Onondaga County Proposes Increased Child Protective Services Spending

SYRACUSE, NY — As incidents reported by Onondaga County Child Protective Services are still sitting at pandemic-high numbers, the local legislature is proposing a large investment to keep students in the classroom.

If approved by the legislature, the county will allocate roughly $3 million to creating 15 new positions at the CPS department. The Deputy Executive for Human Services Ann Rooney says this will allow them to get ahead of cases before they require a caseworker’s assistance.

“Coming out of the pandemic families were used to keeping their kids home during school time because school was not being administered in the traditional sense,” says Rooney, “What we’re seeing still to this day is what we call, or school systems call chronic absenteeism or educational neglect.” 

Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10%, or 18 days, of school. In the past academic year at the Syracuse City School District, almost half of students met that threshold. Even further, exactly 586 students missed 100 days or more.

With these skipping statistics leading the county, the district is taking a new approach.

“Our new campaign is called ‘Rish and Thrive, Show Up to Glow Up’,” says Brad Vivacqua, the Director of Communications for the SCSD, “It’s an effort to remind parent that the district is here for them if they should have an issue getting there child to school and that we want to help them.”

With the county now getting involved in combating this loss of class time, it seems more parents and students will be held accountable.

Reporting by: Riley Fay