Long Island getting $8.35M to give kids options to not join MS-13, Cuomo says

Long Island schools and groups will receive an extra $8.35 million for after-school, job-training and placement programs to fight gang violence and give youngsters other options, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Tuesday.

"The launch of this comprehensive plan builds on our investments to stomp out gang recruitment while engaging young men and women in our efforts to eliminate MS-13 from New York once and for all," Cuomo said.

The new grants raise Long Island’s total to halt the “school to prison” pipeline to almost $27 million. Another $7.6 million will fund 4,750 after-school slots statewide, Cuomo said.

The Island’s 17 grant-winning entities include schools in Nassau’s Roosevelt, where prosecutors said the Crips and Bloods street gangs warred from 2003 to 2013, and the Mineola-based Family and Children's Association, which will try to keep youngsters from reoffending again.

Some of Roosevelt’s 3,300 students wrote dozens of letters to Cuomo, pressing for quality after-school and extracurricular programs, Superintendent Marnie Hazelton said. Her school won $800,000 each year through 2022 — a total of almost $3.2 million.

“This is a tremendous, tremendous windfall for the district,” Hazelton said, adding that paying for after-school programs has been a struggle.

About 500 elementary to high school Roosevelt students will get tutoring, youth development, nutrition and health education, drug and violence prevention and music, art and physical education, starting as soon as late September, she said.

Central Islip, which educates nearly 7,400 pupils, is one area where MS-13 gangs have formed, and about 240 of its high schoolers will benefit from a partnership with West Islip Youth Enrichment Services, which won $240,000 for after-school activities and $300,000 for job training, said Superintendent Howard Koenig.

This will help make up for the Trump administration cuts in such programs, he said.

In Brentwood, where two high school girls were slain two years ago by suspected MS-13 gang members, Superintendent Richard Loeschner said the $300,000 grant would help about 100 high schoolers prepare for jobs and careers. Long Island’s largest district with about 20,000 pupils is working with the nonprofits United Way and Youth Enrichment Services, and plans to enlist businesses as possible employers.

“In Brentwood, we have many immigrant students, newly arrived, and we are targeting specific populations in the past who may have been disenfranchised,” Loeschner said.

The superintendent of one system — Longwood in Middle Island — said though the district appreciated the funding that would pay for after-school mentoring, it did not have a gang issue.

Cuomo debates his Democratic primary challenger Cynthia Nixon just once, on Wednesday at Hofstra University, and she faulted him for initially focusing “entirely on punitive measures” to fight MS-13.

“We are pleased to see he is now changing his tack, but a great deal still needs to be done to address the inequity that leads young people to join gangs in the first place,” she said, vowing to close the gap between high and low income districts by shutting corporate tax loopholes and raising taxes on the wealthy. “New York's schools are the second most unequally funded in the country,” she said.

Different anti-gang programs abound, and experts agreed that keeping students from dropping out and helping them learn to handle conflicts and develop social skills were crucial. Most juvenile crime occurs between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., noted Carolyn Boyes-Watson, sociology professor at Boston’s Suffolk University.

James C. Howell, senior research associate at Tallahassee’s federally funded National Gang Center, has studied gangs for more than 40 years. He praised initiatives that sent rigorously trained police officers to middle schools and “involved developing alternatives for youth and getting them into organized school sports and career training and a host of things to help them get off to a good start in life.”

Boyes-Watson, who also directs the Center for Restorative Justice, and David Karp, who directs Skidmore College’s Restorative Justice Project, said data showed these programs could work, outlining how they could keep children from the clutches of gangs and help their members leave.

For example, victims can meet offenders, holding them accountable for the harm they caused, in controlled settings, which can prove transformative, Karp said. Offenders also are helped to understand what motivated them — and how best to make amends, possibly through community service.

Schools, said Boyes-Watson, should rely less on suspending students who violate discipline — which may lead them to drop out — and more on assisting them in resolving clashes with peers, administrators and teachers.

The governor’s office said schools could use the funds as they saw fit: “The goal is to stop gang violence. We were very flexible with this money, because the school districts and programs that received it know their communities the best.”

New York State, Karp said, has lagged behind other states, including Texas, in enacting restorative justice legislation to allocate funding, determine who is eligible, and how programs will be run.

“If you look at state legislatures across the country, you can see New York has no state-level legislation,” Karp said.

The top two states in this area are Colorado and Vermont, he said.