Just a few months before the 2024-25 school year was set to begin, P.S. 125, the Ralph Bunche School, received unexpected news that would disrupt its parent community. The school’s longtime after-school care provider, the After-School All-Stars program, had not received a grant renewal from the state’s chapter that had fully subsidized them since 2019.

Through the New York State Advantage After-School program grants, ASAS had provided free after-school care Monday through Friday, from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m, to all 200-plus students at P.S. 125. Following the loss of the grant, though, the nonprofit dropped P.S. 125 from its service. The sudden change left the school community scrambling to figure out funding and after-school plans before the 2024-25 school year.

In the following months, many members of the parents association and school administration at P.S. 125 have petitioned the city, local elected officials, and community organizations for funding to resecure after-school care for their students, which they view as vital.

During their organizing efforts parent association members and school staff researched around 300 after-school providers over the summer and settled on Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, a Bronx-based nonprofit that offers after-school programs to elementary and middle schools across New York City. MMCC provided a sliding scale payment option for families dependent on their income level—crucially, the agency was willing to accept Administration for Children’s Services vouchers, which low-income families can apply for to help cover the cost of child care.

While parents and school administrators successfully secured paid after-school care for the current school year, the absence of a stable source of funding threatens the program’s future. The sliding scale option also places a financial burden on families who cannot afford to pay for child care but do not necessarily qualify for ACS vouchers.

The ACS vouchers have their own difficulties too—parents describe the system as “backed-up” and “incredibly slow and bureaucratic.” Securing vouchers is difficult even after families confirm eligibility and once they do receive approval, payments are slow, creating stress for the provider and threatening students’ continued access to after-school services.

According to Julia Wiedeman, a parent of two students at P.S. 125 and co-president of the parents association, in October 2024—two months into the school year—MMCC informed P.S. 125 that they could not continue serving students dependent on the ACS vouchers if payments did not start to come through.

“The provider was giving the school a very hard time about the delay in those payments, even though it’s out of the school’s control,” Tucker said. “We’re all kind of hoping that this is sort of like a one-year situation and that next year we’ll be able to find a different provider with outside funding and be able to go back to making it a free model, but … we don’t know if that’s going to be possible.”

Tucker noted that a fee-for-service program is especially difficult to sustain for Title I schools. For districts with more affluent families, parents can sometimes fully subsidize their children’s after-school programs.

“If you don’t have a family population that is diverse socioeconomically enough to have full pay, partial pay, no pay, then even a fee-for-service model doesn’t work because you don’t have those resources,” Tucker said, describing the difficulties of the program.

The concerns about access to after-school care do not end there. Thousands of New York City parents may soon lose access to child care vouchers each month due to a massive shortfall in the state budget, according to the ACS, further imperiling after-school programs like P.S. 125’s. The state legislature must negotiate to add nearly $1 billion to the Child Care Assistance Program, which administers child care subsidies—including ACS vouchers—to low-income families, to maintain the growing infrastructure.

On March 25, 53 city politicians signed a letter urging state leaders to fund the vital program, including District 7 City Council member Shaun Abreu, CC ’14. Lawmakers failed to hit the April 1 budget deadline last week, and the program remains in limbo.

As a Title I school, P.S. 125 has a high percentage of students from low-income families. According to the New York State Education Department website, Title I schools receive federal funding to provide all students with “a significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, high-quality education” and “close educational achievement gaps.”

For working families at P.S. 125, free after-school care is a lifeline that enables parents to work a regular job and keep their children in safe, engaging, and productive activities after school.

“There is no … job that allows you to work basically four hours so that you can commute on either end to go get your kids at the end of the day,” Wiedeman said in an interview with Spectator. “My situation with my husband and I—it would cost us money for me to work. We can’t afford any sort of after school, and it’s just an impossible situation.”

Having onsite care is especially crucial for elementary schools, allowing parents to forgo the need to transport their young kids from school to another location for after school in between work.

“These are young kids—they really can’t and shouldn’t be home alone, or, they can’t, say, walk to an after- school program,” Annapurna Potluri Schreiber, a parent of two students at P.S. 125, and co-president of the parents association, told Spectator.

Some students also rely on the program for a third meal, and many benefit from the opportunities it provides to seek additional academic support or explore art, music, and other activities.

“If we want to talk about public safety in any major city, but especially in New York City, you have to start that conversation with schools and after school, because it isn’t really a law enforcement issue,” Tamara Tucker, a parent of two students at P.S. 125, said. “It is an enrichment and engagement issue.”

P.S. 125 is one of many public schools across New York City that lost state funding for after-school care last summer, following a change in the Advantage grant program. In February 2024, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that the program would be combined with another after-school grant program, Empire State, into a new initiative—Learning and Enrichment After-School Program Supports—to create “a single, streamlined program” that would “standardize funding and eligibility and reduce administrative burdens for providers,” according to a news release.

The citywide funding cutbacks came despite Hochul’s announcement that more than $100 million in LEAPS grants, an increase of $17.7 million over fiscal year 2023’s funding, was earmarked to fund after-school programs across the state. Parents expressed frustration over the lack of clarity and transparency in the grant allocation process and seemingly arbitrary cuts to funding.

“There’s no real, obvious reason why one school will get full funding from the state or from the city and why another one doesn’t,” Potluri Schreiber said.

This lack of transparency and clarity has created frustration.

“It’s such a complicated bureaucratic system that it makes it really, really difficult to navigate, especially when you take into consideration that the people who are trying to figure this stuff out are usually school staff who are already working an untold total number of hours for which they’re not compensated for, and parents like me, who are volunteers,” Potluri Schreiber said.

At the February Community Board 9 general board meeting, Principal Yael Leopold and P.S. 125 parents explained the school’s predicament and requested help from CB9 and elected officials in their ongoing efforts to secure funding. Leopold said that schools do not receive separate funding in their budget for after-school care, leaving them to find their own grants or partnerships to fund a program.

“There is a belief by some that all schools are given funding for after-school activities to pay teachers to stay after or entities of community-based organizations to stay after. … That is not the case,” Leopold said at the meeting. “During times of COVID and even pre-COVID, schools were given more money with more flexibility. However, that’s not the case any more. Schools are either expected to pay from their budgets for after school or they’re having partnerships with the DYCD—which is local grants and financing of after school—or state.”

The New York City Department of Youth and Community Development has not expanded their budget for after-school funding in nearly a decade, forcing schools that did not apply then to secure funding on their own, according to Tucker and Potluri Schreiber. Leopold and the parents association met with DYCD and the New York City Council, seeking discretionary funding from the latter, but they were informed that there was no extra funding available for the school.

P.S. 125 was also unable to obtain funding from the West Harlem Development Corporation, which Leopold said offered opportunities that only covered parts of after-school care, requiring the school to have an after-school program already in place.

The future of P.S. 125’s after-school program remains uncertain, but the parents association and Leopold plan to continue writing letters, making calls, and organizing meetings to pressure local elected officials to find a source of funding for the upcoming school year.

“It’s a child care issue, it’s a feminist issue,” Potluri Schreiber said. “Because 99 percent of the time, if there’s a gap in childcare, it’s women who are struggling to fill that gap. … When women lose jobs, often families lose … health insurance. It seems kind of like this little issue, but it ripples out into lots of other places.”

Staff Writer Alanys Vargas can be contacted at alanys.vargas@columbiaspectator.com. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec.