and responding to incidents of bias and discrimination.

On Thursday, as he reflected on the city’s response to the tumult in schools around the Israel-Hamas war, Banks said “I wouldn’t say that I’m proud of what we’ve done.”

But “I think we’ve done what we’re supposed to do,” he said.

The war has stirred up “all kinds of emotions in kids as well as adults, and we’ve got to manage all of that. For an entire system, that is not easy to do,” he added. “But I believe that our team has demonstrated a level of leadership that I am more than willing to be at the table and to express what we have done.”

The House committee that Banks will appear before made headlines in December for a marathon hearing with the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spawning viral clips of representatives grilling the administrators on their definitions of and policies for antisemitism on campus. Two of those presidents subsequently resigned.

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

Young adults at Rikers say they’re systematically blocked from school

2024-04-04T20:32:26+00:00

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Young adults incarcerated at Rikers Island are systematically denied the opportunity to attend school, in violation of their legal rights, according to a motion filed Monday in federal court by The Legal Aid Society.

Those at Rikers who are ages 18-21 are entitled to attend the East River Academy, the public school in the facility, to work towards a high school diploma or GED. But in practice, they are frequently told they’re ineligible to attend school based on which housing unit they’re assigned to, or that they can’t attend class because no guards are available to escort them, according to declarations from 29 incarcerated young people.

That’s a violation of a 2016 court order mandating that young adults get access to education at Rikers, Legal Aid lawyers allege in the motion, which asks a federal judge in Manhattan to re-appoint a monitor.

“The City’s failure to educate these New Yorkers is not only a blatant violation of the 2016 court order, but heartbreaking and immoral,” said Lauren Stephens-Davidowitz, a staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, in a statement.

Rikers Island no longer houses 16- and 17-year-olds, who are now held exclusively in juvenile facilities. Education isn’t compulsory for the young adults on Rikers Island, but the city’s public school system is still required to enroll students through age 21 if they request it.

A 2016 order from U.S. District Judge George Daniels — part of a long-running lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society two decades earlier — mandated that the city provide at least three hours of education to students who want it, and that access to school in jail shouldn’t depend on the housing unit a young person is assigned to.

But according to the testimony of more than two-dozen detainees, school on Rikers Island is often out of reach.

One man, now 22, said that he “asked captains many times if I could go to school” but wasn’t enrolled because of the housing unit he was living in. After more than a year of trying, he was transferred to a new unit that allowed him to attend school, but was late most days because the guard who escorted him didn’t arrive on time, according to his declaration.

In addition, classes were frequently canceled because of lockdowns and fights, he said.

Enrollment at the East River Academy has shrunk over the course of the pandemic, as the detention center struggled with severe staffing shortages.

During the 2019-20 school year, 27% of young adults ages 18-21 incarcerated at Rikers were enrolled in East River Academy, on average, according to an Education Department report. By the 2021-22 school year, the most recent for which data is available, only 18% of eligible young adults were enrolled, on average.

Violations of the 2016 judge’s ruling mandating school access are “wider in scope and greater in magnitude” than before the pandemic, lawyers allege in the motion.

According to Education Department data, 121 of the 217 students enrolled in 2021-22, or 56%, had a learning disability. But only 73 of those students got a completed Special Education Plan, a document outlining how the school intends to accommodate their disability, according to the report.

One 19-year-old with a disability who attended a specialized school with counseling services before he was arrested in December 2022 tried in vain for more than a year to start school at Rikers. He eventually gave up, according to his declaration.

The court previously appointed a monitor following the 2016 order, but his last report was in 2018. Conditions have since grown worse, Legal Aid lawyers argue.

Now, lawyers are asking the judge to re-appoint a monitor for another two years.

Several members of the City Council held an oversight hearing last October to address reports that some incarcerated youth weren’t getting access to education. “Today’s lawsuit reinforces those concerns and highlights multiple instances where the Department of Correction failed to meet their mandate,” said Council Education Committee Chair Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn) and Criminal Justice Committee Chair Sandy Nurse (D-Brooklyn) in a joint statement. “Reversing course and addressing these challenges must be a priority for the Department.”

A spokesperson for the Education Department referred a request for comment to the Law and Correction Departments. A Law Department spokesperson said the agency is reviewing the motion. A spokesperson from the Correction Department said staff operate classes in multiple jails on Rikers Island and said new funding announced last month will bolster education programs.

4/5/2024: This story was updated to include comment from the Correction Department and City Council.

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

School staffers in shelters are a lifeline to NYC’s homeless families. Now their jobs are at risk.

2024-04-04T10:00:00+00:00

Dollie and her daughter were living in a Queens homeless shelter in January when the first grader came down with a severe bout of mononucleosis.

Dollie, who asked to use only her first name, was overwhelmed by the task of managing her daughter’s medical care and mounting school absences on top of her own work and housing search.

Fortunately, there was a staffer from the city Education Department working in her shelter to help with exactly this kind of situation.

The staffer, called a community coordinator, helped connect Dollie with medical care for her daughter, showed her what records she needed to provide the school to excuse the absences, and calmed her down when it all became too much.

“I would’ve been lost,” without her, Dollie said. She credits the community coordinator with getting her daughter better treatment, ensuring she returned to school quicker, and helping Dollie avert an investigation from the Administration of Children’s Services.

But the roughly $12 million in funding that pays the salaries of 100 community coordinators working across the city’s network of homeless shelters is set to run dry this summer, leaving the fate of the staffers up in the air even as the city confronts record numbers of homeless kids.

Seventy-five of the community coordinators are funded with one-time federal pandemic aid that expires in June, and the remaining 25 are supported with city funds that have not yet been renewed.

The position of shelter-based community coordinator was created in 2022 at the urging of advocates. Prior to the pandemic, community coordinators were only based in schools. The Education Department also employs other staffers called “family assistants” who work in shelters and are not funded with federal aid. But advocates say those staffers, who make less than community coordinators and work only 10 months a year, often can’t meet all the complex needs of families in shelters.

The community coordinators are among a long list of critical staff members and programs whose funding is tied to expiring federal aid – a list that includes 450 school social workers, free preschool for 3-year-olds, and community schools that partner with community organizations to provide extra services to families.

As budget deadlines approach, families and advocates are urging the city to preserve the community coordinators, arguing they play a critical role on the frontlines of two colliding crises: the exploding number of students – many of them newly arrived migrants – living in homeless shelters, and elevated rates of chronic absenteeism in the wake of the pandemic.

“It is unthinkable that funding for shelter-based community coordinators is in jeopardy at a time of such tremendous need,” said Jennifer Pringle, the director of the Learners in Temporary Housing project at the nonprofit Advocates for Children, which works to support the education of homeless youth.

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said the coordinators “provide critical resources and supports to our young people in temporary housing.

“We are extremely grateful for the stimulus funding that we used to support a range of programs and roles that support student wellbeing, especially as we continue to respond to the ongoing migrant crisis,” she added. “We will review these priorities as we go through the budget process.”

NYC sees a record number of homeless students

The number of city children living in a shelter or doubled up last year hit a record high of roughly 120,000 – a 14% increase over the previous years – thanks in large part to an influx of tens of thousands of migrant families.

Many of those families need immediate support enrolling their kids in school, getting evaluations for special education services, and coordinating transportation – particularly if they have to move to a shelter in another part of the city under Mayor Eric Adams’s 60-day shelter limit rule.

That’s where the community coordinators come in. They work directly from the shelters, though they often have to bounce between multiple locations.

Having staffers knowledgeable about the school system physically in the shelters, rather than having to rely on phone calls or visits to the school, makes a huge difference for parents like Dollie.

“You have eye communication. You have more understanding, you don’t have to go to two to three people to get a direct answer,” she said. Knowing that her community coordinator had seen firsthand the conditions she was living in at the shelter also made Dollie more willing to open up to her, she said.

The community coordinator ended up helping not just with school issues for Dollie’s daughter, but also with Dollie’s own work, education, and housing needs.

“I had lost hope, I had lost a lot,” Dollie recalled. “She went above and beyond with helping me. She brought my self confidence back in me where it was able to help me with my child.”

Coordinators combat chronic absenteeism

Job one for community coordinators is helping families regularly get their kids to school.

Citywide, rates of chronic absenteeism remain far higher than before the pandemic, with students in shelters logging among the highest rates of absenteeism in the city. In the 2021-22 school year, 72% of students living in shelters were classified as chronically absent.

But figuring out how to support individual families means earning the trust of families and unraveling multiple, overlapping challenges keeping kids from school.

In one case, according to advocates, a community coordinator learned that a child was embarrassed to attend school because he’d outgrown his wheelchair, and helped fit him for a new one. In another, a coordinator helped connect a student who’d just had a baby to a public school with a day care on site.

When Dollie’s daughter fell ill with mononucleosis, she dealt with high fevers and lethargy that made it impossible to concentrate on schoolwork. The school called to warn Dollie about the mounting absences, which stretched to almost a month. But Dollie was most concerned about getting her daughter the care she needed and ensuring she wouldn’t infect other kids.

The community coordinator, meanwhile, checked in regularly, asking about the girl’s fever and helping connect Dollie with doctors. She didn’t pressure Dollie about the absences, but made sure she had everything she needed to feel ready to send her daughter back to school, Dollie said. Without that support, the absences would have likely extended even longer, and could have triggered additional consequences like a child welfare investigation, Dollie added.

The family left the shelter recently and moved out of the city, but Dollie worries what will happen to other families in similar positions if the community coordinators aren’t funded next year.

“I really hope they do keep her there,” she said. “Without them, these shelters are nothing.”

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

New metal detectors in NYC schools will still be paired with backpack checks

2024-03-28T22:23:00+00:00

As Mayor Eric Adams launches a high-profile effort to pilot new weapons detection technology in the subways, New York City has also begun quietly rolling out new weapons scanners in schools, according to education and police officials.

The NYPD, which oversees school weapons detectors, is in the process of replacing the existing metal detectors at nearly 80 city campuses with new scanners from the company CEIA at a cost of roughly $3.9 million, an NYPD spokesperson confirmed. An additional nine schools will get the new devices for “random scanning” on select days, the spokesperson said.

The new CEIA Opengate scanners for schools, which consist of two wireless, standalone pillars that can be customized with the school’s name and colors, are supposed to feel more welcoming and “less intrusive” to students than the traditional, box-shaped metal detectors, according to Mark Rampersant, the Education Department’s Chief of Safety and Prevention Partnerships.

The new CEIA Opengate scanner in the foreground is replacing the traditional metal detectors seen in the background.

But Education Department officials aren’t planning to take advantage of the device’s major selling point: allowing students to walk through without removing their backpacks, which would save a significant amount of time.

Instead, New York City schools will continue asking students to put their bags through a separate X-ray machine – the part of the process that usually takes longest – Rampersant said.

“In terms of the students not removing their backpacks, this technology does not allow for that,” Rampersant said Thursday at a press conference. “We’ll continue to use the X-ray machine that tells you what’s in the bag.”

That runs counter to the company’s marketing of the product, which promises that “individuals can go ahead and keep their bags on them,” because the machines can, in theory, distinguish between weapons and other metal devices like cell phones, bottles, and tablets, the company’s website reads.

Nikita Ermolaev, a research engineer who studies CEIA products for IPVM, a security industry research publication, said it’s “extremely rare” for a school district to purchase the CEIA Opengate scanners while continuing to use X-ray bag machines at the same time.

“That raises a lot of questions,” he said. “If one can have a similar experience with traditional metal detectors, why would you need to buy a more expensive unit?”

An Education Department spokesperson referred questions about the new scanners to an NYPD spokesperson, who said “the CEIA Opengate is a low profile detector, however, it does not replace an X-Ray machine.”

More welcoming and portable devices

City officials pointed to two main advantages of the new CEIA scanners. First, since they’re wireless and relatively lightweight, they’re easy to move. That would allow schools to scan students before entering sports games outside, Rampersant said recently to parent leaders.

Officials also say the CEIA devices will feel more welcoming because they can be customized with a school’s logo and colors.

“It has the school’s branding on it so when kids see it … it doesn’t look like a metal detector scanner,” Rampersant said earlier this month at a meeting of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Committee.

But Ava Harris, a 16-year-old senior at the Walton Campus in the Bronx, said walking through metal detectors each day makes her feel “like a criminal,” and the design of the scanners won’t change that.

“I find that quite ridiculous,” said Harris, a member of the student groups Urban Youth Collaborative and Sistas & Brothas United, which advocate for the removal of scanners from schools. “I don’t really think the logo of the school or anything would make a difference. It’s still a scanner, kids will still know it’s a scanner.”

Officials didn’t immediately say what will happen with the old scanners or whether they will be repurposed.

CEIA is a competitor of Evolv, the company whose technology Adams touted at his Thursday press conference on subway safety. Evolv has attracted significant scrutiny from experts and government officials over accusations that it overpromises with its aggressive marketing and triggers false alerts on objects like Chromebooks. Ermolaev said CEIA is a more established company and is more conservative in its marketing.

But he said the devices can still miss items, or falsely alert on non-weapons when sensitivity settings are too high.

Ermolaev questioned whether the ability to move and decorate the new devices was worth the additional cost. He pointed out that most traditional metal detectors can be put on wheels and moved, and many can also be customized with school designs.

The major advantage of a system like Opengate is that it can significantly speed up the scanning process by eliminating the need for the X-ray bag machine, he said.

Harris, the Bronx student, suggested the city divert the roughly $4 million it plans to spend on the new scanners to “things that would actually help students like counselors, restorative justice, and conflict mediators.”

Officials offer conflicting messages

Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks have talked for years about introducing new scanners in schools, but officials have recently offered conflicting messages about what those devices will do and the timeline for rolling them out.

At the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Committee meeting earlier this month Banks said, “we’re trying to get in place … these non-invasive scanners where you don’t have to take everything out.”

He added that he was hopeful that technology is coming “sooner rather than later.”

It’s unclear if Banks was referring to the CEIA Opengate, or a different device.

But Rampersant, later in that same meeting, sounded a more cautious note.

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as less invasive tech, they’re all invasive,” he said. “The scanning machine the Chancellor speaks of, there is no real timeline for that being introduced into … our school system.”

Education Department officials didn’t immediately say how many schools have gotten CEIA scanners, but multiple principals at schools with metal detectors told Chalkbeat they haven’t yet received the new devices.

The city school system has seen a significant uptick in students arriving with weapons and other dangerous items in the wake of the pandemic — a reality students say is driven by safety concerns on the commute to and from school.

So far this school year, the NYPD has collected a total eight guns, 1,774 knives, 455 box cutters and razors, and 1,382 “other” items including pepper spray from students across the city’s roughly 1,600 public schools. That’s down slightly from last year’s totals during the same period, but still up significantly over pre-pandemic numbers.

Rampersant said “more and more of our schools, including our affluent schools, are asking for scanners in the school building.”

But critics have long alleged that the NYPD offers little explanation or rationale for where the scanners are placed.

At one school campus serving middle and elementary school students that got “pop-up” scanning this week, a parent said there was little explanation about why the metal detectors were necessary that morning, and that the scanners caused fear and confusion rather than reassurance.

“It was quite chaotic,” said the East Village elementary school parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I think really it more alarmed a lot of parents … than assuaged their fears.”

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

NYC chancellor says controversial school building swap had a happy ending. Teachers disagree.

2024-03-20T19:49:31+00:00

To hear New York City schools Chancellor David Banks tell it, a bitter fight last year over the decision to swap the buildings of two Manhattan high schools had a happy ending.

Students at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School, an under-enrolled transfer school for kids at risk of dropping out, were forced to switch buildings with The Young Women’s Leadership School, or TYWLS, a crowded school occupying a smaller space across town. The move sparked an uproar last year from West Side’s community, who argued it would deprive already marginalized kids of critical resources housed in its long-time building.

In recent months Banks has shared an upbeat update, telling reporters and members of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, a board that approves decisions to relocate schools, that he heard from West Side staff that “after the dust settled … everything worked out.”

“They couldn’t be happier,” he added last week, paraphrasing a letter from the principal and the school’s chapter leader, the official representative to the teachers union.

Banks’ update seemed to tie a neat bow on a messy public dispute. It also bolsters his argument for advancing other contentious school merger and relocation proposals and validates his decision-making at a moment when he’s urging the state legislature to extend mayoral control over schools.

There’s just one problem: According to teachers and students at West Side, the move has had anything but a happy ending.

Seven West Side teachers and a student who spoke to Chalkbeat said the move to the new space has worsened their school experience in almost every way. It has reduced access to organized sports and deprived students of the health clinic and on-site day care available in the old building. Forcing kids and staff into more cramped quarters has exacerbated tensions between students and diminished teachers’ ability to provide individualized support, teachers and students said.

“The chancellor was characterizing the move as being good and fine in the end … which is just utterly false,” said Joel Solow, a West Side teacher. “This has been an incredibly challenging year on almost every count.”

For students like Joel Gomez, 17, who started at West Side in October 2022, moving to the new space has felt like having the best part of his school experience “ripped away.”

Spending last year in the old building was “one of the best years of my life,” he said.

But “this year just feels like everything is dampened down,” he said. The move, for him, “did not work out in a great way.”

Even the city’s original justification for the move – that West Side needed much less space, while TYWLS needed much more – hasn’t panned out.

Last year, West Side had only 230 students last year in a building that can fit nearly 800, while TYWLS has hovered between 450-480 students in a building that could hold 560. Officials had predicted West Side’s enrollment would stay flat, while TYWLS would immediately grow when it moved to the larger space.

But the opposite has happened: Enrollment at West Side has surged, to 344 as of this month, thanks to an influx of migrant students and the addition of a bilingual program. Enrollment at Young Women’s Leadership, meanwhile, has shrunk to 363 – leaving the two schools now at almost the same size, according to Education Department records.

Education Department officials noted that despite its enrollment increases, West Side’s daily attendance still hovers around 51%.

An Education Department spokesperson attributed the drop in enrollment at TYWLS to smaller classes of entering 6th and 9th graders, and said the school couldn’t offer more new seats because the move was approved too late in the year. But state data shows that the drops in 6th and 9th grade classes account for only a fraction of the overall enrollment reduction at TYWLS, and other grades shrunk as well.

The West Side building swap reverberates beyond the two schools

The city Education Department is facing increasing pressure to move, merge or even close schools as a result of pandemic enrollment losses – and Banks will need the approval of the Panel for Educational Policy to advance those proposals.

A happy ending to the West Side saga, one of the most high-profile fights in Banks’ tenure, strengthens Banks’ case to move forward on other controversial proposals, offering evidence that dire predictions from angry communities don’t always come true. Already, several proposals on the docket in the coming months have spurred fierce community pushback, some of which echoes the concerns raised by the West Side community.

West Side also is relevant to the ongoing negotiations in the state legislature over if and how to extend mayoral control over city schools. The current governance structure gives Mayor Eric Adams power to appoint the majority of the Panel for Educational Policy, an arrangement Banks says allows him to “make the best decisions on behalf of the entire school system,” even when it means fighting through some opposition, he said last week.

But critics of mayoral control say the West Side move is a case study in the limitations of a system that allows officials to ignore community input to the detriment of kids.

“In mayoral control,” Solow said at a January town hall in Manhattan, “the people who have to deal with the consequences have no voice that needs to be listened to. And the people who get to determine the consequences need to listen to no one.”

Dueling interpretations of a letter

Part of the ongoing dispute comes down to dueling interpretations of a letter sent in the fall by West Side Principal Mara Rivera and chapter leader Mark Weller.

The letter, a copy of which was reviewed by Chalkbeat, thanked facilities officials for the “excellent job” in upgrading the new building, praising the “remarkable” difference in the condition of the facility now compared to last year, and calling the atmosphere in the building “much more uplifting … than we had expected.”

The principal and chapter leader didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Multiple staffers who spoke with the chapter leader said he had explained that the letter, which was written without the knowledge of staff and was not addressed to Banks, was meant to build goodwill with facilities staff to help secure future upgrades. It wasn’t meant as an endorsement of the move or affirmation that it had worked out for the best. The letter writers weren’t notified that Banks was going to share the letter publicly, staffers added.

It was a “fairly simple message about ‘thanks for making the move a little less bad,’” Solow said.

An Education Department spokesperson didn’t directly address criticism that Banks misrepresented the letter, but said he only stated that the “principal wrote a letter of appreciation for the work done to get the space ready for the students of West Side High School.”

Banks heard about the letter through a regular update from facilities staff, the spokesperson said.

“We promised we would ensure the building meets both our standards and those of the school community, and the upgrades have made a true impact in the way students and staff view their new learning environment,” spokesperson Chyann Tull said in a statement.

Enrollment numbers don’t tell the full story

West Side staffers and students argued that there were features of the old building – which the school has occupied since the late 1980s – that were critical to its success and would be lost in the new facility, a prediction they said has come to fruition.

The old space had a child care program and health clinic on site, as well as a full-size gymnasium and access to an adjacent sports field. Those amenities filled specific needs for the school’s students, who are older, often juggle competing responsibilities, and struggle with attendance.

The new space, located on the seventh to 11th floors of an office building, has none of those things. The difficulty of restarting organized sports, such as volleyball, has been a particular blow, since that’s what helps keep many kids engaged in school, staffers said.

An Education Department spokesperson said officials are working to sustain services for students in the new space, including connecting the school to a nearby Mount Sinai location.

Staffers said they appreciated the facilities repairs, but those can’t alter some structural differences in the new building, including classrooms that are often about half the size of their old home.

One teacher described moving into a smaller classroom with multiple students with emotional disabilities. In the old building, there was enough space to separate students during conflicts. The new room doesn’t allow for that, said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Gomez, the student, said the new building is “claustrophobic” and “dreary.” He misses the joy of seeing the little kids at the old on-site day care, the access to fields and a gym, and the spacious hallways and classrooms where kids could take a lap if they got overwhelmed.

He’s struggled to keep up his attendance this year. For one stretch, he missed a month of school.

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

NYC schools chancellor hints at reversal of hundreds of millions in preschool cuts

2024-03-18T21:11:10+00:00

New York City Mayor Eric Adams could soon reverse a major budget cut to early childhood education, schools Chancellor David Banks hinted Monday.

Adams previously announced $170 million in cuts from city funding to free early childhood education programs effective next fiscal year as part of sweeping citywide cuts in November and January.

On top of that cut from the city’s coffers, prekindergarten programs are due to lose one-time federal pandemic aid that expires this summer. Roughly $92 million in federal aid is going toward supporting this year’s 3-K program for the city’s 3-year-olds, and another $90 million is helping pay for special education programs for preschoolers.

The city is facing a total “fiscal cliff” of nearly $1 billion next year, and advocates have been sounding the alarm for months on the need to come up with new funding to replace those disappearing federal dollars.

At a City Council budget hearing Monday, Banks called the city cuts “extremely hurtful to the entire enterprise of early childhood,” and said he was “fighting like heck to get these cuts restored.”

Though he didn’t commit to anything specific, Banks said, “I have great confidence in the coming weeks we will have really good news around early childhood.” He added, “The mayor’s office, City Hall, feels the same way.”

Asked later in the hearing by Council member Jennifer Gutiérrez (D-Brooklyn) which specific funding streams he’s fighting to get restored, Banks named the $170 million city cut. He also cited the expiring $92 million in federal funding for 3-K this year. Deputy Chancellor Emma Vadehra mentioned the $90 million in federal money for preschool special education seats that will dry up after this year.

The early childhood cuts, if reversed, would be the latest item slashed by Adams in recent months to get restored thanks to what city officials describe as an improving budget picture.

Adams has also announced restorations of cuts to the police, fire, and sanitation departments, as well as a $10 million cut to community schools that partner with community organizations to provide extra support to families. More recently, the city promised to allocate additional funding to bring back popular food items that were cut from school cafeteria menus in February.

Adams had initially planned another round of city budget cuts in April, but canceled those cuts last month.

Critics of the cuts have long contended that they were never necessary in the first place, and that city officials were being overly pessimistic with their financial predictions to create more pressure on the federal government to boost funding for the city’s influx of migrants.

The cuts and subsequent reversals have created a whiplash that’s been disorienting even for seasoned budget watchers.

Early childhood education advocates have warned that the early education cuts could have devastating consequences and force the city to permanently close seats.

If the city comes up with money to replace the expiring federal money for 3-K and special education preschool programs, it would mark the city’s largest commitment yet to replace an education program at risk from the fiscal cliff.

So far, the city has only committed $80 million to keep Summer Rising, a free academic and recreational summer program, going this year. Promising to prop up 3-K and special education preschool funding after the federal aid expires would prevent significant cuts to seats and drastic pay cuts for preschool special education teachers.

Even if cuts are reversed, preschool program face challenges

City officials conceded Monday that some 600 preschoolers with disabilities are still languishing without adequate preschool seats, despite federal legal mandates and the city’s own promise to get every child a seat.

And even before this year, Adams had already curtailed former Mayor de Blasio’s plans to aggressively expand the city’s free 3-K program to make it universal. De Blasio’s vision was largely funded with one-time federal pandemic aid, raising questions about its sustainability, and when Adams took office, he seemed to be hobbling the program. Program providers complained of rising payment delays and lackluster outreach from city officials.

Adams administration officials have contended that they’ve simply been right-sizing the program, and that they still plan to be able to offer a 3-K seat to any family that wants one. They have also argued that the existing seats aren’t properly distributed, with some neighborhoods seeing lots of open seats, while others have much more demand than supply.

Deputy Chancellor Kara Ahmed, who oversees early childhood education, said the city has cut roughly 8,000 seats that weren’t being used and redistributed 7,000 to other programs to parts of the city where they’re more likely to be filled.

Making matters more complicated, officials said Monday they’re still waiting on the results of a $760,000 study commissioned more than a year ago from the consulting company Accenture mapping out the city’s preschool seat needs. Banks said he expects the Accenture report in early April.

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

As tensions flare in parent councils, NYC sees a surge in misconduct complaints

2024-03-13T19:19:25+00:00

Fierce debates and in-fighting within New York City’s parent education councils are hardly new.

But as tensions escalated during the pandemic, the Education Department created its first formal process to investigate complaints of harassment and discrimination among these parent leaders and issue sanctions.

That process, after getting off to a slow start, is now facing its first major test amid a surge of misconduct allegations against parents on these boards.

A total of 36 grievances have been filed this school year against parents elected to the city’s Community Education Councils, according to the Education Department. That’s up from five such complaints last year.

Debates in the councils have simmered for years over proposals to strip selective admissions criteria in an effort to racially integrate schools. Conflicts exploded during the pandemic, both locally and across the country, over school closures and masking requirements. And sharp divides have continued this year over rhetoric about LGBTQ youth and the Israel-Hamas war.

“I think what we’re seeing now is a national political fight that has found its way into education,” said Tracy Jordan, the president of Community Education Council 22 in southern Brooklyn, who recently faced accusations of antisemitism from a local City Council member and some parents over a decision to hold a meeting on a Friday night. (Jordan said she cleared the meeting time in advance with all the members of the council, including Jewish members, and that it was a special meeting that didn’t have a public comment portion, so no one was excluded from speaking.)

Jordan doesn’t know for sure if any complaints have been filed against her, but said even the threat of them can “cause concern.”

The spike in grievances, called D-210 complaints, is also a sign that parent leaders are finally making use of the disciplinary process, which was rolled out in December 2021, at the height of the pandemic, and met with deeply divided reactions. Some parents at the time shared personal accounts of racism, harassment, and doxxing at the hands of fellow parent leaders, and they argued it was long past time for city officials to take a stronger role in enforcing behavior norms.

But other parents, including members of PLACE NYC, or Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, a group that supports selective school admissions, argued that the regulation is overly broad, could have a chilling effect on political speech, and gives the Education Department too much power to regulate independent parent leaders.

The resolution ultimately passed, but the process has taken years to get up and running.

City has yet to share outcomes of investigations

When the Education Department receives a complaint, an “equity compliance officer” is supposed to investigate, and within 60 days must turn over their findings to a council of parent leaders elected by their fellow CEC members. That council must then issue recommendations to schools Chancellor David Banks.

The Education Department only hired the equity compliance officer in February 2023, more than a year after the position was created.

Education Department officials said parent leaders recently elected representatives from their home boroughs to the council responsible for reviewing the investigations, though a spokesperson declined to name its members.

Many parents didn’t know about the grievance process or trust that it would yield any results, said NeQuan McLean, the president of District 16′s CEC in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and head of the Education Council Consortium, a group of parent leaders who pushed for the regulation.

“Now that those elements are in place, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the number of discrimination complaints increased,” he said. “The fact that people are filing complaints demonstrates that the regulation and civil rights protections were needed.”

But how the disciplinary process will play out in practice largely remains to be seen.

Potential disciplinary outcomes range from an order from the chancellor to stop the behavior in question to immediate removal if the behavior is criminal, poses a danger to students, or “is contrary to the best interest of the New York City school district.” For lower level offenses, sanctioned council members get an opportunity to reconcile with their colleagues.

An Education Department spokesperson declined to share whether any of the probes have led to discipline.

Camille Casaretti, a member of the Citywide Council on High Schools, said the process “takes too long,” adding that she knows of complaints made during the CEC elections last spring that are still pending.

Meanwhile, some parents are losing their patience.

At a February meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, multiple parents implored Education Department officials to remove members of the CEC on Manhattan’s District 2 who made comments in a private group text chat that denied the existence of transgender kids and referred in graphic terms to the genitalia of a gay state lawmaker, according to The 74. Maud Maron, one of the CEC 2 members in the private chat, declined to answer questions about whether she is the target of any complaints, but told Chalkbeat that “defending the rights of girls and women is not anti-trans.”

Separately, some students and parents at Stuyvesant High School are pushing for Maron to be removed from the School Leadership Team.

Banks, who makes the final call on discipline for elected parent leaders, called the comments “despicable” and “not in line with our values.”

“One of the things I will tell you in the two years I have been chancellor that has been the greatest disappointment to me is to see on a daily basis an example of parents behaving badly,” Banks said. “I’ve tried to give this some time to allow adults to be adults. But when you realize they refuse to do that … we are going to begin to take action.”

Tensions continue to flare in CECs

The conflict in CEC 2 isn’t the only one to draw significant attention this year.

CEC 14 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has been locked in a dispute over whether to resume in-person meetings, following a backlash to CEC President Tajh Sutton’s support for a student walkout calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Sutton and other CEC members say they’ve received violent threats, including a package containing feces mailed to the council’s office, and don’t feel safe meeting in person. Critics have accused CEC members of blocking pro-Israel speakers from participating in online meetings – an allegation the CEC members deny.

Sutton said she’s filed D-210 complaints, and she knows she’s the target of multiple complaints. She was initially supportive of the disciplinary process, but doesn’t believe it’s working as intended. She faulted the Education Department for watering down language in the original proposal that referenced specific forms of discrimination, including against transgender people. She said it also took too long to get the process in motion, which caused some parents to lose trust in the process.

“They’re going to have to contend with the fact that this regulation written by parent leaders under attack at the time is now being weaponized against parent leaders under attack,” she said.

Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said “parent input has been considered at every stage of developing this process, which helps us ensure an inclusive and respectful environment for all members of our school communities.”

It’s not just the high-profile conflicts garnering media attention that are spurring D-210 complaints. Parent leaders and Education Department officials said the grievances are coming from a wide range of districts.

“In other councils, yes we have D-210 complaints that have been filed, many of which over the last several months,” said Deputy Chancellor Kenita Lloyd in a February meeting. “That process is ongoing.”

In District 22, CEC president Jordan said she’s still managing the fallout from media coverage of her Friday night meeting flap with local City Council member Inna Vernikov, a vocal supporter of Israel who recently made headlines for bringing a gun to a pro-Palestine student rally.

“It was really disappointing and deflating,” Jordan said of the experience. “When you’re accused of something it’s a blemish and doesn’t go away easily.” The whole process has made her question whether getting involved in her CEC was worth it.

She said she supports the idea of a code of conduct for parent leaders, but worries that the Education Department hasn’t done enough to train CEC members on what the code entails and what accountability would look like.

Still, she hopes that the Education Department can distinguish between frivolous complaints and ones that target clearly out-of-bounds behavior.

“At the end of the day, we should be open-minded,” she said. “But when we start causing harm, that is a problem.”

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

NYC Education Dept. sues state over order to pay for charter school’s ‘inflated’ rent

2024-03-06T21:13:07+00:00

New York City’s Education Department is accusing a Staten Island charter school of “artificially inflating” its rent costs to collect more reimbursement from the city – and it’s taking the state education commissioner to court for greenlighting the arrangement, according to legal filings.

In a lawsuit filed last week in Albany Supreme Court, city lawyers allege that Hellenic Classical Charter School took advantage of a state law that requires the city to either offer charter schools space in city-owned buildings or pay for their rent in outside facilities.

The school leased space from a church in Staten Island and then turned over the lease to an affiliated group, which subleased the space back to the school at a price three times as high as what the school originally agreed to pay the landlord. The school then asked the city to reimburse it at the inflated rate, the suit alleges.

New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa is the subject of a new lawsuit from the city Education Department over her ruling in a dispute over charter school rental reimbursement.

The extra rental income was used to subsidize the costs of constructing a brand-new building for the school on the premises, city lawyers claim. Such costs, they said, aren’t covered by the rental assistance law.

The arrangement amounts to “self-dealing…in which the School in effect pays itself an artificially inflated sub-rent and pockets the difference,” city lawyers said.

Lawyers for Hellenic conceded that the dramatic rise in rent was driven by the cost of “improvements” on the facility, according to court documents. But Hellenic’s lawyer, Kevin Quinn, argued that the city has no right under the law to “second guess” the price of a charter school’s rent, and that the reason for the increase is irrelevant.

State Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa largely agreed.

In an October ruling, she wrote that Hellenic’s financial arrangement was “certainly concerning,” but fell within the bounds of the law.

“That is the system the Legislature has created,” Rosa wrote. “Any change must come from that body.”

This instance, “is merely an exaggerated example of the goal of the rental assistance program: the public financing of New York City charter schools,” she added.

James Merriman, the director of the New York City Charter School Center, a group that advocates on behalf of charters, argued that, much in the way the public subsidizes the cost of public school construction, charters should be able to use rental assistance for the same purpose.

The Education Department’s lawsuit marks the first time the city has brought a legal challenge against the state Education Department over a charter rental dispute, according to a spokesperson from the city’s Law Department.

“There is no evidence that the Legislature intended” for the law to require the city to “cover what this charter school is seeking,” the spokesperson said.

Critics have flagged inflated rental costs for years

The city’s obligation to subsidize charter rents stems from a 2014 state law, passed as former Mayor Bill de Blasio took office. The legislation was meant to shore up protections for the publicly funded, privately run charter schools against a city executive viewed as more hostile toward charters than his predecessor, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The law compels the city to offer a new or expanding charter school space in a public school building or cover the cost of rent in an outside building up to a certain amount. If the rental costs are greater than 30% of what the city receives from the state for a charter school’s enrollment, the reimbursement from the city is capped at that level.

The state reimburses the city for 60% of what it pays for charter rental costs.

The city paid about $75 million for charter rental reimbursements in fiscal year 2023, after factoring in the state’s portion of the payments, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. Year-over-year growth in the city’s total outlay on charter rental reimbursements has begun to slow as the city nears the state-mandated cap limiting the number of charter schools in operation, the IBO said. But the subsidy will likely continue to tick up in future years as rental costs rise and enrollment at charters increases overall.

Critics have for years alleged that some charter schools are taking advantage of the law by overcharging the city on rent and “self dealing.”

A 2021 report from the group Class Size Matters, which advocates for lower class sizes, pointed out several instances of charters renting space from affiliated organizations with subsequent sharp increases in rental rates.

The report cited an example of two Success Academy charter schools in Hudson Yards subleasing space from the network. In that case, the rent jumped from less than $800,000 in the 2019 school year to $3.4 million the following year, allowing Success to collect more than $3 million from the city in rental subsidies. (The report said Success owned the space, but a spokesperson said they rented it and then sub-leased it to the schools.)

Success Academy spokesperson Jessica Siegel said that even with that increase, the network has lost money on the lease because “facilities reimbursement has covered far less than our total costs including rent and the cost of the necessary renovations we had to incur to make the space safe and functional for learning.” She added that Success asked the Education Department for space in a city-owned building but was denied.

In Hellenic’s case, the school originally agreed to pay the landlord roughly $660,000 in rent during the 2021-22 school year for its Staten Island space. But the school subsequently transferred the lease to an entity affiliated with the school called “Friends of Hellenic,” which then sub-leased it back to the school at a price of over $2 million a year.

Quinn, the school’s lawyer, said using a “Friends Of” entity is a “common practice.”

In response to the 2021 Class Size Matters report, state Sens. John Liu (D-Queens) and Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan) and City Council member Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn) sent a letter to city Comptroller Brad Lander asking him to audit the Education Department’s charter rental reimbursement payments to ensure they’re based on fair market value.

A spokesperson for Lander said the comptroller’s office couldn’t comment on ongoing litigation.

Leonie Haimson, the founder and executive director of Class Size Matters, called Hellenic’s arrangement “outrageous” and urged the state legislature to amend the rental assistance law “to disallow any self-dealing and ensure that any rents charged to DOE by charter schools are no more than fair market value.”

Rental reimbursement law draws renewed scrutiny

The rental reimbursement law has recently come up in conversations about how the city plans to comply with a separate state law mandating lower class sizes in many schools.

At a town hall in Brooklyn on Monday night, some parents pushed schools Chancellor David Banks on the possibility of moving charters out of public school buildings to clear out more space for district schools to spread out and lower their class sizes.

But Banks warned such a move would ultimately drive up the city’s expenses because of the rental reimbursement law.

“If I take a charter school and move them out of your building so that now you have more space for class size, I now have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent for that charter school,” he said. “Guess where that money is going to come from ...The funding that we use to pay for your music program and your art program.”

New York City is the only city in the state required to reimburse charter schools for rental costs – a fact critics have long seized on in arguments to repeal the legislation.

But other state legislators want to move in the opposite direction: State Sen. Luis Sepulveda (D-Bronx) and Assembly member John Zaccaro Jr. (D-Bronx) recently introduced legislation to expand the charter rental reimbursement law so it will also apply to charter schools opened before 2014.

Advocates and educators previously told the Bronx Times that charter schools that don’t receive the rental reimbursement have to divert significant chunks of their budget to covering rent and away from teachers and programs benefiting kids.

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

NYC budget director blames cafeteria menu cuts on too many kids eating

2024-03-04T23:26:19+00:00

New York City slashed popular items like chicken tenders, dumplings, and cookies from cafeteria menus in February because too many kids were eating, a city official said Monday.

Jacques Jiha, director of the Office of Management and Budget, offered the surprising explanation at a City Council budget hearing in response to questions from Education Committee chair Rita Joseph pressing officials about why “high demand items are being swapped for heat-and-serve options.”

“Bear in mind, the city made some significant investments in school cafeterias,” Jiha said, referring to a $50 million initiative to upgrade middle and high school cafeterias to make them resemble food courts – a project explicitly designed to increase student meal participation.

“So what you end up with, you have a lot of kids hanging out in cafeterias now and eating more and more and more and more,” Jiha continued. “So therefore what they did was, they basically cut some of the items from the menu … because more kids are eating.”

A school food staffer told Chalkbeat in January that the items removed from the February menu were among the pricier offerings.

The menu cuts have already had significant effects – both on kids who were crushed to lose their favorite lunch foods and on manufacturers struggling with the loss of business.

Jiha claimed that the menu trimming was not the result of a budget cut. The $60 million in city funding slashed from the Office of School Food and Nutrition Services in November as part of a sweeping, citywide budget cut ordered by Mayor Eric Adams, was “swapped” for $60 million in new federal funding, Jiha said.

But critics say the city still hasn’t provided a satisfactory explanation for why the midyear menu reductions were necessary if the budget wasn’t cut.

“The City’s November 2023 budget documents included a clear $60 million cut to school food operations,” said Rachel Sabella, the Director of No Kid Hungry New York, in a statement. A budget update in January included the same figure, and the cuts to the February menu “followed soon after, removing higher-priced items that kids loved and that contributed to higher participation--like burritos, dumplings, and French toast sticks.

“If the cut has now been filled with federal revenue … we look forward to seeing the budget updated accordingly,” she added.

An Education Department spokesperson previously told Chalkbeat that costs went up because of a 9% increase in student meal participation compared to last year and rising expenses in unspecified other areas.

But food manufacturers who spoke to Chalkbeat in January said that’s not a convincing rationale for making major menu cuts in the middle of the school year, since the Education Department has significant power to set its own prices, and costs are largely set before the start of the school year.

And when Education Department officials were asked directly about the possibility of menu reductions in January, they appeared to blame the mayor’s budget cuts.

“We are going to have to cut back a little bit due to the [cut],” said Chris Tricarico, senior executive director of the Office of Food and Nutrition Services in a January meeting with the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council. “As all agencies had to reduce a little bit, we’re going to have slight reductions to the menu as far as choices.”

Jiha said the city is currently “modifying the budget and adding federal resources” to support school foods. But when pressed on why that wasn’t translating into the restoration of slashed cafeteria menus on the ground, Jiha said only that Joseph could “trust what I’m saying to you.”

An Education Department spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about if and when any of the axed items would return. There are some minor changes in the March school cafeteria menu compared to February, including the addition of mozzarella sticks as a daily backup options for food court cafeterias. But many of the big-ticket items axed in February like french fries, chicken tenders, cookies, and chicken dumplings, still don’t appear on the March citywide menu.

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

NYC may encourage principals to hire teachers over other roles to reduce class sizes

2024-02-29T23:28:24+00:00

Principals with vacant positions next year might start feeling more pressure from the city to hire teachers over other roles to comply with the state’s class size law, officials said Thursday at a New York City Council hearing.

The law, passed by the state legislature in 2022, requires that kindergarten to third grade classrooms have 20 or fewer students, fourth to eighth grade classes have no more than 23 students, and high schools classes have 25 or fewer. The law takes effect in phases – requiring that 20% of classrooms across the city meet the mandates by this September, and 40% satisfy the requirements by September 2025. The entire city will have to be in compliance by September 2028.

So far, the city’s Education Department hasn’t had much trouble complying. Roughly 40% of classrooms across the city are currently at or below the caps, officials testified Thursday.

But to make sure the city is still in compliance by next September, and begin preparing for the stricter requirements in coming years, the department is considering some policy changes next school year, Deputy Chancellor for Operations Emma Vadehra testified on Thursday.

One of those changes may be “asking schools to prioritize hiring teachers over other positions” when they have vacancies, Vadehra said.

That could mark a significant shift in a system where principals have traditionally had wide latitude to manage their hiring decisions and decide how to distribute their dollars among classroom teachers and other positions including aides, administrators, deans, and counselors and social workers.

First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said, pushing school hiring decisions “top-down” would be “overrid[ing] the judgment of the people we want making those judgments.”

Officials didn’t offer many details on how that directive would work. Schools already have some hiring restrictions unrelated to the new class size law, such as maintaining the mandated number of teachers and paraprofessionals for students with disabilities and ensuring they have teachers for required subjects.

The plan will need to be approved by the teachers and principals unions, and officials aim to communicate plans to principals by this spring before they have to begin hiring for next year, Vadehra said.

Henry Rubio, the president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the union representing principals, expressed concerns about the idea, calling it “tremendously short-sighted.”

In addition to more teachers, schools also need “support staff, paraprofessionals, and supervisors to maintain effective instruction and provide the adequate professional development that a school’s staff needs,” he said. “Otherwise, the academic gains from smaller class sizes may be eroded since new teachers and other staff will require more support given their lack of experience.”

Mike Sill, the assistant secretary at the United Federation of Teachers, said the union “like[s] the concept in general,” but there are “caveats.”

Some schools might need more counselors or deans, he said. “It’s a half-baked plan at this point.”

Education Department previews other potential changes next year

Officials said they are considering a recommendation from a recently-convened working group to restrict how schools can spend $215 million in funding through a state program called Contracts for Excellence, or C4E.

C4E money is distributed by the city, based on the level of student need at a school, measured by the number of low-income and academically struggling students, as well as English Language Learners and kids with disabilities.

Currently, schools that receive C4E money can use it for reducing class sizes, launching professional development programs to improve teacher quality, offering full-day pre-Kindergarten classes, and running programs for English Language Learners, among other things.

Officials on Thursday said they’re considering restricting that funding so it can only be used to lower class sizes.

More than 1,500 schools got C4E money this year, with an average of nearly $141,000 per school.

Bigger changes are ahead

The challenges facing the Education Department are going to grow as the class size law continues to phase in.

Officials estimate that the city will need to increase its teaching force, which currently stands at around 77,000, by between 10,000 and 12,000 to fully comply with the law. That will cost between $1.4 to $1.9 billion a year, according to the Education Department’s estimates, and require a significant boost in hiring at a time when the number of new teachers entering the workforce is shrinking. The Education Department also estimates that there are about 500 schools that will need more classrooms than they currently have in their buildings to meet the class size standards. Some schools that only need one or two extra classrooms might be able to shift around existing space. But other schools need as many as 78 additional classrooms, Vadehra said.

The School Construction Authority, which is in charge of building new facilities, estimated that it will cost between $22 and $27 billion to build all the new facilities needed to meet the class size mandates – a budget far greater than is currently slotted in the SCA’s capital plan.

State legislators have argued that the Education Department doesn’t need any additional funding to comply with the law because Foundation Aid from the state increased by more than $1 billion in recent years. But Education Department officials say they’ve already committed that money to bolstering school budgets, increasing funding for low-income and homeless students, and paying for increasing mandated costs for charter schools and special education.

Adding to the complexity, the schools with the largest class sizes currently are more likely to have larger concentrations of students from affluent families, creating concerns that the city could have to shift resources away from schools with needier populations to those with lower levels of student need.

One of the city’s cheapest options for reducing class sizes citywide would be capping enrollment at the most overcrowded schools, and redirecting students to schools with more room and lower class sizes. But that policy would likely spur significant pushback from parents, since many of the schools with the largest class sizes are among the city’s most in-demand, especially at the high school level, where students have the greatest freedom to apply to schools across the city.

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

NYC families and teachers: How are your schools handling student cell phones?

2024-02-22T22:21:37+00:00

School cell phone policies are under the microscope nationwide. We want to hear what’s happening at your New York City school.

When students returned to in-person classes after learning remotely during the pandemic, some educators noticed that kids were increasingly attached to their phones. Now, more schools are experimenting with systems to keep phones out of students’ hands during the school day.

And in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has railed against the dangers of social media for children’s mental health, declaring it a public health risk and filing a lawsuit against five leading social media companies.

But efforts to ban or curb cell phone use in schools have also generated significant pushback. Some parents worry they won’t be able to reach their kids in emergencies, while some students and educators say restrictive rules rob them of a critical tool and opportunities to use technology responsibly.

At Chalkbeat New York, we’re hoping to dive deeper into how schools are handling cell phones. We want to learn more about the policies schools are adopting – or avoiding – and the benefits and drawbacks of those approaches. Please fill out the short survey below to help direct our reporting.

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Eric Adams cancels new round of budget cuts, but fiscal cliff for NYC schools looms

2024-02-21T23:06:13+00:00

New York City’s Education Department won’t see another round of city budget cuts this spring, Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday.

But the school system still stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars of expiring federal aid by this summer unless city and state officials act quickly to replace it, advocates warned.

Adams said he will not move forward with a third round of planned budget cuts to city agencies, citing better-than-anticipated revenue and shrinking spending on migrants. The previous two rounds of cuts slashed a total of more than $700 million from the Education Department’s budget for next fiscal year.

Advocates celebrated Wednesday’s news, but warned it does nothing to reverse the massive cuts already coming through previous reductions in city spending and the approaching fiscal cliff of expiring federal aid.

“We are relieved that there is not going to be another round of cuts to the New York City Department of Education,” said Randi Levine, the policy director of Advocates for Children of New York. “But we are deeply concerned about the cuts that are currently being proposed. We need the city to make a substantial investment … to ensure that we don’t have devastating cuts to education programs come July.”

Among the programs that could be partially or fully eliminated when the federal money runs out: 450 new social workers, whose salaries are covered by the one-time federal aid; the city’s recently expanded free preschool program for 3-year-olds; and more than 100 “community schools” that partner with community organizations to provide extra support to families. Funding that propped up the budgets of schools whose enrollment fell during the pandemic is also drying up.

Advocates for Children is one member of the recently formed Emergency Coalition to Save Education Programs, which is calling on the city and state to come up with more than $1 billion dollars in this year’s budget to replace the expiring federal aid.

One hundred and sixty community groups signed onto a letter last September sounding the alarm about the fiscal cliff. There was some movement in January, when Adams announced $80 million in city funding this summer to help continue Summer Rising, the academic and recreational summer program that began during the pandemic.

But advocates say that’s only the tip of the iceberg – and worry that the urgency of the situation hasn’t yet sunk in for city and state officials.

In fact, at the January briefing announcing the Summer Rising funding, Adams said he “had no clue of the extent of how many programs were being funded by stimulus dollars” until schools Chancellor David Banks had briefed him earlier that month.

Here are some of the biggest programs currently funded by federal aid, and a glimpse at what could happen if the money runs out without a replacement:

Social workers and school psychologists on the chopping block

The salaries of 450 social workers and 60 psychologists were covered by nearly $80 million in relief money this year as part of a pandemic effort to bring mental health support to schools without full-time help.

The influx brought social workers to roughly 194,000 students who previously didn’t have a full-time social worker in their school, advocates estimate. If schools lose the federal money funding these positions, they’ll either have to scrounge up money from elsewhere in their budgets – an unlikely prospect with school budgets poised to shrink next year – or “excess” them, sending them to a central pool where they’d have to wait to get picked up by a new school.

One Brooklyn principal who hired a full-time social worker for the first time with the pandemic aid said it’s made an “enormous” difference to have a staff member who can focus on behavioral issues, freeing up other administrators to focus on academic needs.

“I’m very worried about what will happen if we lose her,” said the principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There is no way I can keep her unless the funds are replaced.”

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said the agency is “extremely grateful” for the relief money and is “working with the administration to identify new funding sources.” The department will “provide guidance to schools so they can appropriately plan for the upcoming school year,” she added.

$160 million to prop up school budgets amid enrollment losses

During the pandemic, former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration paused the normal process of slashing school budgets when enrollment fell, and instead spent $375 million in federal aid to keep school budgets steady, even as enrollment cratered.

Adams began tapering off that support in 2022, cutting $215 million from the “hold harmless” pot, which left it at $160 million. That $160 million will disappear next year unless city and state officials replace it – and it will come directly out of the budgets schools use to pay for staff and supplies. If a school’s enrollment increases next year, the accompanying budget bump might offset some of that loss. But if their enrollment shrinks or stays steady, they’ll feel the full effects.

An expanded preschool program

De Blasio used federal relief money to advance a long-standing goal of expanding the city’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds in the same way he built out the city’s heralded universal prekindergarten program for 4-year-olds.

The 3-K expansion has been rockier, with more empty seats – but it’s still brought free preschool to more than 20,000 new 3-year-olds since the start of the pandemic.

If the city’s current proposed budget passes unchanged, spending on the 3-K and pre-K programs will fall by $263 million next year, according to advocates’ budget analysis. About $170 million of those cuts come from the city’s own budget trims, which officials have said will only affect seats that aren’t currently filled.

But there’s also $93 million in federal aid for 3-K that could disappear next year. The city’s cuts alone could reduce the number of 3-K seats by between 9,000 and 15,000, according to projections from the Citizens’ Committee for Children. Even if the seats that get cut were empty, losing so much funding could make it impossible for some providers to keep their lights on at all, said Jennifer March, the Executive Director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children.

“It could have a detrimental impact on the fiscal viability of that provider long term,” she said.

The clock is ticking for other programs

There are many other critical programs paid for with federal aid, including 100 staff members working directly in homeless shelters to help students with transportation and other needs, and more than 100 new community schools that partner with nonprofits to provide social services and extra support to families. A recent effort to reduce the long-standing shortage of preschool special education seats is also in jeopardy.

There’s also precious little time for city and state officials to salvage those programs. The state’s budget deadline is April 1. Advocates say things are moving the wrong direction so far: A revision to the state’s funding formula is leaving the city Education Department with $130 million less than expected.

The city’s budget deadline is further out in June. But there’s a perhaps even steeper climb to reverse some of the $700 million in cuts Adams has proposed in recent months – while also coming up with new money to replace the sunsetting federal aid.

But advocates said the stakes are too high for lawmakers not to act.

“We are talking to everyone at both the city and state levels,” said Levine. “A parent who doesn’t have access to 3-K doesn’t care if they lost the seat because of federal, state, city funding … they care that they’re losing that seat.”

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

Most NYC school safety agents are now wearing bulletproof vests. The change is unsettling for some.

2024-02-14T19:30:13+00:00

Most of the school safety agents working in New York City schools have quietly added a new item to their uniforms: bulletproof vests.

A NYPD spokesperson confirmed that about 3,000 of the roughly 4,100 school safety agents across the city are now wearing “bullet resistant” vests since the department began distributing them this school year, with the rest on the way.

The police department is rolling out the vests citywide as a safety measure for the agents amid elevated levels of neighborhood youth gun violence and a spike in guns turning up at city schools in recent years. School safety agents don’t carry guns.

But the arrival of the vests has often come with little warning or explanation to school communities, stirring mixed reactions from families, educators, and school safety agents themselves.

Alex Estes, the president of the Parent Teacher Association at the Neighborhood School in the East Village, was caught off guard when he noticed the safety agent at his son’s school wearing a vest last month.

“You’re not going to find a better-informed parent,” he said of his level of involvement, yet he had no idea about the change.

He worried about how the children at the elementary school where his son is in first grade might respond — or whether the youngest children might understand the change, hear things from older kids about the vests, or even be able to articulate their concerns. The children feel like the school is their home, and many hug their school safety agent, Estes said.

“They see her. They hug her. They care about her. Then all of a sudden … this hug has a bulletproof vest,” he said. “Five-year-olds, 7-year-olds, 8-year-olds aren’t fantastic about reporting what it is that’s making them uncomfortable, and the way this is rolling out is not taking that into account at all.”

An NYPD spokesperson didn’t respond to a question about what the department has done to prepare schools, aside from saying, “NYC Public Schools … have been notified.”

An Education Department spokesperson referred questions to the NYPD.

One Manhattan principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the school was given “zero warning” that safety agents would be showing up in vests, even though administrators had met with school safety agents just days earlier.

“The first people we see are school safety … to walk in and be greeted by bulletproof vests is alarming for students and staff,” the principal said. “Your immediate thought is, ‘What happened?’”

Some school safety agents feel conflicted about their new apparel

One Manhattan high school safety agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she appreciated the extra layer of protection, but worried about the “message” it communicated to students.

“I think we should have had a whole conversation with the schools first to prepare them,” the agent said. Though she believes that “kids can adapt” to the changes, some concerned parents asked whether there was a threat they should know about, the agent said. She feared that wearing a vest made it seem like safety agents weren’t succeeding at their jobs of keeping schools safe.

The plan to outfit school safety agents with vests, first reported last summer by the New York Daily News, follows a pilot program last year, and multiple years of lobbying from the union representing school safety agents. NYPD officials said the pilot program “aided in the safety of our School Safety Agents,” but didn’t provide further details, including where the pilot took place or how they determined its success.

The terms “bulletproof” and “bullet resistant” are often used interchangeably for vests, but some experts have said the former is a misnomer because vests aren’t impervious to all bullets.

No guns have been fired in city schools in decades, but multiple shootings have occurred right outside schools around dismissal time, including one in Williamsburg last February that injured two students and a security guard.

More than 20 guns were confiscated from students at city schools during the 2021-22 school year, a marked increase since before the pandemic. So far this school year, seven guns have been seized at schools, compared to nine during the same period last school year, according to the NYPD.

The distribution of the vests is one of several changes school and police officials have made in response to the concerns about gun violence. Last school year, the NYPD changed the frequency of school safety agents’ radios to connect them more directly to NYPD precincts, and city schools are rolling out door locking and camera systems at all elementary schools this year.

Officials previously indicated that the door locking upgrades would cost around $78 million total. An NYPD spokesperson didn’t respond to a question about the cost of the vests.

One Brooklyn elementary school principal said he appreciated some of those recent safety upgrades. But the transition to bulletproof vests for school safety agents felt extreme.

“I would want her [the School Safety Agent] to be safe in all situations, but it seems like it’s going from zero to a hundred given that the door wasn’t even secured three months ago,” said the principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The agent has complained the vest is bulky and uncomfortable to wear all day, and “she doesn’t feel like there’s an active threat to her safety that [the vest] would protect her from.”

Bulletproof vests not supposed to be visible to students

The new vests are supposed to fly under the radar. An NYPD spokesperson said in a statement they are supposed to be “worn underneath the uniform shirt and may never be the outer most garment.”

But school safety agents who spoke to Chalkbeat said that their uniform shirts aren’t tailored to fit over the vests, and that they still haven’t received new shirts. They were wearing their vests outside their uniform shirts, though one was covering it with a sweater, and others wore their uniform-issued jackets over the vests.

The vests, which NYPD officials said are “durable and lightweight,” are supposed to be worn at all times when safety agents are on duty, including when they’re staffing “safe corridors” outside of schools to help students on their commutes.

Many families and educators still haven’t noticed the vests. For those who have, they’ve often come as a surprise.

Some schools are making their own efforts to inform their communities and answer any questions.

After their safety agent got her vest, the Neighborhood School administrators sent a note to families letting them know they would be paying attention to whether children bring up the issue, and they asked parents to encourage their children to talk to trusted adults at the school if they needed to.

Estes, the PTA president, feels frustrated overall with various moves to “harden” schools, believing the focus instead should be on reforming gun laws.

“We want to keep the security officers safe,” Estes said, “but the other problem I have with this is that every time we’re talking about school security measures, we are taking up the slack of the gun laws.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed to this story.

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

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

This NYC teen wants therapy. Her mom isn’t so sure.

2024-02-10T05:00:00+00:00

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A version of this story is being co-published by the Associated Press.

Derry Oliver was in fifth grade when she first talked to her mom about seeing a therapist.

She was living in Georgia with her uncle and grandparents while her mom was in New York scoping out jobs and apartments ahead of moving the family. It was a rough year apart. Oliver, now 17 and a senior at Cobble Hill School for American Studies in Brooklyn, was feeling depressed. A school staffer raised the idea of a therapist.

Oliver’s mom, also named Derry Oliver, questioned the school’s assessment and didn’t give consent for therapy. “You’re so young,” the mom recalled thinking. “There’s nothing wrong with you. These are growing pains.”

The issue boiled over again during the COVID-19 pandemic when the younger Oliver, struggling with the isolation of remote learning, reached out to her school for help. School-based mental health professionals like social workers can provide some counseling without parent permission. But in New York, referring a student to more intensive therapy almost always requires a parent’s agreement. In Oliver’s case, that led to more conflict.

“It was very emotional for both of us because I understood her frustrations and fears,” the younger Oliver recalled. “But at the same time it’s sometimes best for your child to be able to access this rather than hold it away from them.”

As schools across the country respond to a youth mental health crisis accelerated by the pandemic, many are confronting the thorny legal, ethical, and practical challenges of getting parents on board with treatment. The issue has become politicized, with some states looking to streamline access as conservative politicians elsewhere propose further restrictions, accusing schools of trying to indoctrinate students and cut out parents.

But for families like the Olivers, the decision to start a child in therapy is often deeply personal – bringing up cultural and generational divides, as well as diverging understandings of mental health.

Derry Oliver, 17, believes that therapy could be helpful.

Differing perspectives on mental health aren’t new for parents and kids, but more conflicts are emerging as young people get more comfortable talking openly about mental health and treatment becomes more readily available, especially with the growth of telehealth and online counseling.

“It’s this disconnect,” said Chelsea Trout, a graduate student in social work at NYU doing her training at a charter school in Brooklyn. “The kids are all on TikTok or the internet and understand therapy speak and that this is something that could be helpful for their mental health and are interested in, but don’t have the explicit buy-in from their parents.”

Research suggests that having to obtain parental permission can be a significant barrier to teens accessing treatment.

Access to therapy can be critical, particularly for LGBTQ youth, who are significantly more likely than their peers to attempt suicide, and whose parents may not know about or approve of their sexual orientations or gender identities. Dr. Jessica Chock-Goldman, a social worker at Bard Early College High School in Manhattan, said she’s seen many cases where mental health issues turn severe in part because teens didn’t get earlier access to therapy.

“A lot of kids would be hospitalized because of suicidal ideations or intent because the preventative work didn’t come into fruition,” she said.

Laws about consent vary widely by state

The question of when young people can consent to mental health treatment is getting increasing attention from policymakers. States like California and Colorado have recently lowered the age of consent for treatment to 12. But in some states like North Carolina, the issue has been swept up into larger political debates about parents’ input on curriculum and the rights of transgender students.

There’s also a huge obstacle outside the law: Therapy is rarely free, and paying for it or submitting insurance claims often requires parental support.

Teens in New York can consent to therapy starting at age 16, and a provision allows doctors to authorize treatment for younger children if they deem it in their best interest. But there are caveats: The consent laws only apply in outpatient settings licensed by the state, and they don’t extend to the prescription of medications.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently announced a partnership with the platform Talkspace to provide free online counseling to all city teens, through a program known as NYC Teenspace. It doesn’t ask for insurance, but parental consent is required, “except in the case of special circumstances,” according to the program’s website.

Apart from the legal and ethical considerations, clinicians noted that mental health treatment for teens is almost always more effective when parents are on board.

“In an ideal world, absolutely I would love more access to therapy for these kids with the hope they can talk to their parents about what’s happening,” said Chock-Goldman. “Because I believe nothing changes unless you change a family system.”

A mom and daughter split on therapy

For the two generations of Oliver women, their divergent views of therapy are rooted in very different upbringings.

The elder Oliver, 36, was raised in Georgia in the 1980s and ‘90s, when people “didn’t speak on mental health a lot.”

As a kid, Oliver knew some people in therapy, but mainly because “they experienced something extremely traumatic.”

Derry Oliver, 36, is wary of her daughter doing therapy.

As she got older, Oliver had her own encounters with therapists. She was diagnosed with depression and prescribed medication that made her feel like a “zombie,” she said.

Oliver has also felt the sting of being labeled as “aggressive” simply for expressing her emotions as a Black woman – a reality that’s made her reluctant to confide in therapists who aren’t themselves Black women.

She’s concerned that allowing her daughter to see a therapist might lead to a diagnosis that brings the same kind of medication she so despised.

“Baby, there’s nothing wrong with you,” Oliver tells her daughter. “You don’t have any mental issues. You don’t need to be put on anyone’s medication.”

The younger Oliver sees things very differently. She grew up with friends who saw therapists without experiencing acute trauma. And she found numerous examples on platforms like TikTok and Instagram of teens with similar stories who had benefited tremendously from therapy.

“You don’t even have to have anxiety or depression and I don’t even know if I do or not,” she said. “But if you feel as if something isn’t right or okay with you, then I think that’s when a person should be able” to access therapy.

For Oliver and her mom, years of conversations have yielded some progress, but not as much access to therapy as the younger Oliver wants.

Several years ago, the Olivers agreed on a compromise. They found a Black female therapist, and the elder Oliver agreed her daughter could start therapy – as long as she sat in on the sessions. But the therapist changed jobs after about a month, and Oliver hasn’t seen another therapist since.

“It has to be someone trustworthy,” the elder Oliver said of a potential therapist for her daughter.

New initiatives are in the works

Trout, the school social worker in training at the Brooklyn charter school, said she’s encountered a number of parents who, like Oliver, don’t trust the school’s recommendations, and wonder why their child would need therapy if they’re succeeding academically and socially.

“If we’re thinking about predominantly Black and brown communities, if your interactions with social workers or mental health services or anything in that realm thus far have not been positive,” she said, “how could you trust them with your kids?”

Derry Oliver, 36, said her own experience has shaped her views on therapy. Her daughter, Derry Oliver, 17, wants more access to therapy.

Statistics do show a racial divide. In 2021, 14% of white children reported seeing a therapist at some point during that year, compared to 9% of Black children, 8% of Hispanic kids, and only 3% of Asian American children, according to a survey from the Centers for Disease Control.

The barriers are often particularly high in immigrant communities, where there can be a strong stigma, or simply a lack of knowledge about “what therapy or counseling looks like or means,” said Cindy Huang, a child psychologist and professor at Columbia University Teachers College. Huang was recently awarded a grant to launch a pilot program to increase access to mental health treatment for youth at risk of suicide in Manhattan’s Chinatown.

Advocates and experts are continuing to push policymakers to give young people more freedom to consent to therapy without parental approval.

There’s a bill pending in New York’s state Assembly that would give minors more freedom to consent to their own health care, including therapy.

Without access to therapy, the younger Oliver has sought advice about managing her emotions through friends, school social workers, and the internet. But she’s convinced she could do a lot more with consistent professional help.

Oliver has already gotten into a number of colleges — to her mom’s enormous pride — and is weighing her options for next year.

One thing she’s considering: how much access they offer to therapists.

Correction: A previous version of this story said the younger Derry Oliver was living with her brother in Georgia while her mom was in New York. She was actually living with her uncle and grandparents. The story was also corrected to reflect the fact that Chelsea Trout is a social worker in training at a Brooklyn charter school, but hasn’t yet completed her degree.

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

Empty display cases, hungry kids, disrupted production: NYC’s cafeteria cuts send shockwaves

2024-02-06T18:57:31+00:00

The effects of New York City’s recent school food budget cuts are already rippling through city cafeterias and beyond, even threatening jobs at the manufacturer of the chicken dumplings pulled from February’s menu.

A $60 million November cut to the Education Department’s school foods division forced the agency to chop a number of popular items, including cookies, bean and cheese burritos, and roasted chicken, Chalkbeat first reported last month. Middle and high schools with cafeterias that resemble food courts lost chicken tenders, French fries, burritos, and grab-and-go salads – items that were previously available on most days.

New York City’s school system runs the largest daily food program in the country outside the military. It serves approximately 880,000 daily “free, nutritious, and delicious meals,” according to Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle, who downplayed the impact of the menu changes. She said the agency “will continue to work to prioritize student choice wherever possible.”

But the cuts were felt immediately by many students.

Alec Lopez, a 17-year-old senior at Urban Assembly Bronx Academy of Letters in the South Bronx, went to the cafeteria last week to grab the chicken tenders and French fries she usually takes only to discover that they weren’t available.

“I didn’t eat anything. I was like, ‘Ooh maybe I should get a salad,’ but they cut that out too,” she said. “For the rest of the day, we’re tired, we’re hungry, energy levels are so down and it makes everyone feel like crap.”

A container with veggie nuggets at Bronx Academy of Letters on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024 in Bronx, New York.

Previously full display cases sat empty, and the slim offerings on shelves contained meager portions, said David Garcia-Rosen, the dean at Bronx Letters.

“I’ve never seen that all school year,” he said, adding that some of the containers held what appeared to be just a handful of veggie nuggets.

At Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology in Hell’s Kitchen, the recent menu cuts exacerbated long-standing issues with broken cafeteria equipment and food shortages. Parents and school officials have tried in vain for years to get busted display cases fixed, said Diane Tinsley, a parent of a senior and Parent Association president at Urban Assembly Gateway.

On a recent Friday afternoon, multiple broken display cases sat empty and unstocked, while only one was filled with hot food for a building with five schools and more than 2,000 students.

“I come in and it just looks like a desert,” Tinsley said. “This is child abuse.”

Food manufacturers feeling pain, too

The effects of the cuts are also spreading beyond school cafeterias. The city’s decision to yank major menu items midyear sent shockwaves through food manufacturers.

“We’re all just kind of frustrated and befuddled,” said Kirk Jaudes, chief operating officer of International Food Solutions, the company that produces the chicken dumplings for city schools. The company first found out about the change when a staffer noticed that the dumplings were missing from the Education Department’s February menu, he added. An Education Department spokesperson said vendors were notified on Dec. 19 and Dec. 22 of the changes.

International Food Solutions produces the dumplings exclusively for the city Education Department from a factory in Long Island that can churn out somewhere in the ballpark of 2 million servings a month, at a cost of around $1 a serving, Jaudes estimated.

But the Education Department’s abrupt decision to pull the plug is upending the company’s operations, Jaudes said, taking a bite out of revenue, slowing production, and forcing the company to consider layoffs.

“You could potentially have students in the New York City Department of Education whose parents are going to lose their jobs,” he said. The company, moreover, is still stuck with about $350,000 in leftover inventory that it can’t sell anywhere else because the product is reserved exclusively for New York City schools. Company officials are trying to work out a deal to distribute it in city schools, but said they haven’t gotten anywhere.

“Unless there’s major policy changes, we won’t be doing business with New York City” any more, Jaudes said. “We can’t take that risk.”

An Education Department spokesperson noted that the agency asked all vendors whose items were removed from the February menu for a “voluntary price reduction,” and that International Food Solutions declined. But Jaudes said his company had already agreed to the price suggested by the Education Department before this school year, and had even offered an additional discount, also before the start of the school year, on top of that.

“We didn’t have any margin to provide further cost reductions,” he said. The Education Department spokesperson said nine vendors offered price reductions, which are currently being reviewed by city officials to see if any items can be added back to the menu.

The dumplings are, by many accounts, one of the most popular items served in schools.

At one Manhattan elementary school, 31 out of 46 fourth- and fifth- grade students surveyed last week by the school’s principal said dumplings were the best lunch meal, the administrator said.

And in a recent Reddit thread about the school menu cuts, the top comment reads, in part: “I work in the schools. The dumplings are popular and most kids eat them.”

Reasons for budget cut raise questions

The circumstances surrounding the school food budget cut are still somewhat murky. The $60 million cut to school foods was part of a larger $550 million budgetary blow to the Education Department that Mayor Eric Adams said was prompted by increased spending on the wave of migrants who have arrived in the city over the past year-and-a-half.

But budget documents appear to suggest that the cut to school foods from the city’s budget was going to be offset by federal food revenues that “exceed budgeted amount.” Administration officials told the City Council that the cut to city school food funds wouldn’t affect the division’s overall operating budget because it would be offset by federal money, according to a council source.

“It’s mystifying why schools are seeing these removals of menu items,” the council source added.

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed that the city is indeed replacing the missing city money with federal funds, and said the overall $580 million budget for school foods is still higher than what the city spent last year. Costs are up this year because of increased participation compared to last year and increases in unspecified “other areas,” according to the spokesperson. Labor contracts prevent the Education Department from laying off workers, “which meant a reduction in food options,” the spokesperson added.

Some observers worry that the cuts could have long-term implications for the city’s school food program.

The number of city students eating lunch on an average day, while higher than last year, is still down significantly from the 2019-20 school year, according to city data.

If even fewer students eat lunch because of the menu changes, that could lead to lower reimbursement from the federal government, which in turn can lead to cuts that further diminish the quality of the food, in what Jaudes called “a never-ending cycle to the bottom.”

The Education Department spokesperson said, “The current menu still provided high demand items, a decrease in meal participation is not expected.”

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

Cookies, chicken tenders, dumplings: NYC cost-cutting axes faves from February school menu

2024-01-24T20:00:23+00:00

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Mayor Eric Adams’ school budget cuts will soon hit New York City students square in the stomach.

A $60 million November cut to the city’s school foods budget is forcing the Education Department to thin out next month’s school cafeteria menu by removing a host of pricier items, including student favorites like cookies, chicken dumplings, and bean and cheese burritos, according to an email from a school food official obtained by Chalkbeat.

Additionally, at the growing number of middle and high schools with cafeterias that resemble food courts (part of an initiative expanded by Adams to improve the lunchroom experience), students will no longer get chicken tenders, grab-and-go salads, and French fries – items that are currently offered multiple days a week as options for kids who don’t want that day’s main course.

Other items that will be taken out of rotation in February include roasted chicken thighs and legs as well as guacamole and salsa, the message said. Breakfast meal kits, French toast sticks, bagel sticks, ciabatta bread, and sweet potato oatmeal muffins will also be scratched.

In a recent meeting with parent leaders, Chris Tricarico, the Education Department’s head of school foods, acknowledged that the menus would be impacted by the budget cuts, but promised “minimal changes.”

But to many parents and kids, the cuts feel anything but bite-sized.

“To me, that’s like 75% of the menu,” said Jose Santana, a 17-year-old senior at Dr. Richard Izquierdo Charter School in the Bronx, which offers the same menu as district schools. French fries were “definitely one of my favorites,” he said. “For that to be gone is huge.”

Without the chicken tenders, fries, and grab-and-go salads, the remaining daily backup options at high schools with food courts are pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, and hummus and crackers, according to the February menu. There will also still be a daily salad bar, but Santana said he doesn’t see many students use it.

“At least the pizza is still there,” he said.

Clarissa Kunizaki, a 15-year-old sophomore at Brooklyn Technical High School, was similarly shocked to hear the list of menu items getting chopped.

“The chicken thighs and legs were the best option for lunch in my opinion, since the other hot meals usually do not taste great,” she said. The bean and cheese burritos were also “pretty good and very popular among other students,” she added.

Menu cuts come after school food investment

Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks pledged $50 million a little over a year ago to turn 80 more school cafeterias into food courts – a change advocates have contended can increase the number of students who eat. More than 100 school buildings serving 140,000 students now have an enhanced cafeteria, according to the Education Department’s school kitchens dashboard.

Adams has made school food a major priority, launching an initiative to serve vegan offerings on Fridays and a recent program to bring professional chefs into schools to help develop new recipes.

But with the variety in the food court lunchrooms getting significantly diminished next month, some students wondered whether more teens would turn to other options.

“I see every day a good group of students that just don’t eat school lunch,” Santana said. “I wonder if this budget cut will cause students to spend more money” outside schools at nearby bodegas or delis.

“I personally don’t want to waste five to 10 dollars every day,” he added.

Liz Accles, the executive director of Community Food Advocates, a nonprofit that led the charge to expand the city’s cafeteria enhancement program, said in an email she’s “hopeful that the funds will be restored … given the unprecedented commitments that the Mayor and Chancellor have made in creating an innovative and leading edge school meals program.”

An Education Department spokesperson said items that don’t appear on the February menu may still be added back in subsequent months.

“Our school food team has worked diligently to respond to budget reductions without sacrificing nutritional standards and with a continued focus on student choice,” said spokesperson Jenna Lyle. “Daily options, including a salad bar, continue to be available, and our young people continue to benefit from enhanced cafeterias, halal certified kitchens, plant-powered Fridays and other school food programs.”

Students and parents concerned about more school food waste

At many high schools and even some middle schools, students are allowed to leave campus for lunch and buy food at local eateries.

But for younger students, there’s no option to leave school – it’s either eat what’s on the school menu, or bring food from home.

Ana, a 6-year-old student at P.S. 289 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said she’s “going to be sad” if the cookies disappear from her school menu.

“They took things off the menu that I really enjoy,” said Mia Ueoka, a 9-year-old fourth grader at P.S. 295 in Brooklyn. “My favorite thing on the menu was the cheese and bean burrito and the chicken thighs. I actually felt like I could get protein from it.”

Ueoka’s dad, Elton Dodson, worried the changes could exacerbate equity issues, “with more affluent parents able to pack lunches to compensate for this policy atrocity.”

News that the chicken dumplings are falling victim to the budget cuts also hit hard for some students and adults.

Jake Jacobs, a middle school art teacher in the Bronx, allows students to eat lunch in his classroom, and gets a first-hand look at what they like and what they don’t based on what ends up in his trash can.

“They throw the vast majority of it away,” he said. But the dumplings were one bright spot. “They get double portions and they’re fighting over them,” he said.

The $60 million cut to school foods was part of a total of roughly $550 million chopped from the Education Department budget in Adams’ November budget. Adams ordered all city agencies to trim their budgets by 5% as part of what he described as a bleak fiscal situation driven by increased spending on services for migrants and asylum seekers.

But Adams significantly revised that financial forecast in January. He reversed $10 million of the November cuts to the Education Department, but still announced $100 million in new cuts set to take effect next fiscal year. Additional cuts to the police, fire, and sanitation departments were put on hold.

Officials have emphasized that they have done everything possible to keep the cuts from directly affecting services. But several parents said the cuts to the school menus would have an immediate impact on their kids.

“Our schools have already seen after-school programs decimated, arts programs eliminated,” said Dodson, the parent at P.S. 295. “Now they won’t have adequate fuel for the day.”

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

A math problem with no easy solution: Regents scores plummeted during pandemic

2024-01-23T17:58:15+00:00

New York City high-schoolers’ scores on math Regents exams plummeted during the pandemic and have yet to bounce back, according to recently released state data.

Performance on the Regents tests, which serve as graduation requirements in New York, fell in every subject with the exception of U.S. History between 2019, the last year before the pandemic, and 2023, the data shows.

But the decline was steepest for city students in higher-level math courses. In Algebra II, proficiency rates for city students fell from 69% in 2019 to just 44% last year. In Geometry, 56% of city students passed the Regents test in 2019, but just 38% passed last school year.

The sharp decline is a stark indicator of the ongoing challenges the city faces in helping students recover from the academic impacts of the pandemic. Those challenges are particularly acute in math, where one course builds directly on the last and interrupted instruction can have ripple effects.

City officials are betting big on a new curriculum overhaul, where high schools for the first time are required to use a shared math curriculum for Algebra I.

“Math Regents scores have been unacceptably low for the last several years, even before the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein. “We launched our rollout of the Algebra 1 Illustrative Math curriculum to address dropping test scores.”

The curriculum mandate is currently in place only for Algebra I, but city officials have raised the possibility of standardizing curriculum for higher-level math courses as well. Illustrative Math, the mandated Algebra I curriculum, has drawn mixed responses from educators.

The Algebra I Regents exam is also undergoing a change this year to align with a new set of standards, and similar changes are on the way for the Algebra II and Geometry exams.

Brownstein said the Algebra I curriculum mandate is “just the first stage” of the Education Department’s work to improve high school math instruction and that “we are confident we will see rising Regents scores as a result.”

Pandemic Regents waivers help explain drops

There are likely several factors that drove the unusually steep decline in higher-level math scores.

In general, math scores fell more dramatically than reading scores across grade levels and districts. That pattern held true for New York City on the state’s third-to-eighth-grade state tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tests fourth and eighth graders.

Bobson Wong, a veteran high school math teacher in Queens, said basic academic skills like knowing how to study, remember things, and ask for help – skills that are particularly important in memorization-heavy subjects like math – all took a hit during the pandemic.

But educators also pointed to specific features of New York’s high school Regents tests and the state’s pandemic policies that may help explain the size of the drops.

High school math, to a greater degree than other subjects, is cumulative – meaning it’s extremely difficult to perform well in Algebra II without having mastered Algebra I, said Wong.

Prior to the pandemic, many schools didn’t enroll students in Algebra II or Geometry courses unless they’d passed the Algebra I Regents exam. But during the pandemic school years of 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, when schools were partially or fully remote, Regents tests were mostly canceled and students could earn waivers by passing the course linked to the test.

As a result, when in-person instruction returned, educators said they noticed an unusual number of students enrolled in higher-level math courses who’d never really mastered Algebra I.

“I saw a lot of students in my Algebra II class waived through Algebra I and they didn’t know any algebra,” said Wong. “We didn’t really do anything to prepare them for a course like Algebra II. It requires so much knowledge of algebra and so much prior skill.”

During the pandemic, there were few good options to fairly assess students. State officials concluded that trying to hold Regents exams during the height of the pandemic, with schools offering varying levels of in-person instruction and students often struggling to engage in remote learning, would exacerbate inequality and unfairly block some students from graduating. Students in New York typically need to score a 65 or higher on five Regents exams to earn a diploma, and can receive an “advanced” diploma by passing more of the exams.

More than 80% of New York City’s high school graduates in 2020, and nearly three-quarters of graduates in 2021, had at least one Regents exam exemption counted towards graduation requirements, a 2022 analysis from Education Trust-New York found.

But while many educators supported the additional flexibility during the pandemic, some have expressed concerns that students granted Regents exemptions or who passed courses because of added pandemic grading flexibility didn’t get the support they needed to catch up, and were instead moved into higher-level courses for which they were unprepared.

“We had to make some really important and responsive decisions,” said Tracy Fray-Oliver, the vice president at Bank Street Education Center and a former math official in the city Education Department. “But without ensuring the mastery in these courses that came before, you’re going to see these kinds of results.”

Passing the Algebra II and Geometry Regents tests isn’t a requirement for graduation because students can satisfy the math Regents requirement by passing only Algebra I. But the tests are required for an advanced diploma, and passing them can be an indicator of whether students are on track to take and pass pre-calculus and calculus.

Gaps between racial groups grew

Across the state, the Regents exam declines were also largest on the Algebra II and Geometry tests, although the drops in New York City were larger in both cases.

The gaps between racial groups also grew. The share of Latino students in New York City scoring proficient on the Algebra II exam, for example, was more than cut in half, from 58% in 2019 to 28% last year. Just 26% of Black students passed the Algebra II test last year, down from 55% in 2019.

The proportion of Asian American students passing the exam fell from 87% in 2019 to 74% this year, while the share of white students scoring proficient fell from 82% to 63%.

Fray-Oliver said she applauded the city’s efforts to overhaul high school math curriculum, but added that many of the skills students need to succeed in higher-level high school math courses are first taught as early as elementary.

Critics have long argued that the Regents exams aren’t effective ways of assessing what kids know and encourage rote learning at the expense of deeper understanding. That’s part of why a Blue Ribbon Commission recently recommended to the state’s Board of Regents that New York offer more pathways outside of the exams for students to earn graduation credit.

Wong said he expects the scores on the higher-level Regents tests to slowly bounce back on their own as the effects of the pandemic fade.

“I wouldn’t push the panic button and say we have to do all these interventions,” he said. “If the drop-off continues, that could be more of an issue.”

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

NYC rolls out long-awaited school bus tracking app

2024-01-19T23:38:34+00:00

New York City is finally rolling out a long-awaited school bus GPS app citywide – four and a half years after officials first announced the plan.

The NYC School Bus App, developed in partnership with the rideshare company Via, allows caregivers of the roughly 150,000 students who ride a school bus every day to track their kids’ vehicles in real time. The sprawling school bus system, which serves tens of thousands of students with disabilities, often subjects students to hours-long rides, delays, and no-show buses. In the past, parents often had to repeatedly call bus companies to track down missing buses.

Education Department officials first announced the five-year, $36 million contract with Via in summer 2019. They said at the time the app would roll out citywide in the 2020-21 school year. Those plans were scuttled by the COVID pandemic, but even after the full return of in-person learning in fall 2021, it took two-and-a-half more years to get the app up and running citywide.

Mayor Eric Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks struck a celebratory note in a press release announcing the citywide rollout.

“I’m thrilled to be launching this system for families across the city and to provide peace of mind to parents as they send their babies off to school each day,” Banks said.

Lori Podvesker, a parent and director of disability and education policy at IncludeNYC, said launching the bus-tracking app was long overdue.

She often relies on text messages with a bus attendant to get a heads-up on when her son, Jack, will be picked up and dropped off each day from his District 75 program, which serves students with more significant disabilities.

“Knowing that I can access this information helps build trust,” Podvesker said.

She recalled an incident several years ago when Jack’s bus didn’t turn up and she frantically called the bus company, which didn’t answer the phone. When Podvesker called the Education Department’s transportation office, she was placed on hold.

“It is so nerve-wracking — especially as a parent of a kid with intellectual disabilities who’s nonverbal. You just freak out,” she said.

One Staten Island parent in 2021 resorted to slapping an Airtag on her elementary school daughter in lieu of working GPS on the school bus.

Podvesker welcomes the new app, but she wasn’t sure if it’s working yet for her son’s bus route, which ferries him from Downtown Brooklyn to the Lower East Side. When she logged into the app on Friday, a page came up that said, “No activity so far. We hope to see you soon!”

Still, she noted her son was already off the bus when she checked.

Indeed, officials’ claims of a full citywide rollout come with several big caveats.

First, the app only works if drivers sign up for the program – and currently about 25% of the city’s bus drivers aren’t signed up, according to officials. In the press release, officials advised caregivers whose kids’ drivers aren’t subscribed to contact the bus company and ask them to help.

An Education Department spokesperson said drivers are required to sign up and can be fined if they don’t. Use of the app was a part of the protracted contract negotiations with the city’s largest school bus drivers union that threatened to throw the school bus system into chaos last fall, the spokesperson added. While negotiations were underway, union drivers were instructed not to use the app, delaying the rollout, the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, the city’s largest school bus drivers union, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another obstacle for many families is that the app requires a New York City Schools Account, or NYCSA. Roughly a third of the city’s public school families weren’t linked to an account as of summer 2023. And for the tens of thousands of charter and private school students who also ride city school buses, signing up for a NYCSA is difficult or impossible, parents and advocates said.

A 2022 Education Department manual said private school students are “ineligible” for the accounts, and that charter school students can get one but have to go through a more onerous process.

Manhattan parent Naomi Peña said she lost access to her NYCSA when her son transferred to a private school because the Education Department couldn’t accommodate his learning disability. Her son still relies on city school buses, but she can’t access the new app.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” she said. “When busing routes get switched … we are left scrambling waiting for the new bus driver or matron to call us.”

An Education Department spokesperson said the agency is working with individual charter and private schools to give families access to NYCSA logins.

The bus tracking app is also supposed to have a feature that allows school administrators to track the buses of their students.

The school bus tracking app is the Education Department’s second recent high-profile foray into developing software to support families. The agency recently released its own grades, attendance and messaging app, following a catastrophic hack of Skedula, a widely used online gradebook run by an outside vendor.

To allay concerns about privacy, officials said they will “share the minimum required data, will require highly secure logins for all users, and will perform data encryption and continuous security testing on the system.”

The Via app also isn’t the city’s first attempt to equip school buses with GPS. A City Council bill from 2019 required the Education Department to install location tracking technology in all city school buses by that September – a deadline council members said they didn’t meet.

And, of course, even if the new app works seamlessly and makes it into the hands of every parent, it won’t address the many other problems plaguing the sprawling school bus system, including frequent delays and no-shows, buses without air conditioning, and an ongoing shortage of drivers and bus attendants.

“It wouldn’t necessarily make the routes shorter,” said Sara Catalinotto a long-time transportation advocate and head of the group Parents to Improve School Transportation. “But at least people wouldn’t come out into the cold to wait.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

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

New lawsuit targets program to diversify NY’s college STEM majors

2024-01-17T22:11:19+00:00

A prominent conservative legal foundation is backing a new lawsuit challenging a New York state program that seeks to increase the enrollment of “historically underrepresented” students in college science and technology programs on the grounds that it excludes some white and Asian American students, according to legal filings.

The Pacific Legal Foundation is taking aim at the state’s 39-year-old Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP), which offers eligible students in seventh through 12th grade extra summer courses at local colleges and admissions help.

The lawsuit claims the program violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause by making Black, Hispanic, and Native American students automatically eligible, regardless of their family income, according to the federal suit filed Wednesday in New York’s Northern District. White and Asian American students are only eligible if their families fall below the income threshold.

“All students of all races should have equal rights based on their merit to participate in programs like New York State’s STEP,” said Wai Wah Chin, the president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York and a plaintiff in the case, in a statement.

Plaintiffs and lawyers in the new case say their argument fits squarely with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to strike down race-based admissions at the college level.

The court “reaffirmed that racial discrimination in admissions is unacceptable, and ‘eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,’” added Chin, who is also slated to speak Thursday at a New York City event for Moms for Liberty, a parent group that’s sought to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and block LGBTQ-focused books and curriculum.

The program in the crosshairs of the new lawsuit is a nearly four-decades-old initiative codified in state law to offer extra support to “students who are either economically disadvantaged or minorities historically underrepresented” in the STEM fields. The law leaves it up to the Board of Regents to define which students fit in those categories.

Fifty-six colleges and universities across the state got state money during the 2021-22 school year to offer extra summer courses, counseling, and research and internship experiences to more than 12,000 qualifying middle and high school students. More than 80% of the program’s graduates said they planned to attend college, according to the state Education Department.

The plaintiffs argue that the racial criteria unfairly discriminates against white and Asian American applicants who are above the income threshold.

“The Hispanic child of a multi-millionaire is eligible to apply to STEP, while an Asian American child whose family earns just above the state’s low income threshold is not, solely because of her race or ethnicity,” the suit states.

Yiatin Chu, a parent activist and plaintiff in the suit, said her seventh-grade daughter wants to participate in the NYU STEP program this summer, but is ineligible because she doesn’t meet the race or income criteria, according to the suit.

The state Education Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit or how the eligibility criteria was determined.

The state’s definition of “underrepresented” groups in STEM majors and careers appears to align with both state and national data. As of 2015, both Asian American and white workers in New York were overrepresented in STEM jobs relative to their share of the population, while Black, Hispanic, and Native American residents were underrepresented. That pattern also holds true nationally, according to a 2021 report from the National Science Foundation.

The plaintiffs are asking a federal judge to block the state from using any “racial classifications or criteria” as a part of the STEP program.

The suit isn’t the Pacific Legal Foundation’s first attempt to block New York’s efforts to diversify selective institutions.

The group previously filed a lawsuit against the Discovery program that offers admission at the city’s specialized high schools to disadvantaged students who scored just below the cutoff on the admissions test and complete a summer course. A federal judge ruled against the plaintiffs in the Discovery suit in 2022.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the name of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York.

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

Moms for Liberty came to the Upper East Side. Protesters may have outnumbered guests.

2024-01-19T04:14:35+00:00

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Protesters may have outnumbered participants in Moms for Liberty’s Thursday night town hall on the Upper East Side.

The right-wing organization’s event, which according to organizers was sold out, attracted ire from politicians and parent activists across the city. As about 100 people rallied outside toting signs reading “Mom against fascism,” “Queer people have kids too,” and “Read banned books,” many of the speakers on the panel rehashed national issues like the influence of teachers unions, the teaching of anti-racism and “gender ideology,” and school choice.

Several speakers stood before the crowd of about 75 people and took digs at New York City’s class size mandate, its cap on charter schools, and its high spending and low rates of reading proficiency.

Moms for Liberty bills itself as a “parents rights” group. It was founded in Florida in 2021 and quickly made national headlines for its calls to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and block LGBTQ-focused books and curriculum, as well as limit lessons about race.

The organization has swiftly made inroads across the country, raising $2.1 million in 2022 from the conservative Heritage Foundation and Republican donors, after raising just $370,000 the year before, according to the Associated Press. The organization has become influential in GOP politics and recently started a chapter in Queens.

It was named an “extremist” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its divisive tactics and efforts to undermine public education.

The question-and-answer session after the panel turned fiery. Several parents and teachers challenged the panelists on culturally responsive education, their views on transgender children, and what specific curriculum proposals they recommended to boost reading scores.

Moms for Liberty event attracts familiar education names

Moms for Liberty’s town hall in a staunchly blue pocket of the city caused a stir. But for close watchers of local education politics, many of the panelists were likely familiar.

They included Maud Maron, who sits on the Community Education Council, or CEC, for Manhattan’s District 2, and has been sparring for years with other parents.

CECs are largely advisory parent-led boards that approve or reject school zoning proposals and issue resolutions about such topics as admissions and curriculum.

Maron is a co-founder of the group PLACE (Parents Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Learning), which has organized in support of selective admissions at a time when integration advocates had been gaining traction in their efforts to desegregate many schools.

Maron, who recently said in a private chat that transgender children don’t exist, faced a barrage of criticism Wednesday night at the District 2 CEC meeting for her participation in the Thursday panel.

She doubled down on her decision Thursday night, accusing her critics of being “illiberal” and shying away from arguments. She singled out one young woman who recently challenged her stance on transgender children.

“She identified herself as a proud queer woman,” Maron recalled. “Which I think means she’s a straight girl without a boyfriend.” A parent at Thursday’s event subsequently challenged Maron on the comment, calling it “unnecessary and spiteful.”

Charles Love, another District 2 CEC member who spoke on Thursday’s panel, said he hasn’t yet found any evidence that Moms For Liberty is racist or homophobic.

The flier promoting the event listed Maron’s affiliation with the education council, along with Love’s. The city’s conflict of interest rules say council members may only use their titles along with a written disclaimer on materials and a verbal disclaimer that they are speaking in their personal capacity.

Education Department officials said before the event they would follow up with CEC members to remind them of this rule. Love acknowledged he’d been warned and said he agreed not to use his title, but neither he nor Maron offered an actual disclaimer.

Other panelists included Wai Wah Chin, the head of an Asian American parent advocacy group, Natalya Murakhver, an advocate against closing schools during the pandemic, and Mona Davids, who leads a group pushing for more school safety agents and metal detectors.

Some opponents expressed concern that the group was starting to exert influence in city education circles. Abby Stein, a rabbi and transgender advocate, raised the group’s use of a Hitler quote in a newsletter in Indiana. “When you put a quote of Hitler on your newsletter and you’re trying to make your way into New York City, on to education councils, I am terrified,” she said. (The group later apologized for quoting Hitler.)

The conversation did at times center on city-specific issues. When Chin criticized the class size cap, which she said would force the city to hire more teachers of lower quality, several audience members piped up that they were former teachers fired because of the city’s COVID vaccine mandate.

Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty and the moderator of the town hall, said she didn’t think education in the city’s public schools could get “much worse.”

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice opens up the organization's town hall on the Upper East Side on Thursday.

Still, speakers offered few specific prescriptions. One parent asked after the panel what precise curriculum suggestions the panelists had. Maron criticized the city’s long-time reliance on a Teachers College reading curriculum that has largely been discredited. The city is already midway through a two-year effort to move away from that curriculum.

It’s unclear how large Moms for Liberty’s presence actually is in New York City, and event organizers didn’t give specifics about expansion plans.

Several elected officials spoke out before the event, including Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who called the group a “bunch of hypocrites.”

“You don’t believe in liberty if you ban books,” he said. “If you attack trans kids and the parents of trans kids, that’s not liberty. That’s fascism.”

Jo Macellaro, a trans teacher in a Bronx District 75 program serving students with disabilities, was holding a sign that read: “I’m the trans teacher you’re scared of.”

Macellaro, who uses they/them pronouns, said they were called a “groomer” several times Thursday night. They felt it was important to speak out as Moms for Liberty has made inroads in Queens.

“I think we need to make it very loud and clear they are not welcome here,” Macellaro said.

“[Kids] can see what’s going on. If they can see these people are coming here and spewing their hatred, what message does that send?”

(A Moms for Liberty supporter wearing a “Protect Our Children” sweatshirt did yell at the group’s opponents, “You’re absolutely disgusting, you’re grooming our children.”)

Some protesters tried to convince the event’s venue, the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, to cancel ahead of time, but the nonprofit concluded it couldn’t do so.

“We are a completely apolitical organization concentrating on cultural performances, and – this particular group clearly does not fit our strong non-political stance,” Joseph Balaz, the organization’s president, wrote in a lengthy statement online explaining his rationale.

He said he planned to personally match the rental fee for the event and donate it to “one of our organizations which actively supports young, future leaders.”

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

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

NYC launches ‘campus revival’ program to upgrade neglected school buildings

2024-01-18T21:46:28+00:00

For years, students and staff at Bushwick Leaders High School for Academic Excellence in Brooklyn had a recurring complaint about their aging school building: There were no working water fountains.

Staff and students tried in vain to get them fixed, and Principal Enrique Garcia resorted to stockpiling bottled water to hand out to thirsty students. Seventeen-year-old senior Gabrielle Smith felt compelled to act after a friend passed out on a sweltering day because of dehydration.

“That was the turning point for me and my mom. She was like, ‘I need to bring this issue up, I need to do something,’” Smith recalled.

Her mom, Florence Knights, brought the problem to East Brooklyn Congregations, the four-decade-old network of faith-based community organizations that helped found the school. Leaders from that group got the attention of First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg, who came to the school to meet with families and staff in spring 2022.

“The day after he met with us, water and AC units were brought into our school,” Smith recalled.

City officials are now looking at Bushwick Leaders’ partnership with the community organization as a model of how to improve conditions in other schools and districts that have been historically overlooked when it comes to facilities upgrades, schools Chancellor David Banks said Thursday.

That means bringing in community organizations to work with school staff and families to identify the most critical facilities upgrades and setting aside funds in the Education Department’s capital plan for targeted districts. The resulting “campus revival project” began in the 2022-23 school year in Brownsville’s District 23 with $10 million in capital funding, and it will expand next year to District 5 in Harlem, District 7 in the South Bronx, and District 29 in southern Queens.

“When you have a building that is in disrepair it sends a message to kids subliminally about how important we really think you are,” Banks said. He added that he’s noticed that some schools have “out of order” signs hanging on water fountains for a year, while others see the problem fixed in a day.

P.S. 137 in Ocean Hill Brownsville, where Banks spoke Thursday, was one beneficiary of the new initiative. The school got a library redesign after several years during which the space was out of date and unusable, according to the principal.

Shaun Lee, the lead pastor at Mount Lebanon Baptist Church, recalled hearing in a spring 2022 meeting with District 23 families and school staff about “young scholars not going to the restroom because of broken and dilapidated bathrooms. Not being able to hydrate because water fountains were broken. Struggling to concentrate on hot days because there’s no air conditioning.”

The listening sessions surfaced a total of 168 repairs that the Education Department pledged to address. Facilities workers completed 117 of them last year, and expect to finish most of the rest this year. Some of the larger projects, like an upgraded swimming pool, will take longer, a spokesperson said.

Officials said schools in the three districts participating in the expansion of the campus revival initiative next year are currently working with community-based organizations to identify the problems they want fixed. Funding for repairs in those districts will depend on what problems the schools and community groups identify, a department spokesperson said.

Garcia, the principal of Bushwick Leaders, said community organizations were a key ingredient in getting the fixes.

“They connect the dots,” he said. “They have relationships with other organizations, they have relationships with elected officials. They’re able to get everyone into the same room.”

Garcia said he hopes this new focus and approach to targeting facilities in overlooked communities can begin to address the stubborn disparities in school buildings he’s witnessed first hand.

“I went to LaGuardia High School. I had students in my class who were from very affluent families. We had an escalator in the building, the water fountains worked,” he said. “You see the difference when you go to other school communities. It’s an injustice when you go to a school in Bushwick, or in District 23 and it’s not the same.”

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

Recipe to help school budgets? NYC considers chopping bake sale restrictions

2024-01-12T22:53:40+00:00

Bring back the bake sales!

That’s one idea New York City education officials are weighing to help schools make up for the impact of steep budget cuts, according to a recent letter from Deputy Chancellor Kenita Lloyd to principals.

Education Department officials are considering relaxing a more-than-decade-old rule that restricts what food can be sold on school grounds and limits PTA bake sales with unapproved foods to once a month — a rule originally intended to cut access to unhealthy foods.

Waiving the rule would give schools “greater flexibility to conduct fundraising activities more frequently, thereby offering a vital resource in these financially stringent times,” Lloyd’s message said.

Parent leaders came to Education Department officials with the idea of relaxing the bake sale rules during an October meeting of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Committee.

Randi Garay, a Brooklyn parent and member of the advisory committee, noted that schools were previously issued a waiver from the fundraising rules to raise money for humanitarian relief in Haiti.

“Due to the budget cuts…our schools are now in crisis,” she said. “Parent associations and parent teacher associations would like to step up.”

But the Thursday letter from Lloyd left a sour taste in the mouths of some principals.

“I did a little math,” said one Manhattan principal who spoke on the condition of anonymity. With budget cuts projected to exceed $2 billion by spring, the principal estimated, each of the city’s roughly 1,600 public schools would have to raise more than $1.3 million to offset them.

“This is a real ‘let them eat cupcakes’ kind of moment,” the principal said.

“It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, frankly,” added a Brooklyn principal.

Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said, “We value the health and nutrition of our students, while welcoming the diverse perspectives of our families.” The agency is gathering feedback from principals, but no final decision has been made on if or how the rules will change, she said.

Like anything that involves PTAs, the proposal raises equity questions. Parent groups across the city’s segregated school system have wildly varying fundraising capacities, with some raising over $1,000 per student and others reporting no revenue.

“If each school is left to their own devices, the financially privileged districts continue to leverage their PTAs to bring them more,” said a third principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Elton Dodson, PTA president at P.S. 295 in Brooklyn, said his school would likely take advantage of the additional freedom to offer more bake sales.

“A penny here, a penny there is better than nothing,” he said.

But his school community has parents with the time and resources to coordinate, stock, and staff the bake sales, and customers with enough disposable income to spend freely on the tasty treats – an advantage he acknowledged other schools may not have.

An Education Department spokesperson countered, however, that some parents suggested “that more flexibility would help schools that have historically struggled to fundraise.”

Reconsidering a longstanding rule

The bake sale regulation that Education Department officials are considering waiving dates back to 2009 — part of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s public health push to limit the availability of unhealthy foods and beverages.

The rule, which generated a healthy dose of controversy when it was introduced, limited what foods could be sold on school grounds to a pre-approved list, cutting out homemade goods like cupcakes and brownies.

Some parents and City Council members argued at the time that bake sales were a useful fundraising tool amid a previous round of budget cuts.

An amendment to the regulation issued in 2010 extended the hours that students could sell pre-approved snacks, and allowed PTAs to have one fundraiser a month with non-approved foods. Money raised by PTAs can fund school supplies, extracurricular activities, and the salaries of “supplemental” staff but can’t pay the salaries of teachers in core academic subjects.

Now, officials say they want to further relax the bake sale rules and are soliciting feedback from school leaders.

“As we navigate the challenges the possible upcoming budget constraints, it’s heartening to witness the proactive and innovative approaches our parent leaders are adopting,” Lloyd wrote. “In line with these efforts, we are currently considering an important initiative that could provide additional support to our school communities.”

Repealing rules that were meant to cut down on unhealthy foods in schools would be a curious turn for the administration of the famously health-conscious Mayor Eric Adams, who has touted his efforts to introduce vegan foods into school cafeterias.

Elena Tate, a Brooklyn parent and elementary school PTA president, said offering a few more bake sales would likely help the school’s bottom line. But she said that the concerns about limiting sugary foods that propelled the initial restrictions are still present for many parents.

“Some people do want to keep them to once a month or get rid of them” for health reasons, Tate said.

Adams announced roughly $550 million in budget cuts to the Education Department in November, and additional cuts are expected in January and later in the spring, reaching a potential total of more than $2 billion, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. The city also reinstated a policy of clawing back money midyear from schools with enrollment shortfalls.

For schools like Dodson’s, those cuts have had real impacts. The school almost lost its music program – until the PTA ponied up $70,000 to save it, he said.

“We shouldn’t have to have three extra bake sales a month to fund our music program,” he said. “That being said … if this is what we have to do, this is what we have to do.”

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

NYC says it won’t move forward with tens of millions in cuts to District 75 schools

2024-01-11T22:27:06+00:00

New York City’s Education Department is pledging not to move forward with tens of millions of dollars in budget cuts to District 75 programs for students with significant disabilities – but school staffers say they’re still getting mixed messages about the cuts.

Staffers at multiple District 75 schools said last month that their principals were instructed to cut $1 million or more from their budgets as part of citywide budget cuts ordered by Mayor Eric Adams. The planned cuts totaled roughly $97 million across the district and would have forced schools to slash spending on extracurriculars, supplies, and paraprofessionals, people familiar with the discussions said.

Following an outcry from school staffers, parents, and advocates over the planned cuts, Education Department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said earlier this week “we can confirm that there are no school-based cuts happening to D75.”

Another Education Department spokesperson denied that there was a “change in course” and insisted that District 75 schools were simply asked to review their budgets to ensure they aligned with enrollment, a “recurring practice for all schools.”

“We are working with district leadership to ensure this understanding is clear for all principals,” the spokesperson added.

But school staffers said they are still getting conflicting messages, and news of the reversal hasn’t yet trickled down to some schools.

Jo Macellaro, a teacher and union chapter leader at P.S. 186X in the Bronx, the city’s largest District 75 program, said the school’s principal is “under the impression that they are still happening.” The principal didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another District 75 administrator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the reversal of the cuts has not been communicated to their school either.

Tameka Solomon, the chapter leader at P.S. 352X, another Bronx District 75 program, meanwhile, heard from her principal that the cuts are “on hold.”

The vague communication and confusion surrounding the cuts has left some worried that District 75 school budgets could still be vulnerable.

“In this top-down approach to school governance, there is very little that trickles down to actual schools,” said Paullette Healy, a parent of a District 75 student and long-time advocate. “Until I see it in writing, I still believe our students with disabilities are in jeopardy of losing their services because of these cuts.”

From the start, the specifics of the cuts have been mired in confusion.

In budget documents released in November, only $3 million a year in cuts was listed for District 75.

But staffers at four schools subsequently told Chalkbeat that their administrators were instructed by the district leaders to make far steeper cuts, effective immediately. The staffers added that their schools are not normally subject to big mid-year cuts, and pointed out that enrollment is up across the district.

The $97 million figure was communicated by District 75 Superintendent Ketler Louissaint in a meeting with principals, according to people familiar with the discussions.

News of the cuts drew outrage from staffers, parents and advocates.

One administrator warned that cuts to the school’s paraprofessional budget could pose safety risks for students with autism who are prone to run out of classrooms and buildings with no notice and need full-time monitoring by dedicated aides. That risk was underscored last week when an 11-year-old boy with autism ran out of his District 75 school in downtown Brooklyn and managed to board a train to Long Island. He was found four hours later unharmed.

Some advocates said the Education Department’s commitment not to enact District 75 school cuts was a positive step.

“We are relieved that what was rumored around cuts to the district serving those students isn’t currently in the cards and that, for now, the expertise the district offers should remain intact,” said Maggie Moroff, the senior special education policy coordinator for Advocates for Children. “Hard times can’t be an excuse for cutting services to those students who need support the most.”

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

Can artificial intelligence help teachers improve? A network of NYC schools wants to find out.

2024-01-02T20:28:53+00:00

A network of small public high schools in New York City is exploring whether artificial intelligence can change the way teachers receive feedback about their classroom instruction.

Urban Assembly, a network of 21 schools, is working with the American Institutes of Research to develop an AI-powered tool that can help instructional coaches analyze videos of teachers delivering lessons and offer feedback, according to network leaders.

Artificial intelligence is already transforming the classroom experience for many New York City students, who say chatbots like ChatGPT can help them understand difficult topics and speed up their research. But the technology has also sparked fierce pushback from some educators and officials worried about its potential to encourage cheating and spread misinformation and bias.

After initially banning ChatGPT on school devices over concerns about academic dishonesty, New York City’s Education Department pledged to teach students to use the technology responsibly, and plans to open an institute to study its applications in schools.

The use of AI in teacher coaching brings up similar questions. Proponents say it could save lots of time for instructional coaches and expand access to feedback that improves the quality of teaching. But some teachers said they still had questions about how accurately the technology can capture subtle classroom interactions, how useful its data will be, and whether it will be skewed by biases.

Judy Cappuccio, a math teacher and instructional coach at Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in Downtown Brooklyn, said she’s “open” to the idea of assistance from the AI tool, but has a “healthy amount of skepticism.”

“I would like to see it in action. It would take me some verification at first to trust it,” she said.

Several schools in Urban Assembly’s network are already part of a pilot where educators record themselves teaching and analyze the videos in detail with instructional coaches to improve their practice — a practice Urban Assembly CEO David Adams likened to athletes reviewing game tape.

The problem, Adams said, is that it can take the instructional coaches hours to review a single video, limiting the scale of the program. That means teachers aren’t getting enough feedback, and they’re getting it less often than they should be, he said.

That’s where the new AI-powered tool comes in. At the end of a two-year rollout, project leaders from the American Institutes of Research hope it will be able to measure things like how often students and the teacher are talking, laughing, and yelling, according to a proposal researchers submitted to Urban Assembly.

The tool will initially roll out to the 21 schools in the Urban Assembly network, though Adams hopes to eventually expand its use. It will cost around $500,000 to develop, test, and implement over two years, according to the network.

The tool will also be able to use “natural language processing,” a branch of AI that seeks to understand the meaning of language, to evaluate how “positive,” “respectful,” or “insulting” the teacher’s language is.

Some of the details captured by the AI tool might seem small, but they can offer clues about the climate of a classroom that teachers can learn from, Adams said.

When kids and teachers are laughing together, for example, it can be a sign that they’re “in the same emotional space” and students are better equipped to absorb the lesson, Adams said.

Capturing and documenting those moments on video can help teachers “replicate and grow” them, added Kiri Soares, the principal of Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, one of the schools planning to pilot the new tool.

The tool won’t replace the instructional coaches, but will save them time by pointing them to relevant sections of the video, producing audio transcripts, and quickly gathering data that would take humans hours to compile, Adams said.

Ultimately, the tool could enlarge the program and allow more teachers to benefit, Adams argued.

The tool won’t be used in an evaluative capacity and won’t be tied to performance reviews conducted by the school principal, he added. The program is meant to be supportive and highlight what teachers do well, not just where they need to improve, Adams said.

Project leaders propose using the tool to help schools expand an existing teacher feedback program called CLASS, which taps instructional coaches to evaluate educators on metrics ranging from academic content to their relationships with students, based on video recordings of their classroom lessons.

Using videos rather than live observations can give a more honest glimpse of the classroom, and gives teachers the chance to see themselves in action, proponents said.

Teachers interested in AI proposal but have questions

Liza Backman, a science teacher and instructional coach at Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in downtown Brooklyn, said she could see the benefits of having the type of data the AI tool can quickly gather at her fingertips.

“I think it’s a tally that would be interesting,” she said.

Still, she cautioned, those data points are only useful if there’s an instructional coach to help make sense of what they mean within the context of the class.

“Some of the lessons, there would be no laughter because we were talking about a very serious topic,” she noted.

Backman also raised questions about what kinds of school environments would be featured in the videos used to train the AI, and whether any biases could be baked in as a result.

“If you feed it videos from primarily white schools, versus primarily Black and brown schools, how will it navigate names?” she asked.

Adams said the tool in development for Urban Assembly schools would be trained at other Urban Assembly schools with similar demographics.

There are other potential downsides.

The AI-powered tool may miss out on meaningful moments from a classroom video that don’t fit cleanly into one of the categories it’s meant to track — moments an instructional coach would’ve caught if they’d been watching, said Soares, the principal of Urban Assembly Institute.

But that’s a worthwhile tradeoff if she can expand the number of teachers participating in the program, she said.

“Yes, we might miss out on some of those moments,” she said. “But more people will get more things.”

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

NYC teachers union sues Eric Adams to halt school budget cuts

2023-12-21T19:07:46+00:00

New York City’s teachers union is suing Mayor Eric Adams in an attempt to halt nearly $550 million in school budget cuts, according to legal documents filed Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Adams is violating a state law barring the city from decreasing its contribution to schools when the city’s overall revenue doesn’t go down, the United Federation of Teachers’ lawsuit argues. Revenues went up by $5 billion last year, the union claims.

The “draconian” cuts, the suit further claims, will infringe on students’ constitutional rights to a “sound basic education.” Three teachers and a speech therapist joined the suit as plaintiffs, outlining how they lack resources and supplies for their students, especially those with high needs.

The suit asks a judge to order the city to restore its funding of schools to last year’s levels.

It is the second legal challenge from a municipal union in the last two weeks seeking to stop the cuts. DC 37, the city’s largest public union, sued over the cuts last week.

“The administration can’t go around touting the tourism recovery and the return of the city’s pre-pandemic jobs, and then create a fiscal crisis and cut education because of its own mismanagement of the asylum seeker problem,” said union president Michael Mulgrew. “Our schools and our families deserve better.”

The city’s law department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Adams sought to downplay the conflict when asked about the lawsuit during an unrelated press conference Thursday morning.

“The UFT, they have to represent their members,” Adams said. “From time to time, friends disagree. Sometimes … it ends up in a courtroom.”

Lawsuit ramps up pressure on Adams

Adams has argued for months that the city is facing a fiscal crisis due to unanticipated spending on the influx of more than 150,000 migrants and asylum-seekers since last summer.

But critics of the cuts, including Mulgrew, have countered that the city is overstating how much the city will spend on the new arrivals. The administration’s claim that the city’s response to the increase in migrants will cost about $11 billion over the next two years is an “unverified estimate,” the lawsuit claims. The Independent Budget Office and the city’s comptroller’s office have projected lower costs.

The city routinely projects budget deficits that are ultimately erased plugged by higher-than-anticipated revenue, Mulgrew argued in a recent op-ed. That’s what happened last fiscal year when the city collected $8.3 billion more than projected in tax revenue, he said.

The move to file a legal challenge represents a significant escalation in the union’s efforts to reverse the cuts, which were originally announced in September and formally rolled out late last month.

Adams ordered all city agencies to find savings of 5% in the November cuts. Additional rounds of 5% cuts are expected in January and next spring, bringing the potential total losses to the Education Department north of $2 billion.

The November cuts, which totaled $547 million, slashed the city’s universal pre-K and 3-K programs, its free summer school program, and its community schools initiative.

Chalkbeat recently learned that the city was quietly targeting cuts in District 75 programs for students with complex disabilities. Staffers said they are facing budget cuts far greater than the $3 million reduction outlined in the November plan. People familiar with the discussions said the planned cuts in District 75 total about $97 million and could jeopardize extracurricular programs, supplies budgets, and the jobs of paraprofessionals.

Those cuts “threaten these schools and the 26,000 students, many of whom have complex disabilities” and “will exacerbate significant staffing and resource shortages,” the suit alleges.

An Education Department spokesperson previously said the agency was doing everything possible to shield schools from the impact of the cuts, and that District 75 schools were undergoing a normal process of reconciling actual enrollment with projections.

Suit hinges on claims of funding misuse

That higher-than-anticipated revenue is at the center of one of the legal claims in the union’s lawsuit.

The suit cites a section of the state education law that “prohibits the City from reducing spending in its schools from the level provided in the preceding year unless overall City revenues decline,” according to legal documents.

The city allocated $14.5 billion to schools in last year’s budget, and $14.1 billion in this year’s, according to the suit. That amount will fall to $13.9 billion if all the cuts go through, the union claims.

Union lawyers also allege that the city is misusing a historic influx in state aid, which has increased by about $1.3 billion in recent years after the state’s fully funded the Foundation Aid formula.

Because of the city’s budget cuts, the Education Department will have to tap state funds to support programs. But state law requires the city to use any increases in state aid to “supplement” what the city is spending on education, rather than “supplant” it, the lawsuit argues — meaning that the Adams administration would be violating this provision.

Three teachers and a speech therapist also joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs, sharing their experiences to illustrate how the cuts could be in violation of a “sound basic education.”

Miriam Sicherman, a third grade teacher at Manhattan’s Children’s Workshop School, has six Spanish-speaking migrant students, four of whom are not literate even in Spanish.

Without any additional resources from the Education Department, the lawsuit claims, she is “essentially running three classes within her third-grade class to accommodate and teach the migrant children with severe educational needs alongside her other third-grade students.”

Rebecca Lopez, a teacher at P.S./M.S. 279 in the Bronx, “cannot afford basic equipment for her high-needs and disabled students or curricular materials for her class,” according to the suit.

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

NYC’s District 75 schools for students with disabilities brace for tens of millions in cuts

2023-12-20T15:25:29+00:00

New York City’s Education Department has quietly been asking leaders of District 75 schools serving students with complex disabilities to slash tens of millions of dollars from their budgets, according to staffers at multiple schools.

The cuts, relayed to principals by schools Chancellor David Banks and District 75 superintendent Ketler Louissant, amount in many cases to more than $1 million per school, and are supposed to take effect immediately, according to staff from multiple affected schools. Across the district, they total about $97 million, and are supposed to help the Education Department achieve savings ordered by Mayor Eric Adams, people familiar with the discussions said.

The cuts would gut extracurricular programming, thin out supply budgets, and exacerbate an already severe paraprofessional shortage, potentially pushing schools even further out of compliance with students’ legally binding special education plans, staffers from four District 75 schools told Chalkbeat.

The roughly 26,000 students in District 75 often have complex disabilities that their local public schools are unable to accommodate, ranging from cerebral palsy to acute emotional challenges.

“They’re asking every principal in District 75 to cut close to $1 million from their budgets,” said a District 75 administrator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “There will be no paper or ink for the printers … children that are emotionally disturbed, autistic, will not be able to get a paraprofessional.”

Education Department officials didn’t confirm the amount of the cuts. But department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said, “We are in a fiscal crisis, and we are taking every action necessary to limit impact on schools.”

District 75 schools are undergoing a normal process of “reconcil[ing] enrollment with the number of classes needed to serve students,” he said. “Additionally, we are identifying vacancies, efficiencies, and underspending that can be used to meet the mayor’s savings target.”

But staff at District 75 schools said the steep midyear cuts are not typical. District 75 schools don’t get money through the Fair Student Funding formula used for other public schools and aren’t normally subject to “midyear adjustments” that require schools to give back money part way through the year if their enrollments are lower than projected, staffers said.

Moreover, the district’s enrollment has actually gone up in recent years, even as student numbers have cratered in much of the rest of the city. Enrollment in District 75 rose 3% between 2018-2019 and last school year, while K-12 schools lost 13% of their students citywide during the same period.

“We have so many students with referrals waiting for a new seat,” said Tameka Solomon, a teacher and union chapter leader at P352X in the Bronx.

District 75 cuts are larger than anticipated

The cuts far exceed what was outlined in the city’s November budget plan, which listed “savings” of $3 million a year in District 75 because of “lower than expected spending.” When City Councilmember Alexa Avilés, of Brooklyn, asked about a $97 million cut to District 75 during an oversight hearing last week, Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget Director Jacques Jiha pointed only to the $3 million cut outlined in budget documents.

But behind the scenes, the message from Education Department officials has been much different, educators said.

Solomon’s principal was asked to cut $1.3 million from the school’s budget, though subsequently the principal said the cut was on hold, she said.

The Bronx’s P186X, which is the city’s largest District 75 program with nearly 700 students, is also facing a $1.3 million midyear cut, according to teacher and chapter leader Jo Macellaro.

Many District 75 schools have already begun trimming overtime budgets that pay teachers to staff extracurricular programs and budgets for supplies, multiple staffers said. Those cuts are less painful than eliminating staff positions, but they still affect kids, staffers said.

“Even during COVID we always had an afterschool program, and now it’s like, ‘Don’t even think about it,’”said Allister Johnson, an adaptive physical education teacher and union chapter leader at a District 75 school.

“A lot of learning took place,” in the extracurricular programs, he added. “It’s sad for the kids and for the parents.”

Concerns grow over paraprofessional shortage

Reducing overtime and supplies budgets won’t be enough to achieve the required savings, however. Schools will likely have to slash the budgets for paraprofessionals, teaching assistants who provide extra support for students with the greatest needs, staffers said.

District 75 schools have already been experiencing a severe paraprofessional shortage.

The number of paraprofessionals working in city schools fell from roughly 25,700 in June 2020 to about 21,800 in November 2021, according to the state comptroller, a drop of roughly 15%.

As a result, many students with significant disabilities whose special education plans require a dedicated, one-to-one paraprofessional go without one, staffers said.

P186X is already short at least 30 paraprofessionals, according to Macellaro. On some days, one paraprofessional has to change the diapers of a dozen middle school students alone.

“People are getting injured. It’s already really not a good situation. And honestly we’re already rationing things like wipes,” Macellaro added.

Solomon’s school has largely been relying on substitute paraprofessionals. It’s better than nothing, but it often means investing extra time training people who may have never worked with kids, and less continuity for students who have to work with a rotating array of paraprofessionals, she said.

Further cutting the already diminished paraprofessional pool could have disastrous consequences, staffers said.

The District 75 administrator said their school has a number of students with autism who will attempt to run out of their classrooms and the school building with no warning. “Think about what’s going to happen” when those students don’t have a dedicated paraprofessional to follow them throughout the day, the administrator said.

An Education Department spokesperson acknowledged there is a paraprofessional shortage, but attributed it to “lack of talent,” not “lack of funds.”

The budget cuts laid out in November, which amount to 5% from each agency, include roughly $550 million from the Education Department. Additional 5% cuts are expected in January and again in the spring.

Among the Education Department cuts are $10 million from the community schools program, which pairs schools with community organizations to provide additional services to families, and $20 million from the city’s free summer school program.

But the cuts to District 75 appear to be the deepest so far to individual school budgets — a fact that’s baffled the District 75 administrator: “How do you justify asking the most vulnerable children in the city to go without?”

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

Thousands of NYC school staffers aren’t enrolled in a pension. A new law could change that.

2023-12-13T21:35:58+00:00

A quirk in New York City’s pension system has for years kept tens of thousands of the city’s lowest-paid employees from reaping the benefits of a city-subsidized retirement, according to pension fund and union officials.

New York City’s Board of Education Retirement System, or BERS, which covers school crossing guards, cafeteria workers, aides, parent coordinators, and other non-teaching school staff, stands alone among the city’s five pension funds in not automatically enrolling eligible members in a pension plan.

Many workers don’t know they have the option of signing up for a pension, or simply assume they were automatically enrolled, said Sanford Rich, the executive director of BERS. As a result, roughly 35,000 employees eligible for a pension are not enrolled, according to BERS data.

But new legislation signed over the weekend by Gov. Kathy Hochul is poised to change that system.

The law, sponsored by Queens Assemblywoman Stacy Pfeffer Amato, D-Queens, and Sen. Robert Jackson, D-Manhattan, will make enrollment in the BERS pension system “opt-out,” rather than “opt-in,” for the first time.

“I personally believe this corrects an injustice in the city,” Rich said.

Rich said he’s had to break the news to city workers who retired after decades of service and thought they were on track to receive pension benefits that “‘you never joined, you don’t have a retirement package, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’”

One woman was so distraught that he had to sit with her for hours so she could work up the courage to go home and tell her husband, he said.

But starting July 1 of next year, under the new law, all of the eligible but unenrolled members will be signed up automatically for a pension plan. They’ll have 90 days to opt out. If they hadn’t previously been paying into the pension, they have the option of purchasing previous years of service by paying greater installments.

Officials at DC37 Local 372, the union representing the affected workers, have pushed for years for state legislation to make enrollment in the Board of Education Retirement System automatic and bring it in line with the city’s other pension funds. But previous legislative efforts were met with vetoes from the governor, including one from Hochul in 2022.

A tragedy this year that sparked a new wave of advocacy may have helped turn the tide.

In October, Krystyna Naprawa, a beloved elementary school crossing guard, was struck and killed by a truck while on the job in Queens. The tragedy drew the attention of officials across the city, including Mayor Eric Adams, who called Naprawa “the best of us,” and delivered a eulogy at her funeral.

After Naprawa’s death, her son Tomasz Naprawa, a Port Authority police officer, went to collect the pension he assumed she’d been paying into, only to discover she wasn’t enrolled.

Tomasz Naprawa said it’s extremely unlikely his mom would have knowingly opted out of a pension, especially since she was planning to retire in her native Poland.

“I was like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy,’” he recalled of the discovery that she wasn’t enrolled. “I honestly thought it was automatic.”

Tomasz Naprawa worked with officials at DC37 to bring renewed attention to the pension loophole and legislation to close it.

At Krystyna Naprawa’s funeral, Adams publicly committed to “sit down with the leaders of the Senate and Assembly to see how we can resolve” the pension issue.

But the battle didn’t end there. According to union officials, Adams administration officials initially objected to the bill on financial grounds. City officials say they’re facing a grim fiscal situation and have enacted cuts across all agencies – cuts DC37 recently filed a lawsuit to try to halt. An Adams spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The city will likely have to chip in between $17 million and $22 million extra a year in employer contributions for the new enrollees, according to an analysis by the chief actuary of the city’s pension funds.

When the legislation stalled in the governor’s office, Tomasz Naprawa and union officials renewed their push. Naprawa penned a Nov. 15 letter to Adams urging him to follow through on his commitment and support the bill.

The years of advocacy finally paid off last weekend. Adams administration officials rescinded their objection, and Hochul signed the bill on Dec. 8, union officials said.

“This was long overdue,” said DC37 Local 372 President Shaun Francois in a statement. “Persistence” overcame the “resistance,” he added.

The change is too late to benefit Tomasz Naprawa, but he thinks his mom would’ve been happy to know the advocacy she helped inspire will improve the lives of her colleagues.

“Me and my sister are getting none of these benefits … but going forward it’s nice to know if there’s another tragedy five,10,15 years from now that family will reap all the benefits they’re entitled to,” he said. “I think she’s looking down on us and she’s happy.”

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

NYC’s class size working group delivers recommendations — but some members dissent

2023-12-12T00:54:10+00:00

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After months of deliberation, internal clashes, and comments from nearly 2,000 people, a working group tasked with advising New York City’s public schools on complying with a landmark state law capping class sizes released its final recommendations Monday.

The 55-page report, which had an initial Oct. 31 deadline, includes more than 50 recommendations. Its prominent suggestions include capping enrollment at some overcrowded schools, moving pre-K programs out of district buildings and into community organizations, and offering financial incentives to boost teacher hiring.

The report, which is similar to a draft version released in September, is non-binding. Education Department officials still have final say in how they’ll meet the new legal mandates, which are expected to be phased in over the next five years. But the contentious process of putting the recommendations together illustrates how complicated meeting the new mandates will be.

The caps require K-3 classes to be no larger than 20 students, classes in grades 4-8 to be smaller than 23 students, and high school classes to be capped at 25 students.

Proponents of the law, including a wide array of parents, advocates, legislators, and educators, point to extensive research on the educational benefits of lower class sizes — and argue that the new recommendations give the city a clear roadmap for how to get there.

“Given these actionable proposals — many of them cost-free — the Chancellor no longer has any excuse for delay,” said Leonie Haimson, working group member and executive director of Class Size Matters, in an email. “If the DOE really cares about following the law and the goal of providing all NYC students with a better opportunity to learn, the time for action is now.”

But the law has also prompted fierce pushback from city Education Department leaders, who argue they don’t have the necessary funding to implement it. Parents concerned the law could restrict enrollment at sought-after schools and advocates worried about equity implications have also criticized the law.

Several studies suggest that the highest-poverty schools will benefit less because they are already more likely to have classes under the legal cap.

The working group’s deliberations got so contentious that nine of the working group’s 46 members declined to endorse the final recommendations — and several even authored a dissenting “minority report.” Those dissenters argue that the law itself is deeply flawed.

Dia Bryant, the former executive director of Education Trust-New York and one of the dissenters, said the law and the working group ignored practical concerns and are “very aspirational.”

“Ultimately, I think the implementation under the current conditions … is just bad for kids,” Bryant said.

In response to the report, schools Chancellor David Banks noted the city is currently in compliance with the class size law, but that “the work to remain in compliance will take changes, tradeoffs and additional resources across NYCPS.”

Currently, more than half of the classes across the city’s 1,600 public schools, or more than 73,000 classes, are out of compliance, the working group has said.

Here are some of the working group’s most controversial recommendations.

Cap enrollment at overcrowded NYC schools

Capping enrollment at oversubscribed schools and diverting kids to under-enrolled ones nearby was among the most divisive suggestions.

There are 386 schools across the city currently enrolled above their building’s capacity, the report noted, and in many cases, there are neighboring schools with plenty of room.

But many of the city’s overcrowded schools are also among its most popular and sought-after, meaning any efforts to cap their enrollment are likely to meet fierce opposition.

One way to decide who should get access to limited seats is by prioritizing those who live within a school’s geographic zone, the working group noted. Roughly 17,000 kids at overcrowded schools are attending those schools from out-of-zone, according to the report.

But the authors cautioned that decisions about if and how to cap enrollment should still be made “in harmony with the principles of equity and community cohesion.” For example, they pointed out that some out-of-zone students attend specialized programs like dual-language classes.

Meanwhile, the dissenting minority report argues that enrollment caps are a nonstarter because they would lead to increased travel times for families in overcrowded districts and fewer seats in popular programs.

Instead, the working group’s dissenters want to give parents a role in deciding when schools should be exempt from the law, according to Stephen Stowe, a working group member and co-author of the minority report who is also Community Education Council President in Brooklyn’s District 20. (Currently, under the law, only the chancellor and union officials can weigh in on exemptions).

Moving prekindergarten classrooms out of overcrowded schools

As the city works to fill empty 3-K and pre-K seats amid enrollment declines, the working group’s enrollment committee offered a possible solution: consider relocating 3-K and pre-K seats from schools that are overcapacity to nearby pre-K centers that are under-enrolled.

This could help struggling programs — which get funding from the city based on their enrollment — have “more sustainable budgets,” according to the working group report. The pre-K sector has long complained about the competition it faces from programs in district schools.

With nearly 14,000 empty 3-K classrooms, all 3-year-olds in school-based programs could move to community-based organizations, the report suggested, freeing up as many as 451 classrooms in schools. For pre-K, which serves the city’s 4-year-olds, nearly 17,000 empty seats could accommodate the majority of those in school-based programs, potentially opening up 1,000 elementary school classrooms.

The report did say that some members of the working group worried this solution might inconvenience parents, especially those with older children in public schools. In response, the group urged programs to have flexible drop-off and pick-up times, as well as longer days for families needing after-care.

Merge co-located schools, avoid opening new schools

The creation of small schools gained traction under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with nearly 470 new schools opening between 2003 and 2010. That has resulted in more administrative overhead and less classroom space, the report stated.

In light of that, the working group suggested merging schools that share buildings, “especially those that have similar or complementary designs, programs, and student populations.”

The working group also advised the city to reconsider the creation of new schools (except for schools in District 75 that serve students with significant disabilities).

“If there is a perceived need or idea for a valuable new program or service, existing underutilized schools should be given the resources and support to provide these new programs or services,” the report stated.

Pay teachers more in schools where hiring is hard

New York City will need to hire at least 17,000 new teachers to meet the class size mandate over the next several years, according to the Independent Budget Office. The Education Department put the figure at somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000.

Some working group members worried that a wave of new teachers could affect the quality of instruction — an issue that researchers have raised — and could dilute the intended impact of smaller classes.

At the same time, in public forums on the law, many teachers spoke out in favor of smaller classes. Some of them said it could improve their working conditions, reduce burnout, and cut down on attrition.

To address concerns around the influx of new teachers, the working group issued various recommendations, including providing teachers with “high-quality, research-based lesson plans” to reduce workload.

The group also wants to analyze whether teachers in non-teaching roles — such as deans, lunchroom supervisors, or grade advisers — could return to the classroom, giving greater oversight to superintendents of these so-called compensatory positions.

The report said such a change “would be a historical shift away from greater principal autonomy and defer control to a more centralized system.”

(Only one member of the working group dissented from this, the report noted.)

The working groups also wants to offer pay differentials to educators in hard-to-staff schools in places like the Bronx, Far Rockaway, and Central Brooklyn, as well as in difficult-to-hire subjects, including special education and bilingual education.

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

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

Essays, tests, auditions, frustration, stress: What it’s like to apply to high school in NYC

2023-11-30T21:24:27+00:00

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One mom called it hell. Another felt like she was drowning in information. Some stretched their budgets to pay for test prep and coaches for their children’s art portfolios and auditions.

Welcome to New York City’s high school application process, where parents — often moms — take on what amounts to part-time jobs to help their 13-year-olds find the “right” school.

Families have until Friday to rank their 12 choices from among 700 programs in 400 schools. Despite the vast array of options, families feel like they’re fighting for seats.

In many ways, they are. In talking to more than a dozen families of eighth graders about their admissions journeys, Chalkbeat found a handful of coveted schools repeatedly came up. And admissions data confirms that a small number of high schools are ranked on an outsized number of applications.

The top 15 schools represented about 20% of all the choices that eighth graders picked on their applications in 2021, according to an analysis by Sean Corcoran, associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University.

And this data doesn’t include the eight prestigious specialized high schools, like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech, that require the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, or LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, which requires auditions. Thousands of students apply to those schools through a separate process.

“When people are confronted with an overwhelming amount of information, they want to simplify things as much as possible. You start with the schools that everybody knows, with the best reputation,” said Corcoran, whose research focuses on how to provide information to families to help them expand their choices.

The odds can feel overwhelming. At Manhattan’s Eleanor Roosevelt, there were 37 applicants for every general education seat, according to stats from the MySchools directory. There were 27 applicants per seat at Bard Early College High School in Queens. (This school was the 18th on the popular schools list.)

As with so many things in the public school system, those with time and means often have an advantage, contributing to New York having among the most segregated schools in the nation. Families jockey for limited spots on tours. They go down rabbit holes in Facebook groups to figure out their children’s odds. And a whole cottage industry has developed around the process, including consultants advising on a good fit.

Below are stories from six families from across the city reflecting on the lengths they’ve gone to figure out their school rankings.

“It’s just like the college application process,” said southeast Queens mom Trina Mitchell. “But it’s high school! It’s insane.”

The experienced project manager

Carina Li, left, with her mom, Karen Li.

Karen Li is hedging her bets.

The day after Li’s daughter Carina finished seventh grade, Li enrolled her in an SHSAT prep course. Carina studied all summer and took the prep course until Nov. 8, when the Education Department administered the test in public middle schools across the city.

Carina also took the Test for Admissions into Catholic School, or TACHS, and will sit for Catholic school scholarship exams on Saturday.

Then there’s the application for LaGuardia High School. Carina started planning her visual art portfolio in July and was still working on it four months later. She needed to submit eight pieces (including a still life that she redid three times) and make a video explaining her choices.

Even with help from an artistic aunt, the process is a lot. In fact, it’s all a lot.

Studying for the SHSAT was “terrible,” and the practice tests were “horrible,” said Carina, who lives in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. The art portfolio was “very demanding.”

“People always think that you have to spend money to pay for SHSAT prep,” said Li, who works in tax reporting. She now realizes that many kids vying for arts schools have to work just as hard as those studying for the SHSAT, plus they’ve been taking pricey arts classes for years. “They dance when they’re in diapers.”

Li said she has felt like her daughter’s “project manager,” reminding her to study, keeping track of due dates, and obtaining transcripts and recommendation letters for Catholic schools.

She has had practice: She went through the high school application process a few years ago with her older daughter, who went to Brooklyn Tech. So Li knew she had to start researching high schools for her younger daughter in seventh grade.

Carina, a competitive swimmer, would also like to go to Brooklyn Tech, especially for its swim team. But the family isn’t pinning its hopes on one school.

On top of it all, Li sees her daughter feeling overwhelmed and tries not to add stress.

“All this will be over by Dec. 2,” Li said.

The community activist

Jason Sosa spent months on SHSAT prep.

Expensive SHSAT courses were out of reach for the Sosa family of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. But they still managed to find creative ways to get their son Jason test prep.

Jovita Sosa recently got a grant that helped fund a six-week summer SHSAT test prep course through the literacy-focused nonprofit she started 10 years ago, Grupo Juego y Lectura. Jason was one of roughly six students who met twice a week for the course.

The Sosa family also received study materials from an acquaintance who got into Stuyvesant after completing the city’s DREAM program, offering free test prep. Sosa was amazed at how much more detailed the study materials were than the free materials the Education Department offers.

“I can’t afford the prep that some other people are getting,” said Sosa, a paraprofessional.

Jason, who attends a Catholic school, had been studying independently about 20 minutes a day this fall using the DREAM workbook. He worked with a high school senior on math for an hour every Saturday and Sunday. He also signed up for a free TACHS test prep program through his school. Though Sosa said she can no longer afford to pay for Catholic school, Jason wanted to take the test in case he got a scholarship.

“I found the SHSAT as expected, challenging, but not out of my grasp,” Jason said. “I feel like I could’ve done a better job with taking more time to understand the questions, but being under pressure blurs your thinking.”

The experience brought out the activist in Sosa.

She wrote to her state senator who had boasted in a constituent email of securing millions of dollars for SHSAT prep, asking for help to make free DREAM workbooks widely available to children who can’t afford test prep.

Sosa is trying to remain grounded.

“I lived it with my oldest child. We stressed him out when he was younger,” she said. “You learn it’s not the end all.”

One family. Two kids. Many art programs.

The Doucette family on a recent trip to Walt Disney World. Zach and Lexie's older brother (standing behind the twins) went to LaGuardia High School.

“It’s hell.”

That’s how Upper East Side mom Caren Doucette describes the application process for her twins.

Lexie — who has ADHD and dyslexia — is looking at visual arts. Zach is interested in performing arts. While there’s some overlap between their schools of interest, Doucette estimates that she devotes at least two hours daily to the process (and more on weekends). She’s researching websites, comparing notes with other parents, sending questions to schools, and attending tours.

“If you don’t sign up in the first 24 hours, you miss a spot,” said Doucette, a tutor with a flexible schedule. “My days are spent on the computer scouring all of this, and my husband will take the kids on evening tours.”

Doucette is especially concerned about whether her daughter, who has specific learning needs, will land at a school that can support her.

Lexie bonded with her visual arts coach, who also has dyslexia. Zach, who enjoys musical theater, had a drama coach and a voice coach, who each charge about $150 an hour. He also completed a free bootcamp in August through the Education Department’s Summer Arts Institute, where he studied with an acting coach.

“It’s a financial commitment,” Doucette said. “It straps us, but we can figure it out.”

Lexie is in “priority group 3,” because of a low grade she got last year in math from an unsupportive teacher, according to her mom, who has complained to their middle school, Wagner. Zach is in “priority group 1,” but didn’t have a high lottery number — a reality she wanted to shield him from.

Lexie and Zach went on all of the school tours as well. Even though it can be hard for her 13-year-olds to focus during the tours, they “get a vibe” being in the schools, Doucette said.

But that means they’ve missed about five days of eighth grade so far. One week they had five tours in three days, and now they’re wrapping up auditions and interviews and writing essays.

“It’s really annoying and unnecessary and stressful and time-consuming and set up awfully,” said Zach. “We have multiple things that cut into our school hours.” He wasn’t excited about the 7 p.m. open houses either.

“It’s annoying,” Lexie agreed.

A mother and daughter navigate language barriers

When Nancy Sagbay enrolled her daughter Jaleen in kindergarten nine years ago, her main priority felt clear.

Sagbay, who emigrated from Ecuador before Jaleen was born, didn’t want her daughter to lose her native tongue. So Jaleen attended P.S./I.S. 218, a dual-language K-8 school near their home in the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx.

Nancy Sagbay, left, with her daughter Jaleen Sagbay.

Now Jaleen can read, write, and speak in Spanish and English, and averaged above a 90% in her classes last year, to Sagbay’s great pride.

But as Jaleen turns her sights towards high school, the choices — and the application process — feel a lot more complicated.

“No one is ready for so much information,” said Sagbay, who still struggles with English.

Sagbay works at a barbershop and is constantly asking colleagues and clients for school recommendations and advice, which she relays to her daughter, Jaleen said.

As Jaleen finalized her list, she crossed off some she’d initially been eyeing once she saw their four-year graduation rates on MySchools. The 13-year-old hasn’t been on any school visits, and three of the schools she’s considering — Columbia Secondary, her top choice, Bard High School Early College in Manhattan, and Beacon, which one of her teachers recommended — require essays and other prompts.

With just a week left before the due date, Jaleen still hadn’t started them and was getting “stressed and anxious,” she said. But teachers at her middle school gave her time during the school day this week to work on them.

“I feel like I could do it,” Jaleen said of the selective schools. “I like competition. If there’s competition for it, it must be a good school.”

Sagbay, however, is worried about commuting to Manhattan.

“I didn’t want it because the trains can be dangerous,” she said, “but she wants to explore, to see people outside (her neighborhood).”

For now, they’re compromising: Jaleen is including some schools closer to home on her list.

They’re also compromising on academic focus. Jaleen is interested in art, but her mom has encouraged her to consider schools with a technology focus, since Jaleen is strong in math.

“One way or another,” Jaleen said, “she would … put that pressure on me to do better.”

The fierce parent advocate

Justin Mitchell playing drums for the NY Alliance Drumline.

What if a child’s performance in seventh grade did not reflect their abilities because of a series of extenuating circumstances?

Trina Mitchell demanded answers to that question on behalf of her son Justin.

Despite other public schools reopening after COVID shutdowns, Justin’s charter school in St. Albans, Queens, remained remote during his sixth grade year because of a problem with its roof, Mitchell said. Upon returning in seventh grade, his school lacked sufficient staffing to provide services mandated by his Individualized Education Program.

Mitchell’s letter to the Education Department through MySchools explaining the situation went unanswered until she brought it up again at an October high school admissions forum for families of children with disabilities.

The department agreed to rank Justin based on his GPA from the first semester of eighth grade.

“I didn’t give up,” said Mitchell, who works as a court clerk in Queens.

She was not able to prevail, however, in her quest to get a hard copy of the high school directory. She wanted it to mark up with sticky notes and carry around with her on tours for note-taking, “like a little bible.” She hoped it would help her discover new options.

The Education Department no longer prints hard copies.

Mitchell wished that things were easier, and that her son could just go to a zoned high school, but District 29 no longer has one. Nearby, the campus that housed Andrew Jackson High School — her husband’s alma mater — has been carved up into several small schools.

These schools read like a “country club” to Mitchell, boasting of tennis courts, football and soccer fields, and a track. Digging deeper, Mitchell said she found most students aren’t on grade level.

In general, she was concerned about the overcrowding of many Queens high schools and also was perplexed by all of the specialty programs, like law and STEM. Her son does well in science and is a good writer, but doesn’t have a career path in mind. He’s interested in being on the drumline and football team.

“For your average kid that doesn’t have a clue what they want in life, how do they lock into a program at 12 or 13 years old?” Mitchell asked. “The system is designed to cater to a kid who has it together and knows what they want to do.”

To stay or leave Staten Island?

Miles Curatolo-Boylan, left, and his mother, Lucia Curatolo-Boylan.

In drawing up their list of high schools to rank, Staten Island mom Lucia Curatolo-Boylan and her son Miles have been studying MTA schedules. By ferry or bus, he would commute more than an hour each way if he chooses a high school outside the borough.

Miles, the oldest of four, expressed an early interest in Staten Island Technical High School, a specialized school. But they’re casting a wider net.

They’ve toured schools across the city, including some Miles wasn’t thrilled about. They’ve considered Catholic high schools, too.

His deep love for illustration and drawing cartoons, as well as his interest in engineering, have helped inform the search.

But with some of his choices comes added stress — the anxiety over competition for coveted spots, the pressure of standardized tests and portfolios, as well as the reality of a long commute.

Curatolo-Boylan said she and her husband consider themselves lower-middle class, but still invested in getting Miles a tutor shortly before the SHSAT and TACHS, as well as paying for a few classes to help him strengthen his art portfolio. The standardized tests aren’t something that kids learn to tackle organically in school, she added.

“That’s a really difficult thing to stomach,” said Curatolo-Boylan, a private music teacher and acting and vocal coach who is also president of her local Community Education Council. “Knowing that there are kids that could really use that leg up in our community, especially here in Staten Island, and they’re never going to be able to afford that.”

Curatolo-Boylan said getting into public school here has always been stressful, but the “constant run-around of open house after open house” has been particularly grueling.

“So much of his life would change if he chose the city,” she said, referring to Manhattan.

With such a long commute, she knows he’ll leave early in the morning and return late in the evening. In a sense, this would mean letting go of him earlier than she anticipated, she said.

“It would be so exciting for him, and I would be so excited for him,” she said. “But at the same time, I think my heart might break a little.”

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

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

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Help us report on youth mental health in NYC

2023-11-28T23:30:10+00:00

Two weeks ago, New York City launched a new effort to address the ongoing youth mental health crisis: free online therapy for city teenagers.

The statistics illustrating the depth of that crisis are sobering. Nationwide, three-quarters of high school students experienced at least one “adverse childhood experience” – traumatic events linked with long-term mental health challenges – during the pandemic. In New York City, 9% of teenagers reported attempting suicide in 2021, according to the city’s Health Department.

As the city’s efforts roll out, we want to better understand the mental health picture for young people, and how it’s affecting schools.

Educators, parents, and especially students: We want to hear directly from you. If you have something to share, please fill out our brief survey – and thank you.

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Raucous protest against pro-Israel Queens teacher is ‘teachable moment,’ Banks says

2023-11-28T02:11:23+00:00

New York City schools Chancellor David Banks vowed Monday that last week’s chaotic student rally for the ouster of a pro-Israel teacher at Hillcrest High School can be a “teachable moment.”

The turmoil unfolded on Nov. 20 when hundreds of students filled the halls of the Queens school in protest of a social media photo of a teacher holding an “I Stand With Israel” sign, according to students and officials. Social media videos show a raucous gathering with students dancing in hallways and a water fountain ripped from the wall. The health teacher at the center of the protest, who is Jewish, took cover in an administrator’s office on a separate floor, officials said.

Multiple students were disciplined for their role in organizing the protest, but officials declined to provide details because of privacy restrictions.

The incident drew a wave of condemnations over the Thanksgiving break, including a statement from Mayor Eric Adams calling it a “vile show of anti-semitism.”

During a visit to the school Monday, Banks, an alum of Hillcrest, tried to strike a balance between denouncing students’ actions and pushing back on what he described as overly broad criticism of the students.

“A teacher … was targeted based on her support for Israel, expressed in a permissible way outside of school hours, and her Jewish identity, and that is completely unacceptable,” Banks said Monday.

He added, in reference to media coverage of the incident and statements from some elected officials, that “the notion … these kids are radicalized and antisemitic is the height of irresponsibility, and I for one will not accept that at all.”

Students used social media to organize the walkout, which started during a changeover between classes, officials said. An estimated 400 students participated in the initial protest out of Hillcrest’s roughly 2,300-person student body. A followup student protest was planned for Nov. 22, but administrators were able to shut it down before it started, officials said.

School officials said they got wind of the Nov. 20 protest in time to alert police, who responded quickly. The teacher targeted in the protest, whose name Chalkbeat is withholding to protect her privacy, was already in an administrator’s office on another floor talking with police when the protest began, and she stayed there throughout, officials said.

Banks maintained the teacher was “never in direct danger.”

The educator didn’t reply to a request for comment, but previously told the New York Post that she was “shaken to my core by the calls to violence against me that occurred online and outside my classroom last week.”

Several students and elected officials also reported students threatened the teacher and posted her address online.

Banks said the teacher is expected to return to work this week and promised that the school will “ensure her safety” and that staff and students will “wrap arms around” her.

The school is partnering with an organization called Operation Respect to help lead conversations about improving school culture, officials said.

Students at Hillcrest acknowledged Monday that the protest had gotten out of hand, but maintained that the students who escalated the action weren’t the ones who’d organized it.

“It was meant to be a peaceful protest in the very beginning,” said Muhammad Ghazali, the senior class president. “But some of these students lack maturity. These are teenagers.”

Many of the students who participated didn’t “think of it as a serious moment or a moment to actually go out and protest,” but “did it for their personal enjoyment,” he added.

Another student who spoke to Chalkbeat anonymously pushed back on the accusation that the protest was antisemitic.

“The intent … was just to be pro-Palestine,” the student said. “It was not, it was not to attack her for being Jewish. We have teachers that are Jewish, and we love them to death.”

Banks said he came to Hillcrest Monday not just to offer a condemnation but to listen to students and try to better understand what sparked their anger.

Roughly 30% of Hillcrest’s students are Muslim, and some “came from warzones” like Yemen, said one Hillcrest educator who spoke on the condition of anonymity. What’s happening in Gaza is “traumatic” for them, the educator added.

“They consume their information through social media,” Banks said. “And what they are seeing on a daily basis are children and young people in Palestine … being blown up.”

“When they all of a sudden saw this image of the teacher that says, ‘I Stand With Israel,’ the students articulated to me they took that as a message that I’m affirming whatever is happening to the Palestinian family and community,” Banks said. “That made sense to me.”

Schools across New York City have struggled with how — and if — to talk to students about Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which militants killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostage, and Israel’s subsequent bombardment, which has killed more than 14,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Students told Chalkbeat they’re inundated with graphic images of the violence on social media and often struggle to make sense of conflicting sources of information. Many crave safe spaces to talk about those issues in school.

But many educators are wary of wading into such a potentially explosive conversation — some more so after Banks reminded teachers not to share their political beliefs in class and cautioned about out-of-school political activism.

Several Hillcrest students said they had few chances to talk about what is happening in Gaza and Israel before last week’s events.

“Don’t just think you can just skate by it,” one student said. “Because these [issues] are in these children’s hearts, and they’re going to feel a type of way about it. So it’s best to address it … It’s a boiling pot. Now, that exploded, and this is what happened.”

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

NYC students want to talk about Israel and Gaza. Schools are struggling to keep up.

2023-11-21T23:21:34+00:00

For many New York City teenagers, the violence that’s unfurled thousands of miles away in Israel and the Gaza Strip over the past seven weeks has felt startlingly close to home.

Both Muslim and Jewish students told Chalkbeat they’ve noticed an uptick in hurtful and derogatory comments from classmates at school or over social media, echoing a recent state review that found Islamophobic and antisemitic rhetoric have each jumped by more than 400% on social media since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the country’s retaliation.

Students, meanwhile, are glued to their phones. They’re trying to keep up with an endless stream of often-graphic social media content about the ongoing war while attempting to sift through a barrage of conflicting information and viewpoints, they said.

It’s “scary … to be teenagers and dealing with antisemitism and Islamophobia,” one Brooklyn high school student said, adding that they were “grappling with how to feel about this horrible thing that’s going on that we don’t have any control over.”

School can feel like one of the few safe places to make sense of the Israel-Hamas war, learn about the historical underpinnings of the crisis, and try in some small way to take action, teens said.

Hamas militants killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis and took another 240 hostage, and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza has killed at least 11,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children.

City schools, however, are taking divergent approaches to navigating conversations about the war, and in some cases largely avoiding it, according to interviews with educators and students at six high schools, most of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

At some high schools — particularly large ones — pressure to keep up with fast-paced curriculums, fears about further inflaming tensions, and caution about steering clear of political landmines, especially after a warning from schools Chancellor David Banks to keep personal views out of the classroom, have made it difficult to create dedicated spaces to talk about the war, educators and students told Chalkbeat.

“It’s kind of like an elephant in the room for many students,” said a senior at Midwood High School in Brooklyn. “There haven’t been any discussions in classes.”

“It’s very sensitive … and no one wants to get written up or lose their job,” added a Brooklyn Tech staffer. “No one wants to say anything because no one wants to get into trouble.”

The Education Department provided school leaders with a resource guide to “help them work with their staff to support instruction based on facts about the war in the Middle East as well as resources on supporting students during this difficult time,” spokesperson Chyann Tull said.

Banks’s warning about political speech was only meant to reiterate existing city rules and to encourage teachers to remain objective when discussing charged issues, according to officials.

At one Brooklyn high school, students frustrated by the lack of opportunities to talk about the conflict during the school day organized an after-school meeting, supervised by teachers at school, between Jewish and Muslim student groups. They plan to invite expert speakers to give students more background, according to a student who helped organize the events and spoke anonymously for fear of retaliation.

“Having these conversations is really important, and if we can have them in a setting that’s monitored and we have access to concrete information, that’s really helpful,” the student said. “It’s something that 16-year-olds should not have to organize … but I think teachers are scared to be talking about it.”

Some schools and teachers wade into difficult conversations

That’s not to say there aren’t educators and schools across the city wading into difficult conversations.

Kate Cook, a Spanish and senior advisory teacher at Brooklyn Tech, doesn’t normally teach about Israel and the Palestinian territories, and she was nervous about upsetting kids and doing justice to the complex history of the conflict. In each of her classes, she knew she’d likely have multiple students with ties to the region, heightening the stakes. But she decided the risks of avoiding the discussion outweighed the potential pitfalls of diving into it.

“If teachers don’t address it, it sends the message it’s not important and we don’t care about it,” she said.

Cook started with several informal check-ins shortly after Oct. 7 and again after the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began, and asked students to check in on both their Jewish and Muslim classmates. Several weeks later, she led a lesson meant to help students think through all of the ways they process news about the war – intellectually, emotionally, and as a matter of conscience.

There were challenging moments, including a spirited debate between a student forcefully arguing “Hamas needs to be eradicated” and another saying you “can’t ignore” decades of occupation, Cook said.

But she knew it was the right decision when the mother of one of her students approached her at parent-teacher conferences to thank her. The girl had family in Israel and “came home in tears because she was so happy” Cook had checked in with her students, the mom said.

“Particularly at a big school, we can often underestimate our impact as teachers,” Cook said. “But when something big happens in the world, we need to say something.”

Other educators who’ve led classroom lessons about the conflict said they prompted valuable discussions about the relative advantages of social and mainstream media.

Teachers said they tried to help students approach social media more skeptically and spot misinformation without dismissing their arguments that social media has galvanized young people and made information accessible to them in a way mass media hasn’t.

“With the mass media, you are fed information, but on social media, you get to contribute to the message,” one Brooklyn Tech teacher recalled a student saying.

At several smaller schools, teachers have organized optional “teach-ins” during lunch periods and after school for students who want more background on the conflict.

“It was very informative and it didn’t try to force a stance and gave students a chance to make their own conclusions,” said Alexander Calafiura, a senior at East Side Community High School in Manhattan who attended one such session to get a better factual understanding of the conflict. (Calafiura is currently a Student Voices fellow at Chalkbeat).

Teachers who led lessons on the conflict said they were acutely aware that it’s emotional for students and took pains to keep their classrooms feeling safe.

One Brooklyn Tech teacher said he had students frequently flash “thumbs-up” signs to each other to indicate they were OK continuing the lesson. Sari Beth Rosenberg, a history teacher at the High School for Environmental Studies in Manhattan, started her lesson by asking students to agree on the shared principle that all death is bad.

“I think you’re more likely to have a civil discourse if you start it off by framing it as ‘what do we agree on,’” she said.

Students, teachers, and pro-Palestinian allies march through Midtown Manhattan during a student walkout protest calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Nov. 9, 2023 in New York.

Politics loom large

The crisis in Israel and Gaza has reignited long-standing debates about the appropriate role of politics in school.

On Nov. 8, the day before a planned student walkout calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Banks sent the message to all city schools staffers reminding them that city rules bar teachers from expressing their personal political views in class, and that even out-of-school political activity could be out of bounds if it causes a disruption in school.

An Education Department spokesperson said Banks’ warning wasn’t in response to any single event, and Banks told the publication City & State that his intention was not to “silence anybody.”

But critics including New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman argued the missive would “likely have the effect of stifling political discussion both inside the classroom and in the broader community.”

Some educators said that’s indeed come to pass.

“I think it’s egregious that our voices are being censored right now,” said a social worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “As faculty and staff we’ve been clearly discouraged from supporting these students.”

Some students and staff argue, moreover, that condemning Hamas’s attack – like Banks did on Oct. 10 – without also acknowledging the ongoing siege of Gaza is itself a political stance.

One Midwood High School student who participated in the Nov. 9 walkout said it “symbolizes our anger towards the Department of Education for their neutral stance and support of the genocide,” a term that has been hotly contested as a way to describe Israel’s siege of Gaza.

At Brooklyn Tech, students sent a letter last week to Principal David Newman criticizing his decision to send an Oct. 10 email acknowledging the Oct. 7 atrocities in Israel without sending a subsequent message acknowledging the deaths in Gaza.

“The Palestinians currently being killed in Gaza at overwhelming rates, most of whom are women and children, are, above all, innocent civilians,” the students wrote. “They, just as innocent Israeli civilians addressed in Mr. Newman’s email, do not deserve death or suffering in any way. They deserve the same amount of respect as the Israeli civilians that Mr. Newman addressed in his email.”

The students also called for more dedicated spaces in school to talk about the conflict, and additional counseling resources.

Newman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

But it’s not only statements about the violence in Gaza that have proven controversial: At the Museum School in Manhattan, administrators declined to include a statement from the Jewish Student Union condemning the Oct. 7 attacks in the school newsletter out of concern it violated Education Department rules on political speech, the school’s newspaper reported.

The debates over political speech also play out on the smaller stage of individual classrooms.

For some teachers, keeping a firewall between personal political beliefs and classroom teaching is critical.

“We shouldn’t be talking about our political beliefs in the classroom, I don’t think that should be controversial,” said Rosenberg, the Manhattan history teacher, adding that teachers’ backgrounds also shouldn’t play a role in how they discuss current and political events.

“Your classroom is not the place to work out your identity issues,” she said.

But other teachers argue it’s not so simple, and that shielding students entirely from their political beliefs and biases is unrealistic and counterproductive.

“If people ask me, I will have separate conversations,” said one Bronx history teacher, who said her students know she is both Jewish and “anti-occupation.”

“I have no problem with people seeing my point of view as one point of view.”

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

Eric Adams axes $547 million from NYC Education Department budget, more cuts on the way

2023-11-16T22:35:09+00:00

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New York City’s Education Department will cut nearly $550 million from its budget this year as part of a sweeping round of citywide reductions ordered by Mayor Eric Adams.

Many of the cuts are expected to take effect immediately. They will touch a wide range of programs and positions that directly affect students, from the city’s massive free preschool program, to community schools that support families with out-of-school needs, to the popular pandemic-era Summer Rising program.

A big chunk of this year’s savings will come through a hiring slowdown and the elimination of 432 vacant non-classroom positions, which officials said on Thursday will lead to a combined $157 million in savings.

Budget officials didn’t specify which roles would be eliminated but emphasized cuts to central offices and other roles that support schools. A hiring freeze has been in place since earlier this fall, but has not applied to teaching positions. Education Department officials didn’t immediately say whether the agency would continue to spare teaching positions from the freeze.

A mandate to rein in spending on “supplemental pay for administrative staff” is expected to save another $86 million this year, but officials didn’t immediately provide details on what that means.

In September, Adams directed all city agencies to find cuts equal to at least 5% of the city’s contribution to their annual budgets by November, in response to what he described as unsustainable levels of spending on the ongoing influx of asylum seekers. Additional cuts of 5% are expected in January and again in spring 2024.

In all, that means the Education Department could face up to $2.1 billion in cuts. The department’s overall budget is roughly $37.5 billion this school year.

Starting next fiscal year, the department will cut $120 million from the Universal Pre-K program, which enrolled about 100,000 3- and 4-year-old this year and is the signature legacy of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. The program has been beset by payment delays to child care operators and enrollment declines during the pandemic.

Officials said they’re reducing the size of the program because there are about 37,000 vacant seats, but did not specify how many of those slots they plan to eliminate.

“While we don’t know many details yet, there is no way a cut this large would not hurt the services available to children and families,” said Gregory Brender, the chief of policy and innovation at the Day Care Council of New York, a membership organization of child care providers.

A range of longstanding programs with a direct presence in schools are also facing small cuts.

An initiative to expand the teaching of computer science is losing $3.5 million this year, while the budget for community schools will be cut by $10 million this year. Community schools were another major educational priority of de Blasio’s administration, and have continued to grow under Adams.

Separately, nearly $20 million in funding for Summer Rising, the pandemic-era free summer school program that served roughly 110,000 students last year, is being slashed from the budget of the city’s Youth and Community Development Department, which jointly operates the program with the Education Department. The cuts will mean reduced hours and no Friday programs for some middle-schoolers, officials said.

The program has proved immensely popular with families and had about 45,000 more applicants than slots last year.

“For months, we have warned New Yorkers about the challenging fiscal situation our city faces,” Adams said in a Thursday statement. “To balance the budget as the law requires, every city agency dug into their own budget to find savings, with minimal disruption to services. And while we pulled it off this time, make no mistake: Migrant costs are going up, tax revenue growth is slowing, and COVID stimulus funding is drying up.”

Budget analysts have pointed out that the cuts ordered by Adams are far greater than the expected costs of serving the asylum seekers. The city also collected nearly $8 billion more in revenue last fiscal year than anticipated, according to a recent analysis from Comptroller Brad Lander.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, called the cuts “unnecessary” and “driven by City Hall’s false political narrative that New York City is about to fall off a fiscal cliff.”

“Revenues are higher than expected, investment from Albany is up, and reserves are at a near-record high,” he added.

Other groups warned that the city’s hiring and budget freeze is already affecting services for vulnerable children, and that further cuts could threaten their legal rights.

Advocates for Children, a nonprofit group, said the city has been unable to hire 15 additional staffers to help families living in shelters navigate the education system, an urgent concern given the influx of migrant families.

The organization also said short staffing appeared to be causing delays in providing preschool special education evaluations and services in the Bronx.

“We are particularly concerned that these budget plans will result in even more egregious violations of the rights of students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and students in temporary housing or foster care,” Advocates for Children executive director Kim Sweet said in a statement.

More cuts ahead for NYC schools

The city-directed budget cuts are part of a perfect storm of fiscal trouble facing city schools.

About $7.7 billion in one-time pandemic aid from the federal government has padded the Education Department’s budget in recent years and funded critical initiatives, including expanded preschool and summer enrichment programs. That money will dry up next September, and the looming expiration of that aid has already prompted some painful cuts.

For the first time in four years, the Education Department clawed back money this week from schools where enrollment numbers fell short of projections.

Because enrollment went up overall across the city, the majority of schools didn’t have to return money, and instead got extra funding because of higher-than projected enrollment. But there were still more than 650 schools that saw a total of $109 million in midyear cuts, according to a United Federation of Teachers analysis.

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

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

NYC launches free online therapy for teens

2023-11-15T23:58:01+00:00

New York City teens now have access to free online therapy through a city program that launched Wednesday, officials said.

City teens, ages 13-17, can text, call, or video chat with licensed therapists through the online platform Talkspace without providing payment, insurance information, or referrals, officials said.

The teen telehealth initiative, which Mayor Eric Adams has billed as the largest of its kind in the country, was months in the making. The idea was first announced in March as part of the city’s blueprint for addressing a surge in mental health challenges since the pandemic started.

Among the sobering statistics officials pointed to: The share of city students who reported suicidal ideation jumped to nearly 16% from about 12% over the past decade. About 9% of city high school students reported they attempted suicide during 2021, according to a Health Department survey.

“There’s something that has happened to the COVID babies and the COVID children that we are not going to ignore,” Adams said at a press conference Wednesday announcing the launch of the program.

“Our young people are on their telephone, they use the internet, they use social media,” he continued. “We have to really find ways of turning that device into a positive instead of trying to push back on the natural flow of how young people utilize their social media platforms.”

The contract with Talkspace will cost the city an estimated $26 million, Politico first reported.

Teens can register for the program, called NYC Teenspace, as of Wednesday. The sign-up page asks students for a birthday and address before going through a series of questions about their current mental health. Parental consent is required, according to the platform’s creators.

Besides talking with licensed therapists by text, phone, or video chat, students can also take self-guided courses. Texting is unlimited, but live sessions are limited to once a month, according to the company. A Health Department spokesperson said kids will see the same therapist for each session.

For kids in acute crisis, Teenspace providers will refer them to psychiatric care or an in–person counselor, officials said.

Talkspace CEO Jon Cohen said texting has been particularly helpful.

“We have learned that when people face something stressful, messaging is a powerful tool at their fingertips,” he said.

Virtual therapy has become a popular tool at many educational institutions, but city officials have acknowledged that the evidence base for the practice is still thin.

City Health Department Commissioner Ashwin Vasan, who came up with the idea for the initiative, said he hopes it will evolve based on feedback from teens.

“I just want to talk to the young people for a moment,” he said during Wednesday’s press conference. “Your voice will help guide and shape this resource. If you use it, and you like it, tell your friends. If you use it, and you don’t like it, tell us. We’ll fix it.”

Dr. Jessica Chock-Goldman, a school social worker at Bard High School Early College in Manhattan, said there’s a severe shortage of therapists for city teens, especially those from low-income families without private health insurance. Any effort to expand access is a good idea, she said. But she noted that this service “can’t replace regular therapy,” given the infrequency of the video sessions.

Before she starts referring students, she wants more information, including how many of the therapists are Black and Latino.

Cohen said approximately 35% of Talkspace providers who will work with New York City students identify as BIPOC. Roughly 84% of New York City’s students are Black, Latino, Asian-American, Native American, or multiracial.

The Health Department didn’t provide a specific goal for how many students the agency hopes will participate. “We aim to provide services to as many teens as possible across the city,” a spokesperson said.

Officials from the health and education departments said schools will receive materials to help publicize the initiative.

Chock-Goldman said she heard about the program for the first time Wednesday through the Education Department’s Instagram page.

“It’s great to have resources, but we just need new details about the new resources,” she said.

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

A former tutor’s off-Broadway show tackles NYC’s high-stress high school admissions

2023-11-15T19:00:35+00:00

New York City’s high-stakes high school admissions process is taking center stage in a new off-Broadway production.

School Pictures, running through Dec. 3 at Playwrights Horizons theater, draws on playwright Milo Cramer’s experience as a tutor, which often entailed preparing kids for the Specialized High School Admissions Test that determines entry to eight coveted public schools.

Through a series of musical vignettes, all performed by Cramer over ukulele and piano with a lone teacher’s desk in the background, the play offers a portrait — by turns funny, wrenching, and hopeful — of kids navigating academic stress, social pressure, and parental expectations.

While the SHSAT looms large, Cramer’s students also grapple with classroom challenges and applications to other competitive public and private schools.

There’s the aspiring actress whose dad pushes her to dredge up a traumatic incident to craft a better response to an admissions essay prompt about overcoming adversity; the accomplished preteen student-athlete struggling to write an introductory email to a would-be high school coach; the student so anxious about climate change she can’t bring herself to study.

The show also traces Cramer’s evolving understanding of New York City’s inequitable education system, and takes a brief detour into former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s breakfast habits.

Chalkbeat spoke with Cramer, who uses the pronouns they/them, about their experience tutoring, how the show came together, and what they learned about education in New York City.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The show draws on your experience as a tutor for New York City kids. Can you give an overview of what your job was as a tutor, and how that came to be the basis for the show?

I was a tutor for three different companies at different times, which was so interesting, because you travel all over the city. You’re often at people’s homes, but sometimes you go to schools and meet kids in schools. Every one is just so vastly different. You knock on the door, you never know what you’re gonna get.

There’s some very monied environments where there’s pressure. There’s some very monied environments where there’s not pressure, because you’re kind of a servant, and you don’t even meet the parents. And then there’s also contexts where it feels like this is an investment the family decided to do, it’s a significant budget line for them, perhaps, and there’s real hope that you’ll have an impact.

The kids themselves range from children to adolescents, to teenagers. And basically what always happens is, for the student, there’s deep emotional problems, which are often the result of circumstances or family problems.

So we’re working on some assignment, which can feel arbitrary or goofy, or insanely important, like, ‘learn about the Civil War,’ but you only had an hour, my job is at stake, and I need to do a good job. But then also you want to help this child who seems like they are not speaking because they’re so depressed about the world.

It just brought up all of these questions for me when I started doing it. I was so unqualified, and I felt like a fraud. And it was immediately existential.

The show traces your own understanding of the education system in New York and your role in it. What did you come to learn about education in New York City and the role you were playing in it as a tutor?

I’m not a parent, so sometimes I feel like I’m throwing stones because I haven’t gone through the lived experience of having a child and loving your child and wanting the best for your child. But what’s actually best for your child is a humane and just universe. And the New York City school system does not seem so humane or so just. And it’s also dizzyingly complex.

Really what I was doing, people wanted to get into the eight specialized public high schools. And so mostly I was tutoring the specialized high school admissions test to eighth graders hoping to get in, which was very lucrative. And it’s also adorable because you meet sweetheart [kids] and help them do reading. But it’s complicated, because in some ways the test is a segregation mechanism. It’s such a complex thing. It means different things to different communities and families. So I’m hesitant to make sweeping statements.

In the play, I tried to just provide facts, and then provide really detailed stories that are specific and poignant. And to not editorialize so much, because I’m not an expert.

Why did you decide to specifically highlight the Specialized High School Admissions Test? And what role did that test play in the lives of the students who you work with?

It’s mainly what I tutored, the SHSAT. What’s funny is I used to serve Bill de Blasio breakfast every morning as a barista. And there was a moment where [the SHSAT] was in the news a lot. What’s funny is that now, because I’ve been working on the show for six years, it feels like a period piece. It feels like it’s like this time capsule.

Parents are often really stressed out [about the SHSAT]. And they really determine the family culture. And so often it loomed large for them. And for students, it’s like OK this is another test, another hoop I have to jump through, I really want to go play Minecraft. Some students are anxious about it, because they sense that it’s important, but there’s just so much you don’t understand when you’re told.

One really interesting framework that I learned from one of my tutoring companies was: There’s students who are moving with the world, students who are moving away from the world, and students who are moving against the world. That just seems true to me. And all three of those are wonderful ways to be. But they are different from: Are you good at math and reading comprehension?

A number of the students you worked with were in middle school, and a lot of what comes up in the show is just what it means to be going through that time of life. So what did you learn or relearn about what it’s like in middle school?

It seems very brutal. Especially if you are a girl, it seems brutal, although boys are learning a lot of weird things, too.

One thing is in major media high school shows, teenagers are so sexy, and so powerful, and have so much freedom. And in real life, adolescents, their days are full. A lot of them were just very overscheduled. In a way you are trapped inside different adult-managed spaces. The world is about completing homework assignments on time.

So the biggest thing I found myself coaching was something I need help with, which is just normal executive functioning. Like, I have to send an email, I have to send it by noon. And then I also have to remember to pack lunch. That is so hard, I think, for a lot of adults, just basic, consistent, healthy behavior.

There are some really heartbreaking moments of parents kind of adding to the stress that their kids are experiencing, but also some very touching moments about them being there for their kids and helping relieve that stress. I’m curious through all that, how you came to think about the parents of the students you worked with.

I remember when I was a freshman in college, my impulse from high school was to stay up until I finished my homework. And then I was dating a person who was like, ‘Well, it’s 10 p.m., we have to go to bed.’ And I was like, ‘We haven’t finished our homework.’

They were prioritizing health, self care. We didn’t have that word then. But I think that’s just interesting, those are two different types of people, somebody who’s gonna go to bed no matter what when it’s time to because that’s important, and the person who is going to stay up, even if it’s unhealthy and crazy and a product of bad time management to get it done. Both are good and bad.

And I would see that in different families. People just have such different relationships to money to work, to ambition, and to school. There’s academic success and failure, wealth or not wealth, if you’re driven or not, if you value process or product, it’s so infinite, the complexity of human stuff.

Being a tutor I just had so many fascinating windows into these different kinds of case studies. Parents often want what’s best for their kids, but it can be too intense.

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

NYC’s new algebra curriculum mandate divides educators

2023-11-10T21:08:58+00:00

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The ninth graders in Katie Carson’s Algebra I class had only a foggy memory of how to use the “greater than” and “less than” signs that appeared in their warm-up exercise on a recent Tuesday afternoon.

One student said he hadn’t seen the symbols since elementary school.

Carson, a teacher at Energy Tech High School in Long Island City, Queens, gave her class no explanation. Instead, she asked students what they noticed about how the signs work.

“If the open side is pointing to the left, it’s less than, and if it’s to the right it’s greater,” volunteered a student named Adam.

The answer wasn’t right, but Carson gamely copied it onto the whiteboard and began testing it on sample problems. A minute later, Adam interjected. “It doesn’t work. I think it’s whatever the open side is on, that’s greater.”

Dropping students into unfamiliar math problems with minimal introduction and refraining from correcting their errors can seem counterintuitive in a subject where the answers are black and white. But those practices are at the core of an approach that Carson says has transformed her teaching. It’s one that New York City officials are hoping can spark a sea change in how math is taught across the five boroughs.

Carson’s school was an early adopter of Illustrative Math, the curriculum New York City officials began rolling out this year as part of an unprecedented effort to improve and standardize the way algebra is taught across the city’s more-than-400 high schools.

This year, more than 260 schools are using Illustrative Math for Algebra I, while receiving extra coaching, professional development, and supervision from the Education Department. The Algebra I curriculum mandate is set to expand next year, though a department official didn’t say whether it will reach all high schools by then.

A message on the whiteboard of Katie Carson's Algebra I class at Energy Tech High School in Long Island City, Queens.

The stakes are high: Fewer than half of the city’s elementary and middle school students scored proficient on state math exams this year.

The pandemic has only heightened the challenge. Passage rates for high-schoolers on the year-end Algebra II Regents exam, which builds on Algebra I, fell a whopping 24 percentage points over the course of the pandemic, from 69% in 2019 to 45% in 2022, according to state data.

There are also gaping disparities in math achievement between schools: At some selective high schools, 100% of students who took the Algebra I Regents exam last year passed. At others, where almost all students are Black or Latino and low-income, zero did, city data shows.

Two months in, the experiment in shared curriculum has divided educators. Some argue it’s a long-overdue shift toward teaching that prizes deep conceptual understanding of math over rote practice and memorization. But other teachers say the curriculum lacks the kind of structure and built-in repetition that many students — particularly struggling ones — need.

“We show them something and don’t tell them anything, and it’s ‘What do you think?’ with no guidance,” said one special education math teacher in Queens participating in the pilot this year, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “For a special education student who already needs a little more help, it makes it almost impossible, they check out, they lose interest.”

Proponents of the curriculum, especially teachers who’ve used it for multiple years, say they’ve found just the opposite: The curriculum’s open-endedness can help draw in even the most resistant students.

“You typically have students who walk into a math class and have heard … that they’re either a math person or they’re not,” Carson said. “But when they walk into an [Illustrative Math] class, the curriculum doesn’t care if you’re ‘good at math…’ it just makes you explain and prove and share and discuss in a way that it’s going to be challenging for everyone.”

To standardize or not to standardize?

Schools Chancellor David Banks has bet big on the idea that standardizing curriculum can move the academic needle citywide in a system where that’s notoriously hard to do.

Alongside the math push, he’s requiring the city’s elementary school superintendents to choose among three pre-selected reading curricula that officials say better align with a growing body of research about how kids learn to read. The literacy push has gotten significantly more attention, but educators say the math initiative is no less important – or controversial.

Traditionally, high schools and secondary math educators have had wide latitude to select or create their curriculum. For some teachers, especially experienced ones, that freedom can be helpful and spark innovation. Banks, however, argues that as a citywide policy, curricular autonomy has produced mediocre and inequitable results.

“Everybody is not ready for that level of autonomy,” he recently told reporters. “Because if they were, we would have much better results than we have.”

Why Algebra I?

Banks’s curriculum mandate isn’t the first time city officials have tried to boost math achievement by targeting algebra.

An initiative called “Algebra For All” under former Mayor Bill de Blasio attempted to give every student a chance to complete Algebra I by the end of eighth grade – a goal that has become a flashpoint in national debates about equity and math instruction.

That experiment yielded some positive results: In 2023, about 45% of the city’s 62,000 eighth graders took the Algebra I Regents exam, according to the Education Department – up from 30% in 2015. About three-quarters of them passed.

But disparities remain: A higher proportion of white and Asian American students took the test in eighth grade than Black and Latino students, and they were far more likely to pass it, according to a Chalkbeat review of 2022 Algebra I Regents results in more than 200 middle schools.

For the remaining students who either never took the course in eighth grade or flunked the exam, finishing it in ninth grade is critical, educators argue.

Without that, there’s little chance students will be able to advance to higher-level math courses like precalculus or calculus.

Algebra I teacher Katie Carson works through a problem on the whiteboard during a recent class at Energy Tech High School in Long Island City, Queens.

Teachers of high school Algebra I say there are significant obstacles to that goal, including a large number of students who are far behind grade level.

In many cases, teachers feel pressure to return to what feel like safer approaches, like relying on rote practice and pausing grade-level instruction to focus on remediating basic skills like multiplication, multiple educators said.

Jason Ovalles, a math teacher at Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School and master teacher through the professional organization Math for America, knows that pressure well. He began his career as a middle school teacher in East New York without a set curriculum. He tried finding interesting problems and activities on his own, but was often “pulled back” into the way he was taught: “Just tell them how it’s supposed to be, so that they can copy what you did.”

Switching to Illustrative Math allowed him to keep up with grade-level math without alienating or discouraging his struggling students, Ovalles said. Proponents hope it can do the same thing citywide.

Curriculum draws mixed reactions

Illustrative Math was created in 2011 by a University of Arizona professor in the wake of sweeping changes to math teaching during the 2009 rollout of the Common Core standards, a set of benchmarks meant to give states shared academic goals.

Other large school districts, including Los Angeles, are also rolling out the curriculum at scale.

Teachers participating in New York City’s pilot get eight professional development sessions and between eight and 12 visits from an instructional coach throughout the school year, according to the Education Department.

But multiple educators said there are major flaws in the curriculum, and the Education Department’s approach to rolling it out.

Some students don’t have the necessary vocabulary or background knowledge to engage in the open-ended discussions, said one Brooklyn educator who used the curriculum last year at his administrators’ behest. He compared it to asking students in an automotive class who’ve never seen a car engine before to fix a muffler.

“All the investigative time in the world will not make them successful at making it run quietly,” said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The lack of built-in practice time can make it difficult to verify whether students fully understand concepts before moving on, several educators added.

Katie Carson, standing (in gray shirt), teaches Algebra I at Energy Tech High School on Oct. 31, 2023 in Long Island City, Queens.

Teachers who have used the curriculum for years countered that part of what makes it work is that students don’t need vocabulary up front. They can describe concepts in their own words – a feature that’s especially helpful for English language learners – and teachers can bring in the technical terms later.

Ovalles said he’s learned that it’s okay – and expected – to move on before every student understands 100% of the lesson because the curriculum builds in future opportunities to revisit topics.

Education Department officials are holding teachers to a pacing guide, reminding teachers when they should wrap up units, according to communications reviewed by Chalkbeat.

Several educators said the pacing expectations are unrealistic and have made it harder to adjust to the new curriculum. An Education Department official said the pacing guide is “not a mandate” and teachers have freedom to spend longer on individual lessons if they need.

Regents loom large

A big question hangs over the entire experiment: Will the new curriculum improve results on the year-end Regents exams?

Multiple educators who are using the curriculum for the first time said they’re worried that it doesn’t align well with the Regents. The test is mainly multiple choice and it phrases questions in specific ways.

Energy Tech has been using Illustrative Math since 2020 as part of a pilot funded by New Visions, a network that runs and supports public schools, and the school saw its percentage of students who passed the Algebra I test rise from 64% in 2019 to 72% last year, even as citywide numbers declined, according to state data.

Kiran Purohit, the vice president of curriculum and instruction at New Visions, said overall, the schools in the pilot “saw a better post-Covid recovery” in Algebra I than the city average, with an especially big bump for English learners.

Sixteen-year-old Energy Tech student Mostafa Aboelfadl said he’s “not the best test-taker” and would often freeze up on open-response questions on the Regents. But after spending a year chipping away bit-by-bit at complex problems in his Illustrative Math algebra class, he said he realized he could “extract points” from Regents questions even if he didn’t know the full answers.

An Education Department spokesperson said the pacing guide includes some designated Regents review days and suggestions about which lessons can be “deprioritized” because they don’t appear on the exams.

It’s also likely that the Regents test itself and its role will continue to shift. The Algebra I Regents exam is changing this year to better reflect a new set of learning standards. And a Blue Ribbon commission is poised to release a set of recommendations about how and whether Regents exams should continue to serve as graduation requirements.

Ovalles said after several years of using the curriculum, he hasn’t seen much change in his students’ Regents scores – but that’s okay.

In the past, he’d spend “spend weeks and months” on Regents prep, only to see scores stay flat as well.

Now, at least, the tone seems to have shifted among students. “They’re actually understanding math better and are more confident talking about it,” he said. “It feels like a net positive.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

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