Council Member Brewer questions DYCD on Beacon wait lists at Goddard site

All right, I'm going to pause and pass it over to my colleagues.

Is that Councilman Bufelder?

Councilman Bufelder, you have questions?

You pass?

Okay, well, he passed.

Well, there you go.

Councilman Brewer.

Thank you very much for all your good questions.

My question is on beacons.

I was Richard Murphy's best friend.

And so I am very supportive, was there when they started.

So in my situation on the Upper West Side with Goddard, there's a waiting list, and it's been a whole year.

So I must have 20 friends who have kids who go to work with them after school, literally, because they can't get into the beacon.

So I complained to the chair.

That doesn't do any good.

So I don't understand why.

What's the purpose?

Murphy would fix this.

You've got to fix it.

You can't have these kids, you know, going with their parents after school.

I literally have 20 friends who would like to go to that beacon.

So we have to wait for, like, years for an RFP?

How does this work?

I mean, it's just beyond frustrating.

They don't have the money for the Y.

They don't, you know, they want to go to the beacon.

People love the beacon, but they can't get in.

I will say that Goddard is definitely has a long way.

You know, it's very, very high.

There's a high demand.

I know, and I know all the people on the wait list.

Yes, and the team at Goddard reaches out to us, and we try to...

Problem solve and kind of be creative and kind of like how do we reach, how do we expand our reach for these families?

And so that is definitely, there are some pockets of all of our centers where there's a huge and high demand.

And as we are looking and doing a geographical assessment to determine whether or not, where there is need to see where we can expand potentially.

And so that's part of our deeper dive in doing an assessment of communities.