An indignant Mayor Eric Adams warned Tuesday that New York City is “on the eve of a fiscal cliff’’ as the projected multibillion-dollar cost of its migrant influx was set to soar thanks partly to asylum school kids.
“We need national leadership,” Hizzoner said, repeating his demand that the Biden administration step up and do more to combat the border crisis — while also ordering New Yorkers to do the same.
“We need every New Yorker that has something to offer to play a role. This is not Mayor Adams’ job. This is the job of the people of the city of New York, and everyone should participate in that through New York City Cares, through the 100 nonprofits that we are part of and all the other groups,” the Democratic mayor said.
“Everyone needs to be a part of that, and I’m not going to allow anyone to allow this moment to go past without asking, ‘What are you doing to help people who are in need right now?’ ”
More than 18,000 children in the city’s shelter system are enrolled in public schools for the upcoming year. The figure includes non-migrant students with no place to call home but doesn’t account yet for asylum-seeking youngsters who have yet to register with the school system — a number that state and city officials have warned could be massive in the coming weeks.
“We are going to get the new adjusted cost, I believe tomorrow the team is going to be given those numbers, and we had a meeting yesterday with state officials, so we can make sure those young people who are up in the northern part of the state are receiving the support that they need,” Adams said of the migrant student influx.
“The Department of Education did an amazing job of absorbing thousands of children into our current Department of Education structure. The exact dollar amounts will be given … tomorrow.”
Part of the added expense will be beefing up staff to provide English as a Second Language instruction to the new students, who largely don’t speak English — a job that could be open to any qualified New Yorker, the mayor said.
“If you speak Spanish, there’s nothing stopping you from opening a class to teach migrant Spanish — we will give you the room to do so. We can’t do this alone. This is an all hands on deck,” Adams said.
As the Big Apple prepares for the new students, a Manhattan school district that is home to many migrant shelters was ramping up the pressure on City Hall to provide exact details on the influx and accused the education department of using stonewall tactics.
Community Education Council District 2 has around 1,200 migrant kids in its roughly 40 schools, according to Craig Slutzkin, 48, a finance worker whose son attends PS 340 on West 17th Street.
Members of the district were set to adopt a resolution Wednesday that calls on City Hall to conduct a citywide survey to account for all migrant kids and their needs, information that has been “hard to get,” according to Slutzkin.
“[I]t is our understanding that the Department of Education has reached out to some of such families but not in a widespread, data-driven manner,” reads the document.
Adams renewed his calls for assistance from the Democratic White House on the crisis.
There were about 56,000 asylum-seekers in total being housed by the Big Apple on Tuesday, according to City Hall, but that figure is expected to surge with a predicted new wave of migrants soon hitting Gotham, well-placed Adams administration sources have said.
“You know, those of you who cover this office, you remember last year? You know, I took a lot of criticism. You know, people thought I was attacking the party, and I was not. I was attacking the process,” he said.
“I think Democratic governors and mayors and mayors in Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, here in New York, El Paso, Brownsville, all [of] the mayors have been saying that this is a national problem and we need national leadership.
“This is not humane what we are watching right now. And all of us should be concerned about how we’re treating people in this country that we are calling migrants and asylum-seekers, but they’re still human beings.”
Adams couched his criticism by saying his administration continues to have a “great conversation” with the Department of Homeland Security and the White House.
He did not offer any new details about a purported DHS liaison that was supposed to be deployed to the city or give any update on DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ promised visit to the boroughs.
“There’s no reason with almost 108,000 cities, villages towns in this country, we can’t spread it out,” Adams said of the migrant burden.
Adams has asked the feds for more than $4 billion to cover the cost of housing the 96,000-plus migrants who have flooded the city since last spring.