NYC to Invest $331 Million More in Universal After-School Programs

Mayor Eric Adams says universal after-school access key to making NYC family-friendly.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks at a press conference on universal after-school programs, outside the Anna Silver School in Manhattan on April 29, 2025. Oliver Mantyk/The Epoch Times

NEW YORK CITY—Mayor Eric Adams announced on April 29 that a further $331 million will be invested in creating and maintaining after-school programs by the end of fiscal year 2028.

Adams made the announcement at a press event in front of a schoolyard playground in the Lower East Side, Manhattan. The mayor opened the event by relating universal after-school programs to his message of making the city safer.

“To make New York City the best place to raise a family, we need to make sure our young people and families have opportunities to thrive, and that is why we are launching a big, bold vision to achieve universal after-school for free for all students who want it,” Adams said.

The mayor said that the initiative will first give programs to areas that need them the most. He noted that better-off neighborhoods often have plenty of after-school programs, while other neighborhoods suffer from a severe lack of such opportunities.

“If you live on the Upper West Side, you have everything,” he said, “You have Museum Mile, where you can just walk down the block and they’re living, breathing after-school programs and opportunities. We want to go to those places where those opportunities don’t exist.”

Fund Allocation

The initiative will add a total of 20,000 spots in after-school programs for students in grades K-5 over the next three years.

Of the total sum, $21 million will be invested in the 2026 budget immediately. That money will be used to open 5,000 more seats in K-5 after-school programs for the Fall 2026 school semester. The rest of the funds will be invested over the 2027 and 2028 budgets.

The $331 million will be added to the $424 million already allocated for after-school programs by 2028, bringing the total to $ 755 million. At that time, the estimated number of K-8 students served by after-school programs is expected to grow to 184,000, up from 164,000 currently.

The mayor’s office cites several potential economic benefits of offering more free after-school programs, among them a study showing that NYC lost $23 billion due to parents needing to quit work to take care of children, and an Oklahoma study estimating that every $1 invested by Oklahoma state saved it $8-$12.

Mayoral candidate and rival Brad Lander, the current NYC comptroller, posted a response to the mayor’s announcement on X. “Mayor Adams’ plan for universal afterschool programming is too little, too late. And it also looks awfully familiar…”

Other candidates in the race for the mayorship, including Zellnor Myrie and Lander, have been advocating for universal after-school programs.