State grant helps two Sunset Park after-school sites
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s latest executive budget, according to the governor’s office, supports “an innovative program designed to transform schools into community hubs that integrate social, health and other services, as well as after-school programming.”
In Sunset Park, however, the reality is more complex. The governor’s $500,000 grant is quite welcome, but it builds on existing, high-demand “community school” projects operated for decades by the Center for Family Life (CFL), a program of SCO Family of Services.
The new funds will allow CFL to expand its five-day-a-week School Age Child Care/Afterschool Program at two elementary schools from approximately 175-200 students to 300 and ultimately 350. The provision of supervised and enriching programs from school dismissal time until 6 p.m. is crucial in Sunset Park, where parents often work long hours away from home and families are crammed into overcrowded apartments.