Mayor de Blasio's thirst for power led to kids getting dumber

NY Post

 Mayor Bill de Blasio was personally involved in a deal with Orthodox Jewish leaders to delay a long-awaited report on shoddy yeshivas in exchange for an extension of mayoral control of city schools, emails obtained by The Post show.

Internal emails among de Blasio and his top aides at City Hall and the Department of Education reveal that the mayor made key phone calls to the powerful religious leaders to clinch the support of two state lawmakers voting on his power to run the nation’s largest school system.

“These internal communications reveal what we suspected all along: Mayor de Blasio abused his power by interfering with the yeshiva investigation,” said Nafuli Moster, founder and executive director of Young Advocates for Fair Education (YAFFED). The group filed complaints against 39
 Brooklyn yeshivas in July 2015 for allegedly shortchanging children on secular subjects such as math, English, science and history.

The DOE launched an investigation of the yeshivas, but as it dragged on, critics charged City Hall was delaying the probe to curry favor with the Orthodox Jewish voting bloc.

Even an investigation of the mayor’s suspected interference was stalled, whistle-blowers told The Post. In response to that complaint, the Department of Investigation and the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools finally issued a report last December confirming “political horsetrading” on the mayoral control issue.

For the first time ever, an incriminating email from the de Blasio administration is not redacted

And it exposes Emma Wolfe as de Blasio's political gun moll.

 

Legislation is being drawn to suspend evictions for the rest of the year

Gothamist

 Responding to dire predictions that thousands of New Yorkers, unable to make rent because of COVID-19, could soon wind up on the street, a group of state lawmakers want to block landlords from evicting tenants until the end of the year.

The new legislation would extend Governor Andrew Cuomo's moratorium on evictions, which is set to expire on June 18th, for an additional six months from when the State of Emergency is declared over.

"That moratorium, while welcome, is not enough," Manhattan Senator Brad Hoylman, who introduced the legislation on Tuesday, told Gothamist. "We have to create this safe harbor to give tenants time to get back on their feet."

The bill would ensure tenants cannot be removed from their homes for unpaid rent for the duration of the public health crisis. It would not suspend rent altogether, as other state lawmakers have proposed, and would still allow landlords to sue delinquent tenants for monetary judgements.

But housing attorneys said the bill is a critical first step in addressing a looming evictions crisis that Cuomo has largely waved off.

"Without any state action, there are going to be New Yorkers across the state who will be unable to pay their rent, and very soon the courts are going to reopen and the cases will start piling up," said Ellen Davidson, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society. "This is a step in the right direction to ensure we don't end up with hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in the street at a moment when coronavirus is wreaking havoc on the homeless population."

Expert predict that as many as 40 percent of New York tenants may be forced to skip April rent payments, as COVID-19 containment measures have pushed unemployment to historic levels. Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who introduced a companion bill in the State Assembly, said that tenants who'd lost income during the pandemic were now facing "a ticking time bomb."

For his part, Cuomo has repeatedly insisted the "rent issue" was solved through the three-month eviction moratorium. He has declined to support a bill with bipartisan support that would cancel rent payments and provide relief to landlords as well.