Jared Evan
City Council member Ben Kallos has some interesting ideas as to the empty store front issue, he wants to use spaces like vacant community centers, libraries and closed private schools as childcare centers where students can work on remote learning with adult supervision on days they’re not allowed in their schools.
The Daily News reported : Kallos cites a spate of closed Duane Reades and Chase Bank, along with recently-shuttered Catholic schools, as possible examples, noting the Citywide Administrative Services Department surveyed empty properties during the pandemic to scout for medical space and should have a database of suitable locations.
Kallos was elected in 2013 to represent the Upper East Side, Midtown East, Roosevelt Island and East Harlem, which is City Council District 5.
This comes on the heels of the city announcing that 1.1 million public school students would spend between one and three days a week in their classrooms this year to keep numbers down and maintain social distance, as the City has grappled with the school issue since the start of the deadly pandemic.
Supervised remote learning centers with smaller groups of students could fill the lack of classroom time.
The budget cuts are also looming, and the remote learning would require plenty of staff.
Last week it was reported that The New York City Department of Education (DOE) will be hit with at least $400 million in budget cuts under the $88.1 billion Fiscal Year 2021 budget that was adopted by the New York City Council, S.I live pointed out.
Some of the budget cuts according to the school chancellor Carranza would be 10 million in cuts to the Schools Out NYC (SONYC) after-school program, $21 million in cuts to per session budgets, which will reduce the amount of enrichment, services, and support for students outside of the school day, as well as teacher professional development, $40 million cut to School Allocation Memorandums, and the DOE said there is a general reduction in Community Schools contract spending of $6 million to baseline funding in Fiscal Year 2021 and the outyears. There are 267 community schools as of January serving 135,000 students and families citywide in the community school program which is designed to integrate academics, health and social services inside of schools, according to S.I Live media
City Councilman Ben Kallos, who chairs the Committee on Contracts, last made headlines for wanting nonprofit funding to be prioritized over for-profit business contracts.
“I think that the city should be cutting contracts with for-profit, Fortune 500 companies before we cut any contract with a nonprofit providing essential services in a community with needs. … With a $94 billion budget, I can think of several billion dollars in cuts we can make before we touch our nonprofits”, Kallos told NYN Media in a recent interview
