Press Releases

NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Adams and New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) Commissioner Sue Donoghue today outlined details on the administration’s $5.5 million expansion of its highly-successful free swimming classes to more students in underserved areas, delivering a safer and more affordable city and one that is a better place to raise a family. First announced in Mayor Adams’ 2025 State of the City address, NYC Parks will expand free swim programs to reach another 4,800 second graders — bringing the total students served through the program to nearly 18,000. The initiative will target underserved communities and save working-class families $1.3 million in swimming lessons with this expansion alone. These free lessons will take place at New York City Public Schools pools and select third party indoor pools.

“To make New York City the best place to raise a family, we must continue to invest in the services that families need and deserve, and that includes swim safety,” said Mayor Adams. “Expanding free swimming classes will enrich our young people’s lives and keep them safe, allowing families to confidently take advantage of our world-class beaches and pools. Under this $5.5 million expansion, we will now reach a total of nearly 18,000 students with this program, serving more kids and families in underserved communities, and saving families over $1.3 million on swim lessons. This investment, once again, builds on our work to create a safer, more affordable city for working-class people as we continue to make New York City the best place to raise a family.”

“As New York City summers get hotter, New Yorkers of all ages increasingly rely on our 14 miles of beaches and dozens of public pools to cool off,” said Deputy Mayor for Operations Jeffrey Roth. “While we invest in the hardware, spending over $1 billion to retrofit and build new city pools, all that infrastructure only goes so far without the safety skills to go along with it. We’re starting kids early, in second grade, providing free swim safety classes so kids build skills that will follow them for the rest of their lives.”

NYC Parks’ free swimming classes taught more than 13,000 young people how to swim in Fiscal Year 2024, saving families hundreds of dollars each on swimming classes every year and laying the foundation for a lifetime of water safety for their children. As part of this program, NYC Parks will host three sessions — in winter, spring, and fall — of free swim safety classes each school year. Each session will serve six classes, with approximately 20 students per class, or 120 per session, totaling about 360 to 370 students throughout the school year. This targeted effort ensures that more second graders, particularly in underserved communities, gain life-saving water-safety skills while benefiting from Mayor Adams’ broader efforts to make New York City safer and more affordable for working-class families.

In addition to today’s announcement, more than 6,800 people were served last year as part of the city’s “Learn to Swim” program at indoor pools, and more than 6,600 people took part in “Swim for Life” program, a vital initiative aimed at preventing childhood drownings by building partnerships between public agencies and private organizations. About 20,000 people take part in swim programming — including senior splash and swim team programs and swimming lessons for children — throughout the year with NYC Parks. Finally, more than 60 percent of NYC Parks’ pools are less than one-quarter of a mile from a New York City Housing Authority campus and in communities with high Heat Vulnerability Index scores, making free swim lessons crucial to the safety of New York City youth.

To learn more about water safety programs, New Yorkers can visit NYC Parks’ website.

The expansion of free swimming classes is the latest in the Adams administration’s commitment to ensuring more New York City families have access to safe and affordable swimming programming. The administration has brought seven pools back online over the last three years including Evander Campus, Dewitt Clinton, two pools at Truman Campus, M045 River East Elementary, New Utrecht High School, and Beach Channel Campus. In June 2024, Mayor Adams announced a $1 billion investment to public pools in all five boroughs, including two new pools in Brooklyn and Queens — the first public city pools to be added since 2008.

Beyond today’s major investment in the city’s pools, the Adams administration has also taken strong steps to combat a nationwide lifeguard shortage to ensure that as many of New York City’s pools and beaches can be open for safe swimming as possible this summer. In May 2024, an arbitration panel issued an award in the city's ongoing negotiations with the bargaining unit representing city lifeguards that will functionally pave the way for the city to be able to hire more lifeguards, allow more swimming capacity at beaches and pools over the coming summers, and improve operations of the city lifeguard program. Among other things, the award will allow the city to modify the qualifications for lifeguards assigned to shallow water pools and modernize the vision requirements to be more in line with state regulations and industry standards. This action builds on the city's agreement with District Council 37 last year to permanently improve the pay of city lifeguards to $22 an hour as of last summer, along with a $1,000 per year bonus for returning lifeguards.