Council Member Gutiérrez Questions Voucher Eligibility for Younger Siblings

Do you have a sense of of those that were able to recertify how many of them potentially have siblings, younger siblings that were not able to qualify?

Because I think that puts parents in basically back to square one where they have one child who is utilizing a voucher, but they technically can't go to back to work because they have a younger child.

Do you have a sense of that?

I don't have a sense of magnitude.

We we know it's an issue.

I mean, we do have families reaching out to us telling us that they are trying to add a child to their case, and that child might be on the wait list if the family is still eligible serving other children.

Um, we can look into whether or not those analytics are possible and get back to you.

Got it.

Um, just so you know, we we a few of my colleagues and myself jointly sent a letter to some of our our folks um at the state.

Um, knowing full and well the budget would not have been passed by April 1st.

Obviously, we don't have anything.

I think what you've shared today is just nothing substantial.

My last question, um, and I'll stand up for round two is are there any um specific circumstances outside of seeing this miraculously in the state budget that would allow for ACS to begin offering vouchers to eligible families?

Well, I want to be clear that we will be looking at what is in the state budget, which is a substantial increase in funding that is allowing us at baseline to continue to say that we've got to allow people that have to restart it by.

Which is not nothing.

Which is not nothing.

And we will be looking at where enrollment stands across all three agencies and spending to assess if there is a time in the next months that we may be able to begin moving the wait list.

But we don't know that yet because we need to assess what's in the budget, what attrition in our system looks like, what spending across ACS HRA and New York City Public Schools looks like.