A recently passed bipartisan bill aims to regulate how close new schools can be to major roadways. The Schools Impacted by Gross Highways, or SIGH Act, applies to controlled access highways, with newly constructed facilities required to be at least 500 feet away, with some exceptions.

Across the state, thousands of students attend schools near these major roadways, where the air quality is unquestionably a concern for their health and safety.

State Senator Rachel May told Spectrum News 1 the bill seeks to mitigate that impact moving forward, while addressing longstanding concerns about space in crowded cities. Those concerns torpedoed an earlier version of the bill two years ago. 

“It’s pretty common and it's especially common in low-income urban neighborhoods,”  she said. “The air quality around highways is really poor, and students who are studying close to a highway tend to have higher athsma rates and lower test scores.”

Lanessa Owens-Chaplin, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Center, stressed that discriminatory policies of the past mean the impacts of noise and air pollution from the roads hit low-income communities and communities of color the hardest.

“Thinking of Urban Renewal and the mass transit movement, a lot of these major highways were placed directly in Black and brown or low-income communities,” she said.

Owens-Chaplin says the SIGH Act, along with a high-profile fight in May’s district to move a roundabout planned as part of the removal of the elevated portion of I-81 through downtown Syracuse away from a local elementary school, are evidence the issue is being taken more seriously than in years past. The school has been in the shadow of I-81 for decades.

“As the general public becomes more aware of what environmental justice is and what environmental racism is, once we have that language, people are becoming more involved,” she said.

The bill has faced opposition in New York City. It was veoted in 2022, in part, because of concerns about a lack of space for new schools downstate.

May said the bill has been amended to address the concerns of city officials, with requirements for air-quality control in buildings that must be constructed within 500 feet of a highway due to space constraints.

“Their position was 'what if we make sure there are careful air-quality controls in the schools?' We’re mitigating the situation if we have to build a school near a highway,” she said.

State Senator Jabari Brisport, who represents an area of Brooklyn and is a co-sponsor of the bill, insists that even the city should be able to manage a 500-foot gap.

“I supported the bill even before it was amended,” he said. “Building a school within a city block, I think we can do better than that.”

He said, however, that he does support the changes as a way of ensuring progress.

“I think that this is an attempt to make sure we can move forward and that the city is making a good faith effort to protect our youth and our students,” he said.