Attendance at NYC schools Summer Rising program rate dips to 62% despite demand for free child care

Thousands of New York City parents are grabbing coveted spots for their kids in Summer Rising, only for many children to not show up when the city’s immensely popular summer program begins, new data shows.

Each year as the end of school approaches, Summer Rising makes headlines when families are inevitably shut out of the free program, which started during the pandemic and combines academics with camp activities. It serves about 110,000 students in kindergarten through the eighth grade — a major expansion from the summer program options before COVID-19 that still falls short of demand.

But figures disclosed for the first time at a City Council hearing on Wednesday showed some slots were empty, while other families scrambled or paid out of pocket for child care.

Between July and August, the attendance rate for Summer Rising was 61.5%, down from 63.4% in 2023, local city officials testified.

Among the 110,000 offers made to families after the spring application period, just 101,000 students reported to their assigned sites at least once.

“Where are those kids?” said Councilwoman Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn), chair of the education committee. “If 9,000 kids go missing in our school system, I would like to know where they are and what are they doing, and how are we doing outreach to those families to find out why they’re not sitting in our seats?”

“For me, it’s not good enough,” she added. “We got a lot of work to do.”

Summer Rising

During the regular school year — when compulsory education mandates are in place — the attendance rate was 89.4%, officials said.

A top deputy of the school system cautioned against comparing Summer Rising to a more typical term.

“We intentionally make it flexible for families to be in and out, to not mandate a certain thing, to allow them to opt out a couple weeks,” said Emma Vadehra, deputy chancellor of operations and finance.

“We do talk long and hard about how to change this program every year, for whatever it’s worth, and continue to try and improve. That is not something we’ve been looking to change, because we think that flexibility in a free program is actually appropriate,” she added.

About 81% of parents who applied on time to Summer Rising received an offer for their child, an increase from 68% the year before, Vadehra said. A majority of those families received their first choice program.

Summer Rising also uses a waitlist. If a student does not attend by the first day of the second week, and their parents cannot be reached despite multiple attempts, then students are removed and their seats offered to the family next in line.

Councilwoman Althea Stevens (D-Bronx), who chairs the youth committee, questioned whether the city is changing its roster too late in the summer, when families already needed to find alternatives for child care.

“We are trying to figure this out by the second week,” said Stevens. “We’re going to be calling parents who probably already found other accommodations.”