Categories for Analysis

Jun 6

2024

Charters outperform urban public schools in reading

Published by

The reading skills of young students who attend charter schools in and around Buffalo are slightly better than those attending urban public schools, an Investigative Post analysis has found. The results of 2023’s testing showed 30 percent of third through fifth grade students at the 19 charter schools tested in Erie and Niagara counties could read and write at or above grade level, according to the New York State Education Department.  That compares with 25 percent of students in the same grades in Buffalo public schools. “There’s more we want to achieve for our kids, clearly,” said Fatimah Barker, executive[...]

Posted 11 months ago

May 27

2024

Buffalo’s fiscal reckoning

Published by

  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 12 months ago

May 3

2024

Buffalo’s precarious budget

Published by

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown struck a pragmatic tone Wednesday as he introduced his budget proposal for the coming year, which is balanced with a 9 percent hike in property taxes and nearly $15 million in reserve funds. The mayor’s $618 million spending proposal, however, suffers from some of the same unrealistic revenue projections that led to shortfalls in the past, before the city’s treasury was bursting with federal pandemic aid to conceal the difference. Consider just three revenue sources the Brown administration has frequently overestimated in past budget cycles: parking meters, parking tickets, and traffic fines. Parking meters are forecast[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Apr 30

2024

IDAs have ‘perverse incentive’ to issue tax breaks

Published by

The Erie County IDA earns a majority of its revenue from fees generated by approving subsidy deals. Photo by Garrett Looker. No wonder industrial development agencies across New York State dole out so many tax breaks, watchdog groups say: The more IDAs issue, the more money they make for themselves. That system creates a “perverse incentive,” the groups claim in a new report. “It just creates this horrible incentive where the IDA isn’t working for the public anymore, it’s working for its own self interest,” said Anya Gizis, a researcher at Good Jobs First and one of the report’s authors.[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Apr 26

2024

School districts succeeding at reading

Published by

A third grade student raises a hand during Karen Shedrick’s lesson at Cuba-Rushford Elementary. Photo by Garrett Looker This is the second in a series on literacy in Western New York public schools. The first installment can be found here. Young children scramble around a gymnasium at Cleveland-Hill Elementary School on a recent night, gazing over tables lined with piles of books — all free for them to take home. Laia, who’s in the second grade, filled a bag full of new titles, books slightly above her current reading level, “so she can advance and be ahead of the curve[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Apr 25

2024

Reading scores lag across WNY

Published by

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series. Our second story is here.  It’s not just Buffalo where students are struggling to read and write. Only 39 percent of third through fifth graders in Western New York’s 99 school districts scored at grade level on recent English Language Arts tests. What’s more, 31 percent of students lack even basic reading and writing skills. In some districts, including Buffalo and Niagara Falls, that figure approaches or exceeds 50 percent. The problems extend from the city to the countryside, urban neighborhoods to suburban cul de sacs, according to an Investigative[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 15

2024

Solutions to Buffalo’s lagging mortgage lending to Black residents

Published by

Second in a series on the impact of lending practices on homeownership by Black residents in Erie and Niagara counties. The first story is here. Analysts and community leaders suggest a series of banking reforms aimed at increasing Black homeownership in Erie and Niagara counties. Ideas include expanding outreach efforts to underserved communities and retooling mortgage lending options by lowering interest rates for low-to-moderate income buyers and considering rent and bill payment history in lieu of credit history. “Potentially having those rates lowered and providing more ability for families that may not have higher income streams to have some subsidies[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 14

2024

Mortgage lending lags to Black applicants in Buffalo

Published by

This is the first of two stories on the impact of lending practices on homeownership by Black residents in Erie and Niagara counties. The second story, outlining possible solutions, is here. Black applicants are twice as likely to be denied a home mortgage as the overall population in Erie and Niagara counties, an Investigative Post analysis has found. What’s more, the region’s 18 percent rejection rate for Black applicants in 2022 was higher than in all but a handful of other major metro areas nationally.  The gap between the denial rate for Black applicants and the overall mortgage denial rate[...]

Posted 1 year ago
Investigative Post