violent Fourth of July<\/a> in the capital city, in which 10 people were shot and one killed, and a fire sparked by a flare gun destroyed two buildings in incidents involving youth offenders. A 15-year-old was charged with murder in the death of 17-year-old Vance Mims III and several others who played a role were even younger.<\/p>\n\u201cWe learned a lot this summer,\u201d State Sen. Pat Fahy said. \u201cSome of those involved were 12, 13 and 14.\u201d<\/p>\n
In looking for answers, officials, including Fahy, along with Assemblymembers John McDonald and Gabriella Romero, have zeroed in on age.<\/p>\n
That has led some, like Albany County District Attorney Lee Kindlon, to push for tweaks to the state\u2019s Raise the Age law \u2014 which allows offenders ages 16 and 17 to avoid being prosecuted as adults. In this case, the conversation has centered around those younger participants and their school attendance records. More broadly, a report last year from state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found a nearly one in three chronic absenteeism rate statewide.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of these kids hadn\u2019t been in school for a year,\u201d McDonald said of those involved in the July 4th incidents. \u201cHow is a child out of school all year?\u201d Fahy added.<\/p>\n
Fahy, McDonald and Romero are hoping to find out through a two-part legislative package. One bill would create a dashboard to track absenteeism in real time. Fahy stressed that this aspect is crucial because the most current data that the state has to work from is from the 2022-2023 school year. Fahy finds the lack of current tracking ability troubling.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need really time data,\u201d she said. \u201cYou need to shine a light on students when there is chronic absenteeism. You don\u2019t wait until the middle of the year\u2014within the first month.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second bill would create a pilot program focused on intervention, and where necessary \u2014 enforcement. It would be open to the state\u2019s 100 largest school districts located within a city of less than 1 million people, effectively excluding New York City.<\/p>\n
The program would attempt to recalibrate a system of outreach, programming, and, in some cases, law enforcement action that has broken down in the aftermath of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrograms that used to be active and build communications between all of the stakeholders that were actually somewhat vibrant before the pandemic, because of the pandemic, they kind of dissipated,\u201d McDonald said.<\/p>\n
Fahy explained that districts would not be forced to participate, but the hope is to reestablish some accountability in the state\u2019s larger cities, such as Albany, Buffalo, Rochester,= and Syracuse.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are well past COVID now,\u201d Fahy said. \u201cSomebody has got to knock at that door every day, there has to be intervention, and where necessary, there has to be stepping in to work with the family and possibly child protective services to make it clear: it\u2019s not acceptable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Western New York Republican Assemblymember Joe Sempolinski expressed support for the bill \u2014 with one objection:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt only looks at large school districts \u2014 and I think we should look to avoid absenteeism in all school districts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also took the opportunity to implore the state\u2019s Democratic majority to look into other laws that relate to youth offenders, like Raise the Age.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to also look at how we have changed our criminal justice over the years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the events of July 4th have led to conversations about changes to raise the age as part of this year\u2019s budget, and Gov. Kathy Hochul didn\u2019t rule it out when asked in the aftermath of July 4th. Some lawmakers have expressed that they expect conversations over some level of minor adjustment to be a budget battle.<\/p>\n
McDonald stressed his support for Raise the Age.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t ever see that rolling back, maybe some minor tweaks to it \u2014 very minor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But both Fahy and McDonald agreed that a spotlight must be on those who are just under that threshold as a means of preventing them from getting to a point where Raise the Age is a factor in their lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the young kids that we have to make sure we\u2019re addressing their needs. Raise the Age is a little separate from this \u2014 and it starts with absenteeism,\u201d Fahy said.<\/p>\n
Fahy expressed hope that the initiative could eventually develop into a coalition similar to Hochul\u2019s bell-to-bell cellphone ban in schools, and potentially factor into conversations around youth criminal justice during budget talks.<\/p>\n
Spectrum News 1 reached out to Hochul\u2019s office, and a spokesperson pointed to her investments in school aid, universal free school meals, and the bell-to-bell cellphone ban and added the governor will review any bill that passes both houses of the state legislature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Propelled by one of the darkest days in the city\u2019s recent history, Albany area state lawmakers are taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109,116,256,295,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,112,108,87,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-23488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","10":"tag-capital-region","11":"tag-jack-arpey","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-new-york-state","16":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-state-news","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-ny-state-of-politics","20":"tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","21":"tag-politics","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}