Statement on 2020 NYC Budget
JULY 3, 2020
An open letter to the adult leaders who lied to us:
As we witness the celebration of the “restoration of SYEP” and listen to the boasts of City Council members who voted for a budget in direct conflict with our demands to FULLY fund summer youth employment and to defund the NYPD by at LEAST $1 billion, we cringe.
We have come to expect dishonesty and gaslighting from Mayor de Blasio. We did not expect it from Council Members who claim to be “youth champions.” No matter how they try to spin it, these folks voted for a budget that cut SYEP by $100 million — about 80%. Meanwhile, NYPD’s budget took the illusion of a minor cut. In fact, the budget for the NYPD occupation of public schools increased 2%.
For the 35,000 young people who now have access to stipended summer youth opportunities, we are truly happy. But we can’t help but wonder how our most vulnerable youth will access these opportunities with no live application available on the DYCD website and no access for students who are not “legally allowed to work in the US.” For three months we have been talking about the intersections of income inequality, COVID-19, and identity. Why would you leave out NYC’s undocumented youth? Why not use some of the millions in privately raised money to cover stipends for youth without a social security number?
Because the Mayor and Council delayed an SYEP announcement until the final hour, the program has been cut short by a full week. Providers and youth are now scrambling to find answers, and we’re not even sure who’s in charge.
It didn’t have to be this way. Teens Take Charge partnered with more than 100 providers, community-based organizations, parent groups, educators, and youth-centered programs to develop the SYEP 2020 Plan. We sent our plan to Council leaders, who seemed to dismiss it. We requested meetings with Speaker Corey Johnson and with Youth Services Chair Debi Rose. Neither accepted our offer. Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo did not reply to any of our many requests. Nor did Finance leaders Daniel Dromm or Vanessa Gibson. Yet, each of these individuals referenced their dedication to youth in their remarks during the Council vote.
Three months of constant advocacy — 42,000 petition signatures, 7 youth op-eds, dozens of media stories, virtual rallies, more than 200 written testimonies to the City Council, and a flood of direct outreach via phone, email, and social media — was not enough to get youth to the table.
Our demand that the bare minimum of 75,000 spots be maintained — a number that met only half of the demand last summer — went ignored.
We understand that the city is experiencing not only a financial crisis but also a reckoning with its inequitable history. We understand that cuts needed to be made. That’s why we proposed a practical solution that would have cut the SYEP budget by as much as 15% while maintaining the same number of spots by switching from wages to stipends. Instead, the Mayor and City Council took an ax to the program, all while lying to the press about plans to shift significant resources from NYPD to youth services.
We hoped that the Mayor and City Council would begin to see the direct correlation between funding youth services and investing in the communities most impacted by COVID-19 and the reallocation of funds New Yorkers of all ages have been fighting for, from criminalization to education and opportunity.
This budget does not reflect that we’ve been heard. It reflects that no matter how hard we work as young people, the decision-making power still lies in the hands of adults who refuse to stand with us. If young people are the future, we should have access to spaces where decisions about OUR LIVES are being made in the present.
We are thankful to elected officials such as Council Member Menchaca, Public Advocate Williams, and State Senator Salazar, who not only listen to the youth but actually HEAR us and act in our defense by using their structural power to advance our goals and amplify our voices. We are thankful to the nine Council Members who would not approve a budget that did not fully fund programs like SYEP. We are devastated that young people have lost so much — from community school funding to counselors, which further harms our most vulnerable families.
We are not counting the restoration of less than half of the SYEP slots as a victory for the City Council. We are counting it as a victory for student voice and community power because we know that if it weren’t for us and our allies, we wouldn’t have any summer youth employment opportunities at all.
We implore the DYCD and the City Council to engage with the youth leaders in our most impacted communities, not as an afterthought or sound byte, but as an integral part of how this city moves toward a more equitable future. We thank our partners throughout the city for advancing this work, and we will continue to fight for a fair and just NYC for all young people and their communities.
With rage and power,
Teens Take Charge Save SYEP Team