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Battery Park City Students Rally Against After-School Program Cuts at City Hall

By Julie Shapiro | May 28, 2010 11:19am | Updated on May 28, 2010 11:20am

By Julie Shapiro

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

LOWER MANHATTAN — Wearing theater costumes and sports uniforms, about 100 students from I.S. 289 marched through TriBeCa to City Hall Thursday afternoon demanding their after-school program back. 

“Save our program, save our future,” they chanted. “No justice, no future.”

To save money, the city slashed the $120,000 grant that funds the popular program at I.S. 289, a middle school in Battery Park City. Thirty-two other middle schools around the city also lost their after-school funding.

“It’s important because kids will be out on the street, not doing positive things,” said Stacia Quinones, an I.S. 289 seventh grader from Midtown.

I.S. 289’s free five-day-a-week after-school program, run by Manhattan Youth, includes all of the school’s sports teams, its theater program and a myriad of other clubs and classes.

The city Department of Youth and Community Development targeted programs based on the wealth of the school’s zip code.

At Thursday’s rally in City Hall Park, I.S. 289 students joined with hundreds of others from around the city to advocate for their programs to continue.

The I.S. 289 students stood out in the crowd with neon signs and colorful costumes for their spring play, “The Madwoman of Tribeca.”

An adaptation of Jean Giraudoux’s “The Madwoman of Chaillot,” the play tells of the discovery of the world’s last oil reserves beneath the Gee Whiz Diner on Greenwich Street, and the valiant efforts of the eponymous madwoman to save her neighborhood.

The students will perform “The Madwoman of Tribeca” Fri., June 11 at 7 p.m. and Sat, June 12 at 3 p.m. at I.S. 289, 201 Warren St.