“Invest in us; we’ll rise to the top. Give us a little, we’ll grow a lot!” This was the rally cry of the 700 children and after-school advocates that attended the March 28th rally outside City Hall to save child care and after-school programs. Dozens of after-school programs citywide, including Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood Center on East 93rd Street, brought representatives to the rally to protest the extreme proposed budget cuts. Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed fiscal plan in 2014 would cut $130 million from after-school programs and leave 47,000 children without a place to go after the school day.

“I think what we want to look at is how kids are staying in school and how our and how these programs build the skills of our youth,” said Cathleen Fitzgibbons, of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of the sponsors of the rally, along with the Campaign for Children. “These programs are critical for their overall development, and for shaping them as they’re going through middle school and high school.”

The rally was packed with hundreds of advocates, who brought signs and posters pronouncing their love for the after-school programs: “Help Keep After School Alive!” and “Do Not Close Child Care!” Matt Phifer, Director of Educational Services from the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side, led the rally as MC. He brought to the stage numerous council members like District 6’s Gale Brewer, as well as District 8’s Melissa Mark-Viverito, who both touted the educational importance of these programs. Gale Brewer explained that every year for the past 12 years, the mayoral office has done this “budget dance” where they cut programs they know the City Council can restore.

“The uncertainty is still scary,” said Council Member Brewer.

Children from the after-school programs showed off their extracurricular skills on stage – from double-dutch, to singers and traditional drummers, making for quite an exuberant scene. As for the kids in the crowd, many of the younger students said that they loved playing sports like dodgeball and rugby in their after-school programs. But the older teenagers conceded that the programs keep them off the streets and out of trouble.

“Visibility was great. It was a perfect storm of different concerned parties,” said Phifer. “Hopefully we will be able to make some change.”

Mayor Bloomberg has not yet responded to the pleas of families impacted by these budget proposals. “We’re working with the City Council to deliver an on-time, balanced budget that keeps the city’s fiscal house in order, while also protecting vital services,” said City Hall spokeswoman Lauren Passelacqua.

The budget right now has not included any of the City Council’s one-year funds, which would cause hundreds of programs to have to shut their doors completely. In addition the $10 million proposed cut would slash after-school slots by 75 percent.

This struggle is not new – just last year, similar budget cuts were proposed. But after several rallies last year, many of the funds were actually restored for one more year, according to Phifer.

Emma Woods, a representative from the Campaign for Children, an organization that was started last year in response to the budget difficulties and one of the rally’s sponsors, said that the Mayor should just baseline the money for these programs in his budget, so that this fight would not have to happen year after year.

“In the long term, the goal would be to no longer put these programs on the chopping block,” said Woods. “As the number of kids served goes down, poverty increases.”

And there are other measurable benefits too. A Wallace Foundation Evaluation of Out of School Time Programs in 2006 found that 56 percent of program participants felt that the programs really got them interested and involved in activities outside school. Plus 69 percent of participating students said that they made more friends in the program. Besides social skills, most of the students surveyed felt that their schoolwork improved.

So what would happen to those benefits if budgets were slashed? For Stanley Isaacs Center, the Upper East Side organization at the rally, budget cuts would be devastating. They have four after school programs, and would basically have to chop one completely (P.S. 112), if the budget proposal passed. At P.S. 112, right now, they can only serve 80 kids, with a waitlist of dozens of students who want to participate in the program, said Jeanine Glazewski, the Director of Development at Stanley Isaacs, which oversees a low-income area. She also said that these programs decrease delinquency. One of their board members is Marianne Hedges, the woman who was hit in the head with a shopping cart thrown from the roof of a building over the summer.

“These are just kids with nothing better to do we after school,” said Glazewski. “We would much rather have them doing homework, arts and sports.”

Plus, she said, the after school programs allows parents to go to jobs or do job training/searches. Many of these parents, she said, cannot afford caretakers. So, if there were no after school programs, the parents would have to quit their jobs in order to provide an environment for their children.

“Parents feel strongly about this, but it becomes more and more difficult,” said Glazewski.”People think ‘oh this again? Didn’t we fight this last year?’ When you have to go and argue for something that is creating longterm benefits of the city, you know there’s a problem.”

By Nick Powell

Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined his preliminary budget for fiscal year 2014 last Tuesday, emphasizing that the budget will be balanced without any tax increases. But what stood out was the glaring loss of $724 million in state education funding over the next two years, a consequence of the lack of progress over negotiating a teacher evaluation plan with the United Federation of Teachers.

The $250 million loss this year will be reflected in immediate cuts to child care and after-school programs, and would result in a loss of up to 700 teachers through attrition. The city will forfeit $250 million in aid in the next fiscal year too, plus another $224 million in the state executive budget if the two sides do not reach an agreement by Sept. 1, meaning another 1,800 teachers could be lost through attrition.

State Education Commissioner John King recently wrote to Bloomberg that he plans to baseline that $250 million loss for the next four years—resulting in a potential four-year loss of roughly $1 billion in state education funding—if discussions between the city and the teachers union remain stalled.

Bloomberg said the city was spending $8 billion more per year on education than when he first took office, and while the state’s education aid has plateaued in the last four fiscal years around the $19-21 billion range, it has also generally increased from 2002-03, when the state spent $14.6 billion. Still, the mayor accused the state of turning its back on the city’s children by imposing the school aid penalties.

“We’re not walking away from education in spite of the fact that I would argue the state’s walking away from us,” Bloomberg said.

Later, in a testy exchange with a reporter, he remarked that the one-year teacher evaluation agreements that 99 percent of the state’s school districts have signed are a “sham” and a “joke” because they violate state law that requires a two-year period to evaluate a teacher. He added that Gov. Andrew Cuomo “can’t just snap his fingers” to make the school districts agree to another teacher evaluation deal after this year.

However, the mayor said that he would happily take the $250 million in education aid should he be able to reach a deal with the teachers union in the coming days. The mayor left open the possibility of coming to an agreement, but hardly sounded optimistic.

“I said from day one, we can come to an agreement with them, we talk every day,” Bloomberg said. “But fundamentally you’re asking a union to let its members be evaluated, and discriminate, and have distinctions based on productivity rather than based on seniority, and essentially unions have always been opposed to that, but we’ll see.”

Meanwhile, UFT President Michael Mulgrew testified in front of the Legislature on Tuesday, where legislators grilled him on the failed teacher evaluation agreement. Mulgrew continued to blame Bloomberg and education officials for not negotiating in good faith.

“We had 40 plans from different cities during negotiations, and they were not interested in copying another city’s plan,” Mulgrew said.

Despite the lack of progress on a deal, Mulgrew said he reached out to Bloomberg to set up a future negotiation date, but that has not been scheduled yet.

In addition to the loss in state education aid, $135 million will be cut from after-school and child care programs that service more than 47,000 children, many from low-income families. The specter of this cut, among others, set off angry responses from child care advocates.

“Just like last year, 47,000 children are set to lose access to after-school and early education programs—programs proven to help children succeed while parents work to support their families,” said Michelle Yanche, assistant executive director for government and external relations at Good Shepherd Services, on behalf of the Campaign for Children, a coalition of child care advocacy groups. “The same parents and providers will be forced to fight for the same funding that they were just given a few months ago. How can this be happening, after all we’ve heard from our city leaders about making children a priority?”

With reporting by Aaron Short. A version of this story originally appeared on the
website of City & State, cityandstateny.com.

The root of the problem is that New York state’s courts have been tasked with doing more with less—$170 million less. While that impact has been spread around the state, many courts in New York City have seen dramatic effects.

At the end of last year, the New York City Lawyers’ Association (NYCLA) commissioned a report (see sidebar), conducted by its task force on judicial budget buts, to find out the impact of the 2011-2012 fiscal year cuts. They surveyed 759 people, including private practice attorneys, court system employees, government attorneys and judges. Over 80 percent of respondents reported that they strongly agreed or agreed that the court’s efficiency has been compromised and that the budget cuts have had a negative effect of the administration of justice.

The cuts include offering early retirement packages and putting a freeze on hiring new employees, in addition to layoffs. Interpreters are harder to find, and security has been reduced. The courts have also practically eliminated overtime, and in perhaps the biggest and most consequential change, implemented shorter hours, closing the courts at 4:30 p.m. instead of 5 p.m.

“It was a drastic budget cut that had not happened before. The court budget had not been slashed in decades,” said David Bookstaver, communications director for the New York state court system. “We are good partners in government. We realize our budget was cut because of the incredibly difficult fiscal times that the state was going through at the time.”

The cuts come as a direct result of a dire budget situation for the entire state. Although the state court system, as a third and separate branch of government, doesn’t submit its budget in the same way that state agencies do, it is not immune to the fiscal crisis that has hit every state-funded entity in the past year.

Bookstaver said that the chief administrative judge, A. Gail Prudenti, who supervises the administration and operation of the state’s trial courts, did not take the cuts she imposed lightly.
“We have not had to lay off anyone in the court system in almost two decades, and we had to lay off over 400 employees,” Bookstaver said. “The chief judge felt that the court’s mission was to not close courthouse doors, as other states were forced to do.”

Slashing services and staff across the board was the better alternative to closing courts for a full day every week, Bookstaver said, but acknowledged that that extra half an hour lost every day isn’t just two and a half hours a week. The reduction in overtime allowances means that if a witness in a trial is ready to testify at 4 p.m., a judge might push the testimony to the next day, instead of risking running past 4:30 p.m. In the past, judges would routinely stay until 5:30 or 6 p.m. in order to finish out a motion or hearing, so the real time lost is much more substantial than a scant 30 minutes.

“You will start a hearing and continue it weeks later,” said Stewart Aaron, the president of NYCLA. “There are these long delays in getting resolutions with matters that are important to the litigants, leaving people and issues in complete limbo. Obviously that’s not the way to administer justice.”
Some attorneys say that the cuts disproportionately affect those who should be getting the most help to navigate the system.

“We saw an almost immediate impact on the court, because there were both layoffs and earlier closures. The shortened hours definitely are a hardship in civil court,” said Dora Galacatos, senior counsel to the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School and a volunteer with the Civil Legal Advice and Resource Office, which helps low-income New Yorkers being sued for debt collection. Galacatos said that the court heard over 134,000 debt collection cases in 2011 alone, and that the defendants in these cases often have a difficult time getting through the process.
“Many of them are economically distressed and working poor people, so shortened hours mean less flexibility in getting to the court,” Galacatos said. Other services designed to help working people, like free childcare programs, have been cut, forcing parents to drag small children through a day in court. Small claims court used to stay open several nights each week to accommodate people who work during the day, and is now only open on one night.

The cuts have a ripple effect on litigants and the system as a whole. If someone is supposed to be in court at 3:45 p.m., they might take off work and head down to the courthouse with time to spare, only to be met with a longer-than-normal line to get through security and into the doors, due to reduced staff. Earlier closing times with less wiggle room means people are more likely to miss their times altogether, further burdening the court calendar.

In housing court, which is a specialized court that only exists in New York City, the urgent problems people come to address—tenants not receiving crucial services or landlords not receiving rent—are often stretched out and resolved in a matter of months instead of weeks.

“Let’s say you have landlord/tenant proceeding, a simple, easy case,” said Glenn Spiegel, a real estate and housing attorney and partner with the Newman Ferrara law firm. “The landlord starts a case against a tenant because the tenant didn’t pay their rent. How long is it going to take the landlord to get their apartment back? The landlord isn’t a corporate landlord, it’s an individual, relying on those rents to pay the mortgage debt. How much longer does it take the landlord to evict that tenant that’s not paying?”

In his experience, it’s now taking two or three months for these kinds of cases, Spiegel said—and that’s if everything is perfectly by the book with no mistakes in the paperwork. If something has to be resubmitted, that can double the amount of time, he said.

Spiegel said that these types of delays could also have greater ramifications for all renters in general in the city. Landlords, knowing that if a tenant doesn’t pay up they won’t have a quick recourse to get them out, could become more skittish in choosing renters and raise their required income threshold, locking lower and middle income residents out.

It’s costing everyone more money to drag out cases, whether in legal fees or time spent away from work.

“It’s already expensive enough to be involved in litigation. If you have to sue somebody, you’re talking about a private case,” Spiegel said, adding that he doesn’t like having to explain to his clients why a proceeding that should take a lot less time and cost them less is suddenly going on for much longer.

Family court litigants are suffering as well. Briana Denney practices matrimonial and family law through her firm Newman & Denney, and said that she’s unfortunately grown accustomed to incredibly lengthy cases over the past year.

“Families are really in crisis by the time they go to the court system, and most people have an expectation that it’s going to be dealt with expeditiously,” Denney said. “The cutbacks have really impacted how much time judges have to deal with people. Unless it’s the worst of the worst, like serious abuse or things like that, things are getting pushed out for months or even years.”
Denney recalled a custody case where a divorced mother moved out of state with her child, legally, and when the father sought to change the custody arrangement and get the child back, the judge sided with him—three years later.

“It’s a strain financially, and it’s a huge emotional strain,” Denney said. “When the issues are dealing with kids and visitation and custody, everything is in flux and it’s really stressful for [kids] too.”
Some involved with the courts say that the slowdown can’t be attributed to budget cuts alone, however. Louise Seeley is the executive director of Housing Court Answers, an independent group with a contract from the city to set up information tables inside housing court buildings, in order to assist pro se litigants—both tenants and landlords—who appear for housing cases and need help to understand the process and their rights.

“It’s hard to tell how much of it is the cutbacks or the economy, because filings are up,” Seeley said about the backlog in housing court. She said that some days there is standing room only at the clerk’s office. “With the economy, more people are falling behind on their rent. It’s a combination of less people being able to staff windows combined with increased filings.”

Another aspect of the economy that still haunts the courts is the foreclosure crisis. State Sen. Liz Krueger said that she’s heard from many judges how backlogged the civil court system has become across the state because of the avalanche of foreclosure cases that have inundated the courts.

“There still is an enormous problem with cases coming before the courts where whoever is doing the foreclosure does not have the correct paperwork and doesn’t have the facts, and the judge has to put a delay in the case and call them back,” Krueger said. “It’s a continuing saga of an enormous waste of court resources as well as pain to the people who are at risk of losing their homes.”

Krueger said that she’s supported increasing filing fees in certain cases in order to help alleviate some of the courts’ budget constraints, enabling them to hire more clerical staff and get everything running faster, but that none of the state bar associations has supported this kind of measure.

“If the banks created this problem, I think the banks should have an obligation through increased filing costs for going to court, to pay for the increased burden on our courts to ensure that justice is done correctly,” Krueger said of the foreclosure cases.

The Office of Court Administration is gearing up for another budget season and just presented its fiscal 2013 budget proposal to state lawmakers. Citing the continuing fiscal crisis that has been compounded by the astronomical costs of recovering from Hurricane Sandy, the OCA is asking for an even smaller budget than last year.

“The Judiciary’s General Fund Operating Budget request is $1.75 billion. The request is a decrease of $212,013 from the current fiscal year budget, a reduction of .012 percent,” the executive summary states. “This negative budget request is being presented in the face of a number of cost increases, including the second phase of the judicial salary increase, and contractually required increments for eligible non-judicial employees.”

In other words, it doesn’t look like this will be the year that positions, programs and hours get restored in the courts.

“The civil court is the people’s court. It used to be the jewel of the judicial branch,” said Spiegel. “There has to be a better solution than limiting access to the courts.”