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A city-ordered shake-up of after-school programming at two Upper East Side middle schools has set off a parent revolt — complete with a rally, a petition closing in on 5,000 signatures, and a sharply worded letter from four neighborhood electeds.
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Manhattan Youth, the nonprofit that has operated free programming at Yorkville East Middle School and Wagner Middle School for close to a decade, is not expected to return in September. The city’s Department of Youth and Community Development declined to renew its contracts under a citywide reshuffle of after-school awards announced May 14. The new contracts at the affected schools run through 2032.Manhattan Youth’s programming at the two middle schools has included athletics, arts clubs, tutoring, and standardized test prep. At Wagner, the incoming provider will be the New York Junior Tennis League.
Families have not taken the change quietly. An online petition demanding Manhattan Youth’s reinstatement and a fuller explanation of the Department of Youth and Community Development’s (DYCD’s) contract decisions gathered close to 5,000 signatures in its first week. On May 21, parents organized a rally outside Wagner Middle School. On Tuesday, advocates delivered more than 1,000 letters from students to Councilmember Julie Menin’s office, Patch reports.
Sharon D’Agostino, the vice president of Wagner’s parent-teacher association — whose seventh-grade daughter is enrolled in Manhattan Youth’s theater club — told Patch she could not grasp why a program that was working well for families would be uprooted at all. Beyond the disruption of familiar staff leaving, parents have raised concerns that the incoming providers offer narrower programming than Manhattan Youth’s broad mix of athletics, arts, and academics. The Junior Tennis League selection at Wagner has drawn particular skepticism that the new offerings will lean too heavily on the sport itself.
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Menin — joined by Councilmember Virginia Maloney, Councilmember Harvey Epstein, and Assemblymember Keith Powers — called DYCD’s selection process “opaque” in a joint letter to the agency. The four electeds argued that principal feedback, which DYCD considers a central component of contract evaluation, should have weighed in favor of Manhattan Youth’s renewal given the support from school leadership and families.DYCD has defended the decision, telling Patch that the programs will remain free and that the city will work closely with the incoming providers to ensure a smooth handoff. The Upper East Side losses are part of a broader hit to Manhattan Youth, which had its contracts pulled at roughly a dozen middle schools citywide — about half of its NYC middle school portfolio, Tribeca Citizen and New York Family reported. The contract round itself is the largest expansion of New York’s after-school system in its 20-year history, with the agency awarding 806 school-based contracts to 171 organizations after reviewing more than 3,700 proposals.
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