Dear New Yorkers,
We know the pandemic robbed thousands of NYC kids of their parents and other close caregivers like aunts, uncles and grandparents. Less clear is how, or if, they received help for their grief from the place uniquely positioned to support them: public schools.
Over the past year, THE CITY’s MISSING THEM project collaborated with Columbia Journalism Investigations, Type Investigations and City Limits to document the city Department of Education's response — or, too often, lack of response — to children bereaved by COVID who attend public schools. We discovered that decades of underfunding mental health care left schools unprepared to handle the spike in needs during the pandemic. The problem hit students worst where COVID illness and death were highest: among people of color and immigrants.
The dearth of care for grieving students partly stems from an overall shortage of mental health support in New York City schools. Before the pandemic, the DOE employed only one full-time social worker, on average, for every 648 students.
Our reporters spoke with more than 10 immigrant families who lost parents to COVID, as well as teachers, social workers, administrators — and former Mayor Bill de Blasio who said he knew about the mental health resource deficiencies before the pandemic. As COVID-19 continued to spread, they compounded.
"Everyone was already perfectly [aware] that we were sitting on top of a huge problem," he said.
Read more here.
Some other items of note: - “If you draw a picture, it's like letting your emotions out onto a piece of paper and it just stays there.” — Ten-year-old Maddie Fletcher’s advice to other kids who have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID. Here is more wisdom on healing in the words of kids still grieving.
- A $20 million boost for a new biotech “innovation lab” is slated for the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is one part of the State of the City address to be delivered by Mayor Eric Adams later today.
- At a City Council hearing yesterday, the city’s Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina said — despite the collapse of a once-heralded LGBTQ+ unit — the agency has no culture problem. As THE CITY reported, trans women on Rikers Island have lost key support in the department since the start of the Adams administration.
- In case you missed it: THE CITY’s next subway quiz has left the station! More than 40,000 people took our first transit trivia test so we’ve rolled out another one. Take it! Even if you don’t know all the answers, you might learn something new about underground New York.
- See how New York City’s doing with our newsroom’s economic recovery tracker.
- For the latest local numbers on COVID-19 vaccinations, testing rates and more, check our coronavirus tracker.
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