Categories for DailyPost

Jun 5

2024

Erie County making headway on foster care

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Illustration by Christine Ongjoco. This story is being co-published with The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice. Where Kin Come First: The Imprint’s first-ever analysis of how often New York counties place foster children with relatives found huge gaps across county lines. This story reveals how counties that prioritize kin are keeping children within family networks. Part two of a two-part series. Read part one here.   In 2018, when her young nephew was found wandering outside alone, Krystal Henderson got a call from the Chemung County social services agency. Would she and her husband[...]

Posted 11 months ago

Jun 4

2024

Falling short on foster care

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Illustration by Christine Ongjoco.  This story is being co-published with The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice. Where Kin Come First: The Imprint’s analysis of New York child welfare agencies’ reliance on family and friends reveals where children end up depends a lot on geography. Part one of a two-part series. Six years ago, the federal government made a dramatic shift in the way it funds foster care. Instead of only paying states after they removed children from parents accused of abuse or neglect, local authorities could be reimbursed to avoid family separation through[...]

Posted 11 months ago

Jun 3

2024

Numbers dispute the claims of a WNY renaissance

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Some numbers caught my eye in the new edition of the WNY Economic News produced by economic professors at Canisius University.  And I quote: National payroll employment has surpassed its pre-COVID peak by more than 7 million jobs while WNY employment is more than 12,000 below its pre-COVID peak.  As they have been since the late 1980s, wages for workers in the Buffalo MSA [metropolitan statistical area] are lower than wages for workers in most industries in the United States. Thus, it should not be a surprise that the most recent data for the Buffalo MSA shows that the average wage[...]

Posted 11 months ago

May 31

2024

Buff State has rock bottom graduation rates

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We pulled graduation rates for SUNY's 20 universities and four-year comprehensive colleges with campuses, using full-time students who entered as freshmen in 2013. (We wanted to avoid the pandemic years.) The average four-year graduation rate was 55 percent. By six years, the average graduation rate was 68 percent. Buffalo State had the lowest four-year graduation rate, 28 percent. It also had the lowest five-year and six-year rates. UB 's four-year graduation rate was in the mid-range, and a few points higher in the five and six-year categories. Geneseo had one of the highest graduation rates among the 20 SUNY schools.[...]

Posted 11 months ago

May 30

2024

A different approach to revitalizing Buffalo’s East Side

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What do you like about your neighborhood, the interviewer asked. What are your concerns? How optimistic are you that things will get better? There was no right or wrong answer for the 567 residents who took the survey, but their responses will help determine which neighborhood serves as a pilot to help rebuild Buffalo’s East Side and elevate the city’s Black community. Henry Taylor, director of the University at Buffalo’s Center for Urban Studies, unveiled the framework last November in “How We Change the Black East Side: A Neighborhood Planning and Development Framework.”  The model poses a radical challenge to[...]

Posted 11 months ago

May 29

2024

Jail advisory board makes some progress

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Erie County Holding Center. Photo by Garrett Looker. The Erie County Corrections Specialist Advisory Board made incremental progress Tuesday, mustering a quorum, barely, after failing to draw enough members to conduct business at its three previous monthly meetings. Six members of the 11-seat board were present, exactly the number needed for a quorum. The board took two actions, approving minutes of past meetings that could not previously be voted on due to lack of members and setting a June 11 date for a special meeting to select a chair, a vice chair and a secretary, positions that have been vacant[...]

Posted 11 months ago

May 29

2024

NYC migrants may be exiting Buffalo area hotels

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State Sen. Sean Ryan. Photo provided. New York City is developing  a new program to help migrants it is housing in Buffalo-area hotels move into apartments, reports the Gothamist. The news organization said New York City hopes to work with Jewish Family Services of Western New York to assist over 500 migrants find more permanent — and less expensive — housing. The nonprofit agency would also help the migrants find jobs and to seek asylum, Gothamist reports. The arrangement is similar to one previously suggested by state Sen. Sean Ryan of Buffalo, who has been involved in talks leading to[...]

Posted 11 months ago

May 27

2024

Buffalo’s fiscal reckoning

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  Buffalo Common Council President Christopher P. Scanlon. Photo by Garrett Looker. Buffalo’s Common Council took some of the sting out of the mayor’s proposed property tax hike last week, at least for residential homeowners.  Legislators knocked Mayor Byron Brown’s 9 percent tax increase to 7.5 percent, with most of the relief directed to residential homeowners. But city dwellers shouldn’t rest easy. Taxes likely will continue to rise in the years to come. “This tax increase is nothing compared to what’s going to happen in the future,” Niagara District Council Member David Rivera said last week.   “We should have been[...]

Posted 11 months ago
Investigative Post