TESTIMONY OF:

Stephany Betances – Mitigation Specialist, Adolescent Representation Team

BROOKLYN DEFENDER SERVICES

Presented before the New York City Council Committees on Education, Criminal Justice, and General Welfare

Oversight Hearing on Educational Programming in Jails and Juvenile Detention

April 21, 2021

My name is Stephany Betances. I am a Mitigation Specialist on the Adolescent Representation Team and Education Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS). BDS provides innovative, multi-disciplinary, and client-centered criminal, family, and immigration defense, as well as civil legal services for nearly 30,000 people in Brooklyn every year. We thank the City Council Committees on Education, Criminal Justice, and General Welfare and Chairs Treyger, Powers, and Levin for holding this important hearing on educational programming in jails and juvenile detention.

BDS is fortunate to have the support of the City Council to supplement the services we provide as a public defender office in Brooklyn. Through specialized units of the office, we provide extensive wrap-around services that meet the needs of traditionally under-served clients in a comprehensive way. This includes helping young people and their families navigate the public education bureaucracy during and after contact with the criminal legal and family court systems.

BDS’s Adolescent Representation Team works to eliminate contact and involvement within the criminal legal system for court-involved youth aged 21 and under. Our specialized attorneys, social workers, and youth advocates provide legal representation, advocacy, and social services in youth proceedings in Brooklyn’s Criminal Court, Supreme Court and Family Court, collaborating across BDS’s practices to provide comprehensive support on behalf of youth and guidance to their families. Our Education Unit delivers legal representation and informal advocacy to our school-age clients and to parents of children in New York City schools, including youth detained at Rikers, Horizon and Crossroads. A significant number of the students we work with qualify as “over-age and under-credited” and have been retained at least one grade. More than half of the students we work with are classified as students with disabilities. As an interdisciplinary legal and social work team, we work to improve our clients’ access to education, and a significant portion of our advocacy relates to special education, school discipline, reentry, and alternative pathways to graduation.

Educational access in NYC jails

We believe that children learn best when they are in their homes, and not behind bars. The best way to provide educational supports to the young people we serve would be to avoid putting them in detention and focus on diverting them from the criminal legal system all together. But, as long as the City continues to incarcerate or detain school-age children and young people, there are many ways that the education provided to them can be improved.

Young people–particularly those on Rikers Island–struggle to access educational services. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, young people often reported to our staff that they were not aware education services were available, were not made aware of their eligibility for school, or were not brought to school after enrolling. This has been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Youth on Rikers, who are entitled to receive educational services at East River Academy (ERA), went without any educational services for nearly the entire spring of 2020 following the shutdown. When school services did begin again, educational programming was being provided either through tablets with a chat function–but no live instruction–or through generic paper packets brought to housing units. While many students enter ERA with IEPs from their last school, our clients at Rikers have told us that they do not currently receive special education supports. And more recently, students report not receiving tablets on which to do work.

BDS applauds ERA staff for working to find ways to deliver services during a challenging time period when they were not physically present on Rikers Island. School staff set up a hotline that would allow students to call in to speak with teachers directly when DOE staff was unable to travel to Rikers Island. Still, many of the young people we work with report being unaware of this hotline, or even that school services were available at all.

Over a year after the pandemic began, there are still students in multiple facilities on Rikers who are receiving work only through standard paper packets that are picked up only once every two weeks, and who have never spoken to a teacher. Staff from our office has spoken with many young people who are understandably feeling unmotivated to engage with school, some of whom have decided to wait until leaving Rikers to pursue their education. In the meantime, they are left with little to do in cells and dorms with no other programming available and making no progress towards obtaining high school diplomas or equivalency certificates.

Educational access in secure and nonsecure juvenile detention

Students who attend Passages Academy at Crossroads Juvenile Center, Horizon Juvenile Center, and in nonsecure detention have also struggled to access education during the pandemic. While they have recently been able to access live instruction, for many months students were only able

to communicate with their teachers through the chat feature on their tablets. We are pleased to hear now that high schools have reopened, Passages is able to provide some in-person instruction to students. However, in-person instructional time is still limited, and interrupted by frequent quarantines, which means online instruction still accounts for a significant portion of each student’s week.

In some cases, students have also struggled to access the curriculum at Passages and have not been given the transitional support they need to reintegrate into their home schools when they leave detention. We have worked with students who have not always been able to access the specific classes they need to earn credits. At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, we worked with a student who needed only a few credits to graduate. However, the student’s counselor informed us that two classes she needed to be taking as a 12th grader, Geometry and Earth Science, could not be offered to her due to lack of course availability, and so she was placed in Algebra and Living Environment–two courses she had already taken and passed. Because Passages was unable to offer her the credits she needed, her progress towards graduation was delayed. When it came time for this student to leave Passages, it took a team of advocates from our office to ensure the student was able to enroll in a transfer high school convenient to her home so she could progress to graduation more quickly. Between her education attorney, criminal defense attorney, mitigation specialist, the student, her father and case manager from non-secure placement, we were ultimately able to secure her spot at the alternative school. But Passages did not make the transition easy or seamless for this young person, between enrolling her in classes she had already passed and failing to help her enroll in a school that was more appropriate and convenient to where she was living. Thus, her transition back into the community was met with a number of challenges.

Another student we work with was out of school for almost a month after leaving Crossroads, as his school required updated grades from the time he spent at Passages. While he was ultimately able to reenroll in the high school he attended before Passages and obtain full credit for the work he did while detained, he risked missing out on credits by virtue of the time he spent out of school.

Recommendations

Students at both Passages Academy and East River Academy have been ill-served by the educational services they have received (or, in many cases, failed to receive) during the pandemic. As the City moves toward increased in-person learning, there is an opportunity to prioritize the needs of the young people in jails and detention centers who have been disproportionately impacted by gaps in access to school this year. In an effort to ensure that the educational needs of young people in jail and detention are prioritized, we offer the following suggestions:

1. DOC Must Ensure Consistent Access to Educational Services at Rikers

DOE and DOC must work together to create a plan to provide the opportunity for regular, live instruction for students at Rikers. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the young people we serve reported having difficulty accessing the education to which they are entitled. Many students were brought to school by DOC staff so infrequently that they gave up trying to attend; others were placed in facilities–such as AMKC–that did not have school services available; still others were never given information about how they could sign up for school. We also heard reports of frequent, sometimes multiple day lockdowns, where all students were denied school access. All young people at Rikers who wish to attend school in person must be able to do so.

Ensure In-Person Learning – Including Required Special Education Services – Is Available to All Students at Rikers.

The educational services that have been provided to students at Rikers during the pandemic are severely lacking, and few–if any–special education services are being offered to those who require them. Now that DOE staff have returned to Rikers Island, DOC and DOE must work together to create a plan to make students aware that educational services are being offered, and DOC must transport every student interested in attending school to the school floor every day during which school is offered.

Make Learning Tablets Available to All Students at Rikers Island.

While tablets should not be used as a substitute for in-person learning, tablets should be made available to all students at Rikers. Access to tablets has encouraged some of our clients to remain engaged in school. Some of the young people we serve have reported that they enjoy having the flexibility to learn at their own pace. Access to tablets is not universal. Students at several facilities – including GRVC and OBCC – have been without tablets throughout the pandemic. More recently, we have heard reports that tablets are not being given to young people even in facilities where these devices had previously been made available. This technology should continue to be provided to supplement in-person learning–or for those students who do not wish to travel to the school– and expanded to be available to students in all facilities on Rikers.

Extended Eligibility and Compensatory Services.

We are pleased that the Department of Education has allowed 21-year-old students–who would ordinarily be aging out of eligibility for school–to attend school for an additional year. The DOE should ensure targeted supports are provided to students both inside and outside of custody to allow them to maximize that opportunity. Due to the gap in educational services during the pandemic, make-up services–in the form of tutoring or compensatory education– should be offered to current and former ERA students to help address the lapse in services they were entitled to receive. The City Council should ensure the DOE has sufficient funding to offer these services to students who desire them.

DOC should be required to create a school in any facility where youth are held.

BDS frequently works with young people who are placed in facilities at Rikers that do not have any educational services available. While these young adults are eligible for school, and many are interested in preparing for their High School Equivalency or Regents Diploma, East River Academy is not available to them. Prior to the pandemic, we worked with several young people who were housed at AMKC or parts of OBCC who have reported that they want to attend school but have chosen to remain where they are–rather than request a transfer to a facility with school–because of violence concerns. Other young people have requested transfers to facilities with schools but have not been moved. DOE should be required to create a school in any facility where young people are held. Our clients should not have to choose between safety and school opportunity.

1. Expand Educational Offerings at Passages Academy.

While students at Passages Academy have had more access to educational services during the pandemic, there are still a number of areas where students have been met with difficulties– whether as a result of a delayed transition into or out of Passages or the lack of appropriate programming. ACS and DOE should work to ensure every student at Passages has access to varied and engaging educational services and programming, as well as the supports they need to be successful in school.

Create Additional Programming at Passages

One of the challenges of running a school inside detention is that students will necessarily enter at varying levels: some students may require intensive remediation, while others need upper-level courses. We also hear from many young people at Crossroads and Horizon–even those who have not yet graduated high school–that they would like the opportunity to engage in vocational programs, to learn job readiness skills, and to obtain technical certifications that will help them find employment in adulthood.

For those students who graduate high school while at Passages, or who are capable of accessing college-level work, credit-bearing college courses should be consistently made available at Passages. Allowing students to access these programs at Passages would have the added benefit of positioning those who are sentenced and sent to long-term placements the opportunity to take advantage of college programming in those long-term facilities

DOE and ACS should also work together to create vocational programs and technical certification programs at Crossroads and Horizon. While students should of course continue to receive academic instruction, increased vocational programming should also be available to students who are interested, so they have the opportunity to leave the facilities with valuable work credentials.

Improve Literacy Services and Other Targeted Interventions

Many of the young people we serve struggle in school because their reading skills are far below grade level. Reading is the building block of learning, and without it, young people are at a deficit that fosters disengagement, not opportunity. Passages Academy can be an opportunity to re-engage students in school and provide them with the building blocks to succeed. In order to break the cycle of incarceration and poverty, our clients need access to interventions that will provide additional and targeted support in reading. The City Council should fund intensive, research-based remedial reading instruction, including additional staffing such as reading specialist positions, at Passages Academy, to ensure all the youth who attend have the opportunity to improve their basic reading skills.

Ensure High School Equivalency Programming Is Available to Students at Passages.

Every student at Passages who wants to work towards a traditional high school diploma should have the opportunity to do so. Many young people who enter Passages having accrued few high school credits and may prefer to obtain a High School Equivalency (HSE) certificate should know it is an available option. For those students who are eligible for HSE programming, Passages should create a robust HSE program to give students the skills that they need to prepare for the HSE examination.

Continue In-Person Tutoring Programs at Crossroads and Horizon.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several organizations have provided in-person tutoring services to students at Crossroads and Horizon. Tutors have been able to coordinate with DOE staff to help students complete assignments, reinforce what they are learning in class, and make significant progress towards graduation. The City Council should ensure these organizations have the funding necessary for them to continue providing tutoring services to all students who are interested in obtaining tutoring at Passages

Ensure Continued Availability of Tablets and Other Technology to Allow Students to Access Supplemental Learning Opportunities.

While online learning cannot substitute for live, in-person instruction, many young people have reported to us that they appreciate having the opportunity to do self-guided work on the Chromebooks that have been made available to them during the pandemic. As students hopefully return to fulltime in-person learning in the near future, ACS and DOE should work together to make online learning available to students who are interested in engaging in additional credit-bearing work, or who may benefit from computer-based remediation tools.

Ensure Appropriate Transition Services into and out of Passages

As noted above, we have worked with students who have entered Passages Academy and who have been either erroneously programmed for classes they have already taken, or who have not been able to access particular classes at Passages. When a student enters detention, the DOE must work to quickly evaluate which classes an entering student needs to graduate and ensure that any class needed by a student to make progress towards graduation is available.

We have also worked with students who have struggled to reenroll in school after leaving Passages, and who have lost the opportunity to earn credits as a result of delayed reenrollment. The DOE must ensure all students leaving Passages have updated copies of all their school records, and coordinate with the receiving school to ensure a seamless transition for entering students.

Conclusion

Thank you for holding this important hearing and for your consideration of our comments. BDS is grateful to the Council for the opportunity to testify about the challenges incarcerated young

people face in accessing educational services on Rikers Island and in juvenile detention. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to Supervising Education Attorney and Policy Counsel Anna Arkin-Gallagher at aarkingallagher@bds.org.