Basically:
"The city is slashing funding to free after-school programs in the East Village because the neighborhood has grown too wealthy to receive the services."
A few quotes:
"There may be increasing affluence in the East Village, but there are also huge pockets of poverty," said Robin Bernstein, president and CEO of the Educational Alliance, which runs an after-school program at P.S. 64 at Avenue B and East Sixth Street.
And.
"It's really an all-out assault on working families and the working poor," said David Garza, executive director of Henry Street Settlement
16 comments:
boozberg and his henchmen...
I was among the many who warned people about voting for that SOB. Especially after he circumvented term-limits. And all those so-called progressives (are you listening, Ms. Quinn) who put their own ambitions over the common interest and endorsed him should be kicked out at the next opportunity.
it is shocking and disturbing that this kind of thing has become absolutely de rigeur in NYC neighborhoods. any moron can see how desperately these services are needed. my heart goes out to these families and these children who will be robbed of such a vital resource.
they put those stats together like they're making sausages.
never has the system been so rigged for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.
our mayor should be ashamed of himself. how does he even sleep at night???
@glamma: Sadly, assholes like Bloomberg sleep very soundly as the rest of us have to toss and turn due to he and cronies horrible decisions. I don't think he knows what "shame" is. Robots have no feelings.
Bloomberg is just beyond belief. The guy does everything in his power to foster hyper gentrification, and then uses the results as a hammer to beat the working poor who were here all along.
East Vilage has become too wealthy indeed -- a $32,000-A-Year-Elementary School
I'm generally not a huge Bloomberg hater but it really does seem as if he wants to gentrify this city to more closely resemble the white haven he comes from - Boston.
sorry, people, but anyone who needs these services for their kids is, for starters, not paying market for their apartments in the East Village. Either they're in public housing or they're rent controlled or whatever
Which is all well & good, but look, your housing is subsidized, your kids' education is free, and now you want free babysitting after-school stuff as well?
When are you going to be self-supporting?
@9:57--Look at it this way: if the working poor's "babysitting," as you call it, were not subsidized, these kids would be left without supervision, right? And isn't the lack of unsupervised kids running around causing what you might call "quality of life problems" exactly the sort of thing that keeps your high property values intact?
It's awfully difficult to be "self supporting" when prices keep going up, wages for working families keep going down, and jobs, even for the college educated become increasingly scarce... Imagine what it'd be like to try and find a job if you didn't have a high school diploma. And then consider that without the after school programs you call "free babysitting" you're dooming another generation of children to higher dropout rates, lower salaried jobs, greater risk of incarceration, and little ability to become "self sufficient."
Your "self-sufficeny" is not a result of hard work and perseverance, but mostly of good luck, that you've had the opportunities you've had provided by your parents, the government, and/or generous individuals. How are you giving back? What have you done lately to ensure that your good fortune serves your community, not just your own self interest? Or have you simply taken your luck, turned it into cash, and given yourself a masturbatory consumer orgasm that culminates in narcissistically wallowing in your own waste products, trying to overcome your flaccidity so that you can go another round?
When is America going to realize that all people have the right to food, clothing, shelter, and education?
(Yes, I said RIGHT, taken directly from Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights Speech and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25(1). Providing these rights to individuals is a moral imperative.)
Go to hell, 9:57. Those "un-self-sufficient" people you dump on mostly work harder in a day than you will in your life. They're the type of people that deliver your food and clean your home and bus your table and change your kid's diapers for you. They're the type of people that built this country. You won the lucky sperm lottery. The least you can do is show some fucking compassion for those that didn't, eh?
My kid goes to one of the more economically diverse (which is to say wealthy) public schools in the neighborhood -- one of the four "progressive" schools. More than half his classmates qualify for free lunches. The richest parents are solidly middle class creative class types. The truly wealthy send their kids to private schools. Occupy the DOE!
Anonymous 9:57pm, pardon me while I clean the vomit off my monitor.
You are absolutely right; people "not paying market rents for apartments in the East Village" do not need these services. BUT GUESS WHAT. THERE ARE FAMILIES WHO LIVED HERE BEFORE YOU! According to the city's own data, 84% of the kids at PS 63 qualify for free lunch; at PS 64, the number is 90%. If it makes you feel better, at schools with "only" 49% of the kids living in poverty, free after school programs were cut over a year ago. So you got that going for you, which is nice.
Attention all small children of color who did not have dinner at Momofuku last night, whose parents are trying to hang on to apartments they've had for decades and and who can't afford decent childcare: Please tell your parents to VACATE so their building can be razed and we can put up a delightful architectural monstrosity for privileged dipshits.
Love you, Marjorie. Couldn't have expressed it better. (Trusting you on those stats.)
I'm still trying to get my head around this. And I just read this news story today about teens struggling to find jobs:
http://tinyurl.com/18r
From the article -
"We're in danger of graduating a whole generation of kids who don't know how to work."
I cant deal with all this crap going on in the East village these days. YUPPIES AND GENTRIFICATION ARE KILLING THE HISTORY OF THIS NEIGHBORHOOD. I wish we could go back to when people were scared to walk past Avenue A. This crap today is horrible. I would rather the neighborhood be filled with Squatters, Homeless, and drug dealers any day rather than these condos, yuppies, nyu students, and rich people. Please leave our neighborhood alone.
I was here when it was the old East Village, ok? And it was not for families. You want a family, there's the Upper East Side, there's the Upper West Side, there's Harlem, there's Yonkers, there's New Jersey. The Ramones and Patty Smith and Sid Vicious were not here to raise their kids.
The people who bus tables and deliver food in this town are immigrants who don't speak English. I seriously doubt they are benefiting from all the subsidized apartments and after-school programs. If we want to subsidize housing, let us rent apartments to people who work as cops, nurses, etc., the way buildings rent a free apartment to the building's super.
When my son was in elementary school we had the amazing benefit of being able to use the Boys & Girls Club on 20th Street which closed around 2003 or so. It was $10 per year and helped us and other families more than I could imagine with their after school program. When they closed, nobody did anything to save it. I would have gladly paid more and subsidized people who couldn't afford anything, and I'm sure a lot of people felt that way. They never asked us for money, it was a done deal by the time we realized what was happening. It was a tremendous loss but I am so grateful we had it when we needed it the most. We were very lucky that our son was pretty much able to fend for himself by 4th or 5th grade when it closed. It would have been a real struggle to hire a babysitter to pick him up, or to pay for the after school program at the Y, and leaving work at 2:30 is not realistic for most working people.
As a middle income earning couple, I can tell you that it is very difficult to make ends meet, and babysitting can really cut a big hole into a limited budget.
After school programs allow people to work at their daytime jobs and be responsible, tax-paying contributing citizens. Not having adequate and affordable child care is one of the primary reasons families have trouble digging out of their downward financial spirals, creating more welfare families and problems that the above commenter probably hates also. Pick your poison - low income people who work and need help, or people who don't work and need more help--including welfare, food stamps, health care, housing and drugs to dull the pain of everyday life.
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