NY1: After-school providers call for more funding in city budget

NY1: After-school providers call for more funding in city budget | June 2025: Mayor Eric Adams and many of those running to take his spot in City Hall have proposed expanding after-school programs for students in the city. 

But City Council members and the organizations who run the programs say they need a pay increase from the city to keep their doors open. 

At a community center run by the Queens Community House program, students spend hours after school working on homework, making art, playing games and practicing yoga. 

“We're having fun and we like spending time with people and, building bonds. And number two, it's like, honestly,  just overall fun to, like, take trips and like, be outside and stuff,” student Iyanna Elliott said. 

“We get to go to the gym. We play basketball, soccer, steal the bacon, sometimes,” student Kai Vaelera said.

It’s also a safe, reliable place for them to be while their parents are at work — a program mom Jenny Nunez doesn’t know how she would survive without.

“It would literally leave me homeless because if I cannot go to work, how am I supposed to support my children? What kind of care and who's going to care for them? Some of us don't have grandmas and grandpas and aunties and uncles or best friends living next door that would keep your kid for free,” Nunez said.

Programs like this one are free to parents, and providers are paid per child by the city through two programs: COMPASS, for elementary school, and SONYC, for middle school.

But the amount the city pays per student has not been updated since 2011 for COMPASS, and 2015 for SONYC.

“It means we're struggling to continue providing these services, and all of our brothers and sister organizations throughout the city that provide free afterschool programming funded by the city, are struggling alongside us,”  Ben Thomases, executive director of Queens Community House, said.

The City Council has proposed adding an additional $154 million to this year’s city budget to raise the base rates for after-school programs.

“The urgency matters just because these people have been underfunded for the last 15 years. And so how do we just tell you, wait another year and have these — just hold the same wages and do the work that we're asking you to do, but do it at a lower cost?” Councilwoman Althea Stevens, who chairs the Committee on Children and Youth, said.

Watch the full segment here:

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