Sen. Felder Advocates for Jewish Education, People with Disabilities, the Homeless

By Yehudit Garmaise

    For the 2021 Legislative Session, New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has appointed State Sen. Simcha Felder (D) to five Senate Committees that reflect the areas in which he would like to focus his energies.

    For the last two weeks, Sen. Felder has already started serving on a committee that he has previously chaired: one that is concerned with education in New York City.

    Yeshivas and parochial schools’ autonomy to determine their curricula is the one critical issue facing the community, said Sen. Felder, who added that he will continue to advocate for private schools to teach what they want to teach.

    “A good education is not a question of the number of hours that teachers spend on specific subjects,” Sen. Felder said. “A good education is a question of quality, not quantity.”

    Sen. Felder also is serving on a Senate committee that focuses on people with disabilities, an area that Sen. Felder also relates to education.

   “The city is entirely negligent in getting assessments and payments efficiently done for children with disabilities,” said Sen. Felder, who has been working for years to speed up the processing of individual education programs (IEP), which affect children with disabilities in both public and private schools.

   “This is not just a Jewish thing,” Sen. Felder said. “This is an issue with children who are being neglected by New York City. 

   Another way in which Sen. Felder would like to advocate for people with disabilities in District 17 is to ask the state whether people serving prison time could create ramps for store entrances to make entries and exits easier for people who use wheelchairs.

   “People in correctional institutions currently make gallons of hand sanitizers that is freely distributed by the state,” said Sen. Felder, who pointed out that his mother is in a wheelchair. “They make furniture. I don’t see why they can’t make ramps to help people to get in and out of stores.”

   On the Senate Committee for Mental Health, Sen. Felder also would like to try to get additional funds, resources, and services for people who are homeless. 

   “We are bundled up, and when we see people who are sleeping on the street, we have to remember that those are clearly people with severe mental health issues,” Sen. Felder said. “Sometimes, we walk by them, and we falsely think ‘That person is not someone I need to be concerned about.’”

    In general, Sen. Felder explained that usually those who make the most noise get the most resources, but many in the city do not have the ability to advocate for themselves, nor do they have enough people to advocate for them.

      “In addition, often, people who are desperate are the ones who end up committing crimes and negatively affecting the community. We have take them off the bottom of every list.”

   Although disempowered people make little noise, Sen. Felder, who is also serving on committees for Social Services and Aging, said those in power should remember that a way to determine whether someone is accomplishing something is whether they focus on doing or talking.

   “An indication of how successful anyone is when he or she is trying to help others in is whether you hear a lot about it, Sen. Felder said. “Most often, you can get much more accomplished without the noise.

   “We shouldn’t talk about what we have done, while ‘it is still cooking.’ We should wait until it is cooked, and done and ready to eat, and only then, do our accomplishments smell good.”