NYC school playgrounds would stay open longer under bill expected to pass City Council

New York City kids could soon have more space to play outdoors.

The City Council is set to approve a bill later this month aimed at keeping public school playgrounds open outside of school hours — part of a broader push by lawmakers to expand access to parks and recreational areas.

The bill, sponsored by Councilmember Gale Brewer of Manhattan, would require the city’s education and parks departments to identify at least 15 school playgrounds a year that could be unlocked late in the afternoon and on weekends. The reports would have to include information on how much operating the playgrounds beyond the school day would cost and any potential logistical challenges.

The measure specifies the playgrounds would have to remain open after school on weekdays when school is in session, and from 8 a.m. to dusk on weekends and weekdays when school is not in session. Playgrounds in “environmental justice areas” that have been disproportionately affected by pollution would be prioritized for expanded hours. The legislation has 25 cosponsors and will need only one more vote to pass.

Brewer previously said she had been working on this kind of legislation for decades. Her office commissioned a digital map showing schoolyards that could be opened after school, and a report by the city's Independent Budget Office found it would cost millions of dollars annually in staff overtime to extend schoolyard hours.

"We need to get people off the street,” Brewer said. “We need people to be exercising and we need people to do it conveniently. It is so frustrating for me to walk by and see this locked half-a-block-big space with nobody in it all summer.”

During a Council hearing on the bill in April, parks officials said they were “broadly supportive” of expanding public access to schoolyards but opposed the legislation because they said it was up to education officials to decide whether to keep school sites open.

“Those spaces remain under the care and management of NYC Schools,” Deputy Parks Commissioner Margaret Nelson testified.

A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said the mayor earlier this year announced plans to unlock an additional 11 schoolyards as public playgrounds outside of school hours as part of a city initiative.

“We continue to work with the City Council on creative solutions to ensure New York City is the best place to raise a family,” the spokesperson, Zachary Nosanchuk, said in a statement Thursday.

Another Brewer bill set for a vote Wednesday would require the parks department to install at least 50 outdoor drinking fountains at parks in the next decade.

The proposal has 19 cosponsors, and at the April hearing parks officials said that while they appreciated the intent of the legislation, it appeared redundant with a similar bill also making its way through the Council. Nelson said her agency maintains more than 3,400 outdoor drinking fountains at city parks and playgrounds, “making us far and away the largest provider of clean drinking water for New Yorkers.”

The Council was slated to meet at 1 p.m. Wednesday and vote on other bills meant to address opioid overdoses in jails and expand city reporting on public bathroom access, among others.

This story has been updated to reflect that the vote on the playgrounds bill has been pushed until later in June.