Recent weeks have seen a relentless avalanche of reports of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s alleged sexual harassment of women, and his administration’s cover-up for political reasons of large numbers of Covid-19 deaths in the state’s nursing homes. In response, many of New York’s leading Democrats in national and state government have Read more…
by Robin Jacobowitz and Fred Smith This week, the United States Department of Education (USDE) sent a letter to chief state school officers directing them to administer state-level standardized testing in 2021. This annual testing, waived in spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is required under the Every Student Read more…
We shouldn’t have to disadvantage taxpayers and our children to build smartly in the 21st century. Robin Jacobowitz with Kt Tobin and Josh Simons It would be pretty hard to be an Ulster County resident and to not by now have heard about the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) sought Read more…
This post originally ran on the Gotham Gazette Early in 1984 I visited Governor Mario Cuomo’s office in Albany at his invitation. He wanted to discuss a talk I’d given at the New School about his first year as governor. I found myself going on about the growing dominance of Read more…
I know that I promised an article about how the City of Poughkeepsie was going to experience the most transformative change from the current wave of migration from New York City, and that article is coming, but first I wanted to address the notion that this trend is going to Read more…
It is—and isn’t—who you’d think Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution requires a decennial census. It is the basis for reapportionment, the drawing of legislative district lines for all levels of government from the federal House of Representatives all the way down to local city councils and some towns Read more…
This post originally ran on the Gotham Gazette The New York State Senate and Assembly, both now in Democratic hands, last month gave first passage to several changes to an earlier constitutional amendment, adopted in 2014, creating a so-called Independent Redistricting Commission to redraw district lines every ten years for Read more…
By Robin Jacobowitz and KT Tobin On August 7th Governor Cuomo announced that our COVID numbers in New York State were sufficiently low to allow us to send our K-12 children, our teachers, and school staff back into school buildings. There’s a good reason for wanting to do this. The Read more…
By Robin Jacobowitz, Gerald Benjamin, and KT Tobin “Everything connects to everything,” Leonardo Da Vinci is said to have concluded from his life’s work. Nowhere is this lesson more evident than in K12 education this year. In the face of a pandemic, we closed our school buildings to protect the Read more…
On April 11, 2020, with his school chancellor Richard Carranza standing beside him, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City’s schools would be closed for the remainder of the school year to limit the spread of coronavirus infection. Almost immediately thereafter, Governor Andrew Cuomo dismissed this announcement as Read more…