Mayor de Blasio at an education announcement (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)
Once again, New York City public school students and families are experiencing whiplash. Last year, the city took steps to improve equity, transparency, and accountability in high school admissions. Now, at the eleventh hour of the next admissions cycle, Mayor de Blasio announced he might back away from last year’s promise to eliminate geographic priorities for high schools.
We can’t have any geographic priorities reinstated — they prioritize school admission to students who live in certain areas, advantaging affluent families, systematically denying marginalized students from accessing well-resourced high schools, and reinforcing segregation. Such exclusionary policies foreclose access and opportunity to too many students.
New York City’s high school admissions cannot revert to pre-pandemic “business as usual,” morally or practically. A reversion to the pre-pandemic status quo would mean a reinstallment of several of the most egregious policies proven to fuel segregation in city schools. This tragic misstep would happen at a time when the global pandemic continues to disrupt our lives, having additionally laid bare the disproportionate and devastating impact of systemic racism on Black and brown students and communities. Instead of moving backward, New York City needs to prioritize equity and recovery in school admissions.
Our report, The Next Step, issued by a coalition of advocates, services providers, and experts, lays out recommendations to do just that. A central tenet of the report is that the city must adopt considered and deliberate equity measures to affirmatively desegregate schools: the elimination of exclusionary measures such as geographic priorities alone will not do the job.
For one, New York City needs to make good on its promise to reform admissions screens. Screens are another exclusionary policy, and more widespread in New York City than anywhere else, that public schools use to select students based on an array of admissions standards. Last year, the city pledged to pause middle school screens, which in just one year already made sought-after middle schools significantly more accessible. We call on Mayor de Blasio to make last year’s “pause” on middle school screens permanent.
High school screens need reform too. Pre-pandemic, high schools used screens like attendance, punctuality, grades, and state test scores (among other criteria such as tests and auditions) to judge whether eighth-graders could attend certain public schools. The pandemic forced the city to abandon many of these criteria, which research has shown to be unreliable, biased, and unfair. The city’s next step must be to implement policies that make the process of assigning students to high schools more equitable and just.
We recommend that the city require schools to opt in to screening and provide an educational justification for the use of any screens. For instance, using criteria like grades or attendance, which were not reliably collected during the height of the pandemic, would be patently unfair and unfounded. Any metrics the city approves must be reliable and transparent without systematically excluding historically marginalized students, such as those from low-income families, in temporary housing, or with disabilities, and English Language Learners.
More importantly, the city should mandate equitable admissions priorities for high schools citywide. Since the first “set-aside” program implemented in 2012, New York City schools have made strides with expanding the “Diversity in Admissions” initiative, which now includes over 160 programs. This voluntary effort increased “set asides” in admissions for children who are English Language Learners, in the child welfare system, in temporary housing, or from low-income families. While we applaud this step in the right direction, much more is needed. The city can use readily available socioeconomic and demographic indicators to level the playing field and provide marginalized students the priority they need to access appropriate high schools of their choice.
The city has the tools and data needed to elevate equity in high school admissions. It just needs the political will and moral fortitude to do so.
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Nyah Berg is the Executive Director of NY Appleseed. Dora Galacatos is the Executive Director of Fordham Law School's Feerick Center for Social Justice. Laura B. Petty is the former Amanda Rose Laura Foundation Education Law Fellow, Fordham Law School's Feerick Center for Social Justice.
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Gale Brewer, the author (photo: (Kevin P. Coughlin / Office of the Governor)
As New York City faces the continuing challenges of COVID-19 and new opportunities, the next Speaker of the City Council will need to have the experience, relationships, and know-how to make government work for Council Members and their constituents.
Traditionally, the New York City Council has functioned in a top-down decision-making process. As Speaker, I'll lead a more member-driven body that empowers Council Members to vote their conscience.
I know that from my own experience on the Council, individual members are not always properly supported. That’s a primary reason why I'm running to be Speaker. I'll make sure that Council Members have more budget to hire talented staff, are assisted with expenses such as renting a district office (with funds that are separate from personnel budget), and that there are no favorites or needless intrigue with the Council's central staff on issues related to land use, the city budget, and bill drafting.
Should you elect me as your Speaker, I will leverage the significant political capital and goodwill that I have earned over decades of public service. I will collaborate using my working relationships with key leaders and partners in government, the nonprofit sector, and business to position you to succeed in delivering tangible improvement in the lives of your constituents.
As we enter 2022 with an extraordinarily diverse Council, the most diverse in history, we need to make sure that all of our borough delegations, caucus groups, and constituencies are represented in leadership and that they chair significant committees. I would consider broadening the leadership and enhancing the role of the committees to ensure that they are more productive. We need more voices at the table.
My track record, including eight years as Manhattan Borough President and 12 years on the City Council, has proven that I know how to lead in a collaborative way by being receptive to the ideas and needs of my colleagues, labor unions, advocates, and everyday New Yorkers.
That’s how we tackled discrimination in hiring by passing the Fair Chance Act, how we successfully took on big business by winning paid sick leave for hourly workers, and how we improved data-sharing in government by passing the Open Data Bill. As Borough President, I strengthened the Manhattan Community Boards by mirroring the demographics of the Community Boards to the districts and, through training, professionalized the work of both the staff and the members. These improvements proved essential as my office and the Community Boards faced and completed 200 ULURPs in the last eight years.
There are many good people running for Speaker, but I believe that I am better prepared to make city government work more efficiently and with greater benefit for all New Yorkers.
As many of you already know, I am low-key. I do not seek the spotlight. I speak my mind, I open my own doors, I carry my own bags and I order my own coffee — no sugar, with half-and-half. My focus will be an open and responsive speakership that delivers results for members. I have no plan or intention to use this position as a stepping-stone, and thus will have no ulterior agenda in my speakership in the kinds of decisions we as a body undertake.
Throughout my career, I have been passionate about cultivating and mentoring the next generation of leaders, including thousands of interns, students at CUNY — where I teach, including current and former staff, some of whom serve or have served at the highest levels of government. If elected Speaker, I commit to serving in the role for only four years, so colleagues will have the opportunity to bring their own perspectives to the Speaker position.
I have long-believed that strong, collaborative leadership within the Council enables it to work productively with and independently from the Mayor. Remember (a tidbit I like to tell my students), the State Constitution requires municipalities to have a legislative body; not a mayor. The Council is supposed to set the policy. The Council must be a strong, independent branch of government – a co-equal branch – but being strong does not mean that the Council and Mayor can’t work together.
Policy and budget proposals must be analyzed by the Council, and the Council should be an oversight body while partnering with the Administration to better serve the needs of every New Yorker. That is why I am hopeful and excited to partner with my fellow Council Members to make New York City, the greatest city on this planet, even greater than before.
Thank you for your leadership and partnership.
Gale A. Brewer
Candidate for New York City Council Speaker
Council Member-elect (D-6th Council District)
27th Manhattan Borough President
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Central Park, from doors-off helicopter flight (photo: Julia Vitullo-Martin, the author)
Thanksgiving! “One of NYC’s most beloved days of the year,” announces notorious doors-off helicopter company, FLYNYON, advertising its $489 seats over Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer immediately responded by contacting the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the NYPD “for answers. Both say it’s handled. Yet the website continues to advertise these tix.”
New York has only one path out of the helicopter mess we’re in and that’s via our next mayor, Eric Adams. He has declared war on lawlessness of all kinds—and we need him to launch a war on the lawless skies over New York.
Despite a 2010 ban by the New York City Economic Development Corporation on helicopter tour flights over Central Park, the Empire State Building, Governors Island, and Brooklyn, a prohibition on all Sunday tour flights, and a 2018 ban on doors-off tour flights, flights over scenic areas continue and complaints are higher than ever. Central Park itself seems to endure a near-constant buzz on weekends—150 flights on Sundays, said the New York Times.
The problem is that much of the worst behavior originates out of town. FLYNYON, which chartered the helicopter that crashed into the East River in 2018, killing five young sightseers, originates in Kearny, NJ. Other tour companies fly from several other New Jersey cities, Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut, and points farther away. New York cannot directly regulate flights coming elsewhere since the FAA oversees the American National Airspace System, preempting local rules.
While Mayor de Blasio has said he opposes “non-essential” helicopter flights, he has taken no action. Can Adams be effective where de Blasio has failed? Adams will have two important advantages. First, he’s one of the most attractive new Democrats nationally, and will be able to get an audience in Washington. Second, he will have a powerful bi-state anti-helicopter coalition behind him of 35 elected officials plus private groups, already formed by Brewer.
She summarized the problem neatly in a letter to federal Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Environmental Protection Administrator Michael Regan: “Helicopters are hovering over our homes and public spaces, flying in between tall buildings and tormenting our residents with incessant noise. These aircrafts operate over our cities, towns, and boroughs night and day, often without regard for public safety or quality of life.”
Under its freedom-to-fly principle the FAA promotes the aviation industry, in order to “keep air travel moving freely and safely.” To the FAA the skies are a highway, skyway is the FAA term, that should be open to all, just as highways are open to all. But just as Americans are now re-thinking highway and road policies, we should be re-thinking skyway policies. Congressional Representatives Jerrold Nadler, Carolyn Maloney, and Nydia Velazquez have introduced the Improving Helicopter Safety Act to ban non-essential flights.
Lawless Skies
“New York is just one giant landing field,” contended an anonymous Twitter account, encapsulating New York’s current situation after a pilot landed his helicopter in a vacant lot in Brooklyn, picked up two passengers, and flew off to Lakewood, New Jersey, pursued by an NYPD helicopter. On landing, the pilot had a “cordial” conversation with the NYPD officers, said Kevin McKenzie, the on-site manager at Lakewood Municipal Airport. No arrest. No legal ramifications. The NYPD referred the Daily Mail to the FAA, which is reportedly investigating the incident.
As if this wasn’t enough, @BanTheHellies, a ferocious anti-tour-heli account, tracked pilot Ilan Nahoom touring the harbor after the Brooklyn pick-up, circling the Statue of Liberty at 100 feet, then climbing rapidly to 600 feet, barely clearing the Verrazano Bridge. All illegal, but not a peep out of the NYPD.
Meanwhile, even as New Yorkers made 17,733 calls to the city’s own 311 portal about helicopter noise through the end of September of this year—triple last year’s—311 has since given up on accepting more, because “much of the airspace over New York City is uncontrolled.” Tour helicopters fly pretty much at will under the FAA’s Visual Flight Rules.
Corporate and commuter helicopters heed directions from the airport towers. A major reason that New York City is tortured by ever louder, lower-flying, aggressive helicopters is that the towers direct pilots to fly low to avoid jets, which also themselves seem to be flying low these days, often at 3,000 feet and under, according to FlightRadar.
Commuter Flights
Ponder the map below of the FAA flight routes for the metropolitan area: The primary southern route from JFK across New York to Newark—Brooklyn—is labeled the Park Route because it crosses Prospect Park as well as the Brooklyn Botanic Garden at its northeastern corner. And while the directions on the map clearly urge pilots to “fly neighborly” and to request heights of 2,000 feet, nearly all helicopters fly well below 1,500 feet, often at 900-1,100 feet. At this height, the heavy Sikorskis and Bells used for corporate commutation are deafeningly loud, “ruining our places of refuge,” tweeted Adrian Benepe, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
The northern route from the airports or the Hamptons (or when flying from New Jersey’s Teterboro or Caldwell) directs helicopters to New York’s other sacred park, Central. I keep FlightRadar open on my computer and have seldom seen a corporate or commuter flight above 1,200 feet. I know to look because the commuter flights roar low and loud through the skies above my building.
Rob Wiesenthal, CEO of Blade Urban Air Mobility, which schedules flights to the airports, the Hamptons, and many other destinations, says of flying into New York’s Class Bravo airspace, “the airport will advise the pilot where to enter the airspace as well as the route and altitude they are to fly. Often they will prescribe you to fly the tracks route, which crosses parts of Brooklyn.” The tracks are the parks.
This is an important aspect of what makes the commuter flights so objectionable: as currently routed, commuter flights inevitably disturb the peace of untold numbers of New Yorkers. As Brooklyn Botanic Garden CEO Adrian Benepe says, “Noise is 80% of the problem.”
Wiesenthal argues that it should be possible to confer with the FAA and airport towers to ease the situation. “We need to help our operators obtain permission to use routes that fly over fewer residences and at altitudes that reduce the level of sound that can be heard on the ground. We’re hopeful that Mayor Adams and his team can help us collaborate with key regulators such as the FAA and the local air traffic control to minimize the sound impact of aircraft in Brooklyn.”
And not just Brooklyn, I would add, but all of New York. Can Mayor Adams intervene? He’s not the kind of leader to accept an ongoing, permanent assault on his city.
It’s worth remembering that despite the territoriality of federal agencies and the egregiousness of federal judicial decisions declaring New York City powerless, anti-helicopter activism has had important victories over the last few years. Led by all-volunteer Stop the Chop, advocates in 2021 convinced New York’s tourist office, NYC & Company, to stop promoting helicopter flights. In 2016 activists helped negotiate a 50% reduction in tourist flights from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, from 60,000 to 30,000, and eliminated all tourist flights on Sundays. The Downtown Manhattan Heliport has been a good citizen ever since. Activists in the Hamptons in 2012 forced a re-routing of helicopters to a water route along the North Shore.
But fundamental change will require federal action because, as District Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote overturning local helicopter regulations in National Helicopter Corp. v City of New York in 1997, Congress expressly preempted any state laws which relate to the "price, route, or service of an air carrier." But New York has a large, strong congressional delegation that has come to its aid in the past. All New York needs, argues Manhattan Institute senior fellow Nicole Gelinas, “is a congressional amendment to restrict the airspace in certain areas to emergency helicopters. Daniel Patrick Moynihan would have gotten it done; in the Senate, he once amended the Clean Air Act to outlaw tolls on the Brooklyn Bridge. If the city’s politicians can’t convince New York senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, to restrict the airspace above Central Park and other theoretically quiet urban oases, it’s because they’re unwilling, not unable.”
If ever New York had a mayor capable of negotiating from a position of strength on its behalf it’s incoming Mayor Adams. He’s clearly up to the task. New Yorkers just have to convince him to act on behalf of our parks, waterfronts, and landmarks.
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Julia Vitullo-Martin is a long-time editor and writer on cities. On Twitter @JuliaManhattan.
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