Good morning. It's Thursday. We'll look at students in city schools who are homeless and the challenges that teachers and administrators face. We'll also look at a new investigation of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey. |
 | | Todd Heisler/The New York Times |
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I asked my colleague Troy Closson about the challenges of having nearly one in 10 students living in a shelter or doubled up with other families, or in cars or abandoned buildings or parks. |
How many of the homeless students are migrants who've been sent to New York on buses from Texas? |
The 104,000 doesn't include them. That figure was from the last school year. But since July, more than 6,000 additional homeless students have enrolled. The education department doesn't track students' immigration status, but we know the overwhelming majority have been migrants' children. |
They have become a big focus for the school system — how to support these students at a time when schools don't have enough bilingual teachers and bilingual social workers. |
Where are the most students homeless? |
This past year the number rose in areas of Queens hit hard by the pandemic where families were struggling and often lost jobs. You saw a lot more homeless students in places like Corona, Elmhurst and Ridgewood — in those neighborhoods, the number rose by almost 22 percent. |
And in parts of the southwest Bronx, one in five students was homeless, which is a staggering number. |
Beyond that, homeless students have been concentrated in Upper Manhattan and in areas of Brooklyn including Brownsville and Bushwick. |
Citywide, about 30,000 students lived in shelters. Another 69,000 were doubled up with other families, and 5,500 lived in cars, parks or abandoned buildings, meaning they probably had less access to social services that the shelter system makes available. |
You write that other large cities have similar rates of homelessness among students, but New York City's sheer size puts the problem on a different scale. What does that mean? |
The rate of homeless students here is about 10 percent, about the same as in Los Angeles. But. New York has more than one million students in traditional public schools and charters. Issues that affect other cities, like challenges with housing affordability and shortages of apartments, are magnified here. And when you put the numbers in context, students living in shelters have fared much worse than students in public housing. |
I talked to a mom who recently moved back to New York with two sons who are 10 and 15 years old. They live in a Bronx shelter. |
She talked about how much of their day-to-day lives are spent thinking about things other than school, like poor conditions in the shelter. She told me her youngest son, who has an autism diagnosis, recently had a breakdown as he struggled to adjust to the new environment and had to be taken to an emergency room. |
What's the school system doing? |
This issue is only partially on the school system to solve. It does come down to affordability and the shortage of housing in the city. |
There are 350 or so staff members in the Department of Education who work specifically on issues for students with homelessness — social workers, even people who work in schools or in shelters just to try to help students who are homeless get to school, because that can often be tough, just being there on a regular basis. David Banks, the schools chancellor, has said that 100 more people will be hired this year to work in shelters. It's important because more than six in 10 homeless children living in shelters were defined as "chronically absent" last year, which means they missed at least 10 percent of school days, more than double the rate of students in permanent housing. |
But, really, there's the issue of better supporting students who are homeless and there's the issue of bringing down their number. The Department of Education can have an effect on the first. When it comes to the other, it's much broader than education and the D.O.E. |
Enjoy a sunny day with above-average temperatures in the mid-60s. The evening will be mostly clear, with wind gusts and temps dropping to the high 40s. |
In effect until Tuesday (All Saints Day). |
 | | Jeenah Moon for The New York Times |
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A new Menendez investigation |
 | | Al Drago |
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Senator Robert Menendez is again facing a federal investigation, an adviser confirmed. The inquiry comes five years after the Justice Department dropped its corruption case against Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. |
The adviser, Michael Soliman, a New Jersey political consultant who managed Menendez's two Senate campaigns, said that Menendez "does not know the scope of the investigation." Soliman said by email that Menendez "is available to provide any assistance that is requested of him or his office." |
Semafor and WNBC-TV reported on Wednesday that prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York were investigating Menendez. |
A Southern District spokesman declined to comment. A spokesman in Menendez's Senate office referred questions to Soliman. |
Antranig "Andy" Aslanian Jr., a lawyer from Fort Lee, N.J., said in an interview that he had been subpoenaed and that he and his own lawyer met with three prosecutors from the Southern District about two and half months ago. He said the investigators appeared to be interested in Menendez's interactions with people he also knew. The investigators also asked about a company authorized to certify halal meat for export that Aslanian had helped a friend incorporate. |
I was riding down Chrystie Street toward the Manhattan Bridge when I passed a man about my age on a bike that was weighed down with traveling bags. |
Since my bike was electric, etiquette dictated that it was OK for me to pass him. At each light, though, he would sidle up next to me and then move just ahead of me, stealing sidelong glances before shifting his eyes to look directly in front of him. |
At one point, I thought I'd lost him. But as I reached the entrance to the bridge, there he was again, pulling to a graceful stop before I did. |
I smiled slightly, trying to decide whether I admired or disdained his obvious pride. He preceded me onto the bridge, visibly straining as we mounted the path's steep curve. |
I rode serenely some feet behind him, admiring the view from the bridge as my rented bike carried me up with ease. He glanced over his shoulder once or twice, but I did not try to pull ahead of him. |
I smiled as we glided downhill toward the other side of the bridge. We wound together for a time through Downtown Brooklyn's knotty streets, looking at each other each time the other looked away. |
We parted ways at Atlantic Avenue with no words or gestures of farewell, content in having engaged in the tender urban tradition of flirtation by proximity alone. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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