09.16.2020 | WCBS 880 | “The city has distributed hundreds of thousands of iPads with data to students who need them, but at some city shelters the iPads don’t work because there’s no WiFi and isn’t sufficient cellular reception,” says Randi Levine, the police director and Advocates for Children of New York. 

She says for the roughly 100,000 students who experience homelessness, education is hard enough. They need more resources to help them learn as efficiently as their peers. 

“Before the pandemic, fewer than a third of city students who are homeless were reading proficiency and only 60% graduated from high school,” Levine said.

Her organization is one of 30 groups that wrote a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio, urging him to address several outstanding issues before the school year begins – among them, access to online learning. 

“We need the city to urgently work across agencies, bring different agencies together, and charge someone with fixing these problems immediately,” Levine said. Listen to the full interview.