Amid backlash, Eric Adams restores funds for popular education programs

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday announced more than $100 million in investments to protect programs for children — his latest step in reversing unpopular budget decisions that have provided ammunition for his political opponents.

Flanked by fellow Democrats, the mayor laid out a plan to spare youth programs from the pending loss of federal stimulus dollars and support schools that have grappled with declining enrollment.

Adams announced he would restore $20 million for extended hours under Summer Rising, a popular learning and enrichment initiative.

He also announced he’d invest in programs set to lose federal stimulus funds.

The mayor is specifically committing $32 million to save initiatives financed with short-term federal Covid-19 money, including teacher recruitment, tutoring restorative justice efforts and computer science programs.

Adams also committed $75 million for schools facing cuts due to low enrollment. This comes after the administration last year announced that schools that matriculate fewer students than anticipated would face mid-year cuts for the first time in three years. During the pandemic, the city used federal dollars to keep low-enrollment schools afloat.

The announcement marked the latest example of Adams backtracking on some of his budget cuts, which proved politically unpopular in polls and formed the basis of some of his opponents’ arguments against his 2025 reelection bid.

Brooklyn State Senator Zellnor Myrie and former Comptroller Scott Stringer, who are both exploring primary challenges to Adams, have been seizing on voter discontent with his fiscal plans.

“The current administration has the city headed in the wrong direction. Eric Adams has yet to find a department budget that he doesn’t want to cut. He has slashed budgets for schools, libraries, and our seniors,” Stringer wrote in an email to supporters last month.

Through his actions, Adams has tacitly acknowledged some of his fiscal measures were ill-advised — reversing cuts to cultural institutions as well as the NYPD and the Fire Department.

But on Tuesday the mayor said the majority of the money he was announcing had nothing to do with reversing cuts.

In fact, $170 million in reductions to the city’s popular preschool program — as well as the 2,000-plus families denied a seat for their 3-year-olds — remain a major sticking point in budget talks. Adams previously announced $514 million to save programs bankrolled by federal funding, including an expansion of 3K.

The mayor’s prior budget cut reversals also emboldened the City Council, which is tasked with voting on his $111.6 billion budget proposal by June 30. The lawmakers had argued his cuts were too steep given their rosier revenue projections. And earlier this year, the officials were vindicated.

In January, Adams revised revenue projections upward by roughly $3 billion, a dramatic turnaround from the previous doom-and-gloom predictions of his budget director, Jacques Jiha. The additional cash led Adams to reverse several unpopular cuts, a trend that continued in April, when municipal bean counters again increased their revenue projections.

On Tuesday, standing alongside council Speaker Adrienne Adams and finance Chair Justin Brannan, the mayor cited strong fiscal management and better-than-anticipated revenues.

It was a rare moment of kinship between the leaders, who are locked in a power struggle.

Adams insisted the “real legacy” will show that “two kids from Bayside High School”— which the pair attended at the same time — succeeded in navigating the city during times of difficulty.

“With a hard budget director in City Hall, a hard budget director in the City Council — both of them coming together and saying, how do we land the plane?” Adams said during the press conference at PS 184 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. “Today the co-pilots have landed the plane on some significant aspects of what we wanna do around children education. AA is no longer American Airlines, it’s Adams and Adams. The plane is landing on the runway.”