A critical tool that helps connect at-risk youth with the services they need may be cut from the city’s budget. I have a simple message for Mayor Mamdani and the City Council: please do not do this.
The mayor’s executive budget included the elimination of nearly $9 million in funding for the New Visions Portal. This internal data management system helps school administrators and other staff keep track of student performance across a variety of metrics. It also connects students with services and agencies outside of the Department of Education, such as the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) and the Department of Youth and Community Development, for example.
All New York City public schools have access to the portal, and in speaking to my colleagues both at the elementary and secondary level, they say they value the access and say it helps them better meet students’ and families’ needs.
One of the most meaningful ways we have used the portal in the last few years is in support of students and families in temporary housing as part of the Every Child and Family Is Known program, which is a partnership between New York City Public Schools, the Department of Homeless Services and ACS.
My school of 655 students has 106 students in temporary housing, 71 of whom are eligible for the program. Advocates document their outreach and interactions in the portal and track students’ attendance and academic performance there.
As a result of the careful outreach, tracking and advocacy of their caring adults the majority of these students have made academic and attendance gains, been promoted and/or graduated, found work and housing and are thriving. What is even more impressive is that their parents also report doing better and appreciating the careful way their needs are monitored. The portal has been a crucial tool in this successful partnership, and losing access to this program would put that success in jeopardy.
Another way we use the portal at my school is to drive student achievement for all students by creating student groups and tracking students’ progress in these areas. For example, as part of New York City Reads intervention groupings, we have seen 49% of students who took the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment were in the Growth Categories 4 and 5, which means they made more than one year of reading growth.
We also use the portal to group and track students for Regents prep and participation in tutoring including Saturday Academy. This January, we saw a tremendous increase in Regents passage as a result of this careful tracking.
Additionally, our counselors and support providers use the portal to plan for students’ future needs. We look carefully at aggregate and individual student data to forecast the number of sections of each course we will need and to create individualized learning opportunities such as test prep, intervention, internships and work-based learning.
We also use the student and family-facing reports to explain our programming decisions and help students and families understand the urgency of credit gaps, literacy and math levels, and exams not yet mastered.
The portal has had a tremendous impact on my students, and that’s just in one school. Removing the public schools’ access to the New Visions Portal would be short-sighted. The type of targeted, sustained intervention and tracking, including across city agencies empowered by the tracker is exactly what our educators, students and families need and deserve.
The portal is a small amount of money in the overall school budget. The social costs of losing this tool could be immeasurable. Let’s save the portal in this year’s budget.
Scrogin is the principal of the East Bronx Academy for the Future.