Brooklyn – Last week Councilman David G. Greenfield, joined by Councilmembers Steve Levin and Brad Lander, hosted an emergency meeting at Greenfield’s office with administrators from over 40 yeshivas to discuss strategies for fighting the City’s intention to permanently end the Priority 7 voucher program at the end of this year.

Since April, a coalition of New York City Councilmembers including Councilmembers David Greenfield, Steve Levin, Brad Lander, Lew Fidler and Letitia James, have advocated to save Priority 7 Day Care Vouchers, which provide thousands of families with safe and affordable childcare. In June, despite great odds against them in the form of billions of dollars in cuts to New York City’s budget, the coalition successfully secured an additional six months of funding for the Priority 7 program, with an agreement to revisit the issue in the fall.  Since that time, the City announced another $2 billion in planned mid-year budget cuts.

“It was necessary to bring leaders of our mosdos together to discuss the impending end of Priority 7 and what kind of advocacy for restoration of this funding would be most effective for families and yeshivas,” said Councilman Greenfield.

Last month, Councilmembers Greenfield and Levin met with Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs to discuss extending funding for Priority 7 Childcare Vouchers for another six months, through June 2011.  Deputy Mayor Gibbs informed the Councilmembers in October’s meeting that she was unwilling to discuss extending the program.  In fact, she told Greenfield and Levin that a unilateral decision was already reached to terminate the program earlier than the six months agreed upon in June.  Councilmembers Greenfield and Levin immediately began advocating to ensure that the agreement reached with the City to keep Priority 7 running through December was honored. After tense negotiations, the Councilmembers were successful in keeping the program operational until December 31, 2010.

“Clearly Priority 7 is an issue that is paramount in the Jewish Community throughout Brooklyn,” noted Councilman Levin.  “What this is, ultimately, is an issue of fairness.  The Jewish Community, by and large, receives a smaller share of publicly funded benefits related to education and childcare than the rest of the city.  What we need to figure out, however, is how we can get the passion of this community to influence the Mayor and his administration.”

In recent years, Priority 7 has become the default option for reducing ACS’s budget shortfall. But, while other programs are recommended for funding reductions, Priority 7 has consistently been slated for total elimination at the expense of a single ethnic community, despite that community’s overwhelming need for publicly funded childcare.  In fact, a 2008 report published by ACS noted that the heavily Orthodox neighborhoods of Boro Park and Williamsburg, where the majority of Priority 7 vouchers are distributed, had the largest unmet need for publicly funded childcare. And, by ACS’ own admission, 92.1% of the 2,200 children receiving Priority 7 vouchers are living below 100% of the poverty level.

“It is obvious that the merits of preserving Priority 7 vouchers are on our side, unfortunately it seems like the politics are very difficult,” explained Councilman Lander.

The emergency meeting, which lasted over 2 hours, included a lively discussion of concerns about the future of the program and significant worry, expressed by yeshiva administrators, that if the funds were somehow restored for six months that they would have to have this fight every six months.

Ultimately, the overwhelming majority of administrators in attendance agreed that the best negotiation strategy would be to ask the mayor to keep the program, but to phase it out over the next four years. The administrators believe that with a multi-year phase out, the program would come to a gradual, rather than abrupt, end and the community would be able to move toward Priority 7 alternatives over a period of years, rather than weeks.

“The strategy of the yeshiva administrators reflects the reality that, in this economic climate, many more families are becoming eligible for Priority 5 and beginning to transition away from Priority 7 on their own,” explained Councilman Greenfield.

Members of the City Council coalition on Priority 7 have a rare personal meeting scheduled with Mayor Bloomberg next week to ask him to personally intervene to restore the Priority 7 program. As per the administrators’ direction, the Councilmembers will continue to vigorously advocate against abruptly ending the program this year and will instead ask the City to phase out the program over the next few years.  For their part, yeshivas will begin a large-scale letter writing campaign in the coming days, appealing directly to the Mayor to restore funding for Priority 7 vouchers.

(YWN Desk – NYC)