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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. By the way, listeners, we are nearing the deadline for you to apply to be our next intern. The next session starts in September and we are looking for students or very recent grads who love news and culture and trying to make a great radio show. This is a full school year internship. You would join our team for about 15 hours a week through the school year, starting in September.

If you want to apply, go to wnyc.org/jobs, by 5:00 PM next Wednesday, July 27th. We are tweeting the link out again this morning. You can also go to wnyc.org/jobs directly and you'll be able to click on internships to apply. If this sounds like something that you might be interested in. All right. Now we continue our year-long series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks in which we're welcoming every member of New York City Council. Touching every neighborhood of the city in this year, in which a majority of the council is new because of term limits and its majority female for the first time ever.

Today, another one of those freshman female members, council member Lynn Schulman from District 29 and Forest Hills. We'll also touch on some pretty big City Council news breaking in the last day or two, many council members expressing regret for voting for the city budget for the new fiscal year that began this month. The regrets are about approving a cut to the education budget with the declining enrollment in the school system. It's a cut that the council and the mayor might yet reverse. Councilmember Schulman, very belated, congratulations on your election and welcome to WNYC.

Lynn Schulman: Thank you very much, Brian. I'm a huge fan of your radio show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. Want to tell people about your background a little bit first? Where'd you grow up and what first got you interested in politics or public service?

Lynn Schulman: I actually grew up in Forest Hills and was very active in the community. I was on the community board. I was on the Precinct Council, I was on the chamber of commerce. I devoted my personal and professional life to healthcare advocacy, which was born out of the HIV/AIDS movement where I saw friends and neighbors die of HIV, of AIDS, and because of the indifference of those in government.

We're experiencing a lot of that today. I ran because I thought it was time for a change. COVID is the biggest health crisis that we have in our lifetime. It's changed the dynamic of how we need to look at all different kinds of facets of the way government intersects with our lives, housing, healthcare, all different kinds of things. That's the basis on which I ran. I was always somebody who wanted to help people. I believe in this capacity, I'm able to do that in a way that I wasn't able to before.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know if you've heard the breaking news yet this hour, that President Biden now has COVID. He tested positive today. The White House says he's experiencing very mild symptoms, isolating and taking Paxlovid. With all the precautions that they take around the president of the United States, I'm sure everybody who gets anywhere near him gets tested first, but we know that people can be infected for a few days and contagious before their testing actually turns up positive.

Maybe that's what happened, I guess, they'll announce whatever they know about that, at some point, but I wonder if even that story has implications for you as someone interested in COVID policy, about what the city should be doing. It's certainly an indication of how hard it is to enact policies that are going to protect everyone. Yet we see the Adams administration really removing masking rules, vaccine requirements, things like that. Even in city offices that it has direct control over, even as BA.5 is spreading the way it is.

Lynn Schulman: I did hear that a little earlier, I heard it when you announced the news about President Biden. I am somebody who had COVID in April and had mild symptoms, but they're not pleasant. This is what I'm going to say about this, that I'm going to step away from the mandates and the masks and all of that for a minute and tell you that this is a pandemic, that's the biggest healthcare crisis of our lifetime. It's shown the vulnerability of our communities.

Over the past two decades, Queens has lost an alarming number of hospitals and other healthcare resources. It's one of the platforms that I had when I ran because Queens actually had the lowest hospital capacity of any borough. That's why Queens was the epicenter of the virus. One of the things that I'm trying to do is to make sure when we have developments coming into our district and that hospital impact assessment is part of that.

That we have emergency care where we need it because that's a real big piece of this. Going towards what people can do I want to tell you that what I'm disappointed in is that not enough people are vaccinated, that's a huge piece. Being vaccinated doesn't mean you're not going to get COVID, but it doesn't mean that you most likely won't have to go to the hospital or die for that matter. We saw hundreds and thousands of people die from this needlessly.

Brian Lehrer: People die of COVID in New York City every day, not like 2020, and not even like January '22 at the height of the first Omicron wave. A handful of people die in New York City every single day from COVID according to the New York Times COVID tracker, which is what I mostly watch. We turn this city upside down in terms of policy when 1 person on average or 2 person on average dies because of gun violence and 5, 8, 10 people a day are dying of COVID and we're taking everything off.

Lynn Schulman: I worked in healthcare for quite a while. I actually worked in a hospital in Brooklyn at Woodhull, not on the admin side, not on the medical side, but people die every day of a lot of things. I just want to put this in perspective, people die of the flu every year. A large number of people die from the flu. COVID's going to be with us for a while. We have to figure out the measures to take we're way ahead of where we were.

Not only do we have vaccines, but we have treatments. The city, you go in now and you get tested and you test positive, you can get antiviral treatment immediately and it's delivered to your door. That's really important. We have at-home testing now, we didn't have that before. A lot of this is the CDC being behind the eight ball, which they've done not only with COVID but with Monkey pox, which I'm sure you will talk about in a minute. I think people at this point, and I've talked to epidemiologists, I've talked to, and to your point, I look at the New York Times stats, I've spoken to the department of health.

I've spoken to actually people around the country who all say, "You have to be careful about what you do with masking because it's two things. One is you want to do it when there's a real emergent situation. It's not there yet." I don't believe. The other is that If you're going to mandate you better have enforcement capabilities, as it is, we mandate that people in healthcare settings and on public transportation have to wear masks.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Those things are still in place, right.

Lynn Schulman: Yes, and on public transportation, I can tell you firsthand that's not being enforced. Unless you have the enforcement mechanism, it's really difficult. I think what we need to do, and I've talked to the administration about this is that we need more masks available. We need more tests available to folks. We really need to make sure that people have the knowledge that we need to make sure that we have information that's available to people so that they can make judgment calls for themselves. I want to tell you--

Brian Lehrer: I hear you and all fair enough. Before we get off healthcare, you probably would like us to mention that you've been open about having had breast cancer recently and that your own experience with medical care in that context exposed the inequities on our healthcare system, even more than you knew. I wonder if you would share some of those lessons with our listeners and your policy response.

Lynn Schulman: I'm more than happy to do that. I had COVID actually while I was campaigning and in the midst of the breast cancer rather in the midst of COVID. There were a few things there. One is that screenings for breast cancer and other diseases went drastically down during COVID. I met up with women who because they had lost their jobs, they didn't have insurance. They delayed getting screened for breast cancer and then found out that they had a lump or they had a positive biopsy, which was terrible.

It made me more aware of the fact that we need-- We don't have a health care system. We have a hodgepodge of health care opportunities. I think no matter what zip code you live in, we should make sure that people have affordable and accessible health care. It shouldn't rely on whether you have insurance or anything else. That's really important to me. I found out there were friends of mine who had been diagnosed.

Actually, this is an interesting story. They had been diagnosed with breast cancer, but they were told, because it was COVID, that it was considered elective surgery to have breast cancer surgery. Can you imagine?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Wow.

Lynn Schulman: That's absurd. They were told to wait, and they were given some medications to help keep the tumors at bay until they could have the surgery. I want to tell you that after I got elected, I met with a few other of my colleagues or incoming colleagues with Governor Hochul. I talked to her about her emergency executive orders. Because remember, they were saying, "Okay, hospitals, they could just not do elective surgeries." She made it clear in the executive orders that followed from that, when we had the big Omicron wave, that any diagnosis of cancer was exempt from that. That that wasn't considered elective. I was really proud to have done that.

Brian Lehrer: My guest, if you're just joining us, is New York City Councilmember Lynn Schulman from Forest Hills, Queens as part of our series 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks in which we're welcoming all 51 members of the New York City Council. Touching every neighborhood of the city in this year when most of the council is new, and it's majority female for the first time. We'll take some calls from the district in just a minute at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or you can tweet @BrianLehrer. Here's a healthcare-related question coming in from your district. Mildred in Forest Hills, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mildred.

Mildred: Hi, thank you for taking my call. The Office of Labor Relations and the Municipal Labor Committee are trying to change the administrative code to deny 250,000 New York City retirees, their right to traditional Medicare with a paid-for Part B supplement known as GHI Senior Care. I'm hoping that you'll support the efforts of 250,000 New York City retirees who have worked and dedicated their lives to New York City service, to the people of New York.

I'm hoping that you will support our efforts to keep our health care since you have just expressed your desire for quality and equality in health care.

Brian Lehrer: Mildred, thank you very much. For listeners who don't know this issue, we've covered it before. This is a huge issue among New York City employee retirees with a proposal that began in the de Blasio administration to move many of them from traditional Medicare to one of the private sector managed care plans. It's so unpopular, councilmember, as you know, that it is being reconsidered. What's the status of that if you're in touch with that issue?

Lynn Schulman: Yes, I am. As a matter of fact, I have 30-plus years of service with the city, and I'm part of the retirees' program. Obviously, I'm not retired yet, but I completely understand. My understanding at the moment is that it's still in litigation, but I have been having conversations and will continue to have conversations with union leadership, which has been involved in this as well as the administration. It's something that's very important to me. I want to help my constituents and people in the program as much as possible.

Brian Lehrer: Peter in Rego Park, you're on WNYC with Councilmember Lynn Schulman. Hi.

Peter: Hi, can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Can.

Peter: Hi, Councilmember Schulman. Thank you for taking my call. I'm a teacher. I live in Rego Park, and I am obviously very dismayed by what's happening with the education budget in this recent budget. I luckily was not excess, but a number of people at my school were. I know that you voted for the budget. I know the vote took place ahead of schedule, and now, we're seeing the fallout of that.

I'm just wondering if you could talk more about why you voted for the budget in the first place and where you think we're at now. I hope that if you could do it again, you wouldn't have voted yes, but if there could have been done anything differently, what you would've done differently?

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Peter.

Lynn Schulman: Peter, thank you for that question. I think our teachers are amazing. My mother was a substitute teacher, and actually, I am a product of the public school system in Queens, which was excellent for me. I want to say this to you. One is that I did vote for the budget. I voted for the budget because this is one of the most robust budgets that we've had in a number of years, and it has programs across the board.

I actually was able to get money for our local schools. I don't know if you teach in the district. I know you live in the district. After-school programs, there were a number of things in that budget that were important. In terms of the cuts that you're talking about, the way that the budget transpired was that the Department of Education was not forthcoming in terms of what that shortfall was going to cover and what was going to be done in terms of that $215 million.

What I will tell you is, since then, I've done a couple things. One is I had a meeting immediately with the principals of all of the schools in the district to talk to them because I know that there were individual schools where there were some misunderstandings of some enrollment issues and all of that. Bigger than that, I've been working with the speaker of the city council and my colleagues to push the administration to restore those monies.

There are conversations going on now. They're not done yet, but I'm hoping that we're going to have some good news in the next few days.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, as some of our listeners know, this isn't primarily about you. This is a citywide issue, the education cuts. 40 of the 51 members wrote a letter to the mayor asking him to reverse the cuts to the schools that have declining enrollment. A lot of people have regrets. Were you one of the 40 who signed that letter?

Lynn Schulman: I signed the speaker's letter, but I don't have regrets about voting for the budget. I signed the letter because the DOE, like I said, was not-- Let me just say this. Let me step back a second. The city council actually put $700 million into the DOE budget, which is historic. This amount of money was something that was a little bit of a contention in terms of the transparency, what it meant, what was going to be done.

I actually am looking to see if I can do legislation so that that doesn't happen again. I'll talk more about that when I have more details about working with staff on that.

Brian Lehrer: On one level, it makes sense. The city has a set number of dollars per pupil that it gives to each school. That per-pupil spending did not get cut, but for schools with declining enrollment, it actually means that they can't have certain programs in those schools. They lose after-school programs. They lose enrichment teachers, maybe Music and Art, things like that, because it's not as simple as X dollars per pupil. That's the underlying issue.

Lynn Schulman: Yes, that is the underlying issue. Let me say this to you. Our kids only get one chance at a good education. The issue here is because what we wanted to do as a council and what I wanted to do is to have the schools kept whole for this year so that we had an opportunity. We're all new. We're all coming in. The budget's happening really quickly, that we have an opportunity where we could work with DOE and the administration on what we do moving forward in terms of these enrollment issues.

We were trying to buy ourselves some time, and there was some considerations given to trying to use the federal monies that we still have to make the schools whole for the next year or two so that we could work together as a team to figure that out and that cut. We are trying to see what we could do. We're going to have to address that issue, moving forward, and also by the way, what we're also going to have to address is that this year tax revenues were very good. Our economists in the council are telling us moving forward, we're going to have deficit. That's going to be a problem, not only for DOE budget, for budgets for the city next year and--

Brian Lehrer: The Department of Education budget is by far the largest thing in the city budget. It's about $30 billion out of the $100 billion budget, 30% of New York City tax dollars go to the schools as it is $30 billion. Just one little footnote on this restoring the cuts will mean schools with declining enrollment, get more money per student than the schools with more steady enrollment. Is that fair and equitable?

Lynn Schulman: I think what we want to do ultimately is to make sure that nobody goes without odds because odds programs, music programs, and all of that. I will tell you that the funding mechanisms in terms of just the budget for DOE, there are some issues around a lot of those formulas. That's something we all have to sit down and work out so that it's equitable across the board.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Maybe a formula of X dollars per student, but where the baseline of every school gets at least these programs as essential resources. All right. We have two minutes left for two questions for short answers to two questions that we are asking every member of the city council in this series. Number one, since you took office in January, what's the most common reason that constituents contact your office?

Lynn Schulman: Dirty streets and public safety issues. With regard to dirty streets in the budget, we put more money into sanitation for trash bins, extra pickups. Those are very important.

Brian Lehrer: Dirty streets might be the number one answer we've been getting the plurality number one answer that we've been getting from councilmembers in this series so far as we're about halfway through the 51 now. Last question in our last minute, we're inviting everybody to bring a show and tell item from your district that other people might like to know about what you got for us?

Lynn Schulman: We sent to you a photo of a street co-naming for my late partner, Adeladie Connaughton who was a retired Lieutenant in the fire department, EMS. She passed away a little over four years ago. She was amazing. She was considered the informal mayor of Forest Hills. She was an emergency medical technician and she helped people. I live in a big complex, it's three buildings in Forest Hills. A phone would ring in the middle of the night. She would go and take care of people.`

She would see people on the street, she would run if she saw an accident. She was amazing. When she passed away, it was interesting. All these people started coming up to me, who I didn't know in the neighborhood to tell me all the different things that she did for them. After she retired, she became a case worker at the Fortune Society which your listeners may know is a place where they deal with formerly incarcerated individuals and also have alternatives to incarceration programs. She was amazing and she did so much work there that people still call me up to tell me.

I meet people on the street who tell me your late partner, helped me so much helped me turn my life around. I have a job now I'm doing well because some of her clients lived in the district. That was what was I thought I'd bring a little bit of that to. She has Adeladie Connaughton Way in Forest Hills. I thought that was something that was personal to me, the whole thing.

Brian Lehrer: That is so touching that the personal could intersect with the policy in that way because your partner was a force for good in the community. Lynn Schulman New York City councilmember from District 29 and Forest Hills. Thank you for joining our series 51 Council Members In 52 Weeks.

Lynn Schulman: Thank you very much.

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