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.
Six conditions for calling a procurement equitable
- 01
Expansion
Increased access in high-need neighborhoods — more seats, more hours, more high-quality providers.
- 02
Quality
Programs that match or exceed what they replace: comparable breadth across sports, arts, clubs, academics, and late pickup.
- 03
Community power
Meaningful parent, principal, and PTA voice before selection — not a comment period after the award.
- 04
Continuity
Protected relationships for all middle schoolers, and an access requirement for students with IEPs and 504s who depend on predictable routines.
- 05
Transparency
If provider diversity overrode a principal's first choice, DYCD discloses how and why — in writing, school by school.
- 06
Measurable outcomes
What improved at each changed school — not just citywide totals of seats or vendors.
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.