Advocates for Children of New York works on behalf of children who are at greatest risk for school-based discrimination and/or academic failure due to poverty, disability, race, ethnicity, immigrant or English Language Learner status, sexual orientation, gender identity, homelessness, or involvement in the foster care or juvenile justice systems.
Find out more here
Need Help?
Call AFC's Education Helpline
(866) 427-6033
Monday to Thursday
10 am to 4 pm
Donate Now
Help Advocates for Children assist more New York City students!
Sign up
Receive email updates or text alerts from AFC.
Spotlight
AFC Testifies on School Transportation
10.16.18 | Today, Advocates for Children is testifying before the City Council Committee on Education about the importance of improving the school transportation system, especially for students with disabilities, students in foster care, and students in temporary housing, and in support of a bill to provide real-time GPS bus location data to... Read more
New Data Show Student Homelessness Continues to Rise in New York City and New York State
10.15.2018 | Today, the New York State Technical and Education Assistance Center for Homeless Students (NYS-TEACHS), a project of Advocates for Children of New York (AFC), posted new data showing the number of students in New York City and New York State schools identified as homeless during the 2017-2018 school year. The data come from the... Read more
New Report Shows Only One in Five NYC Public Schools Fully Accessible to Students and Parents with Physical Disabilities
10.10.2018 | Today, Advocates for Children of New York is releasing a new data brief entitled Access Denied: School Accessibility in New York City [PDF], which looks at the accessibility of New York City’s 1,800 public schools. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires the City to provide equitable access to schools for... Read more
AFC Writes Chancellor Carranza Regarding Busing Problems
09.27.2018 | Today, AFC sent a letter to Chancellor Carranza regarding start-of-school problems with busing. The letter shared a number of cases that are illustrative of what families, especially families of students with disabilities, routinely experience. Although the DOE has tended to treat busing as ancillary to its core mission of... Read more
AFC in the News
NYC must track how often kids with disabilities forced to use separate school doors, councilman says
10.17.2018 | New York Daily News | Advocates for Children Special Education Policy Coordinator Maggie Moroff said the practice of forcing kids to use secondary entrances is “exactly the kind of thing that makes students with disabilities and their families feel like second-class citizens.” She added: “Overall, it’s another way the students with... Read more
Homeless in New York Public Schools at a Record High: 114,659 Students
10.15.2018 | New York Times | Tonight, about one out of every 10 students in New York City will sleep in a homeless shelter or in the homes of relatives. That’s more children than at any other time since city records have been kept. In the morning, those same children will fan out across the city to go to school, some crossing multiple boroughs to... Read more
Data show more than 114K New York City students are homeless
10.15.2018 | Politico New York | More than 114,000 New York City students were identified as homeless during the 2017-18 school year, according to new state Education Department data posted by Advocates for Children of New York. "The number of students who are homeless in New York City would fill Yankee Stadium twice," said Kim Sweet, AFC's... Read more
New record for number of homeless students in NYC
10.15.2018 | New York Daily News | The number of city students living in homelessness reached an all-time high for the school year that ended in June, a new report shows. A record 114,659 students in temporary housing attended city schools in the 2017-18 year, up nearly 3% from 111,562 in the 2016-17 school year, according to data published Monday... Read more