As part of a broader effort to tackle a massive budget deficit, the Mount Vernon City School District announced in December a plan to close three of its K-8 schools.

Erica Peterson, Mount Vernon High School’s PTA president, worries the closures could demoralize an already economically depressed community.

“How are we going to get new families to come to our district with these three schools closing? It’s going to affect the community,” said Peterson, who is running for a seat on the school board. “It's heartbreaking to see something like this.”

The Mount Vernon district was flagged as being in the worst “fiscal stress” of any in the state, according to a recent report from the Office of the New York State Comptroller.

As people continue to flee New York state due to issues like affordability and housing, school districts say that enrollment declines, along with inconsistent levels of state aid and a reluctance to increase property taxes, can leave them financially vulnerable. Meanwhile, educators say, the cost of providing an education to children continues to increase.

Jonathan VanScoy, 54, who lives in a small town in the Finger Lakes, relies on Medicaid for drug and alcohol treatment. Phil, 58, a carpenter in the Adirondacks, uses his health insurance for preventive care, such as a skin screening for cancer or a colonoscopy. Jorge, 32, a construction worker in White Plains, has regular doctor visits and uses an inhaler to keep his asthma under control.

Jon, Phil, and Jorge are among the millions of New Yorkers who receive free or low-cost health insurance subsidized by the federal government. Now, they fear they will lose their coverage if Republicans in Congress follow through with their plan to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance that covers 6.9 million New Yorkers.

That’s more than one-third of the state’s residents, including 42 percent of all births and 63 percent of nursing home residents.

A House plan to shave $880 billion from Medicaid over the next decade could force New York to make gut-wrenching choices: end health care coverage for some 2 million residents, trim benefits such as home care for the disabled and elderly, cut other parts of the budget such as education, or find more than $7 billion a year in new taxes.

The debate over Medicaid costs has put New York’s seven Republican members of Congress in a tight spot: They are pressured by their leadership to impose budget cuts, but they are aware that a large proportion of their constituents rely on Medicaid.

In recent weeks, we’ve been reporting on a shady health insurance company, Leading Edge Administrators, and its founders, Barbara and Jerry Weissman. The company has faced lawsuits after failing to pay for health care and used a creative scheme to help employers keep money meant for low-wage health care workers.

We’re looking into the company because starting May 1, they’ll be providing bare-bones health insurance to thousands of New York’s home health aides — people who care for elderly and disabled New Yorkers through a state-funded home care program known as CDPAP. Our stories highlighted that Leading Edge’s insurance won’t cover many basic medical needs and could leave home care workers in deep medical debt.

But something else also caught our attention. Barbara and Jerry Weissman control a nonprofit that since 2022 has given away $4.3 million — and hasn’t disclosed who received any of it. This defies laws that require nonprofits to report their donations, and it raises concerns about whether the foundation is truly using its funds for charitable purposes.

“If you are actually promoting charitable work, there is no reason to hide the recipients of your charitable grants,” said Tania Ibanez, a lawyer who served as the chief charity regulator for California’s Attorney General until 2023.

Nick Spano faced potential ruin when he was sentenced to prison in 2012. Clients fled his scandal-scarred, Albany-based lobbying firm.

But 120 miles down the Hudson River, his younger brother, Mike, had just been elected mayor of New York’s third-largest city.

In the years since, as Mike Spano has overseen Yonkers’s revival, Nick’s lobbying firm has been resurrected, too. His client list has swelled with nearly two dozen companies and interest groups that have business before his brother’s administration.

A New York Focus investigation has found that Nick Spano has interacted with a top city official and sat in on meetings with Mike Spano. A lobbyist at Nick’s firm requested a sit-down between a client and his own wife, a senior city official, to secure a tax break. After such meetings, Mayor Spano’s administration has taken action that directly benefited both Nick’s lobbying clients and the real estate brokerage where Nick holds a side job as a salesperson.

These findings “suggest a high level of conflict of interest and corruption risk,” said John Kaehny, executive director of the government reform group Reinvent Albany, and “should be investigated by the State Attorney General's office of public integrity as soon as possible.”