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April 3, 2019 Thank You To Our Advocates
As you know, state leaders finalized and adopted the State Budget for Fiscal Year 2019-2020 over the weekend. Our advocates who made trips to Albany to meet with legislators, who made phone calls or wrote letters made an impact on behalf of New York children. Their work helped us ensure the budget:
We have also seen other important policy advances in both the budget and in recent legislation, including the passage of The DREAM Act, The Child Victims Act, bail reform, the Comprehensive Contraception Coverage and Reproductive Health Acts, and codification of the Affordable Care Act and the New York State Health Exchange. We know that these legislative victories will provide critical supports and protections for immigrant youth, survivors of sexual assault, women, and New Yorkers living in poverty. However, there are several areas where the budget didn’t go far enough and substantially shortchanged critical programs. The budget agreement, for example, does not go far enough in investments in services for young children with developmental delays and disabilities, fails to create a statewide rental subsidy to tackle family homelessness, and continues to underfund preventive services that strengthen families. Moreover, the budget agreement will have a disproportionately harmful impact on New York City’s children and families by shifting important public health, public assistance and homeless services costs to the City. We look forward to continuing to work with our supporters on these issues. Even in areas where we didn’t see the progress we wanted, we helped lay important groundwork for ongoing advocacy. In many cases, advocacy is more like a marathon than a sprint. What’s Next Now that the State budget has been finalized, we are continuing our focus on the City’s budget. Mayor de Blasio already announced his Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year 2020 in March. We are expecting his more-detailed Executive Budget to come out by the end of April. Then throughout May, CCC and our colleagues will meet with City Council members and their staff and attend City Council budget hearings. Final budget negotiations will take place before the start of the city’s fiscal year on July 1. Although you’ll be hearing more from us as the budget process moves further along, we are already asking for your help on a couple of items. Salary Parity for CBO Educators The city is in the beginning stages of rolling out a birth-to-five education system. Although there are still many questions on the details of the rollout, community-based organizations (CBOs) will play a critical role in ensuring the success of the initiative. However, the city pays early educators at Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) 60 percent less than their peers at Department of Education (DOE). Save Summer Programs for 34,000 Middle School Students In his Preliminary Budget, Mayor de Blasio cut funding for 34,000 middle school students to attend summer programming. Summer programs are an essential part of a child’s education. They help prevent participating students from experiencing summer learning loss, while providing healthy food and engaging them in sports, social, and cultural activities. Summer programs also enable parents to leave their children in a safe and enriching environment while they work throughout July and August. Take action today and tell our City’s leaders to include funding for summer programming. |
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