New York state is one step closer to banning fossil fuels in new buildings.

On Friday, the State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council voted to recommend major updates to the state’s building code, which is updated every five years and sets minimum standards for construction statewide. The draft updates include rules requiring most new buildings to be all electric starting in 2026, as mandated by a law passed two years ago.

The vote came after the code council went missing in action for more than two months, leaving some advocates nervous that the state might be wavering on the gas ban. With the rules now entering the final stage of the approval process, New York remains on track to be the first state to enact such a ban.

The new draft code also tightens a slew of other standards in a bid to make buildings more energy efficient and save residents money over the long term. But it leaves out several key provisions recommended in the state’s climate plan — possibly running afoul of a 2022 law.

Thousands of parents in New York City are set to lose state-provided child care assistance as soon as April, according to records obtained by New York Focus and interviews with advocates recently alerted to the upcoming funding cliff.

Unless Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature opt to put more money into the Child Care Assistance Program, New York City will soon start turning down new program applicants — even if their income qualifies them for the subsidies. Some families currently enrolled in the program will also lose their benefits when they try to recertify, which happens every six or 12 months.

The Administration for Children’s Services recently told child care advocates in a briefing document that 4,000–7,000 children will soon lose assistance each month, “as the City would have insufficient funds to recertify their care.”

If you’re planning on building a home with a gas boiler in New York, time is running out. Starting on January 1 next year, most new buildings across the state are required to be all electric.

Or at least that’s what state law says. But the mandate has yet to trickle down to most municipalities, which are in charge of approving permits for new construction.

That’s because New York has not updated its statewide building code — which sets minimum construction standards — to reflect the all-electric buildings law passed nearly two years ago.

The State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council is tasked with updating the code every five years to comply with new laws and safety standards. (The current edition dates back to November 2019.) The council was due to meet in early December to vote on a draft of the updated rules, but members never received the new draft and the meeting was postponed, twice. It is now scheduled for this Friday, February 28.

When Chaim Fishman left his Brooklyn-based secondary school at 16, he’d never heard of Mozart or Shakespeare.

“We were never taught about science or history or geography or civics,” let alone English or math, which were considered “ethically wrong,” said Fishman, who attended an ultra-Orthodox secondary school for boys — called a yeshiva — in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and is now a 26-year-old software engineer.

More than 50,000 male students are enrolled in New York’s yeshivas, and a New York Times investigation found that many provided little instruction in core subjects, received some of the lowest standardized test scores in the state, and left their students unable to converse easily in English or find jobs after graduating. Even still, they received more than $1 billion in government funding over a recent four-year period.

A new state law set to take effect at the end of June seeks to hold these schools accountable by withholding millions in taxpayer funds if they don’t provide an education ״substantially equivalent” to what’s taught in the public schools. Ultra-Orthodox community leaders who have long advocated for autonomy are vowing to fight the new mandate.

Last Friday a woman incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County tried to get help. The prison was on lockdown, and she’d been confined to her cell with little information as to why. She said she was having suicidal thoughts, but officers weren’t sending anyone to provide medical attention.

That afternoon, with no guards making their normal security rounds, others on the woman’s block called out to her — to no answer. She was trying to hang herself, officers eventually found. She survived.

The New York state prison system is flirting with chaos as a corrections officer strike continues Since guards at two western New York facilities walked off the job last Monday, the wildcat action has spread across the state. Nearly all of the system’s 42 prisons are now on lockdown as National Guard troops deployed by Governor Kathy Hochul and the few officers who haven’t walked out struggle to provide incarcerated people with basic necessities.