NYC PUBLIC ADVOCATE RELEASES EDUCATION EQUITY REPORT CENTERING INVESTMENT IN SCHOOLS

 

The new report on recovery and renewal for New York City public schools comes two years after school buildings closed due to COVID-19.

 New York City Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams today released a new report outlining key priorities for equitable investment in and renewal of the city's school system as the city works to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper, Invest in Education, explores how New York City public schools can better support and empower young people across the city. It comes two years after city school buildings closed in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as the city and state now remove some COVID precautions from schools.

The following two years of the pandemic have laid bare the inequities among different students, schools, and communities. As the future of education funding is being discussed and debated on both city and state budget levels, this report sets a framework of investment, not austerity, to address the issues that predated the pandemic as well as those it exacerbated, and build a more sustainable, more equitable future through recovery. 

“Combating inequity through investment, not austerity, should be at the center of our approach to education as we move forward in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that upended our schools, creating immense new challenges and exacerbating the old for students, teachers, parents and school staff,” said Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams on releasing the report. “If we return to the old patterns and practices, rather than forging a new normal, we will have failed our students. We can’t rely on one-time expenditures or federal infusions to move forward in recovery and renewal for our our schools – we need sustained investment of attention and resources to correct longstanding inequities, injustices, and inadequacies and strengthen a school system that forms the foundation of our city.” 

The report outlines several key priorities for improving accessibility and equity across the system, highlighting a series of areas in need of attention and investment. Among them are ensuring the health and safety of students in the classroom amidst the past two years of trauma, creating healing-centered educational environments where all types of students can thrive, developing offices and programs to better serve the most vulnerable students, and expanding and implementing extracurricular initiatives that complement classroom learning. The report also looks to other school systems and individual schools from outside of the city for inspiration and information on potential models to implement these reforms on the ground. 

To renew our school system to better serve our young people, as well as teachers, parents, and school staff, the report recommends:

• Creating healthier school environments for students. 
• Schools must have lead-free pipes, enhanced ventilation, social distancing, testing capacity to meet demand, and a remote option for students who need it. 
• Equitably funding all of our public schools.
• The DOE must commit to a plan for spending and allocating fair student funding
• Transitioning to healing-centered schools.
• Schools should adopt a healing-centered framework to support their students, and this framework would take steps to ensure that all students, staff, and families feel safe, supported, and seen.
• The DOE must also invest in funding for this training for staff and school communities
• Supporting students with disabilities.
• All students with disabilities must have access to the services to which they are entitled, such as speech, physical, and occupational therapies, from preschool through college
• Ensuring every student feels safe at school.
• Schools should focus on restorative justice instead of simply punishment.
• Prioritizing students who are English learners.
• Immigrant families and households need to be engaged in the languages that they speak
• Implementing culturally responsive teaching in our schools.
• Some studies have linked culturally relevant teaching and targeted support for students of more color to reduced dropout rates and increased attendance and grades. 
• Establishing an Office for Students in Foster Care
• Students in Foster Care have specific and unique challenges, and the public school system must work to help these students and keep them in their original schools whenever possible. 
• Ending the digital divide.
• The city must continue its efforts to ensure that all students have access to devices and the internet when at home. 
• Reducing class sizes.
• Too many students are learning in overcrowded classrooms, and this leads to insufficient resources for all students but especially disabled students or students still learning English. 
• The Department of Education must hire more teachers and improve teacher retention.
• Desegregating our schools.
• New York City’s public schools are among the most segregated in the nation, and this hurts all of our students. Eliminating gifted and talented programs would be a significant step towards desegregating our schools; at the same time, screened and specialized schools continue to perpetuate and worsen school segregation. 
• The Department of Education must create an established diversity planning process and implement a whole-school enrichment model. 
• Streamlining and growing successful programs like Summer Rising, the Student Academic Achievement Plan, and the Academic Recovery Plan Transporting students safely and reliably to and from school. 
• The Office of the Public Advocate suggests a pilot program for the recruitment, training and nomination of sub-paras (part-time paraprofessionals) specifically for the use of serving students in need. 
• Providing more professional experience for recent high school and CUNY graduates
• Experiences provided through SYEP and city-funded internships, fellowships, and networking and professional development opportunities help graduates improve employment prospects.

With the city budget hearings for education beginning next week, the state budget for education in late stages of negotiation and development, and both students and adults in schools adapting to new changes in pandemic protocols, this is a critical moment to address both the urgent and the underlying issues in our schools. Invest in Education provides a framework of priorities to help renew the system with justice, equity, and opportunity.  

The full report is available for review on the Public Advocate’s website.