Church Evictions Unnecessary

Mayor Bloomberg's eagerness to evict churches from NYC public school buildings seems to be impossible to defend.

Churches in Schools

In our city, schools have been used as venues for churches on weekends when otherwise vacant. Community groups of all types, including Christian churches, use school buildings when the buildings are available. In fact, more than 10,000 groups use NYC school buildings for non-school activities.

Religions that celebrate their day(s) of worship during school days are unable to use schools for their worship services, but religious groups of all sorts are able to use school buildings for their activities.

Legal Challenges

The United States Supreme Court recently refused to hear an appeal to a case that held that governments could deny use of public school facilities to religious groups.

The Bloomberg Administration has embraced that ruling and announced a plan to evict church organizations from their once-a-week spaces in NYC public schools.

Flaws in the Theory

But, the Bloomberg approach is quite flawed. Church leaders presented their case well in the Daily News last week:

We pay the same rents and operate under the same terms as every other group.
Excluding congregations alone contradicts a city that from its birth has celebrated freedom and pluralism.
As we contemplate eviction, Mayor Bloomberg’s declaration 17 months ago haunts us. In defending the right of a mosque to build near Ground Zero, he said: “We in New York . . . are Americans, each with an equal right to worship and pray where we choose. There is nowhere in the five boroughs that is off-limits to any religion. By affirming that basic idea, we will honor America’s values, and we will keep New York the most open, diverse, tolerant and free city in the world.”
The mayor’s boasts from another occasion ring equally hollow: “Our doors are open to everyone . . . Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that, even here in a city that is rooted in Dutch tolerance, was hard-won over many years.”
The mayor argues that when the city allows churches to use school buildings for worship services on weekends, it confuses communities and children into believing that there’s an official religion established at a particular school.
The logic is craven. Are we to believe that the same New Yorkers Bloomberg admonished to “do what is right, not what is easy” during the mosque controversy now cannot tell the difference between a mosque, synagogue or church that rents an empty school facility on weekends and the academic instruction that occurs in the same building Monday through Friday?
New Yorkers are smarter than that. Our children are smarter than that, too.

Mayor Bloomberg owes our city's religious institutions the same respect that he provides non-religious groups.

New York State Legislature in the Spotlight

The State Senate has passed a bill that would ensure that congregations are treated no worse than other community groups. The State Assembly has not yet voted on the measure. The State Assembly will improve our city and send a wonderful message to Mayor Bloomberg by ensuring equality in the use of public space. They should send the bill to Governor Cuomo immediately for his signature.

New York's Massive Sexual Abuse in Prisons and Low Graduation Rates in High Schools

Last week, the Justice Department released its report on sexual in our nation's prisons and jails. New York State emerged as the state with the most sexual abuse in its prisons and jails. Also, we learned this week that New York is the worst state in graduating its Black males from high school. Shockingly, in NYC, only 28% of Black males graduate from high school. NYC is amongst the worst performing major cities in terms of graduating Black males from high school.

New York State Fails High School

A new report by the Schott Foundation teaches us that less than half of all Black males in the US graduate from high school and that New York State and New York City are amongst the worst performers in the country in terms of Black male graduation rates. In New York State, only 25% of Black males graduate, and New York City is only slightly better than the state-wide average with 28%. Our state's 25% graduation rate for black males is the worst of all of the 50 states.

We can predict a lack of success for the Black community in New York State when we see that New York State's Black males are entering adulthood without a high school diploma.

Our failure to graduate Black males from high school in New York State should make us think very seriously about our prisons. A lack of education often leads to criminal behavior, and those without formal educations are most easily incarcerated when they've committed no crime at all.

Unfortunately, our state's poor performance in high school graduation rates is matched by poor quality prisons.

Justice Department Report

The US Department of Justice released a report by its Bureau of Justice Statistics with extensive analysis of sexual abuse in prisons and jails in our country.

The study is based on an anonymous survey of those incarcerated in our country. The findings leave us disappointed and concerned.

More than four percent of those in prison and more than three percent of those in jail have suffered sexual abuse. The rate on inmate-on-inmate abuse was more than twice as high amongst women inmates than amongst men in prisons and jails. Guard-on-inmate sexual abuse is far more common than inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse, and female guards abusing male prisoners is the most common type of sexual abuse in our prisons and jails.

The study suggests that sexual abuse of prisoners tends to begin very early in an inmate's time in prison or in jail and that individuals who have been sexually abused before their incarceration are more likely to abused during the incarceration.

Unfortunately, New York State's prisoners are abused more than any other state's prisoners.

New York Prisons and Sexual Abuse

Unfortunately, the sexual abuse problems we see across the country are at their worst in New York State's prisons. The Justice Department report found that three of New York State's prisons and one county jail have high rates of guard-on-prisoner sexual abuse. Having four of the worst facilities in New York State makes New York State the worst in the country for sexual abuse of its incarcerated population.

Nearly seven percent of those incarcerated at Bayview Correctional Facility and Attica Correctional Facility reported being physically forced or threatened into engaging in sexual activity by prison guards. Ten percent of female inmates at Bayview and seven percent of male inmates at the Elmira Correctional facility were forced into performing sex acts by those running the facilities.

New York State's Black Males

This week presented an unflattering snapshot of the state of our state. We live in the worst state in the country for graduating Black males from high school, and we also live in the state that permits the largest amount of widespread abuse of its incarcerated population by those empowered to control our prisons. Both results are unacceptable, and both results show how our public policy approach in New York State leaves Black males at a disadvantage.

We will not be able to be reach our potential as a state until we cease to treat Black males as a disease to be eradicated. Right now, we refuse to offer educational opportunities to Black males in New York State, but we are very effective at sending Black males to prison to be sexual abused by employees of New York State.

Our next Governor must make improving the prospects for our state's Black males our state's top priority.

NYC School Test Results Controversy

Last week, New York City announced that 11% more NYC public school students passed the New York State reading test in 2009 than passed in 2008. Instead of celebration, the announcement of these results raised new questions and left us searching for explanations.

Is Better Actually Better?

The 11% improvement would be worthy of huge celebrations if not for the other data that accompanied it. Buffalo, a city with a reputation for a failing school system, demonstrated more improvement than New York City. In fact, all major cities in New York State demonstrated equal or greater improvement compared to New York City. Perhaps the test was easier for the students to pass, and lower standards lifted all boats. We cannot be certain what caused all of New York State's urban school districts to have gigantic gains in the same 12-month period, but simultaneous improvement in the quality of education in those cities is unlikely to be the full answer. Teachers might be teaching to the test, year to year changes in the weighting of various sections of the test may have shifted this year to raise scores, the test itself may have become less challenging, and maybe . . . just maybe . . . the students really have obtained greater reading aptitude through improvements in their schools.

But, we cannot determine the cause of the improvement. The Daily News article regarding this topic last week contained a passage that illustrated the lack of clarity regarding the cause of the improved test scores.

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch pointed to an influx of resources, wider access to prekindergarten, a more unified curriculum and improved professional development for scores rising statewide. The number of city children enrolled in pre-K grew to 54,038 from 45,589 in 2005, an increase of almost 8,500 children, city figures show. Per pupil spending was about $11,640 in 2003 and rose to $16,236 in 2007, the most updated figure available from the city Education Department.

"The headline from me should be a four-year story," Tisch said, asking parents to look at long-term trends. She noted that over the last four years, New York City and Rochester improved their scores by 18%, Syracuse by 19% and Buffalo by 24%.

Testing experts said the state's reasons made sense, but that more was likely at work. "One of them is a huge increase in test preparation," said former testing chief for the city and NYU professor Robert Tobias. "It's kind of like how you get to Carnegie Hall - practice, practice, practice."

The skeptics have not been shy in pointing out that Buffalo's improvement has been greater than New York City's improvement. Sarcastically, they ask whether Buffalo's mayor should be asked to run New York City.

Skepticism On Display

Some have labeled the test scores as too good to be true and have questioned why the New York State test shows improvement around the state each year while the national test shows a lack of improvement. We have seen the federal data showing that the changes being made across the country to improve educational achievement have not resulted in a reduction in the achievement gap between white students and students of color. Those results remind us that we must always look behind the initial impressions we might get from the data to discover what the data really means for our children.

Charting a Dangerous Course

Mayor Bloomberg has promoted the concept of increasing the number of charter schools in New York City, but charter schools that design their student populations to be more affluent and less challenged than the communities in which they operate actually make the non-charter public schools in their communities endure the challenges of greater poverty and a higher intensity of problems than they would if those charter schools did not exist. As stated in the Daily News:

In other words, if you have language problems, if you're poor, or if you have special needs, you're far more likely to end up in the regular public school population than in a charter school.

As charter schools become more and more a key piece of the educational infrastructure in NYC, we will need to advocate for policies that ensure that they are not leaving the surrounding public schools more challenged and less effective in teaching our children. Unfortunately, our charter schools have largely excluded special education students (5% of the charter school population versus 15% of the public school population). They have also limited their exposure to children from low-income homes (65% in public schools versus 57% in charter schools). These statistics indicate that charter schools might still be part of the problem rather than part of the solution to the problems we face in educating our children in New York City's public schools.

Standing With Chairman Rangel on Military Recruitment in Manhattan Schools

We have been very fortunate to have the leadership of Charlie Rangel in Congress representing Manhattan for nearly 40 years. He is the dean of the New York State Delegation to Congress, and he is the chairman of one of the most powerful committees in Congress. But, more importantly, he is a biased and aggressive advocate for our children.

Chairman Rangel's leadership was again on display recently as he called for the New York City Department of Education to focus on protecting the privacy of our children as it deals with requests for information from the US Armed Forces.

Rangel to the Rescue

When the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law by President Bush in 2001, it contained a provision related to military recruitment at public schools. The No Child Left Behind Act requires public schools to provide recruiters from the armed forces the same access to students as those schools provide to college recruiters. Schools are also required, when asked, to provide contact information for every student to the US armed forces. Students and parents can opt out of this information sharing process by writing a letter to their local school administrators.

The NYC Department of Education recently changed its policies regarding the provision of information to the armed forces to streamline and centralize the process while making it easier for the armed forces to collect information about NYC public school students.

Late last month, Chairman Rangel, a veteran of (and hero of) the Korean War, wrote a letter to Chancellor Klein requesting that the NYC Department of Education allow a 30-day period for students, teachers, and parents to comment on the recently altered policy. He also asked that the DOE suggest alternatives to meet the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act. More than two-dozen elected officials from around New York City signed onto Chairman Rangel's letter, and the New York Civil Liberties Union coordinated the release of the letter as well as a press conference highlighting the risks of the new policy. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/schools-military-recruiting-policy-draws-protest/

http://www.nyclu.org/node/2114

Chairman Rangel's letter sounds the alarm with regard to the enormous access granted to the US military by NYC public schools and highlights for us the challenges parents and students face in complying with the processes for preventing the distribution of their personal information to the US military. The letter includes an attachment with a long list of very specific recommendations from this group of elected officials regarding how the NYC DOE should deal with various elements of military recruiting at NYC public schools. Let us hope that the NYC DOE implements those suggestions. Without the leadership of Chairman Rangel, our children would be less likely to obtain the protection and respect they deserve from the NYC Department of Education.

Recruiting's Ugly Side

Our nation's volunteer military requires recruitment in order to maintain adequate numbers of troops to keep us safe, but the volunteer nature of the military results in disproportionate representation in the military by people of color and by people of modest means. Those with the greatest non-military opportunities and the greatest wealth and income are the least represented in the modern US armed forces. A cynic might believe that an ineffective educational system is a component of military recruiting - limiting our children's options and fast-tracking them for service in the armed forces. There would appear to be a conflict of interest for the US military as it interacts with our children and our children's schools, and we are led to wonder whether the US military desires improved education in our nation's big cities as it faces shortfalls in its recruitment results. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/22/AR2008012203326.html Every year since 2004, the US military has not met its goal of 90% of its recruits having achieved high school graduation. For 2007, only 70% of those entering the military had completed high school. More and more, poor academic results are correlating with successful recruitment by the military.

There have even been documented abuses by military recruiters, including threats of arrest for those who choose not to enlist, misleading statements designed to trick students into joining the military after those students have expressed the desire to remain outside of the armed forces, and encouraging potential recruits to include false information in their submissions to the military. Complaints against recruiters have risen in recent years, and the military continues to provide bonuses to recruiters based on how many students begin basic training, leading to recruiting abuses that might be reduced if bonuses were based on successful completion of basic training. http://www.kvue.com/news/state/stories/072808kvuerecruit-bkm.10c88acd.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/02/eveningnews/main692497.shtml

In the face of concerns about privacy and recruitment tactics, Manhattan Viewpoint is grateful to Chairman Rangel for shining a spotlight on the role that our city's government is playing in steering students to the US military and for encouraging our city to take better care of the personal information it possesses about our children. We are grateful for this leadership, but not at all surprised to see it.

Crowded Schools in Manhattan

In Manhattan, our educational infrastructure needs larger quantity as well as improved quality. The desire for better quality education is well established all over New York City and all over urban America. In many neighborhoods in Manhattan, the lack of educational infrastructure quantity also deserves attention.

New School Construction Is Rare

When the Thurgood Marshall Academy on 135th Street opened its own building in early 2004 after sharing space with other schools for a decade, it was the first new public high school built in Harlem in over 50 years. http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2004a%2Fpr025-04.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1

http://www.adcorp.org/files/Black%20World%20Today.pdf

In an unprecedented development that may help light a path for others looking to improve the quantity of space in NYC devoted to educating our children, Thurgood Marshall Academy was built by a NYC non-profit organization rather than by the School Construction Authority http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/SCA/AboutUs/default.htm that has been responsible for all such projects since its creation. The lack of new school construction is a problem in every part of Manhattan and has led to overcrowding in many communities, and an apparent lack of sufficient planning may cause that overcrowding to persist well into the future.

The Growing School Seat Deficit

In April 2008, the Manhattan Borough President's Office focused on this problem in its report Crowded Out, http://www.mbpo.org/newsroom_details.asp?id=1163 which illuminated some startling statistics. First, for the areas of Manhattan with the greatest crowding problems in the public schools, NYC issued permits for new buildings estimated to represent more than 2000 new students during the period from 2000 to 2007. During that same period, the number of additional seats added for students in those same areas was only 143 seats. If that deficit of nearly 2000 seats seems backward looking, the current state of planning for the future appears to exacerbate the problem. Over the next five years, NYC plans to create new seats in public schools to serve approximately 4,300 students in Manhattan. Unfortunately, the overcrowded schools in Manhattan already have a 3,900 seat deficit. If the number of students attending Manhattan's public schools did not grow, AND if we also could target all of the new seats to the most crowded schools, we'd still need all five years just to eliminate the deficit. Realistically, Manhattan's student population is very likely to grow materially in coming years, and NYC's official estimates assume substantial growth in the population of Manhattan. Moreover, the additional capacity for students at public schools in Manhattan will not be targeted 100% to the areas with the greatest capacity needs. Therefore, we are almost certain to have more overcrowding in five years than we have today, even if we achieve NYC's current plans for expanding capacity over that time frame.

Borough President Scott Stringer recently updated his April report to include data from January to August 2008. http://www.mbpo.org/newsroom_details.asp?id=1193 In that report, we learn that the number of housing units represented by buildings approved during the first 8 months of 2008 is 32% ahead of the average level established for a full year from 2000 to 2007, even though the year is only 67% complete. The increased flow of housing units is a positive development, but the additional homes result in an increase in the size of the public school seat deficit identified in the April report.

Planning for the Future

Later this year, the NYC Department of Education and the School Construction Authority will propose a capital plan for fiscal years 2010 to 2014. As Manhattanites, we should encourage Chancellor Klein and his leadership team take into account the public school seat deficit and the continued growth of the population of our borough. In Manhattan, several of our neighborhoods are already facing serious school overcrowding, and we'll need to create space as soon as practical for our children who are in school today as well as plan aggressively in order to allow ourselves to provide ample space for the children who will populate Manhattan's schools over the next 10+ years.

On October 3, at 9am on the steps of City Hall, concerned residents of NYC will rally for increased quantity and quality of educational infrastructure, reduced class size, and better planning for the future space needs of our children. http://abccampaign.wordpress.com/ Your voice can make a real difference in the decisions our city's leaders make with regard to school overcrowding.