Cross-Agency

Ensure the city’s social service agencies can provide vital services to New York’s children and families

• Reverse proposed vacancy reductions to DHS, HRA, HPD, DOHMH, DOE, DSS, and DYCD and invest in the community-based non-profits with whom city agencies contract.

Healthy

Support children’s behavioral health needs in schools and communities

• Baseline $5 million in funding for the Mental Health Continuum, a model for integrating a range of direct services to students with significant mental health needs in high-needs schools partnered with hospital-based clinics.
• Maintain funding for Council-funded Mental Health Initiatives, including Children Under Five, Court-Involved Youth, Mental Health Services for Vulnerable populations, Developmental, Psychological, and Behavioral Health, Autism Awareness, and LGBTQ Youth Mental Health.
• Provide $28.5 million to bolster existing school-based mental health clinics and to bring school-based mental health clinics into 100 new schools.
• Invest $120 million to expand restorative practices to 500 schools.
• Invest $2 million to create a new Youth Mental Health Initiative to provide flexible mental health services for youth programs run by CBOs, with a focus on out-of-school time.

Enhance access to anti-hunger programs and services.

• Increase and baseline HRA’s budget to support CBOs in benefits outreach and streamline benefits applications.
• Increase and baseline funding to a total of $59 Million for the Community Food Connection (CFC), formerly known as the Emergency Food Assistance Program (EFAP).
• Invest an additional $200 million in Capital funding for the continued redesign of middle and high school cafeterias.
• Invest $37 million so that all school can have sustained, flexible food and nutrition education funding.
• Increase compensation and head count at the DOE’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS) by $3.5 million.

Protect children from lead poisoning.

• Pass and fund legislation designed to close loopholes and strengthen enforcement in existing lead poisoning prevention laws, including Intro 5, Intro 6, Intro 193, Intro 200, and Intro 750.

Housed

• Restore and baseline $118.5 million for emergency rental arrears assistance.
• Eliminate the 90-day shelter stay rule that requires individuals and families to be in shelter for 90 days before becoming eligible for CityFHEPS and eliminate the requirements for a shelter stay history and housing court proceedings to qualify for CityFHEPS.
• Expand CityFHEPS eligibility to include undocumented families and to include families and individuals that enter city shelters through pathways other than just DHS, including HPD, domestic violence survivors, and runaway youth.
• Make youth categorically eligible for CityFHEPS vouchers and eliminate the 90-day stay requirement for runaway and child welfare and justice-involved youth once they enter the DHS shelter system.
• Maintain funding for the 16 Housing Specialists in the DYCD-RHY System after federal funding expires ($2.23 million).

Educated

Continue the path to universal birth-to-five care:

• Restore Preliminary Budget cuts to 3-K to remain on track for reaching universality.
• Prioritize offering onsite enrollment through providers of care and converting unfilled seats to full day, year-round seats for 3K as well as infant and toddler care.
• Uphold the city’s commitment to open a preschool special education seat for each of the nearly 800 students who need one and invest and baseline $50 million in funding to ensure all preschool special education students have access to the evaluations and services they need. Currently, up to 800 special education students are without a preschool slot and many who are in school lack the proper resources needed to thrive.
• Invest in community outreach and engagement that is culturally and linguistically appropriate and leverages trusted community messengers to improve access to and enrollment in UPK, 3K and infant and toddler care.
• Baseline $20 million in funding for Promise NYC, which allows for child care access for undocumented families.

Support the child care workforce:

• Finalize catching up on back payments, bringing all center-based providers to no less than 75% of their full contract value for FY2022 and increase FY2023 advance payments to 75% of full contract value to address emerging and serious payment delays for the current fiscal year and future fiscal years.
• Fund the next stage of early childhood education parity by ensuring staff left out of the initial agreement (early childhood directors and support staff in community-based organizations and preschool special education programs) are included, that longevity is factored into salary increases, and that a minimum wage floor of $25 is established for all support staff.
• Ensure home-based family child care providers benefit from the increased market rate at the state level (reimbursement has increased to 80 percent from 65 percent).

Support the needs of bi/multilingual and immigrant students and students experiencing homelessness:

• Extend and baseline $3.3 million to maintain 25 DOE Community Coordinators to support students experiencing homelessness.
• Baseline $3 million to add comprehensive services to the six new English Language Learner (ELL) Transfer School Programs in Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn

Invest in community schools:

• Maintain $9.16 million in funding to continue making community schools whole in light of the city’s modified funding formula that resulted in budget cuts to 52 community schools across the city.
• Baseline $60.3 million in funding for Community Schools to ensure sustainability when federal funding lapses in FY26

Ensure adequate funding for all existing education initiatives impacted by lapses in federal funding:

• Develop a long-term funding plan for the education initiatives funded by COVID-19 relief money, which is set to expire in the fall of 2024

Safe

Ensure there is a robust child welfare prevention workforce and support for families.

• Invest $5 million to guarantee bus service for students in foster care.
• Ensure the prevention workforce is included in any human services COLA.
• Restore the PEGs of $13.6 million in FY23 and the $20.5 million in outyears for New York Public Libraries as they are essential community hubs.
• Expand the Family Enrichment Centers model of primary prevention but shift oversight responsibility of the centers away from ACS and to another city agency.

Focus investments on education, year-round employment, and development for youth

• Enhance supports that enable special populations of youth – including justice-involved, child-welfare involved, undocumented, and homeless youth – to access year-round youth development and employment training opportunities.
• Create a path to universal and year-round youth services by establishing 12-month youth service contracts.
• Increase the cost-per-participant rates for COMPASS and SONYC to set a wage floor of $21/hour for staff.
• Invest $4.8 million in GreenThumb to hire Community Engagement Coordinators, create full time youth engagement positions, and provide compensation to youth and gardeners.
• Invest $22 million for the expansion of Work, Learn, Grow
• Invest $11 million to ensure all SYEP participants can receive MetroCards

Promote community safety by investing in youth-led community-rooted initiatives and meet the needs of special populations of youth.

• Expand investment in Cure Violence, credible messenger programs, youth engagement programs and other community-rooted programs that employ a public health approach to community safety.
• Fund comprehensive civil legal services for justice-involved young people facing barriers to employment, housing, accessing public benefits, or any other legal need.
• Close Rikers and ensure the City remains on track with the closure plan.
• Redirect $425 million funding from school policing into opportunities for young people in schools and communities, reject the Mayor’s proposal to hire 500 for school safety agent vacancies, and reject the Mayor’s $47.5 million “Enhancing Security Measures” proposal that would install remote surveillance technologies in our schools.
• Invest $2.42 million to create 40 additional DYCD RHY beds for youth ages 21-24
• Invest $1.62 million to maintain funding for the 16 Peer Navigator positions in the DYCD-RHY System

Economically Secure

• Fund a cost of living (COLA) increase for human services workforce to combat pay inequality among human services workers.
• Expand Fair Fares income eligibility to 200% of FPL to ensure that low-income families have access to public transportation.
• Add $5 million expand guaranteed income programs in the city to for low-income mothers with infants as well as child-welfare and justice-involved youth.