CM Narcisse on school nurses, preschool special ed, and after-school contracts

Thank you, chairs, and thank you, Commissioner and Chancellor and all your team.

And I have to say thank you to Kevin Miranda for being very nice and supporting me in the District 46.

School nurse funding is baseline in this budget.

Does that...

Put a full-time nurse in every school building citywide this coming year?

Or are schools still sharing one nurse across multiple buildings?

And how much of that health funding rise on federal Medicaid reimbursement that is now at risk?

We all know that.

The second one, the budget adds new funding for preschool special education, a chronic shortage area, right?

How many new seats land in Brooklyn where parents are still waiting months for placement?

How many community schools operate in Brooklyn and are any of them at risk of closing or scaling back services this year?

And I have another quick things I have to ask you, even though it's DYCD, but I want to bring that to your attention, is after school program.

The shifting of those IFBs, people apply for them, and the family, you add a baby.

big rally in my district where the community organization, the org that have been taking care of the schools, suddenly find themselves across New York City

for the contract similar while they have somebody new or some other organization, some

elsewhere, not even in Brooklyn.

So I want to know what can parents do because they've been sending me email.

We were on the street rallying.

So I want to have your input on that.

Yeah, thank you.

And, you know, on the issue of our school, I know a lot of the work is done by the UICD.

But so going back to the beginning of your question about we've done a lot of work to ensure that our schools have nurses.

And I'm going to turn it over to Kevin Mann to add anything there.

And after that, we'll follow up with pre-K special education to Christina Foti.

And then finally to Flavia to close out the DYCD conversation on after school.

Okay, real quick on your question.

We meet all legal mandates as it relates to staffing nurses in all of our school buildings.

So, yes, wherever there's a legal mandate to support a student or school community, there's a nurse that's provided.

Sorry.

No.

I just want to know that we're not sharing nurses.

Are we still sharing nurses?

They are shared.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

I'd rather they have their nurses and really.

Understood.

But the budget on the preschool.

Yeah, and that's something that we are really committed to, given the history of not necessarily having those services in pre-K.

And so I'm going to turn it over to Christina for you to talk about it.

Thank you, Councilmember Narcisse.

You're having me open up Councilmember Joseph's tab of my binder, because usually this is her question.

She was there.

Yeah.

So in terms of the $67.5 million, we're so excited and grateful for that.

I am going to ask you to bear with me on details on that.

In Brooklyn.

Yes, ma'am.

The council members in Brooklyn.

Here's what I can say.

Brooklyn will be benefiting as well, and certainly we're going to be opening seats with that.

I can say in the last round of funding, we had 75 seats open in Brooklyn, including the PS6 Flatbush Early Childhood Center, which is a very exciting addition, and more to come on that front.

So for the community school,

They're not going to close.

You're not planning to.

Good afternoon, Councilman Berners.

I think your question was asking how many community schools are currently in Brooklyn.

The answer is 146, and those 146 are remaining.

The only instance in recent where there has been any change, if there's like any school consolidating, but the...

Since we refueled the schools that were previously funded through stimulus funding, we had retained

the number of community schools which we had citywide, which is a total of 419, still the largest community school investment of any district in the country, and hopefully we can continue to...

To look for ways to amplify it because we know that those wraparound support services are so critical and we have specific data that shows the linkage between the long-term impact of community schools and

all of the metrics that we're talking about including student achievement and reduction in chronic absenteeism but to your answer there's 146 and there will be 146 next school year

because i have um principals coming to my office sending email they're very much interested they feel like they should be part of oh they want to become community schools that's a little different now now i'm saying like we're going to talk about it more about community school in my

district

And the last one, the...

The YCD, yeah.

So just to be clear, there are contract nuances about how the YCD does their...

procurement for their contracts that really, I know DYCD recently had a hearing, we don't manage their contracts, and I can't speak to all of the details of their contracts.

What I can say is that since 2015, we hadn't done, citywide, a procurement for after school.

So many of our principals that we have now, which I think, you know, in our system, have never had to go through this experience.

What we did do in partnership with DYCD was that as part of their process, we made sure that there was a principal ranking.

And a large proportion of the principals did get the CBO that they either ranked first or second.

There were multiple schools that didn't get it.

I will say that DYCD leadership, including the commission and directly, has been meeting with some of the providers.

We had held meetings with multiple CEC, our community parent councils, to make sure that they're clear.

The one thing that I want us all to walk away with, like, yes, as a former principal, if I had, like, I had a partnership in the South Bronx with one of the CBOs, and if I have to, made a change and I felt like I had.

Another CVO that I felt was more aligned to that, that's going to be a big shift and it's something that we're going to have to work with our principals and work in partnership with DYCD to make sure that

We're kind of resetting those relationships and are doing our best to make sure that the services, what kids are getting, continues.

But what I want to be clear is that we haven't had any reduction on seats.

The opposite.

DYCD added 20,000 seats for after school that hasn't happened.

So if you have a particular partner or challenge, let me email me and we can work with you.

Yeah, my time is up and my colleagues are waiting.

But it's not only me.

I have Selvena Brooks-Bowery that had to go.

It's the same issue.

I had principal out.

I have teachers out.

I have parents out.

It's a continuity of care and the services at the same time.

Please email us and we can work with DYCD to work on those.

I appreciate your time.

I appreciate you as well.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

And that was actually a large focus of our DYCD hearing, so it was good.

And we have definitely expressed our concerns.

And the commissioner is great.

She's been working with us on that.

Thank you.

Okay, we've been joined by Councilmember Krishnan, and we have Councilmember Epstein, followed by Ressler.