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Home › Equity & access

The kids with the least cushion are the ones a broken handoff hurts most.

The provider shakeup falls hardest on students with disabilities, on low-income and multilingual families, and on the frontline workers who run these programs. The 100-point rubric that decided the awards gave almost none of that any weight.

2,906
students with disabilities or IEPs in the affected communities
14,349
students across the 25 affected school communities
21 / 100
rubric points for a provider's actual track record
0
points for disability transitions, family support, or staff continuity
01

Disability & 504 access

This is the sharpest edge of the whole issue, and the place where the law is clearest.

An IEP or 504 plan only works because of the adults who carry it out: the aide who knows the signs of a coming seizure, the group leader who knows which child needs a quiet corner, the coach who knows the routine that keeps a kid regulated. A provider swap resets that knowledge to zero. Without a written transition, a child can arrive in September to a brand-new staff who have never seen their plan.

That is not only bad practice. Afterschool seats run through DYCD are part of a public program, and Title II of the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act require equal access to public programs for students with disabilities. A transition that quietly drops a child's accommodations is a legal exposure, not just a service gap.

The law changed in your favor · June 2025

A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools made it easier to hold schools accountable.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court held that students with disabilities bringing ADA and Section 504 claims about their education no longer have to clear a heightened "bad faith or gross misjudgment" bar. They are held to the same standard as any other disability-discrimination claim. For an order to fix the problem, families do not have to prove the district meant to discriminate; for damages, the test is "deliberate indifference," a far lower bar than before.

Disabled students' daily challenges, the Court wrote, "do not include having to satisfy a more stringent standard of proof than other plaintiffs."

In plain terms: if DYCD lets disabled kids' supports lapse in this transition, the families affected now have a clearer path to hold the City accountable than they would have a year ago.

Source: A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, Independent School District No. 279, No. 24–249, U.S. Supreme Court, decided June 12, 2025 (Roberts, C.J., for a unanimous Court).

★
What we're asking

A named transition lead and a written continuity plan for every IEP/504 student.

Before the first day, not after a complaint. The plan should name who is responsible, what supports carry over, and how the new staff will be briefed on each child's needs.

File a disability-access grievance →Share with the legal review team
02

Provider diversity

A scoring system that rewards the polished proposal over demonstrated local trust quietly favors the biggest bidders.

Some of the displaced providers are community-rooted and culturally specific organizations that have served immigrant and multilingual families in their neighborhoods for years. When the rubric puts 40 points on a written service plan and caps a provider's actual record at 21, the organizations with the deepest local relationships can lose to larger, better-resourced bidders who simply write a stronger document.

That is an equity question, not a paperwork one. Which organizations a city funds to work with its children shapes who feels seen in those programs, and which languages and cultures are represented by the adults in the room.

★
What we're asking

Publish the provider-diversity impact of these awards.

Show which community-based and culturally specific organizations were displaced, and how the new roster compares with the communities each program serves.

See the records we want released →
03

The workforce

The trusted adult and the afterschool worker are the same person. Lose one and you lose the other.

The people who staff these programs are often paid modestly, hired from the surrounding neighborhood, and disproportionately women and people of color. When a provider loses its contract, those jobs go with it, and the incoming awardee is not required to rehire the staff who were already there. The continuity families value is, concretely, these workers' continued employment.

Protecting the workforce and protecting the kids are not competing goals. They are the same goal described from two sides.

★
What we're asking

Honor staff-retention commitments and publish hiring-preference language.

Give experienced, trusted staff a real path to stay with the children they already know, and make that commitment public and verifiable.

Submit a worker impact →
04

In human terms

Behind every number is a family rearranging its life. These are the kinds of impacts being submitted to the campaign.

A disability family

A child on the autism spectrum who took months to settle with one consistent aide, now facing a September with staff who have never met them.

A working parent

A single parent who chose this middle school specifically for its program, and who relies on the late-pickup hours to hold down a job.

A frontline worker

A coach who has run the same league for a decade, known to hundreds of kids by name, whose position disappears with the contract.

★
Add yours

Your story is evidence.

Impact statements from families and staff become part of the public record and the legal review. They carry weight that a petition signature alone does not.

Share your impact →Or just add your name

Protect access

If your child has an IEP or 504 plan, this is the action that matters most.

File a formal disability-access grievance with DYCD. It puts the City on notice in writing, before the supports lapse, and it builds the record the legal review needs.

Open the grievance form →Learn about the Article 78 legal route
More on this argument

The Equity Test & access barriers

Six conditions a procurement has to meet to be called equitable, and the specific barriers families face on the ground.

Equity cannot mean more seats on paper but less programming, less continuity, less community power, and less certainty for families.

Real equity expands excellent programs into more neighborhoods. It does not require children in one community to lose what works so the City can claim a more balanced vendor portfolio.

The Equity Test

Six conditions for calling a procurement equitable

  1. 01

    Expansion

    Increased access in high-need neighborhoods — more seats, more hours, more high-quality providers.

  2. 02

    Quality

    Programs that match or exceed what they replace: comparable breadth across sports, arts, clubs, academics, and late pickup.

  3. 03

    Community power

    Meaningful parent, principal, and PTA voice before selection — not a comment period after the award.

  4. 04

    Continuity

    Protected relationships for all middle schoolers, and an access requirement for students with IEPs and 504s who depend on predictable routines.

  5. 05

    Transparency

    If provider diversity overrode a principal's first choice, DYCD discloses how and why — in writing, school by school.

  6. 06

    Measurable outcomes

    What improved at each changed school — not just citywide totals of seats or vendors.

An invitation, not an attack

The Mamdani administration has made affordability, quality childcare, and stable funding central priorities. We are asking the administration to apply those same standards after 3 p.m. — to the public afterschool system 100,000 children rely on.

What does not count as equity

  • Replacing a comprehensive afterschool program with a seasonal or single-discipline offering at the same school.
  • Counting a free seat as equitable when staffing, accommodations, or hours have shrunk.
  • Treating quiet communities as consenting communities. Exhausted families are not satisfied families.
  • Concentrating contracts in a smaller number of large organizations and calling that diversification.
  • Removing functioning pathways instead of expanding access to them. Level up — don't level down.
Equity Barriers

More slots is not meaningful access.

Equity is not only where slots are placed. It is whether disabled students can reach the program, whether the provider can serve them, and whether arts, sports, and youth development remain substantive rather than optional. District 75 supports, transportation logistics, and school-specific arts programs are not interchangeable.

From the Council record

"No surveyed District 75 respondents had DYCD-funded afterschool — compared with nearly half of other surveyed schools." — NYC Comptroller's testimony to the Council. The gap is not theoretical; the slots most disabled students need are not where they go to school, and the buses are not aligned to the programs that exist.

Verification in progress. Each barrier below is grounded in public reporting, hearing testimony, or direct family submissions. We will add citations and per-site detail as we receive direct confirmation from schools, providers, and DYCD.

  • District 75 students

    Verification in progress

    Will every D75 site keep an afterschool option that matches the IEP supports students rely on during the school day?

    What we know
    • Comptroller's testimony: no surveyed District 75 respondents had DYCD-funded afterschool, compared with nearly half of other surveyed schools.
    • Transportation is a major reported barrier for students with IEP-mandated busing — even when a slot exists, the child cannot reach it.
    • D75 programs run on highly individualized staffing ratios, 1:1 paras, behavior plans, and predictable adult relationships.
    • Mid-year provider changes routinely disrupt these supports even when the school day stays the same.
    What we still need
    • DYCD's site-by-site list of D75 awards and which sites have a continuity plan.
    • Written commitment that incoming providers will honor existing IEP/504 routines from day one.
    • Coordination with OPT so IEP-mandated transportation reaches the afterschool program, not just the school day.

  • Transportation-dependent families

    Verification in progress

    Are late buses, OPT routes, and accessible transport guaranteed under each new provider's schedule?

    What we know
    • Many middle-school families plan around a specific afterschool end time matched to OPT pickup or sibling-pickup logistics.
    • A schedule change of even 30 minutes can end participation for working families and students with paratransit.
    What we still need
    • Each incoming provider's published end-time and late-bus alignment per site.
    • Confirmation that paratransit and OPT arrangements survive the provider change.

  • School-specific arts programs

    Verification in progress

    Will school-specific arts programs (PPAS, Louis Armstrong, theater/music ensembles) be preserved, or replaced with a generic enrichment menu?

    What we know
    • Louis Armstrong's 12-year CHFS arts program and PPAS's performance-arts identity are tied to the incumbent's curriculum, not interchangeable.
    • Incoming providers have not published which school-specific arts offerings they will continue, modify, or drop.
    What we still need
    • Each incoming provider's commitment, in writing, on the arts programs at the schools they were awarded.
    • A response from DYCD on how arts continuity is scored in provider selection.

Have a specific access barrier to add?

Families and staff with direct knowledge of D75, transportation, or arts-continuity issues can submit details. We confirm before publishing.

Parent submission →Worker submission →Disability grievance route →
On provider diversity →DYCD's claims, in context →What we believe →