Opinion: Building equitable education and infrastructure in post-COVID NYC
/
Dilip Nath is a candidate in Council District 24. Photo courtesy of Nath campaign
By Dilip Nath
It seems like forever from now, with the new variants and bungled vaccine rollout, but we will be living in a post-COVID world sooner than some might think. Once the pandemic is quelled, New York City will be faced with the task of rebuilding, and the more vital task of figuring out how to rebuild.
We can either go back to business as usual from before the pandemic, or we can rebuild better. To rebuild better, we need a solid foundation, and any great big city does three things well: provides quality education for its children, has accessible healthcare, and reliable public transportation — we must first rebuild those better, to then have a chance to continue this progress in other aspects of city living.
As it stands right now, Mayor De Blasio and Education Chancellor Carranza are more interested in giving the world the impression that New York City has an equal school system, without actually putting in the effort to make education equal across the city. They have supported ideas to kill the Specialized High School Admissions Test and end Gifted & Talented programs that have benefitted scores of New York City kids.
Their lazy solution hurts every child. The gifted and talented will not be challenged, and the academically underperforming will not receive the specially crafted education they need to survive.
Queens kids have to travel to other boroughs just to attend specialized high schools. A commute that can take hours, which is time they can’t spend studying or giving back to their community, putting them at a disadvantage to their peers in college applications.
It is time we have a new specialized high school constructed or converted in Queens County.
On the other end of the spectrum, students who perform poorly on tests are not “stupid” but rather learn in a different manner than is taught currently. By eliminating programs to throw every kid into the same pool, and not expanding the unique pools to maximize educational opportunity, the Mayor and Chancellor have done a grave disservice to our children and their future.
If COVID-19 taught us anything, it’s that our healthcare infrastructure in Queens is in shambles. Queens County has the lowest per capita hospital bed count in the entire city.
During the peaks of COVID, our seniors and vulnerable population were unable to be treated for non-COVID conditions in hospitals because there simply weren’t enough beds.
Seniors who did have COVID were forced to die alone, without the comfort of their family by their side. The vulnerable population avoided doctor’s visits as to not chance COVID, when a simple solution of telemedicine is right in front of us. Telemedicine does not require a massive spend and uprooting of our entire system, but it is a solution that would save lives. Getting seniors access to telemedicine will save them.
Additionally, telemedicine will benefit the working class, who cannot take off work for “well visits” to doctors — when they go for a routine check-up to make sure they’re ok. Illnesses caught during checkups don’t have the chance to progress further and are generally more treatable when caught earlier, saving lives and our healthcare system millions of dollars. In this expanded access, we MUST include mental health services. People living with mental illnesses, combined with being in quarantine and the stress of an unstable economy is a mix that can throw them into spirals; which can result in self harm, domestic abuse, or even suicide.
Finally, we need to drastically change our public transportation system. The MTA’s new redesign not only does nothing to address the transportation deserts in Queens, it actually actively makes it worse. That is unacceptable. It takes about 90 minutes for the average central Queens resident to get into Manhattan, where many of the higher paying jobs are.
Public transportation should be free for all. It is already heavily subsidized, and making the final jump to free fares would trigger a tidal wave of good change. It would encourage people to leave their cars at home, it would open up more streets, and reduce our carbon footprint so much that Queens can be carbon neutral by 2030.
Education, healthcare, and transportation are the bedrocks of any thriving big city. As we recover from the pandemic, we will need to once again compete for the title of “the greatest city in the world” because places like Chicago, London, Los Angeles to name a few will be making life better for their residents — it’s long past due life is made better for people in Queens.
Dilip Nath is a candidate for City Council in District 24.
