Would universal after-school help families stay in NYC? Mayoral candidate Myrie says yes.

About two hours after school ended on a recent Tuesday, a group of first graders at the Cambria Heights School in Queens rehearsed the chorus of “Stand Up,” a song about the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, for an upcoming performance marking Black and Women’s history months.

Just a few blocks away at the Ronald McNair School, named for the Black astronaut and physicist, elementary school students were learning about aviation and getting excited to use a flight simulator as part of the after-school program there.

State Sen. Zellnor Myrie visited both programs for the first stop of a five-borough tour to promote his signature “after-school for all” proposal. As mayoral candidates respond to the exodus of families with children from New York City – one of several symptoms of a citywide cost-of-living crisis – expanding access to child care has emerged as a consensus issue in the Democratic primary. But only Myrie is pushing for universal after-school, a sweeping plan that some experts say may be tricky to implement due to its projected cost and scale.

“To me, there is no better investment than after-school. We are literally talking about the future of our city,” Myrie told Gothamist. He points out that most city schools and childcare programs only run until 2 p.m., forcing parents to leave work or pay out of pocket for care until they’re home.

While Myrie isn’t considered a mayoral frontrunner — he’s polling in the low single digits, and his middle-of-the-pack fundraising has slowed in momentum — he’s among a group of insurgent candidates to Mayor Eric Adams’ left that voters might include on their five-person, ranked-choice ballots to ward off the current mayor and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is leading voter polls. Myrie is emphasizing after-school with an urgency similar to how former Mayor Bill de Blasio stressed the need to expand pre-K, hoping that like de Blasio, he’ll be able to break out with a signature issue that taps into parents’ needs.

Cheryl Caddle, executive director of the nonprofit Community Youth Care Services, which runs both the after-school programs in Cambria Heights Myrie toured that day, said that she’s aware of the need for more programming and the limits on public resources to provide it.

“People call me all the time asking me to come in their schools and start another program,” Caddle said, but she’s reluctant until she knows the money will be there to pay the staff.

Myrie’s goal is to expand the city’s after-school capacity so the programs are available at all schools, from 3-K through high school, every weekday until 6 p.m. He wants to add 110,000 seats to the city’s existing after-school infrastructure, so that any kid who wants to attend can do so for free. De Blasio expanded the city’s programs to 126,000 seats at its pre-pandemic peak in 2018, but it has shrunk under the Adams administration to just 100,174 seats, according to data in the mayor’s management reports.

The plan would require significantly lengthening the day compared to the city’s existing care programs, and quickly. In the first year, Myrie says he would focus on providing the option of an extended day until 6 p.m. in universal 3-K and pre-K. Most free early childhood programs currently run through 2 p.m., with only limited options for extended day care.

Myrie would also add additional after-school programming for elementary schools that would combine academics and project-based STEM activity with sports, music and cultural activities. He says he also would appoint an interagency panel to oversee the roll out of the program overseen by a deputy mayor and require an annual report on the after-school programs and their outcomes.

The city currently offers some 900 different types of after-school programs, which are largely administered through the Department of Youth and Community Services in conjunction with the Department of Education. But the availability of these after-school programs, similar to the availability of 3-K and pre-K, is inconsistent across the five boroughs.

None of this would be cheap. The city’s investment in after-school programs is currently on track to decline, according to an analysis from the Independent Budget Office. It went from $170 million in the fiscal year that ended in 2024 to $160 million for the current fiscal year — and would be just $125 million for the fiscal year that ends in 2026. Myrie’s proposal would require a dramatic reversal of that trend. He estimates it will cost $400 million for the first year, which he says the city could cover using $300 million that were allocated to pay for migrant costs and never used, plus $100 million from personal income taxes, which analysts at the City Council have said the current administration has persistently underestimated.

All major candidates challenging Mayor Eric Adams say they support stepping up commitments to 3-K and pre-kindergarten – seizing on a weak point for the sitting mayor, who has become known for pushing cuts to programs like pre-K and 3-K. Fellow members of the progressive flank targeting Adams, like state Sen. Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, have proposed plans for free, universal child care, but none have matched Myrie’s particular focus on after school.

Eli Dvorkin, editorial and policy director at the Center for an Urban Future, which recently released a study on five ways to make New York City more affordable for families, said he found it encouraging that “there’s so much consensus among the candidates that the city needs more solutions around childcare.”

In its report, Dvorkin’s team recommends novel ways to expand the city’s existing 3k and pre-k programs. The team also recommends the city seek more partnership with the private sector as a way to bolster and pay for childcare, something that former comptroller and current mayoral candidate Scott Stringer has proposed doing in his childcare proposal.

City Comptroller Brad Lander, who has also said he supports expanding after-school, emphasizes the need to expand 3-K and pre-K programs along with fighting for state and national funds to pay for universal childcare. Cuomo makes no mention of after-school programming in his childcare proposal, which recommends expanding the city’s current 3-K and pre-K programs and increasing the incentives for childcare centers in economic development projects.

Dvorkin said his team did not explicitly study expanding after-school programs as part of its research. While he called it a “very worthy goal,” he also noted that the current after-school model — which can include city, state and federal funding through different contracts and nonprofit providers — makes the expansion fraught with complexity.

“ There really are a lot of different challenges that after-school faces different than the specific opportunity to make 3-K and pre-K more effectively universal,” Dvorkin said. “ I would just urge all the candidates to make sure that they're putting forward ideas that the mayor can fully implement with the tools and the resources that are at the mayor's disposal.”

Myrie credits his own childhood experience attending the Crown Heights Youth Collective, an after-school program founded nearly 50 years ago that combined academic and cultural programming, with putting him on a path to higher education and elected office. He says the programs boost public safety, by keeping kids off the streets, and support the city’s tax base by keeping parents in the workforce while their kids attend these programs.

“ It's an opportunity to give them another exposure,” Caddle said. “We find when we expose them to coding and dance and music and all the things we've done over the years, it doesn't matter what it is…they sort of go for it.”

But she remains wary of overextending her programs.

“You really have to give some thought about who is going to support after school, this particular service, to keep it consistent quality every day. That’s a conversation we need to have with him,” she said, nodding toward Myrie. “We have a lot of thoughts on that.”