After-School Special

Mayor Bloomberg announced that due to a dramatic increase in funding, as many as 14,000 more city kids will be able to attend after-school programs this year. According to the New York Post, that would bring the total number of children participating in after-school activities to 80,000. The expansion is part of New York's Out-of-School Time (OST) initiative and Bloomberg introduced the addition of 112 new after-school programs at an annual conference of the Association of New York State Youth Bureaus being held this year in Brooklyn.

The OST initiative began in September 2005 and was originally slated to serve 47,000 children, but the program has nearly doubled in size in just a few years. Funding for the initiative is expected to grow from $46 million to $121 million by next year. Four months ago, The New York Times wrote that more than 100 after school programs serving 20,000 students faced imminent cancellation after a reduction in federal grants.