Cuomo's Legacy: "Epidemic" Child Poverty Across Upstate New York

Glenn Blain in the Daily News:

ALBANY - Child poverty has reached “epidemic proportions” in cities across upstate New York, with rates of 50% or higher among many minority communities, a new report revealed.

While 23% of children statewide lived in poverty, black and Latino children in cities like Troy and Schenectady had rates stretching as high as 73.7%, according to the report released Friday from the Assembly’s Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force.

Assemblyman Marcos Crespo (D-Bronx), chairman of the task force, said the report showed “an alarming trend that threatens the economic and social stability of the state.”

In New York City, 30% of children under 18 were living in poverty, but the rates were higher for Latino children, 40.1%, and black children, 33.1%, the task force found after reviewing census data.

Crespo said the report showed the need to, among other things, boost New York’s minimum wage and increase funding for affordable housing and child care subsidies.

 Governor Cuomo's solution to the epidemic of child poverty that has occurred under his watch?

The Cuomo Hunger Games:

When Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed a competition last month for upstate New York regions, with $1.5 billion in prize money, he said it would help revitalize the winners like his $1 billion investment in Buffalo helped energize that city.

Some upstate officials, however, say the Democratic governor’s proposal is more like “The Hunger Games,” forcing them into a brutal faceoff where some will be cast out.

...

Dubbed the Upstate New York Economic Revitalization Competition, the proposal would grant three winning regions some $500 million each, a slice of the more than $5 billion windfall the state garnered from banks to settle financial-crisis-era allegations. Seven regions, including the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes areas, are eligible.

“All the opportunity you need is there,” Mr. Cuomo told upstate officials in January. “Why the competition? Because I believe in competition.”

If he simply doled out the money, Mr. Cuomo added, “you wouldn’t do all the hard things you have to do.”

...

It isn’t unusual for states to offer city grant competitions, and Mr. Cuomo has created them in the past as well. But critics of his latest proposal said its winners-take-all design is frustrating when such urgent needs are at stake.

The prospect for fighting for money they could use to repair roads and water mains, they added, is particularly painful.

“The neediest places have the least capacity to make the case for the money,” said Peter A. Baynes, the executive director of the New York State Conference of Mayors. “All the mayors I heard from expressed the same concern: There is need at every municipality.”

Cuomo's response to the criticism?

If you can't take care of yourself, he will not help you:

Mr. Cuomo and his officials have said the funds can help build sustainable economies so that cities can fund their own infrastructure.

“Show us how you become economically stronger and create jobs. Then you fix your own pipes,” he was quoted as saying in a February article on Syracuse.com.

In Andrew Cuomo's New York, only the strong survive and everybody else can go crawl into a corner and die.

No wonder child poverty has reached epidemic proportions in the state.

And now he's coming for the public schools to hand them over to his criminal friends in the charter school sector.

Because there's nothing better than public school privatization to fix "epidemic" child poverty.

15 Towns Look To Secede From Andrew Cuomo's New York

15 towns in the impoverished Southern Tier of New York are fed up and ready to head to Pennsylvania:

Conklin, NY (WBNG Binghamton) The local economy is pushing one organization in Upstate New York to pose a question: Is it possible to secede to Pennsylvania?

The Upstate New York Towns Association is researching this very topic. The group says a few factors pushing its research are high property taxes, low sales tax revenue and the recent decision to ban hydraulic fracturing in New York.

...

There are 15 towns interested in the secession, according to the Towns Association. These towns are in Broome, Delaware, Tioga and Sullivan counties. The association declined to name the towns without their permission and also declined to comment on specifics at this time. As of now, research is ongoing. The group will be updating Action News with all of their findings in the coming weeks.

The association said it's comparing taxes and the cost of doing business in the two states. It says the facts show there is a huge difference between the two.

Also being considered are things like workers comp, surcharges, unemployment and health insurance. The association's understanding is that the secession would have to be approved by the New York State Legislature, the Pennsylvania State Legislature and the U. S. government.

"We're comparing the taxes in Pennsylvania compared to those in New York," said Finch. "There's a great, great difference. Right now, we are being deprived of work, jobs and incomes."

Cuomo banned fracking, which, considering the environmental risks, I thought was a good idea, but then did nothing to help the region of the state that was in most desperate need of the economic boom fracking would have brought.

These towns are never going to be able to secede from New York, but perhaps a call for secession will force Cuomo to focus some state aid on the region.

Or maybe not - Cuomo doesn't seem to much care about anything but his own agenda and priorities.

Funding Inequities In NY School Districts Reach Record Level Under Governor Andrew Cuomo

Andrew Cuomo told the Daily News back in October that he wants to "break" the public school "monopoly" in New York State by attacking teachers and districts.

According to another Daily News article by Ken Lovett, Cuomo's already doing it by failing to properly fund the state's school districts:

ALBANY — In the opening salvo of what promises to be a heated battle this year over education reform, a new report says funding inequities between poor and rich school districts across the state has reached record levels under Gov. Cuomo - and has soared 43% in New York City.

Overall, schools in poorer districts spent $8,733 per pupil less in 2012 than those from wealthier ones, an inequity that grew by nearly 9% from before Cuomo took office in 2011, according to the study by a coalition of education advocacy groups opposing many of the reforms pushed by Cuomo.

While the 100 wealthiest districts spent on average more than $28,000 in state and local funding per kid in 2012, the 100 poorest districts in the state spent closer to $20,000 per student, the report found.

The report, obtained by the Daily News, is set to be released Monday. The coalition includes the Alliance for Quality Education, which is backed by the powerful teachers unions, the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York, Opportunity Action, and National Opportunity to Learn.

...

The inequity gaps were made worse by nearly $400 per pupil, the report says, after Cuomo won a 2% cap on local property tax increases that made it more difficult for needy districts to raise needed money, the report says.

Cuomo has already attacked the report, his spokesman couching the attack in the usual language deformers use - lies and misdirections:

Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said that the state provides three times as much per pupil in high-need districts than it does in low-need ones.

State education aid per pupil actually went up 9.3% during Cuomo’s first term, with a significantly higher percentage going to poorer districts, he said.

“It’s ludicrous that some special interests are seeking to create a false choice between closing the achievement gap between rich and poor districts and the Governor’s efforts to protect taxpayers, while also injecting accountability and innovation into the system,” Azzopardi said.

Notice the Cuomo flack doesn't address the funding inequity findings in the report at all - instead he states that education aid went up 9.3% overall in Cuomo's first term, which doesn't explain away the reports inequity charges in the least.

Classic Cuomo - here's a number that has nothing to do with the argument, accept it and move on, there's nothing to see here.

State aid goes up, but districts have less money because of the tax cap - that doesn't mean districts have more money, as the Cuomo flack suggests.

In addition, even if we take the Cuomo flack at face value (always a danger actually) and believe that state education aid per pupil went up 9.3% during Cuomo's first term, with a "significantly higher percentage going to poorer districts," that still doesn't address the report charges that "schools in poorer districts spent $8,733 per pupil less in 2012 than those from wealthier ones, an inequity that grew by nearly 9% from before Cuomo took office in 2011."

Even the NY Times editorial page, usually a friend to the kind of teacher-centered education reform Cuomo plans for his next term, gets that funding is the central issue in New York education:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s forthcoming State of the State address is expected to focus on what can be done to improve public education across the state.

If he is serious about the issue, he will have to move beyond peripheral concerns and political score-settling with the state teachers’ union, which did not support his re-election, and go to the heart of the matter. And that means confronting and proposing remedies for the racial and economic segregation that has gripped the state’s schools, as well as the inequality in school funding that prevents many poor districts from lifting their children up to state standards.

These shameful inequities were fully brought to light in 2006, when the state’s highest court ruled in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York that the state had not met its constitutional responsibility to ensure adequate school funding and in particular had shortchanged New York City.

A year later, the Legislature and Gov. Eliot Spitzer adopted a new formula that promised more help for poor districts and eventually $7 billion per year in added funding. That promise evaporated in the recession, spawning two lawsuits aimed at forcing the state to honor it.

A lawsuit by a group called New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights estimates that, despite increases in recent years, the state is still about $5.6 billion a year short of its commitment under that formula.

A second lawsuit was filed on behalf of students in several small cities in the state, including Jamestown, Port Jervis, Mount Vernon and Newburgh. It says that per pupil funding in the cities, which have an average 72 percent student poverty rate, is $2,500 to $6,300 less than called for in the 2007 formula, making it impossible to provide the instruction and other services needed to meet the State Constitution’s definition of a “sound basic education.”

These communities and others like them are further disadvantaged by having low property values and by a statewide cap enacted in 2011 that limits what money they are able to raise through property taxes. And last year the New York State United Teachers union said that the cap had been particularly harmful to poorer districts.

These inequalities are compounded by the fact that New York State, which regards itself as a bastion of liberalism, has the most racially and economically segregated schools in the nation. A scathing 2014 study of this problem by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, charged that New York had essentially given up on this problem. It said, “The children who most depend on the public schools for any chance in life are concentrated in schools struggling with all the dimensions of family and neighborhood poverty and isolation.”

The Cuomo administration seemed not to acknowledge these issues in a letter last month to the chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents and the commissioner of education in which it promised “an aggressive legislative package” to improve education in the state. Among the dozen issues it said it wanted to address were strengthening the teacher evaluation system, improving the process for removing low-performing teachers and improving teacher training.

The regents agreed that these were legitimate issues needing attention. But they also noted that these reforms were unlikely to improve the schools unless they were paired with new investments along the lines of the $2 billion in extra spending that the regents had recommended earlier. No less pointedly, they urged Mr. Cuomo to address the “deeply disturbing inequalities in resources” that exist between poor and wealthy districts, as well as the destructive pattern of segregation. Mr. Cuomo must take on both of these central issues.

You know Cuomo's not coming in with any significant funding changes - that would make his hedge fundie donors and Wall Street criminal friends very, very sad since they might have to pay a little more out of their pockets.

Cuomo has no intention of making his donors or business criminal friends sad.

As for the segregation issue, well, that's a complex one that can't be fixed by Cuomo sticking some mandates into the state budget - so there's no way he's addressing that problem either.

The Cuomo attack on teachers is coming instead.

But the counterattack is coming too - the education problems Cuomo points to as "statewide" are limited to districts with poverty and income inequality issues and these problems are being exacerbated by Cuomo's current policies and future "reform" plans.

Mayor Bloomberg Plans On Bringing NYC's Homeless Problem To The Rest Of The World

Mayor Bloomberg, fresh from arguing that there's no place as good as NYC to be homeless and down on your luck, brags that the consulting firm he has put together to help governments around the world make their income inequality problems as bad as NYC's is very much in demand:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, burnishing his legacy in all five boroughs this week as he prepares to leave office, shed a sliver of light today on the new consulting firm he’s planning to found once he leaves office, aimed at helping cities across the world.


Mr. Bloomberg, who was in Brooklyn to herald the opening of a new ice skating center in Prospect Park, told reporters that many other cities want to replicate the “wonderful things” New York has accomplished in his tenure.

“We’ve got enormous demand and we’ve had for years now from other cities around the world, not just around the country of, ‘How do you do these wonderful things?’” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We are, no matter we may whip ourselves, but we are the poster child for most of the good things that have happened in big cities.”

And what are some of those good things he's brought to NYC that he now wants to bring to the rest of the world?

Why despair, hopelessness and abject poverty of course!

Wonkette has the story:

So we have all read the New York Times story about homelessness in New York, yes? And we have all cried for the smart, tough little girl named Dasani, who lives in a “520-square-foot room with her parents and seven siblings” in a most wretched shelter, where life is most wretched, and we have all said, “Goddamn, this is unacceptable and something must be done.” Yes?

No. Apparently, some of us think, ‘Meh, that’s just God for ya.’ Some of us who happen to be bazillionaires and soon-to-be-ex-mayors of New York.

Asked today if he was similarly moved by the story, current Mayor Michael Bloomberg told Politicker he’d had a different reaction.

While calling her life story “really quite extraordinary,” Mr. Bloomberg insisted Dasani’s situation was not representative of the city’s broader homeless population. 

Well, actually, Mr. Mayor, the point of the story is that actually, Dasani is not “really quite extraordinary.”

Yet Dasani is among 280 children at the shelter. Beyond its walls, she belongs to a vast and invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression, in the most unequal metropolis in America. 

But hey, don’t blame the city or its mayor for that. Nope, blame God.

“This kid was dealt a bad hand. I don’t know quite why. That’s just the way God works. Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of us are not,” he said. 

Yes, God sure does work in mysterious ways, arbitrarily dealing bad hands like that. Sometimes he hands out lots of money, like to Mayor Bloomberg, who is just lucky that way, and sometimes he does not. Shrug, we guess. Whatcha gonna do? Hey, maybe you can fight the scourge of extra-large sodas! Sure, God invented the Big Gulp, but that’s, like, a Serious Problem, the kind of problem that a mayor should do his very best to do something about. Unlike homeless children living in filth and squalor and where guards sexually assault their moms, because that’s just bad luck. Sorry, Dasani and the thousands of children like you, but if you wanted to be not poor and homeless in one of the wealthiest cities in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, you should have asked God for better luck.

Yeah, NYC surely is the poster child for most of the good things that have happened in big cities and I'm sure many other cities can't wait to have Bloomberg and his consultant group bring them what he's brought to NYC.

Stupid Shit Education Reformers Say: Education Nation Edition

There are two ways to improve our schools. Hire better people and improve the ones we have. Everything else is just noise. #EducationNation
— Todd (@ToddWhitaker) October 6, 2013

Gotta love the motivational speaker/education professor/car salesman Todd Whitaker weighing in on complex issues like public education, poverty and teaching with so pithy and ignorant a tweet.

But what else can you expect from a guy who makes his living selling snake oil?

This is the kind of bullshit you get from Education Nation and NBC, indeed, from the corporate-owned media as a whole, when they cover education.

It gives a forum for this kind of stuff.

My response:

No, Todd, dealing with issues affecting students, schools, teachers and learning is not just "noise."

It's called trying to find solutions to complex issues in an increasingly complex, rapidly changing (some would say "devolving") world.

That you think this sort of thing is nothing but "noise"shows nothing but your own ignorance and inability to see beyond your corporate reform ideology.

Poverty matters.

What is happening outside schools in the culture at large, the nation at large, the world at large matters.

These things affect what happens in schools.

One more thing to say about this, Todd:

Bloomberg's Real Estate Policies Drive Increase In NYC Poverty

This must be the fault of schools and teachers:

The latest U.S. Census data is drawing a troubling picture of the struggles of many New Yorkers living in poverty.

It also shows the number of city residents living below the poverty level is on the rise.

According to the data, 21.2 percent of New Yorkers are in households below that level.

That includes 31 percent of children age 17 and under.

Meanwhile, 19.1 percent of those 65 years and older are also below the poverty level.

Nationwide, for a family of four, poverty is defined as living off less than $23,492 a year.

NYC is way above the nationwide average:

The Census data shows 15.9 percent of Americans nationwide, or roughly 48.8 million, lived below the poverty level in 2012.

One big reason, besides the economic downturn of '09 for the increase in poverty in NYC?

Bloomberg's real estate policies:

Nearly 40 percent of the city's landmass will have been rezoned by the end of Bloomberg's reign — probably his most significant legacy, especially considering the new construction the zoning changes enabled. The particulars vary by neighborhood, but the driving idea has been unvarying: Development equals economic growth.

Yet success drives up rents and strains the finances of longtime middle-class residents. Nearly one third of New York's renters now spend more than half their monthly income on shelter… As the proportion of millionaires climbs, so does the share of New Yorkers living at or near the poverty line. 

Bloomberg has made this city a luxury product for the wealthy.

Everyone else, as far as our billionaire mayor is concerned, can go screw themselves.

Let Me Know When The Education Reformers Address This

Here's some informational text for you.

The Grapes of Wrath, 21st Century Edition.

The Consequences Of Christie's Rule

Two stories in the Newark Star-Ledger caught my eye this morning.

The first was this one:

Gov. Chris Christie’s cutbacks in school funding violate the state’s mandate to provide children "a thorough and efficient" education, a court-appointed Special Master declared today in a finding that could force the governor to come up with millions more for schools.

The opinion by Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne, who was appointed by the state Supreme Court in January, will now be considered by the state’s highest court, potentially setting the stage for another historic confrontation on an issue that has been litigated for more than 40 years.

"The difficulty in addressing New Jersey’s fiscal crisis and its constitutionally mandated obligation to educate our children requires an exquisite balance not easily attained," Doyne wrote. "Despite the state’s best efforts, the reductions fell more heavily upon our high risk districts and the children educated within those districts."

This was the second:

The Great Recession pushed thousands of New Jerseyans below the federal poverty level in 2009, causing the state’s rate to spike to the highest it’s been since at least 2002, a report released Tuesday finds.

The recession also took its toll on the state’s youngest residents, according to a separate report to be released today by the nonprofit Advocates for Children of New Jersey. Close to one-third of the state’s 2 million children were living in low-income families, more youths were out of both school and work, and slightly more children were abused or neglected, the group found.

In 2009, 9.4 percent of the state’s residents lived in poverty, compared with the national average of 14.3 percent. New Jersey’s rate has not risen above 8.7 percent since 2002, the first year it was calculated under the formula now used.

"New Jersey poverty is markedly worse by every measure," said Melville Miller Jr., president of New Jersey Legal Services, which released the poverty report. The numbers are "stunning, and terribly troubling," he added.

The report found 799,099 New Jerseyans lived below the poverty line in 2009. Children and the state’s Hispanic population in particular suffered sharp increases.

I'm sure Christie's school budget cuts, cuts to state aid, and tax cuts for rich people won't make these dire circumstances in New Jersey worse.