(Bloomberg) -- Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy is leading a $50 million effort to help city charter schools expand summer programs to combat what he called the “devastating effects” of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The program, called Summer Boost, will reach 25,000 K-8 students in the city’s charter schools, Bloomberg said Monday at a City Hall briefing with Mayor Eric Adams. The program is aimed at narrowing the learning gap caused by remote classes and other disruptions over the past two years. Without urgent help, Bloomberg and Adams said, students will continue to suffer. 

“The long-term Covid of education -- our children are behind in reading and math and this is going to have a longstanding impact,” Adams said.  “If we don’t get on top of this and focus on this, it’s going to have an impact on our children globally.”

Bloomberg Philanthropies will contribute about two-thirds of the funding, with the rest coming from investors Ken Griffin, Stanley Druckenmiller, the Carson Family Charitable Trust, Robin Hood Foundation, Gray Foundation and Walentas Foundation.

The former mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

“Students across the United States have fallen behind, sometimes as much as a whole year,” Bloomberg said. “Without urgent help, many of them will fall even further behind, which could have devastating effects on their chances for graduating high school and going to college or beginning a career.”

Charters are publicly funded and privately run schools that educate about 139,000 students in New York City, or roughly 13% of students in the largest district in the country. Their enrollment has grown steadily in the city even as district-run public schools have seen hoards of students leaving the system.

Charter schools are often supported financially by Wall Street backers. Success Academy, one of the largest charter school operators in New York, was founded in 2006 by hedge fund managers Joel Greenblatt and John Petry. 

Some critics have voiced frustration with the charter school system for pulling funding away from traditional schools, and for reduced transparency compared with traditional district-run schools. Proponents say charters are able to deliver comparable or improved academic results at a lower cost to districts, and that choice offers benefits to families looking for alternatives to their local school.

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