Need Help?
Call AFC's Education Helpline
(866) 427-6033
Monday to Thursday
10 am to 4 pm
Donate Now
Help Advocates for Children support more New York City students!
Julian’s Story
Julian is a 3-year-old preschooler with delays in his language skills, but the DOE failed to provide recommended services.
Stay connected
Sign up for AFC's email updates and find other ways to take action.
-
10.26.2022 | The New York Times | Jennifer Pringle, who works at Advocates for Children of New York, a nonprofit that collects the data on homeless students annually, said that the system must meet the needs of the newcomers, “while not losing sight of the longstanding issues” facing local children...
-
10.26.2022 | Politico (Pro) | “The city needs to address the housing crisis,” Jennifer Pringle, director of AFC’s Project LIT (Learners in Temporary Housing), said in an interview. “The city also must ensure that students who are homeless have access to school and the supports they need to be...
-
10.26.2022 | NY Post | “There’s a lot of attention right now on newly arrived families, as there should be, and there were more than 100,000 students experiencing homelessness before this recent influx,” said Jennifer Pringle, who leads Advocates for Children’s work on student homelessness....
-
10.26.2022 | NY Daily News | The data, compiled by Advocates for Children of New York, shows that about 104,000 students across the city’s public school system suffered from homelessness in the last school year, which stretched from September 2021 through June 2022. That’s a 3.3% uptick as compared...
-
10.26.2022 | City & State | Last school year, there were enough New York City public school students who experienced homlessness to nearly fill Yankee Stadium twice over. And it was the seventh year in a row that was the case. That’s according to a new report from Advocates for Children of New...
-
10.26.2022 | NY1 | At least 104,000 students experienced homelessness at some point during the 2021-2022 school year, up from 101,000 the previous year, a report released by Advocates for Children of New York on Wednesday found. More than 29,000 of those 104,000 children stayed in city...
-
Page: Anselmo's StoryWhen Rosa came to AFC in May, her nephew, Anselmo, was struggling in his New York City public high school. Anselmo, a shy, Spanish-speaking 17-year-old who recently immigrated from Ecuador, is partially blind and has a hearing impairment, and he was reading at a second-grade level. Despite all of...
-
09.29.2022 | Chalkbeat NY | Some advocates said the scores signal that schools need more resources, particularly for younger children who were learning to read when the pandemic first hit, pointing to the dip in reading pass rates for third and fourth graders. Kim Sweet, executive director of...
-
09.28.2022 | The 74 Million | Isabella Rieke, communications manager for Advocates for Children of New York, said the results underscored the urgency behind New York City moving to overhaul its reading program. “While the overall ELA proficiency rate ticked upward, relative to 2019, the...
-
09.28.2022 | CBS News | The executive director of Advocates for Children of New York released the following statement: "The test results released today drive home the need for a fundamental overhaul of the City's approach to literacy instruction, as well as the urgency of providing extra support to...
-
10.24.2022 | Chalkbeat NY | “We have to be committed for the long haul to get students the support they need, to make sure schools have the resources and training they need to be able to provide that support, and not to just expect that in 2024, we’re done with this,” said Sarah Part, policy...
-
10.24.2022 | Politico | “I think given the influx of newly arrived asylum-seeker students who may be arriving after that October 31 deadline, we would hope that the city would allow those schools to receive more funding for every student that enrolls thereafter,” said Rita Rodriguez-Engberg,...
-
The 2021–22 school year marked the seventh consecutive year in which more than 100,000 New York City public school students experienced homelessness.
-
10.19.2022 | Today, AFC testified before the City Council Committee on Education regarding our concern about the 800 preschoolers with significant disabilities who were waiting for seats in their legally mandated preschool special education classes as of June 2022. Read our testimony
-
10.11.2022 | The Uptowner | Sarah Part, a policy analyst with Advocates for Children, explained that while some students struggling with literacy may have learning disabilities, many are considered “instructional failures”: They struggle with reading because they were not taught well, or did not...
-
10.03.2022 | City Limits | But educators and advocates say there are high-need student populations the formula doesn’t account for, including students in temporary housing and in the foster care system. They say that in a city where over 100,000 students were homeless in the 2021-2022 school year,...
-
09.01.2022 | News Nation Now | Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, director of Advocates for Children of New York, said they are concerned there isn’t enough staff at the schools who speak the migrant students’ language and are able to help their families. “It’s also a bigger challenge for students who...
-
08.30.2022 | NewsNation | “Our concern is that there isn’t sufficient staff at each school that is bilingual and that are knowledgeable to be able to help families and to help all the students are coming in,” said Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, an immigrant rights advocate. New York City Schools...
-
09.01.2022 | Conexión Migrante TV | "“Un problema que vemos ahora es que no hay suficiente personal que hable español o que hable el idioma que hablan las familias. Entonces, recientemente el departamento de educación iba a contratar coordinadores que trabajan en albergues para ayudar a las...
-
09.13.2022 | NYS Education Department | 64 Commission Members Encompass Diversity in Backgrounds, Ethnicity, Geographic Regions, and Areas of Expertise. Under the direction of the co-chairs, the 64 members of the Blue Ribbon Commission will undertake a thoughtful and inclusive process to explore...