Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Holds Joint Media Availability with New York Archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan on Universal Pre-K

March 6, 2014

CONTACT: pressoffice@cityhall.nyc.gov, (212) 788-2958

Cardinal Timothy Dolan: You’re sure welcome here, and I say that on the part of Mrs. Helmrich, who’s our excellent principal here, Dr. McNiff, the superintendent of schools, and Connie, who is a real icon within our Catholic school system with the universal pre-K. And we just saw some evidence of your splendid work, Connie. Mayor, you’re very welcome here. And I hope it’s not the last of many visits to our splendid Catholic schools. And thanks to all of you for coming. We are basking in the attention given to education. Thanks for that, Mayor. And we are radiant about the emphasis that he’s put on universal pre-K. He’s put me on the spot because yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and Jesus told us that we shouldn’t blow a trumpet about our good works. But I don’t mind bragging about our Catholic schools, and especially the magnificent universal pre-K that we got. Because Jesus also told us yesterday because it’s Lent to show special love and compassion to those who need it. And does anybody need it more than our kids? We love them. They’re our treasure, they’re our present, they’re our future. And we are single-minded in the love and service that we give them. So mayor, thanks for the spotlight that you’re shining on education. Thanks for inviting us to be an ally in what we consider to be a very promising endeavor [inaudible]. And we’ve been - we’ve been on the front lines of before and after-school programs - and universal pre-K. Our numbers are great, but we’re itching to do even more and we’ve got the capacity and the drive and the energy to do it. And that the mayor has said, ‘We want you to be partners in this,’ I’d say ‘Hallelujah’ but I can’t because it’s Lent. So mayor, welcome. I’m glad you’re here. Okay?

[Laughter]

Mayor Bill de Blasio: How do you top that? I have to tell you, it is such an honor to stand here with his eminence. And Cardinal Dolan, we’ve become fast friends. And we care about so many of the same things and we want to achieve more for the people of this city. And this is a partnership that’s going to be so important as we focus on pre-K and after-school as well. I’d like to note - as I just want to introduce and praise everyone - I want to first say that Cardinal Dolan is sporting the UPK NYC pin. And we want to thank you. It looks smashing on you, simply smashing. And thank you so deeply for your support.

Cardinal Dolan: You’re welcome.

Mayor: I want to thank Tim McNiff, who is the superintendent of the Archdiocese in schools. Is a man with a big job, and is a friend and someone we’re going to be working with closely. I want to thank - of course, as the Cardinal said as we came in - the Cardinal and I were sent to the office by the principal. So I want to thank the principal, Mary Jane Helmrich for her great leadership at this extraordinary school. And I want to thank as well, Connie McCrory, who is the director of early childhood education for the Archdiocese. And I was told by the cardinal, is an icon of early childhood education. So, we’re here with some of the real experts who are going to be crucial partners in this endeavor.

I also want to thank my colleagues from government, Council Member Andy King and Council Member Andy Cohen, for your extraordinary leadership. You two have been front and center in our efforts to create a much bigger approach to pre-K and after school, and I want to thank you deeply for that.

A couple things I want to talk about here at the St. Francis of Assisi School, they’ve - first of all, everyone has been tremendous hosts and so kind, and they have such a great story to tell. And I urge you to get more of the facts of this extraordinary achievement. This is a school that found new strength and new focus when it came to pre-K. And has done it brilliantly. This is really a model that we can learn from and work with deeply. And now - if I’ve gotten my numbers right - there’s 161 kids in pre-K - full-day pre-K in this building - 161 kids benefitting from full-day pre-K. The school is a great school. It’s been serving Baychester since 1921. It’s part of what makes this community great. And now it is building out something that is so necessary for the modern times we live in, which is reaching children even earlier, even more effectively through pre-K. The cardinal and I had the honor of going to one of the classrooms. It was the most fun we’re going to have this week.

Cardinal Dolan: We’ve got paint all over.

Mayor: Right? I feel like - we had to change before we came out here. But we met 4- and 5-year-olds. And I have to tell you, when you go to a pre-K classroom that’s being done on this quality level, there’s a high-quality pre-K. You see something immediately that’s a very powerful sign. The children engage you, they’re purposeful, they’re focused. They have something to say, and one child started counting. A 5-year-old girl started going one to 20 right in front of me, as if it was nothing, because the pre-K is giving them that strength and that focus and that love of learning. And you can see it instantly when you’re in a great pre-K facility. Now, the Archdiocese of New York knows a lot about how to educate our children effectively. And they have been innovators in the realm of pre-K, and that’s why they’re going to be such important partners to us. They know what everyone who is involved in this effort knows all over the five boroughs - that 90 percent of a child’s learning occurs in their earliest years. Literally their brain development in the years leading up to the age of five, that’s the time of extraordinary growth. That’s when we have to catch them and expand their ability to learn, and really connect them to education. So I have to tell you, given our common views on this subject, given our partnership to reach more and more children - I have to tell you this is an extraordinarily important moment in our effort to build out full day pre-K across this city. And the partnership of the Archdiocese will be a crucial part of the equation because they understand full day, high-quality pre-K is the way to go.

Now, I want to note, between the Archdiocese and the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, combined in the first round of proposals that we asked for, from organizations all over the city - the Archdiocese and the Diocese combined have put forward 1,700 potential seats. 1,700 - which would make a huge impact for all those families. And by the way, that’s every single year. As we build out our pre-K program, the numbers we talk about are each year. And then they’re repeated the next year, and the next year, and the next year. Think of how many children and how many families’ lives are improved year after year as we build this out. We’ve said clearly: we are going to take the resources for pre-K and after school and put them in a lockbox, and use them for those purposes only. And we’ve said clearly: we need to greatly expand our pre-K efforts and our after school efforts for middle school kids this year, starting this September. And if you want proof that there are people ready to start this September, I give you the ultimate - educators who have the space and are ready to go this September to make a difference in our children’s lives.

Now, the space is one piece of the equation. The staff is there too. There are lots of trained educators ready to go. The training, again, the archdiocese has done a great job training teachers to be effective in pre-K. And we have other great training capacity all over this city. And so, when we went through our process to learn how many available sites there were around the city, who was really to ready to go, we got 800 different locations all over the five boroughs - 800 locations - with a total capacity of 29,000 seats for this September. And that would allow us to meet our goal of taking full-day pre-K from its current number - around 20,000 kids get it this year - to the new number that we’ve set for September - 53,000 plus. Again, that’s 33,000 more kids who will be helped this year. And then repeat again the next year and the next year.

The focus is there and we have crucial partners like the Archdiocese that are going to make all the difference in this equation. So there’s really nothing standing in our way - except the need for the funding. The enthusiasm is here, the staffing is here, the locations are here. What we need now is the funding. And that should not be an obstacle because we said it clearly to our friends in Albany - it’s time to stop waiting, it’s time to stop the delays, it’s time to get to action, and help us build out full-day pre-K all over the five boroughs and afterschool for middle school kids all over the five boroughs. It’s going to be a game-changer for our kids and we need it now. And with that, we welcome your questions.

[inaudible]

Ah - Monsignor Sullivan - I apologize - I should’ve properly acknowledged. Great partner, also, with so much of what we do in the city and thank you for your work with Catholic Charities. You have a lot of fans in city government - I want to let you know that, Cardinal. Okay, let’s take some questions now. Art-

Question: Mayor, [inaudible] do you support [inaudible] plan to tax those who make over $500,000 a year in order to pay for pre-K?

Mayor: Your Eminence, I think he asked each of us. I’d just like to begin by saying - Yes, I support the mayor’s plan. Yes, now, go ahead, your Eminence.

Cardinal Dolan: Listen, all I’m grateful for is that we’ve got leaders - Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo - who are passionate about this. How it’s going to be done, how it’s going to be funded - I leave it up to them. I’m just grateful that it’s in the spotlight and that they’re working hard to get it done.

Mayor: And I’m grateful for your partnership.

Cardinal Dolan: You go it, alright.

Question: [inaudible]

Mayor: Tim, you want to jump in? Let’s let Tim McNiff answer that.

Tim McNiff: As you know, we’ve had to close a number of schools over the last couple years and right-size the system. So that created capacity for us from a buildings perspective that we’re now ready to transition into UPK sites.

Mayor: On this.

Question: [inaudible]

Mayor: We’re on this topic. This topic only.

Question: [inaudible] provisional tax credit [inaudible] available in Albany [inaudible]

Cardinal Dolan: You bet.

Question: [inaudible] Governor [inaudible]

Cardinal Dolan: Sure, thanks for bringing that up. I couldn’t have cued that better. These are a couple reasons why we’re beaming - because the spotlight is on education. I thank the Mayor. I thank Governor Cuomo. And the two things that we find immensely promising would be the universal pre-K and the partnership that we’ve been encouraged to enter into, and the tuition corporate tax credit, which both Governor Cuomo and the mayor have expressed high interest in. And, seems a no-brainer to us - the mayor and I talked about it about a month or so ago when we met. I know you didn’t commit yourself, but you expressed very high interest in it. And I was grateful for that. So, I don’t know if there’s any developments -

Mayor: I want you to know that the Cardinal has perfectly found the right field for his life, the right vocation, but he could’ve been a great lawyer too. And, so, exactly correct. We met about this. We’ve talked about it. I am open to the discussion. I haven’t taken a formal stance and I have no actually read the specific legislation. But clearly, we have tremendous common ground on the notion that we have to serve our children more effectively, we have to reach more children, we have to reach more families. What united us immediately is - we each have a flock and we each feel the realities of the people we represent. And obviously, for both of us, if I may, I think we have such tremendous common interest - Catholic Charities is a big piece of the equation in terms of the social service work we do together. We’ve seen new opportunities to work together in terms of education. So there’s a lot of common ground and there’s a lot of recognition of the need out there. And we’re going to keep working together on many fronts. Yes -

Question: Mr. Mayor, can you [inaudible] pre-K [inaudible] the governor [inaudible]

Mayor: You know, I think the Cardinal said it best - the governor and I - the governor and I beyond our personal friendship, which is, you know, 20 years long almost - we agree on the need for pre-K to be a priority. I like to - your Eminence, I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy - so I’d like to say, last year at this time - go back and look at the headlines - that we weren’t talking about the need to make pre-K as crucial a part of our education system as we are today. And that’s the blessing here - that now, it’s not a question of if any longer, it’s just how are we going to get it done. And so, my common ground with the governor is - we both know we have to get something important done here. The dialogue is constant - as you saw when I was in Albany, I spent about an hour and a half with him. And this is also the nature of the legislative process - things take time. But there is a gathering consensus in this city and in this state that we must do this if we expect to prepare our children for their futures in a very different world that - the cardinal and I were talking about our childhood - we grew up in a very different time where maybe the demands were a little less and the need for this early start wasn’t as sharp, but now it’s a game-changer. It’s necessary.

Question: [Inaudible].

Mayor de Blasio: The guidelines are the same as we are using right now. The Department of Education , the City Department of Education works right now with the  Archdiocese with pre-K programs but in a very limited way. We already resolved the issue with how to appropriately work together within a legal construct. We found it to be perfectly workable and it is a great partnership, but it is a very modest partnership. We want it to be a strong  and big partnership . We know we could get so much done together. Those issues I think  have been resolved but now it’s time to take the resources and deepen the partnership.

Cardinal Dolan: You are right Mayor. Listen, we have been doing this for a long time. We never apologized for the fact that faith animates what we do but we do not proselytize and we welcome children of all faiths and none at all. They feel at home here and they feel safe there. The parents respect the freedom, faith, character, and virtue that’s a part of it. As for the impacts of Catholic schools, we are more interested in the impacts of the community and our. [inaudible] gave me and the Mayor a wonderful statistic about when we get our children in pre-K very often they will remain in our system which means the child tat enters pre-K within in one of our schools, 95 percent will graduate from high school. That is a stunning statistic which I presume makes the cooperation with us very magnetic and very appealing. We are more concerned with impact of our community and our kids.

Mayor: And I want to credit the Cardinal and the Archdiocese, because if you go into the classrooms as we did, it is every kind of child from this city, and it's true throughout the Catholic school system. It's extraordinarily representative and inclusive, and I would say, I would editorialize and say that I think that the sense of inclusion is profound, that there is a sense of mission, of reaching every kind of child, including children who have the deepest needs. And that's something we honor, and deeply appreciate, and that's something we think is very compatible with our vision.

Unknown: [inaudible]

Mayor: On this topic? Anything else? On topic only in this case. Anything else on this? Yes.

Question: The credentials that are currently required for teachers, very quite wisely [inaudible] program, how do you expect to get all the teachers to become high-quality teachers of a high-quality program [inaudible]? A lot of teachers were talking about that some of them only have a bachelor's degree. 

Mayor: A couple of things. You know, we are obviously- in the plan we put forward, the white paper we put forward in January, we talked about additional training pieces we're putting into the equation, including for this summer, and ongoing training. But the most important fact when it comes to that question is what we indicated in the January white paper. That's a very substantial of available teachers right now. Every year the Department of Education gets about 2,000 applications for employment from teachers who are early childhood education certified. You'll remember, there's been many years where there hasn't been opportunities to hire new teachers, so there's a backlog of folks who have the training and have not been able to get an appropriate job opportunity. And we want to reach that large pool of talented people and give them a chance to apply their early childhood training in this setting. So we think between the existing pool of people, and folks who can get some upgrade in time for September, that we're going to have sufficient resources for the first wave - that's September of this year. Again, we build out further into the 2015-2016 school year, and that's when we bring the number up to 73,000 kids at full-day, and in that time we'll also have an opportunity to reach more talent, train more talent. One more thing I said- we expect interest from around- not just the city, not just the state, not just the tri-state area- but beyond. We think this is such an important initiative, we think qualified teachers are going to want to come here. They're going to want to be a part of this. I'm going to refer to our icon, Ms. McCrory, who is a true and renowned early childhood expert, and you can validate me if you choose that this is an exciting moment for early childhood teachers. Want to say a few words?

Connie McCrory:This gives us the opportunity- we have partnered with a number of the universities, and we work with them on higher education and certification, so we're really working hard to get certified teachers in our system.

Question: [inaudible]

Mayor: There's a passionate group of certified teachers who want to do this, and the fact that this city is committing on this big a scale is going to attract talent from all over to be a part of this. Got time for one more. Marcia.

Question: Is there a charter schools [inaudible] New York Times -

Mayor: Does it relate to this? Let's see you connect it to this, please.

Question: I just want to know that charter school people continue to try to lobby their point, and there's the full-page in the New York Times, of [inaudible] some of whom might be a pre-K?

Mayor: Oh, impressive connection point.

[LAUGHTER]

Mayor: You too could be a lawyer. 

Question: I just wondered, you know, it seems like an ongoing campaign that they don't want to take no for an answer, and I'm wondering if all the pressure is making you change your views at all, and if there's anything you'd like to say that -

Mayor: Yeah, I appreciate that, look -

Question: -also threatening legal action...

Mayor: Well, it's a free country. It's a free country, people can do whatever they choose in a democratic society. Let's talk about what - the decision we made, why we made it, and where we go from here. We had 45 co-locations chosen by the Bloomberg Administration, many of them just before they left office. I think it was a rushed process. I think it would have been better to leave the new administration the opportunity to make those decisions according to the plan we put forward. But since we received the 45 pending applications, we looked at them objectively. We came up with criteria. We said we did not want to put, for example, an elementary school in a high school building. That was what some of those applications would have done. We did not want to displace any Special Ed kids. That was very important to us. We did not want to away seats from Special Ed kids.

We had a set of criteria. When we applied those criteria, 36 of the 45, in fact, met our criteria and we approved them. Amongst the charter applications, I think it was 17 of those were charters. We approved 14 of the 17. So by definition we have shown an open-mindedness and a willingness to work with everyone. And we continue to. We will work with charter schools. I've said it many, many times. There are some things I want to change in the approach from the previous administration, and I say that respectfully. But I've always said that charter schools are part of the lineup and we want to work with them. And we have certain standards we want to achieve in terms of inclusiveness.

As I said, this school system we're discussing here, and the building we're in, is a model of inclusiveness. And I give the Archdiocese tremendous credit - whether it's Special Ed kids, or English Language Learners, which are a huge part of the population the Archdiocese serves in terms of the schools - all are welcome at the standard we want to hold in all traditional public schools, and all charter schools as well. And we think we can get there, and make that the common standard. But the bottom line, in terms of what we're discussing today, we welcome charter schools to be involved in U-pre-K. They have to do it by law, through affiliated organizations, but for example, Harlem Children's Zone is doing that right now, and we welcome additional applications from charter schools that want to create an affiliated organization to do pre-K.

We welcome charter schools to be part of our afterschool effort. And that's something that we've said publicly, and by the way a lot of the charter organizations have embraced that. A number of the charter organizations said that they think our effort to create full-day pre-K across the board is important for the future of New York City public schools, and they're part of that same system. They think afterschool is important for the future and they're part of that same system, and they want to be constructive allies in that, and we welcome their involvement. So, I think, as more people get to hear all the facts, we'll get back to the work of working together. And I look forward to that.