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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. There is a big unprecedented court ruling that just came down this hour in the contentious battle over funding for the New York City public schools for this fall and the New York City budget. A New York state judge has basically ruled that he's going to make the city council do a do-over and vote on the school's budget again because they didn't follow the rule requiring input from an educational policy panel.

As many of you know, some members of council have been expressing regrets over their original vote to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the education budget. The mayor wants the cuts based on declining enrollment in the public school system, but parents and educators have been howling that it'll mean increased class sizes and a loss of music and art, and other needed programs in their schools.

Some parents filed a lawsuit and now, sure enough, the judge says, "Go back and do it right." We will see if the city appeals this ruling. With that breaking news as prelude, now we continue our year-long series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks in which we're welcoming all 51 members of the New York City Council in this year when most of them are new because of term limits and it's majority female for the first time.

We are up to District 31 here on week 31. With us now is Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers who represents people in the Southeast Queens neighborhoods of Arverne, Brookville, Edgemere, Laurelton, Springfield Gardens, Rosedale, and Far Rockaway. I think I got them all. A lifelong resident of the district, a child of immigrant parents, a former labor activist, and staffer for top New York officials.

Selvena Brooks-Powers first joined the council last year. That was in a special election to succeed Donovan Richards, who became the Queens Borough president. Her bio calls her a fierce advocate for equity in city resources. I'm sure we'll get her take on the schools' budget mess through that lens. Councilmember, great to have you on. Thank you for joining our series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks.

Selvena Brooks-Powers: Thank you so much, Brian. It's such a great opportunity to be on with you today. As a former comms director, placed a number of elected officials on your show, never been the person being interviewed on your show. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Now, you've stepped out from behind the curtain and you're on the stage yourself. Can we start with the breaking news? I know this is brand new and I'm sure you're still digesting it but were you one of the council members who was sorry you voted for the budget in the original form?

Selvena Brooks-Powers: When we vote on the city budget, we do not vote on any particular agency in how they allocate their funding and negotiate in good faith with the administration. When we voted on the $101 billion budget, we understood that the federal dollars would be fizzling out at some point this year because these are the things we brought up last year.

If you look back at some of the hearings even that I participated in, those were some of the questions I asked, "What happens when this money runs out?" For the past two years, what we've seen is infusion of federal dollars to our schools because of the pandemic. That has been extremely helpful. What the council did do in the budget was we increased the education budget by an additional $700 million because education is a priority for us and we are completely committed to making sure that our students do not suffer.

I know firsthand in a district like the one that I cover how we have historically been under-invested in. Going into city hall, that has been something that has been a clarion call for myself. I talk regularly with my principals in my district. When I got elected last year, I began convening a monthly meeting with my principal. I just recently also met with my superintendent to understand what this budget means from them. I'm on the ground. I'm talking to my parents. I'm listening to my students. I do believe, as I've said before, we need to look at the funding model which the funding model is not new. The funding model I--

Brian Lehrer: Depending on how you crunched the numbers, it was either a $700 million increase, or it was a $215 million cut, or it was a $400 million cut. Looking beyond that, the court ruling doesn't say the school's budget was too low. It wasn't about the numbers themselves. It was that council didn't follow the procedure of taking input from the panel on educational policy before the vote. Council declared a funding emergency when the court says, "No emergency existed. It was just an excuse to get around that step."

Selvena Brooks-Powers: Just a point of clarification, Brian. The council is not a party to this lawsuit. I don't believe that they said that the council [inaudible 00:05:37]. Again, a lot of this information is break-in information. A lot of people are trying to wrap their minds around what this all means. This is the very first time a portion of the budget that the city council has voted on has been invalidated. There's a lot of complexities to work through.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to be talking to our education reporter, Jessica Gould a little after our segment because she's digging into the details. If you increase the school budget, you'll either have to cut spending on some other city services or raise taxes, I guess, because the total amount of money you have to spend doesn't change. Is that correct?

Selvena Brooks-Powers: I'm going to separate my response to you. On the matter of this court case, the matter's still in the litigation as we expect that the administration will appeal. Again, this is still breaking news. I don't want to step out ahead of the body. What I will say in terms of technicality, we have a responsibility to have a balanced budget. I think the direction I see going in terms of addressing this budget, how does it impact the other. I think that's something that we have to figure out.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have an example of a school or schools in your district and how they'd be affected by the budget as it currently stands?

Selvena Brooks-Powers: You mean prior to the judgment because I think the judgment now--

Brian Lehrer: Prior to the judgment, because I think part of what happened, tell me if this is your understanding, is that a lot of members of the council didn't really realize that it would result in a lot of program cuts because, on the surface, the mayor's position sounds like nobody loses. The funding per student was not going down. It was just that schools with declining enrollment would lose the proportional amount of the students they lost. People are asking why have all these schools been saying, it'll force them to eliminate music and art and other programs. Do you have examples of that from your district?

Selvena Brooks-Powers: Sure. This, again, is something that my principals educated me on actually last year when they shared with me when there's this whole process where sometimes they, I guess, owe DOE money. When enrollment is finalized and if they're under-enrollment, then it changes their budget because enrollment-based model is not something that's new. It wasn't started in this budget this year. It's something that has existed.

I have heard in that lens, how it has impacted my schools. In the budget that was passed in June of this year, a number of my schools were on the list on DOE's website at risk of funding adjustment based on the enrollment decline. My principals also told me during the pandemic that they saw a decline in enrollment which-- The final enrollment will be when school actually begins in the fall where schools are able to appeal.

Based on that appeal, get immediate funding as a result of that. I've been talking to my educators, "What does this budget mean to you?" When it comes to some of my high schools, they are over-enrolled. They're actually getting more money as a result of the enrollment-based model, but then there are some of my primary and middle school schools that are impacted and they saw a decline in enrollment so they've seen that adjustment as well.

I'm working with them to see how I can be able to assist with that. I've been using even my own discretionary dollars, 700,000 of my discretionary funding went to youth in some way, shape, or form. We also have CASA, CII grants. In terms of the arts, I'm very big on STEAM, which my educators in my district know. Again, I stay close to my educators and community, my parents, my students to understand the impact and work with them in partnership to be able to address this because again, this is not a new dynamic for my district.

I look forward to the day when we are not enrollment based because communities like mine that have a digital divide, that's been hit hard by Sandy, that was hit hard by COVID, there are socioeconomic factors that impact our students that being enrollment-based does not go far enough for students like mine.

Brian Lehrer: All right. The whole formula needs to be revisited you're saying. This is 51 council members in 52 weeks, week 31 in district 31 in Southeast Queens with Councilmember, Selvena Brooks-Powers. Let's talk about other things in your district. We ask everyone in this series to paint a people picture of your district for us, who lives there demographically, and how has it changed over your lifetime of living there?

Selvena Brooks-Powers: Actually I grew up in St. Albans but I've been living in the Rockaways for the past 15 years. What I love about my district, I truly believe, and I say this all the time, it reflects New York City and the strength of New York City which is the diversity. My district is a predominantly Black district, but we have a very strong and vibrant Jewish community in the Far Rockaway area.

We have a growing Latino community, as well, we have a large Caribbean community. It's pretty diverse. Landmass-wise, it's a pretty wide district. We have what we call, locals called the Peninsula, and some people call it the Mainland. We have the Peninsula which has Far Rockaway, Edgemere, Arverne, and parts of Rockaway Beach. On the mainland side, we have the JFK Airport. We have Rosedale, Laurelton, Springfield Gardens, and Brookville.

We also have parts of Jamaica Bay as well. Again, I think we have a pretty special district where we have a lot of one-in-two-family homeowners. We have condo owners. We have about five [unintelligible 00:12:05] developments here as well. Everybody has that sense of community. We fight along with each other around central issues, whether it's around public safety, around environmental issues, issues impacting small minority and women businesses. I've always called my district the dynamic 31st.

Brian Lehrer: I know the area. It not only sounds it is a dynamic district and so diverse and such a vital part and often an under-resourced part of New York City. I'm asking all the council members, what's the most common reason that constituents have contacted your office since you took office last year and has whatever that number one reason is surprised you.

Selvena Brooks-Powers: I will say leaning back into the fact that my district is one of the districts that have been historically under-invested in. I find that there are a lot of need in my community, whether it is illegal truck parking, illegal dumping, flooding and infrastructure issues. We've seen an uptick from time to time in crime. More recently, we've seen an increase in gun violence.

In the local community, we had a 15-year-old that was found deceased several days ago, the morning after a shooting. We see a lot of need. A lot of the issues that we are contacted about. We see a lot of illegal truck parking. The JFK Airport is in the district also. A lot of trucks that are going to do the cargo aspect or traveling to other parts of the city will often park on our residential streets.

Right now off of Edgemere, I've been fighting to get some of these trucks removed there. We were successful and did a effort with law enforcement a few weeks ago and we were able to get some ticketed and removed and we're working to get another series of trucks removed as well. Illegal dumping has been really, really big, and infamous on places like the Snake Road, which we call locally, but it's Brookville Boulevard.

We have significant flooding and infrastructure issues. We were vulnerable before Sandy. A lot of infrastructure work has gone into the district but there's still more work around that that's still needed. Again, we've seen an uptick in crime. Crime overall is down, but more recently we have seen some shootings take place in the district.

Brian Lehrer: Where are you on the scale of the city is out of control on crime since no time like the '80s to the right wing is playing us exaggerating the situation?

Selvena Brooks-Powers: I'm a strong proponent that one lost life is one too many. There's work to be done. There's a lot that has been done in terms of the investment in programs like the Crisis Interrupters, which I work to fund and I partner with often. There's been a lot invested in this space, but again, there's more work that needs to be done. We also haven't really talked about the fallout from COVID. How has that impacted people mentally? Is some of that connected to what we're seeing and how can we begin to take a look at mental health and other issues that may be impacting the crime that we see?

Brian Lehrer: Well, some of the progressive members of council, I think the number was 10 objected to the overall city budget which was passed in June for the new fiscal year that just began last month on the grounds that it didn't redistribute resources.

Selvena Brooks-Powers: I'm sorry. I missed a part of what you said, Brian, can you repeat that?

Brian Lehrer: Sure. I was saying that there were a number of progressive members of council who objected to the overall city budget that just passed on the grounds that it didn't redistribute resources in the name of equity enough, still not enough for mental health, which you just mentioned, still not enough for affordable housing, for education, as we talked about before and too much for law enforcement, things like that. Do they have a point or were you in that group?

Selvena Brooks-Powers: I can't speak to why anyone voted one way or another. I can speak to what I know of the budget, I feel like this budget was one. We know that there's challenges in terms of the education budget that we fully appreciate. In terms of the other aspects of the budget, we worked really hard to make sure that we were being able to maximize the resources that were available.

We've seen the last several years an infusion of historic record number of funding coming from the federal government that unfortunately is now fizzling out. At the same time in the budget, we must be fiscally responsible to have a balanced budget. I think the council did its best and did a good job at making sure that we were able to fully fund the city VES program, Voucher program. We were able to provide even if it's a small bit of relief for homeowners.

We were able to see a historic increase in summer youth positions for our young people, creating trauma centers across the city. There's so many goods that a lot of people may not realize was in the budget because it really has not been discussed as much publicly quite honestly, but there are elements of this budget that is going to bring much-needed relief to New Yorkers across the city.

Brian Lehrer: Just about out of time for this week's 51 council members in 52 weeks segment. We're in district 31 with Councilmember, Selvena Brooks-Powers from Southeast Queens and we'll wrap it up with the last question that everybody gets because we're inviting each council member to bring a show and tell item from your district something you'd like people from everywhere else to know about. what did you bring us for show and tell?

Selvena Brooks-Powers: Well, first I just want to start with the two highlights from our district which is JFK redevelopment which is a 20 billion infrastructure program in my district that has the potential to be transformative in our community as well as Jamaica Bay. Parts of Jamaica Bay is in my district. It is the city's largest open space and it is the only National Park in the country that you can get to by train.

For my show and tell, I would say it's the Idlewild Environmental Center. I'm pretty excited about it. It opened up a couple of months ago. It was a long time coming and it's a space where community could come and learn about the rich environmental aspects of our community, where our kids can really learn about the sciences. I invite everyone whether from New York or people visiting New York to come and visit us in our district.

Brian Lehrer: Cool. I love the [crosstalk].

Selvena Brooks-Powers: Oh, Brian, I can't forget to say and make a plug for Rockaway Beach. We were listed as one of the top 25 beaches in the country. I have to make that plug.

Brian Lehrer: Sharks. No.

Selvena Brooks-Powers: We have Dolphins too.

Brian: That's right. People stood up and applauded for the dolphins on one of the local beaches. Recently, this standing ovation I heard, and I love the only National Park you can take a subway to. Councilmember, Selvena Brooks-Powers, thank you, continued good luck in office.

Selvena Brooks-Powers: Thank you.

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