Reports

Last month Governor Cuomo introduced his FY 2022 Executive Budget in the midst of pleading, once again, for a federal bailout. Read More

Preliminary K-12 enrollment data released by the State Education Department (SED) in January suggests that public schools experienced a decline in enrollment of 66,424 K-12 students, or 2.6 percent compared to the 2019-20 school year. That would be the largest since 1981. Read More

A closer look at new data about coronavirus in New York nursing homes raises questions about what factors contributed to high mortality rates Read More

The admission of coronavirus-positive patients into New York nursing homes under March 25 guidance from the New York State Department of Health was associated with a statistically significant increase in resident deaths. Read More

The state’s current and projected fiscal condition make this an appropriate time to examine what drives high special education spending in New York, how it’s serving children and how it can be improved. Read More

State law doesn’t require secrecy around union negotiations, but local governments and school districts have come to believe it does. At the same time, the law fails to give the public a chance to review contracts before they’re ratified, and doesn’t require any calculations that would show the long-term effects on costs. Read More

The disruptions to K-12 education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic spurred Governor Cuomo to announce an initiative to “reimagine education.” This challenge should have policymakers asking what inadequacies have been exposed in our public education system, and which newly adopted practices should be permanent. Amidst a projected multi-year fiscal crisis, New York public schools should expect education spending cuts and should make plans to implement reforms without sacrificing quality. Read More

New York’s largest teachers union this summer threatened to go on strike rather than allow schools to reopen for in-person classes—despite months of preparation by officials and a state law that prohibits union work stoppages. Read More

The rules governing public employment in New York are expressly designed to make it time-consuming and expensive to hold workers accountable for poor performance or misconduct. Read More

Empire Center's E.J. McMahon talks with Bill Hammond about New York's nursing home polices throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Read More

New York school districts are seeking voter approval of budgets that would raise their per-pupil spending by an average of more than four times the projected inflation rate. Most districts have proposed property tax hikes as high as the maximum allowed without supermajority overrides under the tax cap law. Read More

The final set of pre-pandemic U.S. Census population data for cities, towns and villages provides localized details on a familiar New York pattern: widespread decline upstate, and a few small pockets of growth amid the general stagnation downstate. Read More