By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams, City Schools Chancellor David Banks, and City Department of Youth & Community Development Commissioner Keith Howard were joined by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams on Tuesday to announce several investments towards the City’s budget to further support young people and families.
These investments are possible because of the administration’s better-than-expected revenues, Adams noted, and include $32 million to protect programming that was previously funded with temporary stimulus dollars and $20 million to extend the City’s Summer Rising hours.
Additionally, as a measure to combat COVID-19 related learning loss, Mayor Adams and Speaker Adams also announced a “Hold Harmless” policy for the initial budget allocations of City public schools for the 2024-2025 school year to maintain stability for school budgets.
According to Mayor Adams and Banks, the administration will first invest $32 million to protect important long-term DOE programs that had been funded with short term COVID-19 stimulus funds. This is on top of the $514 million in stimulus funded programs that the city protected in the Fiscal Year 2025 Executive Budget. Tuesday’s new funding will maintain:
- Teacher recruitment efforts that are critical to meeting state mandated class-size legislation standards ($10 million);
- Restorative Justice programming designed to reduce the reliance on suspensions or punitive discipline across city schools ($6 million);
- Digital learning resources for students and teachers ($5 million);
- Tutoring support for kindergarten through second grade literacy and sixth through eighth grade math education at select schools across the city ($4 million)
- Computer science education programs that offer computer science exposure, access to computer science-related college and career pathways, and build more inclusive access to computer science education for all students ($4 million);
- “Civics for All” resources including materials, professional learning, and student-facing programming focused on culturally responsive civic education models where students demonstrate the necessary skills and disposition to protect and expand democratic ideals ($2 million); and
- Parent and family engagement resources that support DOE’s “Family and Community Engagement” initiative, which focuses on parent empowerment and engagement ($1 million).
Tuesday’s announcement will also restore $20 million for Summer Rising to return Friday sessions and extend the school day from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. for middle school students. Summer Rising is the City’s summer program that connects 110,000 elementary and middle school students to fun, culturally relevant, hands-on experiences to strengthen their academic, social, and emotional skills. In January, the Adams administration previously announced it would fund the program entirely with city dollars for the first-time ever since it was funded previously using exclusively temporary COVID-19 federal stimulus funds that expired.
Finally, the administration will invest $75 million to ensure that schools with declining enrollment — that would otherwise have seen budget reductions, which represent 15 percent of total DOE schools — will now receive the same level of funding that they were allocated in the mid-year school budget adjustment for the 2023-2024 school year. The “Hold Harmless” policy — instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic — is a continued temporary measure to rebound from the effects of the pandemic and to ensure students’ test scores do not fall behind as academic recovery continues.
