Testimony of Lara Lai, Senior Policy Analyst and Strategic Organizer for Education, to the New York City Council Committee Oversight Hearing re: Advancing Diversity and Equity in NYC Public Schools

Advancing Diversity and Equity in NYC Public Schools

Good afternoon, Chair Joseph, Chair Williams, and members of the City Council Education and Civil and Human Rights Committees. My name is Lara Lai and I am the Senior Policy Analyst and Strategic Organizer for Education in the Office of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today at this important hearing.

Comptroller Lander has a deep record of commitment to racial diversity and equity in NYC Public Schools. As a member of this Council, he led the D15 Diversity Plan in District 15 that desegregated the middle schools in that district and served as a model for other integration efforts across New York City. He sponsored the School Diversity Accountability Act, which required the DOE to start tracking and reporting on school segregation and called on the DOE to take action to address it. In the Council, the Comptroller also introduced legislation on dress codes and screened admissions and has a long record of student-centered advocacy on diversity and equity.

Today I am here to discuss another form of persistent exclusion and segregation that many NYC students face. Students with disabilities make up 22% of all NYC public school students, yet continue to face multiple barriers to full inclusion, full equity with their peers—inequities that can have lifelong consequences.

As our office’s recent report Stranded Afterschool: Advancing Equity & Transportation Access for Students with Disabilities made clear, children with disabilities face a disproportionate lack of access to the free afterschool programs that many of their peers enjoy. This report is based on an analysis of findings from a recent Comptroller’s Office survey of over 600 New York City public and charter school principals on their afterschool programs, including 23 principals from District 75.

The survey found that the lack of afterschool bus transportation is a major barrier to afterschool care citywide, posing a particular challenge for the 62,000 students with IEP mandated school bus transportation, as Chair Joseph has thankfully focused on throughout her tenure, including this committee’s hearing last September on school bus transportation.

Nearly a third of all survey respondents and 100% of District 75 respondents named the lack of school bus transportation as a barrier to student afterschool participation.

Of the 145,000 students who ride a school bus in NYC, the 62,000 students with IEP mandated bus transportation in New York City has increased 9% between June 2022 and June 2024 pointing to an increasing number of students who cannot access afterschool.

Another barrier identified by our survey is the way District 75 afterschool programs are funded and operated, which significantly constrains their ability to meet students’ afterschool needs.

Just 74% of the District 75 schools that completed the survey have afterschool programs compared to 93% of schools outside of District 75.

District 75 programs do not have access to the primary source of supplementary afterschool funding in the City: Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD).

None of our District 75 respondents have DYCD funded afterschool programs compared to 49% of respondents from other schools.

Chart 1: Reported Funding Sources for Afterschool Programs

Source: NYC Comptroller’s Office

Most DYCD-funded and contracted community-based organizations (CBOs), which run 90% of afterschool programming in New York City according to our survey, are unable to meet the specialized needs of District 75 students. As a result, most District 75 schools must fund afterschool programming directly. These programs rely more heavily on funding from DOE Central: 71% of District 75 programs surveyed are funded this way, compared to just 13% of other schools. District 75 staff also provide most of the afterschool services themselves and are typically paid through per session.

There are also inequities in City Council CASA grant allocations: only 6% of District 75 schools in our survey benefit from CASA grants, compared to 15% of other respondents. In addition, fee-for-service programs (where parents cover the costs) are less common in District 75 (6%) than among other respondents (20%).

To advance equity in access to afterschool for students with disabilities, the Comptroller recommends a comprehensive strategy as the City designs and rolls out its universal afterschool program, including:

1. Increase City Council investment in CASA by $10M per year, prioritizing funding to District 75 schools. DOE has been increasing the number of co-located District 75 programs across the city to ensure students can attend schools in more inclusive settings in their own neighborhood. The City Council should support this effort by allocating additional CASA funding to District 75 programs.
2. Create dedicated afterschool funding for District 75 programs via an afterschool School Allocation Memorandum (SAM) for District 75 programs.
3. DOE should pilot an Afterschool for All Multiple Task Award Contract(MTAC) to identify vendors that can support District 75 programs. Centrally procured MTACs give schools choice and flexibility in selecting vendors for needed services. An Afterschool for All MTAC would allow schools to secure specialized programming for students with disabilities that they may not be able to access via local CBOs.
4. Collaborate with UFT to create an afterschool per session bonus to encourage special education teachers and paraprofessionals to participate in extended day programming.

To improve access to universal afterschool programs and address long-standing challenges in providing high-quality bus transportation for students with disabilities, the City and State must prioritize passage of legislation to allow DOE to use employee protection provisions in new bus contracts. Until this legislation is passed, the DOE should avoid long-term extensions when the school bus contracts expire at the end of this month to keep the door open for a competitive rebid that includes stronger worker protections and service improvements such as afterschool and Saturday transportation and transportation for Summer Rising.

Finally, the Comptroller strongly supports Int. 0955-2024, introduced today by Council Member Riley, which would require DOE and DYCD to report on afterschool programming, providing much-needed transparency into where access gaps exist.

To conclude, Mayor Adams’s recent announcement of a new $331 million investment in DYCD to expand afterschool programming is a welcome step toward a more universal model. But as with past “universal” education initiatives—like Pre-K and 3-K—the Mayor’s vision of universal afterschool continues to leave students with disabilities behind, treating their inclusion as an afterthought rather than a core commitment. A true universal afterschool program must ensure that students with disabilities have equitable access to afterschool enrichment including sports, arts, homework help, and social interactions, and that their peers can benefit from afterschool programs that include a diverse set of learners and friends.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today and for holding this important hearing. The Comptroller looks forward to partnering with the New York City Council to ensure that all our students get the support and resources they need to succeed and thrive in New York City.

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