{"id":295991,"date":"2026-07-14T22:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T22:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/295991\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T22:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T22:07:08","slug":"news-12-bronx-nyc-invests-15m-to-expand-free-swim-lessons-to-thousands-of-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/295991\/","title":{"rendered":"News 12 | Bronx | Nyc Invests 15m To Expand Free Swim Lessons To Thousands Of Students"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Thousands of New York City students will soon have the chance to learn a life-saving skill for free.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">City Council Speaker Julie Menin joined other council members and nonprofit leaders Tuesday at Lehman College&#8217;s Apex Center Pool in the Bronx to announce a $1.5 million investment in the Wave Makers Initiative.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">The funding, secured in the city&#8217;s Fiscal Year 2027 budget, will provide nearly 60,000 free swim lessons for an additional 3,000 public school second graders across all five boroughs.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">The Wave Makers program launched in 2024 and has already helped 6,000 second graders learn how to swim through partnerships with schools, nonprofits and public pools.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">City leaders say the expansion comes as drowning continues to be a leading cause of accidental death among children. According to the program, about one in four young people in New York City do not know how to swim.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Parents say the free lessons also remove a financial barrier.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve been looking for swimming lessons, and they&#8217;re very expensive,&#8221; said parent Deshawn Dalmida. &#8220;I also almost drowned when I was nine, so I really wanted her to learn how to swim and my son as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Organizers say they hope to eventually make swim lessons available to every second grader in New York City&#8217;s public schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of New York City students will soon have the chance to learn a life-saving skill for free.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-295991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}