Our guidance counselor came to the classroom for a brief, and awkward conversation with my English class. One of our schoolmates had committed suicide. It was almost exactly a year after the deaths of two other schoolmates had left my classmates and me reeling. The counselor asked us how we felt, and it felt strange for an adult working in the school to ask us about our emotions.
Many New York City students would like to have someone to whom they can turn. But a large percentage of New York City schools offer no mental health services.
According to the New York State Coalition for School Based Primary Care, one in five children in New York City have a diagnosable mental, emotional or behavioral disorder, and at least one in ten has a serious emotional disturbance that interferes with their ability to function on a daily basis. Seventy percent of teens with a severe diagnosis do not receive any mental health services, and about 100,000 teens are on waiting lists for mental health services in New York City.
To help more young people get the care they need, New York City Councilmember Gale Brewer and representatives of a number of advocacy groups rallied outside City Hall in June to try to convince the city to provide $6 million to fund at least one full-time clinical social worker or psychologist in each school-based health center. The groups also wanted to open school-based health centers, where students can receive medical, mental and dental services, in schools that don’t have them.
Advocates like Adria Cruz-Peña, school health services manager of the Children's Aid Society, thought that the time was right for this cause. “When we were pushing for this, we had just learned about the killing scene in Virginia,” says Cruz-Peña, referring to the events at Virginia Tech where a student with a history of psychological problems killed 32 people and himself this spring. “We think this type of thing can be prevented when you have timely mental health services and information.”
But the funding was not included in the city budget adopted in June. “It’s so disappointing because we know the impact that the services have on the mental health of our teenagers,” Cruz-Peña said.
The Coalition for School Based Primary Care plans to try again next year.
The New York State School-Based Health Centers Program, which Cruz-Peña calls “the best-kept secret in New York,” started in 1981 to treat children in low-income, high-risk communities, many of whom had no health insurance. The program sought to provide health services to children through teams of school nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, physician assistants, community health aides, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, health educators, nutritionists and dentists. There are now 61 such centers in New York City high schools and middle schools, according to the New York State Coalition for School Based Primary Care, and many other states have introduced similar services.
Advocates of the centers say that providing mental health services can make a profound difference. According to the Children’s Aid Society, students who received mental health services in the centers showed declines in depression and improvement in self-concept. They also determined that adolescents were far more likely to seek help for depression and suicidal thoughts at school-based programs than ones in the larger community.
But not all schools have health centers, and of those that do, not all provide adequate mental health services. One quarter of the school-based centers provide no mental health services, one quarter have only one mental health provider for up to 4,000 students, and only half have one full-time provider.
Children in schools without school-based health centers can have a tough time accessing mental health services. Although the Department of Education must hire a school nurse for every New York City public school, the nurses do not have to be trained in mental health issues.
The school based health centers are funded through grants from the state and city government or agreements with private health centers or nearby hospitals. This almost guarantees that not every school will have a center since not every school is near a hospital or able to get a grant from the government. Few of the centers can bill Medicaid and virtually none can bill private insurance, so most are not reimbursed for the services they provide.
Advocates for the centers say they provide a valuable service. “Young people have issues,” said Brewer. “Communities are challenged with drugs, incest, housing and there’s nobody to talk to. You need someone to talk to and you need somebody on site because if you tell people to go to a hospital, they’re not going to go.
Teens who do not have access to these centers have few options beyond government health clinics, which Dr. Chris Kjolhede, a member of the steering committee of the Coalition for School Based Primary Care, describes as “understaffed and not necessarily teen friendly.”
Further many teens may be reluctant to go to them. Because mental illness has a ”stigma,” Brewer said, students might be reluctant to go to a clinic in an unfamiliar setting. But, she continued, ”If you’re at a [school based] health clinic, there is no stigma. No one knows who you’re going to see and it’s none of anyone’s business.”
But not everyone sees the need for more mental health facilities. Columnist Mike Males of Youth Today cites numerous studies showing that teens are happier than they have ever been. He also refers to a Kansas State University study that showed that only 5 percent of students use mental health services, a rate that has not changed in 15 years.
Brewer thinks there remains a pressing need. In New York City, she said, 5 percent still means a large number of students. “It’s just someone to talk,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be more than that.”
I can see her point. After the guidance counselor left my classroom, a quick glance around revealed bowed heads and watery eyes. It was clear many of us did need someone to talk to.
This article by April Daley, 17, a writer for New Youth Connections, written by and for New York City teens, is adapted from the pages of our partner, Youth Communication.
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Every afternoon during the school year, tens of thousands of New York City children stay after school, and many of them like it. While they enjoy activities, such as arts and crafts, games and homework help, their parents welcome the sense of security from knowing their children are safe, occupied and well taken care of.
But for 20,000 city students that could change this year. In New York City, 118 after-school programs will face major budget cutbacks, and some will have to shut down entirely. The federal government’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers program has declined to offer the programs another year of funding. Although the programs also receive support from New York City and New York State, Washington was the main source of funding. The learning centers’ funds were distributed through the state education department.
The endangered programs, which have been receiving funds since 2003, have been barred by the federal government from applying for a new round of money.
Good Shepherd Services funds two after-school programs in the Bronx, one at MS 206, the Ann Mersereau School, and the other at M.S. 118, the William Niles School. The programs offer arts, science, homework help, student government, peer leadership and community service. But the center has already informed parents that the programs might close down and has warned staff about lay-offs. Each of the programs has one full-time employee and 20 part-time workers
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“Unless we raise funds we can’t support the programs. We need $185,000,” said Jim Marley, director of Bronx Network for Good Shepherd Services. “It’s terrible and unfair. Children do great in these programs. It’s a proactive and positive approach, and they don’t get into trouble.”
In Bay Ridge Brooklyn, a non profit organization, offers an after-school program at PS 170, the Lexington School. This program serves 220 students and has a waiting list of 60.
Christie Hodgkins, director of after-school services at CAMBA, said that the program will remain open but will have to scale back. ““We know we are going to have to cut 60 to 80 slots and that is significant because there is already a need greater than what we are providing,” she said.
Even programs that will not feel the effects of the cuts immediately fear for their futures. Global Kids, a nonprofit organization that focuses mainly on after-school programs for high school kids, has sufficient funding for at least two years. But the organization’s director for after-school programs, Evie Hantzopoulos said, “We don’t know what’s going to happen two years from now. Every year this is the challenge of doing youth development and nonprofit work: anything can happen from year to year because there isn’t enough of a commitment I think from our government.”
A coalition of schools, community and youth leaders secured $7.5 million from the state for the threatened programs. But this number falls $23 million short of the amount needed to fully fund all endangered programs for another year. Lucy Friedman, president of the After-School Corporation, which supports programs in 322 New York City schools, said foundations could make up some of the shortfall. Advocates also hope the state will come through with additional funding.
Proponents of after-school programs say they offer an array of benefits. Friedman said that, besides providing a safe place for students to be after school, they also help students academically.
“They help because [the students] are engaged in activities -- whether it is karate or dance or photography. They are engaged in activities that help them advance, but also keep them off the streets or being home alone,” she said. “Those are hours that are most dangerous for kids both in terms of getting involved with drugs, getting pregnant, a time when they find trouble and trouble finds them.”
According to a report by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a national anti-crime organization, juvenile crime is more frequent between 3 to 6 p.m. As a result, after-school programs help decrease crime rates.
The Afterschool Alliance, another national nonprofit, conducted a formal evaluation of after-school programs and how they affect kids’ behavior, safety and family life. The group’s report concluded, “After-school programs help keep children safe, have a positive impact on behavior and discipline, and help relieve parents’ worries about their children’s safety.’’
And the need for such programs, supporters say, does not stop when children become teenagers. Hantzopoulos said high school students in particular require dynamic and meaningful after-school programs because they are going though a transitional stage.
“They need these opportunities because they want to do positive things, and we have a responsibility to provide them with programs that will help them develop, succeed, make a change and feel good about themselves,” she said. “Sometimes we are too quick to penalize them, put them in jail.” Arguing that it is “in our best interest to provide more tax dollars for after school programs,” Hantzopoulos said, “Maybe if we had more resources we wouldn’t have some of the situations we have right now.”
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As the fight to get more state money for New York City public schools wended its way through the courts for more than a decade, educators, parents, politicians and others occasionally stopped to fantasize: What would we do with all that money?
Now, with the 14-year-suit having reached a somewhat anticlimactic conclusion and the city set to receive an additional $3.2 billion from the state over the next four years, New Yorkers are learning the answer to that question, and some education activists do not like it. Complaining that they have been shut out of the process, many want the city to spend more to reduce class size and improve middle schools -- and less on testing and charter schools. The dispute, aired at hearings throughout the city in early July, is about money to be sure, but it also concerns setting priorities for the nation’s largest school system and how success -- or failure -- should be measured.
The additional funds signal the end of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity suit brought in the 1990s. Under the state system of funding education, it charged, New York City schools did not have enough resources to provide public school students with the “sound, basic education” they are guaranteed under New York’s constitution. With the state’s highest court issuing its final ruling in the case late last year and a new governor in Albany, the state earlier this year agreed to give the city’s Department of Education an additional $700 million in state education funds for fiscal year 2008. This represents New York City’s share of the almost $1.8 billion hike in state education aid proposed by Governor Eliot Spitzer and approved by the legislature.
The largest chunk of the new state funds for New York City -- $334 million -- will go toward raises and fringe benefits approved in recent contracts with teachers and other school employees. The Department of Education will spend a bit more than $100 million on special education, another $213 million on pre-kindergarten programs and charter schools, and almost $150 million to help defray increased operating costs, particularly rising energy expenses.
But the bulk of the controversy surrounds the remaining $228 million. The state legislation dictates that districts use some of the new funding to finance improvements thought to boost student achievement: smaller class sizes, more learning time for students, full-day pre-kindergarten programs, efforts to improve teacher quality and restructuring of middle schools and high schools.
To receive this money -- $228 million in the city’s case -- the Department of Education has had to prepare so-called Contracts for Excellence describing how they would spend it. According to those contracts, the city will use about half the money to cut class size, with the remaining funds divided among the other four areas.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced this plan on July 5 -- about a week after school had closed for the summer and in the middle of a lazy week interrupted by the Fourth of July holiday. The department scheduled hearings in each of the five boroughs for the following week. By July 15, a revised plan would be sent to the state Board of Regents for approval.
The summer doldrums did not prevent a quick -- and generally critical reaction -- to the city’s plan. In a statement, Geri Palast, executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity charged that the city’s contract “raises more questions than it answers” and “lacks the necessary specificity and transparency to understand where and how the money will be spent.”
The controversy over the contracts echoes many other disputes that have surrounded public education in New York City since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took over the school system in 2002 and installed the Department of Education in the Tweed Courthouse.
Parental Involvement
The state legislature did not pass the law setting up the system and authorizing the funds until April, Excellence Inside Schools has reported. This gave the so-called “educrats” with offices in the Tweed Courthouse little time to devise a plan and put it out for public scrutiny and comment.
But that did not stop many critics from assailing the midsummer hearings. “The fact that these hearings are being held with no outreach to parents and community members, in the dead of summer, is indicative of tepid commitment of our Department of Education to the spirit of CFE,” City Councilmember Robert Jackson, the original plaintiff in the suit, said in testimony. While the hearings “technically comply” with state requirements, “they are implemented in such a way as to actively discourage widespread parental and community input,” he said.
At the Brooklyn hearing, held in a hot auditorium with a faulty sound system often overpowered by crying youngsters in the back (the Spanish translator was particularly difficult to hear), several speakers accused the department of simply going through the motions. “The only reason you’re having this hearing is it’s a required part of the Department of Education receiving the money,” the mother of a fifth grader complained.
The Department of Education representatives, some more attentive than others, did not respond to comments from the audience.
In the Bronx hearing, held on a sweltering Monday night, Ronn Jordan turned to sarcasm. “Good job on having this hearing without giving parents any notice,” he told the education department officials. “Maybe next month you could have it in the middle of the night at an undisclosed location because I think you got too many parents here.
To some parents and teachers, the hearings were another indication of what many see as the Department of Education’s high-handed ways. While the administration has installed parent coordinators in every school and set up a variety of advisory panels, critics say that the panels tends to be toothless, and Tweed prefers to get reactions after it has made a decision -- rather than taking the opinions of parents, students and teachers into account when formulating policy. The issue erupted earlier this year when the department, without consulting parents, altered city school bus routes, leaving many students with long waits or no transportation at all on some of the coldest mornings of the year. In the uproar that followed, the administration created the job of chief family engagement officer, and appointed Brooklyn parent and education activist Martine Guerrier to the post.
But many remain suspicions. Surveying the education officials, who he described as “Ivy League thoroughbreds with business and management degrees,” teacher Jeff Sorkin told the Brooklyn hearing the “plan is one again dictated by us by the Department of Education.”
Class Size
The city proposes adding 1,300 teachers and 400 new classes at a cost of $106 million next year. While that sounds like a lot of teachers, critics calculated it would cut class size by just a third of a student per room in the lowest grades.
At the July hearings, teachers describe how hard it is to deal with dozens of students at a time. Julie Woodward, a high school music teacher in the Bronx, cited classes with 50 teenagers, according to a transcript of the proceedings. “The chancellor shows no concern for the differences that you have to account for as a teacher. We’re talking 9th grade through 12th grade, special ed, regular ed, hearing impaired, all in the same class,” she said, adding that Klein “continues to direct us to teach everybody equally and demands that we justify personal attention to every kids’ needs. This is outrageous and it’s impossible.” A Brooklyn middle-school Spanish teacher described the challenges of helping a class of 39 students “try to grasp an unfamiliar language….It is not fair to them.”
“I don’t understand why Tweed cannot listen to teachers,” Dianne Stillman, an English teacher from John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx, said. “What is so difficult? Teachers have been telling you in high schools, give me 20 students in a class and I can reach the stars. What is so difficult about that?”
Bloomberg and his chancellor have repeatedly downplayed the role that smaller classes play in improving student performance. The administration successfully blocked a question on reducing class size from getting on the ballot, and in a proposal to improve education submitted to the courts in 2005, did not mention reducing class size. Klein has said repeatedly that students are better off in a large class with a good teacher than in a small class with a mediocre one. Class size only emerged in the Contract for Excellence because many principals pushed for it, according to the New York Sun.
Middle Schools
With grades six through eight generally considered the weakest link in the education system, many advocates urged that more money be focused in middle schools. Although the new budgeting system for city schools, called Fair Student Funding, is supposed to provide extra money to needy students and schools, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice say that many of the city’s worst performing middle schools will not see any additional funds. In these schools, a third or less of students meet the state standard for reading.
The advocates would like the Contracts for Excellence to redress this, putting more money into failing middle schools.
The fight over aid to middle schools is likely to receive increased attention later this year when a task force, appointed by the City Council and headed by New York University educator Pedro Noguera releases its recommendation on improving education for the city’s adolescents.
Setting Priorities
Speakers at the hearings also faulted the contracts for not spending more money on the city’s poorest and worst performing schools, on pre-kindergarten programs and on English language learners. And along with criticizing the plan for not spending in certain areas, some critics assailed it for what it does spend. In her testimony at the Bronx hearing, Randi Weingarten, president of the city’s United Federation of Teachers, called the proposal “a plan to fund the city’s own agenda.” For example, she noted, it sets aside $42 million for new testing.
The contracts also include money for publicly funded but privately run charter schools -- schools touted by Bloomberg and Klein as a means to offer parents and students more choice. But Michael Rebell, a lead lawyer for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, questioned the way these schools were treated. “Why should money going to charter schools be less accountable than money going to public schools,” he asked the Sun.
Numerous critics charged the outline for spending was vague, making it difficult to hold the educators responsible for it. “The proposal presented fails to provide any particulars regarding when or where new class space and new teachers will be added. There are no construction plans, timetables, or identification of which schools will receive more classrooms and teachers,” Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan of Queen, chair of the Assembly Education committee has said.
Paul Egan, District 11 representative for the UFT, found the vagueness of the proposal ironic for a system “that’s asking for accountability from teachers, for a system that’s asking for accountability from specific data.” On class size for example, the plan calls for additional classrooms and teachers and sets out some general parameters but does not detail where the additional teachers will go. It does not detail how the city will assess whether the program has been successfully implemented and what plan, if any, Tweed has to further reduce class size in the years ahead.
Under the state law, the city is supposed to submit a five-year plan to reduce the number of students in each city classroom, according to Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters. But, she said, the contracts fail to do that and offer “no real benchmarks, no goals, no timetables, not enough resources to the schools that need them most, and not enough space.”
And so some speakers urged the state to do for the Department of Education what the department proposes to do for principals, teachers and students: hold it accountable.
“No one wants the mayor and chancellor to fail in their efforts to improve our schools,” Patrick Sullivan, who was representing Borough President Scott Stringer, told the Manhattan hearing. “However, if they continue their refusal to plan for and spend new state funding as intended, the state must hold them accountable.”
Assemblymember Jim Brennan, who told the panel in Brooklyn he helped write the law creating the Contracts for Excellence, called on the department officials to heed the comments aired throughout the evening. And, he said, he would urge the state education department to make sure they do just that.