When the New York City Department of Education (DOE) sent a letter to yeshiva educators last week to inform them of the ZIP codes that were called “among those hardest hit by COVID” and that therefore were eligible to apply for city funding for 3-K, pre-K, many principals were confused as to why they did not see one Orthodox Jewish ZIP code on the list.
After months of red zones and lockdowns, one Boro Park principal wondered why, “When it came to the COVID-impacted areas, when it came to giving funding for city programs, we are not now, according to them, impacted by COVID. Now we are the last one in?"
This morning BoroPark24 asked Mayor Bill de Blasio whether he knew about the exclusion of Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods from those ZIP codes that are eligible to apply for city funding that would allow in the words of one Boro Park administrator, “thousands and thousands of Jewish children to attend 3-K and Pre-K who otherwise wouldn’t be able to participate.”
Just as the mayor’s Task Force on Racial Equity considered low-income levels and limited access to healthcare to select its 33 ZIP codes that were given priority access to vaccinations, Mayor de Blasio referred once again to this formulation in determining which neighborhoods would receive crucial 3-K and pre-K funding.
In fact, yesterday, at his morning press conference, when the mayor spoke of grants the city’s Small Business Services agency was giving to small businesses who are struggling to recover from the pandemic, he again alluded to prioritizing his previously selected 33 neighborhoods, which do not include one Jewish community.
When BoroPark24 pointed out that Jewish communities were the only neighborhoods in the city whose COVID-positivity rates were so high that they were deemed “red zones,” which subsequently lost city funding for school programs, the mayor, for whom equity is always a prime concern, did not think previous red zone designations translated into inclusion into his 33 prioritized neighborhoods.
“I don’t think it is right to say, 'Look what happened in September, October, and that is how we made all the decisions,'” Mayor de Blasio said. “No: priorities were based on the whole year of experience and decades of previous history and fact and data. So, in fact the communities where we saw, unfortunately, the most deaths, the most consistently negative health outcomes and the least access to healthcare are those 33 communities.”
The mayor claimed not to have been aware of the DOE’s letter of eligible ZIP codes for 3-K and pre-K funding, although one Boro Park principal said that he must have seen the letter.
“The specific letter you are referring to, I haven’t seen,” the mayor said. “But I want you to know that, we want to make sure everyone is included in 3-k and pre-K, as always. And I want you to know that when we talk about the priorities: that does not stop us from making sure everyone is included in 3-K and pre-K.”
The mayor said he would have his team follow up with BoroPark24 “to get all the facts on how we intend to involve everyone.”
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