NEWSLETTER
During the 2019-20 school year, New York teachers spent an average of $463 on school supplies. Alan Petersime / Chalkbeat

My name is Bianca Fortis, and I’m the education reporter at New York Focus. I always heard stories from my teacher relatives about how they had to buy their own classroom supplies. My cousin, an art teacher, routinely bought basic craft supplies like paper, paint, crayons, glue, scissors and clay. She even bought costumes for her students’ end-of-year performances.

As we head into the new school year, we’re asking teachers across New York State to share with us what they plan to spend on supplies for their classrooms.

We know it’s a long-standing practice for teachers to pay for classroom supplies out-of-pocket due to limited school budgets. But this extra cost places an undue burden on teachers. Many teachers turn to crowdfunding platforms in order to provide students with what they need to have a successful school year.

We are working with Chalkbeat New York to collect stories from teachers across the state. If you’re a teacher, I’d be so appreciative if you could fill out the survey linked below. And if you know any teachers, please help us by sharing the link with them.

 
 
Payments for newborns have reduced poverty elsewhere, but are a novel idea in New York.
By Julia Rock

This month, more than a million New Yorkers with children are receiving checks in the mail from the state. The payments of up to $330 are a one-time supplement to the state’s child tax credit, passed as part of the state budget negotiated by the legislature and Governor Kathy Hochul this spring.

But one Albany-area Republican senator wants the state to go further and permanently give all new parents a $1,000 “baby bonus.”

“When I hear younger people in particular talk about starting a family, cost is a big factor in that and often cited as one of the reasons why they could be discouraged from pursuing a family,” state Senator Jake Ashby, who represents a district between Albany and the Vermont border, told New York Focus. “So I thought that this legislation could be helpful in addressing that.”

Hochul says she’s working with the legislature to replace congestion pricing to fully fund the MTA and its planned upgrades and improvements.

Key legislators say they aren’t aware of any conversations. Senior reporter Sam Mellins shared the story with Radio Catskill.

 
 
The MetLife Building in Manhattan received $6.1 million in tax subsidies in 2024 under the city’s Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program, which the state legislature renewed in June. Following NYC
The Citizens Budget Commission wants the governor to halt a just-passed extension of the Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program so a study of the controversial subsidy can be completed.
By Julia Rock

In the final hours of the legislative session in June, lawmakers voted, after no debate, to renew New York City’s largest commercial real estate subsidy, which provides more than $500 million a year in tax breaks for new construction and renovation projects.

The renewal came as a surprise to the city’s Independent Budget Office, which has been preparing a study assessing whether the Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program is actually inducing development and supporting other city objectives. ICAP was set to sunset in 2025, but the legislature just extended it by an additional four years at the request of New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

“There was not any outreach to our office regarding the renewal of ICAP,” said Alaina Turnquist, a budget and policy analyst with the IBO, which is still planning to release its study. “Our evaluation was timed with the 2025 expiration. … We did not expect the program to be renewed a year earlier.”

 
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins failed to pass a housing bill over Governor Kathy Hochul’s objections in 2023. Photos: NYS Assembly, NYS Senate, illie Grace Ward | Illustration: Neil deMause/New York Focus
A newly discovered 80-page housing package would have included good cause eviction, but legislators were dissuaded by Kathy Hochul’s opposition.
By Sam Mellins

It may seem like ancient history, but 2023 was supposed to be New York’s “year of housing.” For months, Albany seemed poised to finally address the state’s long simmering crisis of high rents, unaffordable mortgages, and homelessness.

Instead, in early June last year, the legislative session ended in failure and acrimony after multiple attempts at reaching a housing deal failed. Legislative leaders blamed Governor Kathy Hochul for opposing a housing package they said they’d put together, while Hochul’s office shot back that legislators had never introduced a major housing bill, let alone passed one.

The claim that legislators had never introduced a bill was true. But it was misleading.

In fact, legislators had written a 14-part proposal containing measures ranging from new tenant protections to boosting office-building-to-housing conversions. That draft bill was never made public, but New York Focus obtained two nearly identical versions of it, both dated to the final days of the legislative session.

 

Copyright © New York Focus 2024, All rights reserved.
Staying Focused is compiled and written by Alex Arriaga
Contact Alex at alex@nysfocus.com

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