100,000

THE CITY

Nearly 1 in 10 New York City public school students were homeless last school year, a staggering rate that has barely budged for several years.

About 101,000 students lived in unstable, or temporary, housing in the 2020-2021 school year, according to an analysis of state data released Monday by Advocates for Children. That’s a larger number of children than the entire school district of Denver.

Homeless students face a host of barriers to education in any given year, especially in terms of attendance. In a year when the COVID pandemic continued to disrupt in-person schooling and place extraordinary challenges on families and students across the five boroughs, homeless students faced even more hardships.

Accessing classwork and instruction — which was difficult for many children last school year — was sometimes impossible for homeless students and their families. Family shelters did not have Wi-Fi and are only getting it now, following a lawsuit from Legal Aid. Even students equipped with city-issued internet-enabled iPads struggled to log on for classes because shelters had spotty connections to the cell service that those devices depend on.

Now, advocates are looking ahead to Mayor-elect Eric Adams in hopes that he’ll take aggressive steps to curb student homelessness and address their dire educational outcomes.

Just 29% of homeless students passed their grades 3-8 reading exams, while just 27% passed math — both about 20 percentage points lower than their peers living in stable housing, according to 2019 data. Sixty-one percent of homeless students graduated on time in the school year before the pandemic, compared to 84% of their peers with stable housing.

“We are hopeful that given the incredibly poor outcomes we’re seeing, particularly for students in shelter, that Mayor-elect Adams’ administration will recognize the crisis for what it is,” said Jennifer Pringle, director of Project Learning In Temporary Housing at Advocates for Children.

More than 3,800 students had no shelter and lived in cars, parks or abandoned buildings, while another 200 students lived in hotels or motels, according to the Advocates for Children report.

Another 28,000 lived in city shelters, while about 65,000 students lived “doubled-up” with friends or family. (Information was not available for roughly 3,900 students, the organization said.)

Though the rate was similar to prior years, the overall number of homeless students — 94% of them Black or Hispanic — appeared to have fallen by 9.5% year-over-year. That decrease could be due in part to a drop in student enrollment across the system, which lost more than 3% of its students last school year. Additionally, schools may have faced more challenges in identifying where students lived because the majority of children chose to learn remotely — an issue that advocates also flagged last year.

Homeless students were far less likely to show up for remote or in-person school last year. Between January and June 2021, attendance rates for students living in shelters were roughly 10 to 14 percentage points less than students in stable housing, according to city data analyzed by Advocates for Children.

The struggles have continued this year. The first couple weeks of this school year, the attendance rate was about 73% for those in temporary housing, rising to 78% more recently, compared to the citywide rate hovering around the “high 80s and low 90s,” according to what education department officials have shared with Advocates for Children.

President Biden abdicates his immigration crisis fiasco onto New York City and Long Island schools

 

NY Post 

America’s crisis at the border is now a crisis in New York public schools.

The Biden Administration is flooding New York City and Long Island communities with thousands of unaccompanied immigrant minors captured crossing the Mexico-US border, often arriving here, as The Post recently reported, via clandestine flights in the middle of the night.

Data from the US Department of Health of and Human Services confirms that the New York area is a hotspot for shipping children rounded up illegally crossing the border without guardians.

Four counties alone, Suffolk, Queens, Nassau and Brooklyn, took in nearly 5,000 unaccompanied children in just 11 months, from Oct. 1, 2020 to Aug. 31, 2021, according to HHS.

With public education in the area costing about $28,000 per child, per year, that’s a $139 million hit on New York taxpayers to educate children arriving unexpectedly just in those four counties.

The arrival of these children, mostly teenage boys, in local schools is creating a classroom crisis that is strapping educational resources, costing taxpayers millions in un-budgeted dollars, and aiding gang-recruiting efforts, argue parents, teachers and immigration experts.

“We’re at maxed capacity for kids with special needs, but they’ll keep sending them,” lamented one high school teacher in Queens, among the communities hardest hit by the illegal-immigrant student dump.

Fifteen counties nationwide have received more than 1,000 unaccompanied children caught at the border over the past year, reported HHS. The top five counties on the list are all in Texas, California and south Florida.

But four of those 15 counties are right here in New York: Suffolk (1,528), Queens (1,314), Nassau (1,064) and Brooklyn (1,046). The Bronx nearly made the list, with 461 unaccompanied students. New York is the only state in America with four counties receiving more than 1,000 unaccompanied minors, despite its 1,700-mile distance from the southern border.

 

Board of Education comes up way short in daycare services in Holden's district

 

 

Queens Post

Council Member Robert Holden is calling on the city to make good on its promise to offer free daycare to working parents on days their children attend school remotely.

Holden penned a letter to Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza last week, calling on the Department of Education (DOE) to expand the child care program to more schools within his 30th Council district.

He said his office has received complaints from parents who don’t have access to the program known as “Learning Bridges,” which offers free daycare for public school children in 3-K through eighth grade on their remote learning days.

“The communities I represent are filled with essential workers and first-responders who worked hard during this pandemic…” Holden wrote in the Oct. 20 letter. “I find it inconceivable that so many families in my district seemingly have no access to such a critical program like Learning Bridges.”

The Council Member listed six public schools in his district — which covers Middle Village, Maspeth, Glendale, Woodside and Ridgewood — where parents don’t have access to the program. Many are in School District 24, he noted.

4,000

 

1010 WINS

 More than 4,000 children in New York state have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19 complications, a new report found. 

United Hospital Fund and Boston Consulting Group on Wednesday released the results of an analysis they conducted between March and July.

The analysis found that 4,200 children in the state lost parents or guardians to COVID-19 during those months, 57 percent of whom live in three New York City boroughs: the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. 

That figure translates to one in 1,000 children across New York state, according to the report. Black and Hispanic kids were disproportionately affected by the pandemic during that time, the analysis noted. 

One in 600 Black children and one in 700 Hispanic children lost a parent or guardian to COVID-19, compared to one in 1,400 Asian children and one in 1,500 white children, the analysis found. 

The analysis also found that up to 50 percent of the 4,200 children who lost caregivers were in danger of entering poverty. 

“Losing a parent or caregiver during childhood is a particularly acute adversity, one that raises a child’s risk of experiencing a range of poor outcomes over their lifetime, including poorer mental and physical health,” the report said. “These children and their families will require ongoing support and investment to ensure that the next generation won’t remain victims of this current COVID-19 pandemic.”

Councilmember Holden demands more information on memo to conceal school coronavirus cases

THE CITY

The Special Commissioner for Investigations for city schools is probing the Department of Education’s bid to squelch coronavirus infection information in the chaotic days before schools were closed.

The investigation comes in response to a report by THE CITY revealing an internal memo advising school officials to not report cases of teachers or staff who tested positive for COVID-19 or were likely infected to the city Health Department.

Following the story, Councilmember Robert Holden (D-Queens) asked Special Commissioner for Investigations Anastasia Coleman to look into the origin of the memo — and whether it contributed to the spread of the virus within schools before Mayor Bill de Blasio reluctantly announced on March 15 that schools would be shuttered.

In an interview Tuesday with THE CITY, Holden said he believes the March 10 memo was intended to help cover up the scope of the spread of the virus within the city public education system to justify keeping schools open amid an avalanche of pressure.

“A lot of teachers were calling us and saying, ‘Why aren’t the schools closed? We have some staff who are infected,’” Holden recalled.

“This is the DOE’s M.O., this is how they operate. They were trying to cover up. They were saying to us, they want to cover this up, we don’t want to cause mass hysteria,” he said.

On March 30, SCI investigator Hector Rivera notified Holden, “I am assigned and investigating the allegations of negligence by the Department of Education, regarding the COVID-19 cases in the city schools.”

On Tuesday, Regina Gluzmanova, a SCI spokesperson, declined to discuss the investigation, stating, “SCI is in receipt of the Council Member’s letter and will not comment any further on an open investigation.”

The Department of Education confirmed this week that 50 public school staff, including 21 teachers, have died of COVID-19 illness since the pandemic hit the city.

As pressure mounted last month to shut the schools, de Blasio resisted the call, saying he feared the closure would hurt families who need their children to be in school while they’re working.

It's not just the D.O.E.'s M.O., it's the de Blasio Doctrine

Update:

NY Post

 

Most New York children “probably” already have coronavirus and are serving as vectors to spread the disease, according to one New York pediatrician.

Dr. Dyan Hes at New York City’s Gramercy Pediatrics advised parents to assume their children have the virus if they contract even mild symptoms consistent with the disease.

“I think that probably 80 percent of the children have coronavirus. We are not testing children. I’m in New York City. I can’t get my patients tested,” Hes said during an interview at CBS News.

“And we have to assume, if they are sick, they have coronavirus. Most of them, probably 80 to 90 percent of them, are asymptomatic.”

But the number of infected children is unknown because so many children don’t display any symptoms, she said — and that could alter COVID-19’s mortality rate.

 “So, these numbers are so skewed. I think that the mortality rate is way, way less than 0.5 percent for children who have it because it is so prevalent,” Hes said.

“You have to remember thousands of kids die from flu a year. This is much, much less virulent in children.”

The bigger risk lies in those infected children passing the virus to much more vulnerable populations, like the elderly or those with pre-existing health conditions.

“The problem with children is that they are so asymptomatic that they are spreading it. And our biggest mistake was that we didn’t close the public schools when we should have,” said Hes.

“So the children were the vectors to the teachers, who might be elderly or immunocompromised.”


 

Chirlane McCray's crazy, ineffective mental health program has cost the city close to a billion dollars and projected to cost another billion more

NY Post

Chirlane McCray’s mental health initiative is on track to spend $1 billion over five years — but city officials can’t provide a detailed breakdown or prove it’s making a positive difference, it was disclosed Wednesday.

The revelations came at a City Council hearing where legislators panned the first lady’s “Thrive” initiative for its slow response time and failure to treat the city’s mentally ill homeless.
“
I like the fact that money is going toward mental health, but when they say we’re seeing a benefit in all areas, I take exception to that, because I don’t see it everywhere,” Queens Councilman Robert Holden told The Post. “I’m not sure anybody does.”

Under pressure from Holden and fellow members of the council’s mental health committee, Thrive director Susan Herman admitted that the program — budgeted for a total $850 million between fiscal years 2016 and 2019 — will now cost $1 billion every four years.

She said Thrive would receive $250 million a year going forward, including $2 million to cover its 21 office staffers.

Politico

Since its inception in 2015, ThriveNYC — the city's sprawling $850 million initiative to address a variety of mental health issues — has operated without much scrutiny or accountability.

With few public metrics by which to measure its success so far, and the broad strokes used by city officials to describe its operations, the city has offered little insight into how it has assessed Thrive's efficacy since it began.

And because Thrive encompasses a variety of initiatives — some new, some already in existence — across more than a dozen agencies, it is difficult to establish a central, line-item budget delineating how the city is spending taxpayer dollars on the program. 

 Representatives from four advocacy and service organizations said that Thrive does not fund greater access to inpatient treatment or intensive outpatient services for those with serious mental illnesses, further burdening the social safety net.

“Thrive NYC is really best understood as a ‘tale of two cities’ initiative,” said Stephen Eide, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and an expert on homelessness and urban policy. “It’s about trying to give people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged access to the same kind of mental health care that people in upper middle income or affluent communities have enjoyed as a matter of course for a very long time.”

But that kind of programming won’t address institutional problems like homelessness and serious mental illness, which are financial and safety burdens to the city, he said.
I
f we’re not addressing those two problems, then whatever we are doing is lacking,” Eide said.
McCray acknowledged in October 2018 that the city does not often discuss Thrive’s programming for violent individuals due to stigma.

“It promotes that misconception that too many people have, that people who have mental illness or people suffering from substance use disorders are violent, which is not true,” she said at a health care conference. 

The Post also has a biting editorial on Chirlie and Butthead and used my own description of her  anointed position in city hall to excoriate her profligate spending.

28,000 kids poisoned by lead - and no one seems to care

From the Daily News:

He had to be backed into a corner by this newspaper and the Department of Justice, but Mayor de Blasio is now correctly having the city use standards set by federal health experts to protect children from lead-paint poisoning.

City Hall’s assurances that only 19 children living in the Housing Authority have been poisoned by lead was devastatingly misleading. Health Department records obtained by the Daily News show 820 NYCHA kids since 2012 ingested quantities of lead sufficient to cause neurological damage. Citywide, nearly 28,000 children did.

They and their families have to live evermore with the tragic reality: lead poisoning in NYCHA, and beyond, is a far greater public health menace than the mayor has been willing to admit or act on, leaving it to special ed teachers to administer to minds forever stunted.

The coverup consists of two sins, one in the headlines and one behind the scenes.

Shouldn't this be a criminal investigation at this point? The FBI has been investigating a payment made to a porn star for more than a year but no one is sinking their teeth into this?

Spa Castle in trouble again

From the Times Ledger:

A controversial spa in College Point is in trouble once again.

State Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) received a letter from the New York State Department of Labor informing him that Spa Castle, located at 31-10 11th Ave., had been fined $1,000 for violating the Child Labor Statute.

Labor Department Commissioner Roberta Reardon wrote to Avella Jan. 30 about an investigation that was completed in December 2017.

According to Reardon, investigators visited Spa Castle on various occasions and times looking for violations of state laws. “After meticulous review of Spa Castle’s wage and hour records, we substantiated a violation of Article 4, the Child Labor Statute,” she told the senator in the letter.

The statute bans minors from working late hours on school nights.

Reardon said the spa was served a notice of violation on Nov. 4 with a penalty of $1,000, which they paid in full. The investigators were not able to substantiate any allegations regarding overtime.

12 die in Bronx building with history of bad smoke detectors

From the Daily News:

A raging fire quickly swept through the five story building on Prospect Ave. at E. 187th St. — taking with it 12 lives — including a one-year-old child.

More than 160 firefighters responded to the five-alarm blaze near the Bronx Zoo. The inferno broke out at 6:51 p.m. on the first floor and quickly spread upward. Firefighters responded in three minutes, after receiving more than a dozen 911 calls.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. Sources said the blaze may have been sparked by a space heater, but de Blasio said was too early in the investigation to tell.

A database in the New York City Housing Preservation and Development revealed one of the apartments on the first floor — where the fire started — had open violations for bad carbon monoxide and smoke detectors.

Attempts to reach the building owners were unsuccessful.

Woman using kids to steal packages in Woodhaven

From PIX11:

A woman with her two daughters were caught on home surveillance camera allegedly stealing packages left outside of a Queens home in three separate incidents in October.

Kimberly and Jennifer David, sisters who live in the family home in Woodhaven, Queens, wondered why the numerous clothing items they had ordered online hadn’t arrived.

So they called UPS and the Postal Service and were told all the merchandise had been delivered and left on their porch. Their home has a security camera so they went back and checked the video over a three-week period. They found what happened to their packages.

On Oct. 21, the video shows what appears to be a mother and her two young daughters walking down the sidewalk towards the David’s home. The group stopped in front of the house and looked at the porch. The older woman appeared to be saying something to one of the girls, who then quickly moved toward the porch, crouching as she reached down, picked up the package, turned around and quickly went back down the stairs.

The entire theft took less than 10 seconds.

The day that Maspeth marched through Floral Park

Below are photo albums from the Bellerose/Floral Park march that happened this Saturday.



You will notice that the signs protest the de Blasio administration, local politicians, Steven Banks and the DHS. There are none protesting against homeless children.



Joseph Concannon spoke first. It's obvious from his criticism of de Blasio's homeless policies that he must hate homeless children. (end sarcasm)



Mayor de Blasio must also think that State Senators Martins and Addabbo are child haters since they both attended the rally.





Funny how the Queens Machine stays silent about the mayor not only dumping shelters all over the borough, but unfairly framing one of their members and their constituents as people who want to see kids sleeping on the streets.

The protesters, however, aren't silent:





It also sounds like this movement is growing:

Other neighborhoods are getting pissed off about this as well. Click the photo below to hear from Rosedale and Woodside.

Thank you to Juniper Civic and Queens by the Minute for the additional footage.

More U.S. families living with fewer bedrooms

From Curbed:

An analysis of home sizes in the country’s top 100 metro areas found that 26.4 percent of U.S. renters are in want of at least one extra bedroom. Using U.S. Census data, Trulia compared household size with the number of bedrooms in the home and found that across the U.S., homes are getting more and more crowded, with an increasing percentage of households having more family members than bedrooms. While the average size of the American home has ballooned over the years, renters are feeling more and more confined, especially in urban areas.

This "space crunch" is most evident in Los Angeles, where 29.2 percent of households have shared bedrooms—the highest proportion in the country. Roughly 67.9 of renters with children in L.A. were short on bedrooms. New York City is next, with 25.2 percent of households squeezed for space.

Questions raised about use of Bayside house

From the Queens Chronicle:

Chadney Spencer, the president of the Northwest Bayside Civic Assocation, is very concerned about one of the houses in the area his group represents. At 202-12 32 Ave., he said, as many as 25 children may be living there.

“Every morning at 7:42 a.m., around 18 or 20 children are walking in front of my house in a double-file line,” said Spencer, who lives nearby. When the Chronicle pressed the doorbell of the house in an attempt to speak with someone who lives at the property, dozens of small pairs of shoes could be seen inside the house.

Recently, the civic leader approached the group when they were walking into the house after school to find out more about them and why they were living there.

“Eventually, a lady came up and the lady comes out and says, ‘Yes, can I help you?’” Spencer said.

After 30 to 45 minutes of conversation, during which Spencer said the woman had a defensive tone and did not answer Spencer’s question about how many children are living at the property, even though he asked it six times, she finally answered his question.

“She said, ‘Oh, their parents are traveling in Europe,’” Spencer said.

The three-story house, according to a Department of Buildings certificate of occupancy from 2005 — the most recent one — has two dwelling units. And according to city records, the property is owned by Shu Jing Cao and Cruz Figueroa Jr.

Neither of them could be reached for comment.

Woodside school has bad bug

From PIX11:

The stomach bug known as norovirus has sickened scores of children at a Queens elementary school.

A local elementary school that usually has more than 1,200 students in class had fewer than 1,000 on Thursday, a day after a virus sent at least 60 kids home, and then spread.

The school ensures families that the situation is being taken care of, but that's not stopping parents and students from wondering what the situation will be like on Friday.

Official numbers showed that classes were, on average, missing about 20 percent of their students, thanks to a Norovirus outbreak.

After the 60 students went home sick on Wednesday, a total of 230 students stayed home on Thursday. Then, once classes began, another 28, at least, went home with the virus's symptoms.

"Vomiting, and the stomach," said Leon, the fourth grader. "Most of the kids are having diarrhea."

Close call prompts petition

From DNA Info:

When Alexa Weitzman lost sight of her 20-month-old son on Sunday for several seconds while playing at a popular neighborhood playground, her heart sank, she said.

As she looked around Katzman Playground, at Yellowstone Park, she saw that its three gates, adjacent to busy streets, including Yellowstone Boulevard, were wide open.

The toddler was quickly located, but the Forest Hills mom said the experience prompted her to start an online petition on Change.org on that same day, in which she asked the Parks Department to install a locking mechanism on the gates.

Christmas surprise in Ozone Park

From PIX11:

Welcoming home a loved one for Christmas never gets old.

When it's a soldier serving the country that you haven't seen for years, there's almost no way to describe the feeling.

One Queens family got to experience that feeling first hand when Santa helped make a Christmas wish come true.

It happened at P.S. 121 in Ozone Park. PIX11 was there as Army Spc. Paul Hernandez was reunited with some of his siblings for the first time in years.

Mad slasher has Whitestone on alert

From NBC:

The apparently random slashing of a 16-year-old girl walking to school in Queens Wednesday morning has shaken neighbors as a local politician says the suspect may have struck before.

The victim, an exchange student from China, was walking near 13th Avenue and 146th Street when a man wearing a surgical mask and gloves grabbed her and slashed her neck and cheek with a utility knife before running off, police said.

The stalker was captured on surveillance video following his victim.

The attack has left families in the quiet residential neighborhood frightened.

State assemblyman Ron Kim said Thursday the suspect may have struck before.

"We've been receiving some calls since yesterday that a similar-looking individual has been harassing females in the neighborhood," he said.

Kim said he has visited the girl, and doctors have told him the attacker missed major arteries but there are still concerns about possible nerve damage and disfiguring scars.

Pol wants to grade day care centers

From WPIX:

How safe is your child's day care? It may get a little easier to find out.

A report released Thursday looked at nearly 2,300 group day care centers across the city for the past three years.

It's just the tip of the iceberg to a much larger problem: Kids are the ones that are in danger.

The report found more than 18,000 violations across the city since 2013.

Hundreds of day care centers are repeat offenders and still open for business.

State Senator Jeff Klein proposed legislation that would create letter grade system for city day cares, the same as how New York restaurants are graded with signs.

The senator showed video where day care officials repeatedly lied to undercover parents about having a good track record– when in truth they didn't.

Lots of kids in shelters & special ed

From Capital New York:

New York City has massive numbers of New York City schoolchildren living in temporary housing, as well as a large and growing special education population, according to an Independent Budget Office report released Tuesday.

The large population of high-needs students may present new policy challenges for Mayor Bill de Blasio and his schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña.

According to the IBO report, there were 82,807 students living in some form of temporary housing during the 2013-2014 school year, including 27,772 who were living in shelters.

There are about 1.1 million schoolchildren in New York City.

The number of families living in shelters has increased substantially during de Blasio's tenure.

City Council seeks slimmer kids

From IB Times:

A bill introduced in New York City that would implement nutritional requirements for kids' meals at fast-food restaurants has the potential to curb childhood obesity if passed, according to an NYU Langone Medical Center study. Under the "Happy Meals" bill, fast-food chains would be required to include a serving of fruit, vegetables or whole grain in any meal marketed to children using toys or promotional items.

The bill, which was proposed by New York City Council member Ben Kallos, also would limit the meals to 500 calories or less, with fewer than 35 percent of calories coming from fat, only as much as 10 percent from saturated fat, fewer than 10 percent from added sugars and no more than 600 milligrams of sodium.