New York City officials want the Board of Elections to stay out of schools next year during early voting. This shift in position comes after parents, teachers, and principals raised concerns about security and the loss of access to large portions of their facilities—including cafeterias and gymnasiums—during the first nine-day period of early voting in October and November of this year.

It also comes the day ahead of a joint State Senate and Assembly hearing evaluating how localities implemented early voting.

“We’ve heard from parents, we’ve heard from principals and we think there is a better way,” Ayirini Fonseca-Sabune, the city’s Chief Democracy Officer, told Gothamist/WNYC. This year, the BOE selected 33 early-voting sites in public schools—more than half of the 61 total early voting sites. Of the full 248 early-voting sites statewide, only one other locality used a school for early voting.

Next year, there will be four elections in New York City, beginning with the special election for Queens Borough President in March. In each case, the nine-day early voting period includes five school days, for a total of 20 days of early voting altogether, adding up to nearly a month of classes.

Two of those election events take place during crucial state testing periods, Fonseca-Sabune added. The presidential primary on April 28th, with early voting on April 18th through 26th, coincides with the New York State mathematics testing for elementary and middle school students. Similarly, the state and federal primary on June 23rd, with early voting from June 13th through 21st, falls during the New York State Regents exams for high school students.

The fourth election in 2020 is the general election on November 3rd, which means early voting kicks off on October 24th.

Since earlier this year, the de Blasio administration has been urging the BOE to increase the number of early-voting sites across the city. During that initial back-and-forth, the city proposed 222 sites including 168 schools. But Fonseca-Sabune stressed the city also identified 66 non-school sites that could work for early voting.

“If you look at the borough of Queens, no schools were used for early voting,” said Fonseca-Sabune. “We see cultural institutions, we see community centers, we see CUNY. Those are the institutions that should be used for early voting,” she added.

The city’s list of recommended locations included sites from the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens library systems, Health + Hospitals, and NYCHA community centers—none of which the BOE selected for early voting.

A spokeswoman for the BOE did not respond to a request for comment about the city’s new position on early-voting sites by publication. But BOE officials did face pushback from non-Department of Education sites when the initial list of early voting sites was first made public.

While we are always interested in finding new ways to foster civic engagement on campus, as well as be a good civic partner, we do have significant space constraints. We would have to evaluate all of the space and logistical requirements of hosting. — Doug Israel (@dougisrael) May 8, 2019

Disability rights advocates are also urging the BOE to make changes to how the city implements early voting to improve accessibility. The Center for Independence of the Disabled NY (CIDNY) surveyed 72 sites during early voting and during the general election and found barriers at 64 percent of them.

Barriers inside poll sites often meant there was not adequate space around the Ballot Marking Device, which are machines used by voters with vision impairments and hand dexterity issues to mark their paper ballot.

“In one case at one of the sites we found a huge plastic sheet rumpled up over a volleyball net behind the Ballot Marking device—so a huge tripping hazard,” said Margi Trapani, director of education and training for CIDNY. She said there was also a lack of signage inside and outside sites, locked doors at accessible entryways, ramps that were too narrow or at too steep a pitch and a lack of consistent information from disability access coordinators at sites.

Poll sites in schools were particularly problematic. “We found a lot of narrow doorways, a lot of materials in the pathways to a voting area that shouldn't be there on Election Day,” Trapani said, adding, “the Department of Education has responsibilities to also see that their sites are accessible.”

At the weekly commissioners meeting on Tuesday, BOE Executive Director Michael Ryan acknowledged the city still has more work to do when it comes to complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Of the BOE’s 1,247 poll sites on Election Day, Ryan said 564 sites still require some type of “temporary remediation” at poll sites - anything from ramps, to mats and cones.

“It is a process that is continuing to unfold before our eyes,” Ryan said at the meeting, “and we have been very vigilant in that regard, to make sure that the sites that we don’t own, and we don’t build, and we don’t have control over for most of the year...that when they are being used for voting that they meet the accessibility standards."

Advocates for the disabled have long pushed to allow people with disabilities to vote independently during elections.

In 2013, a federal court ruled that the city Board of Elections discriminated against disabled voters by not making poll sites fully accessible and ordered the BOE designate disability coordinators at each location on Election Day and to work with a consultant to survey polling sites, and to remove barriers or identify alternate locations.

Trapani said adding more sites overall would help all voters, especially those with limited mobility. “We think early voting is a great idea,” she said,“but it needs to be accessible.”