Council Order Says City Ended SuccessLink Without Public Notice; Replacement Corps Has 400 Jobs

Boston has discontinued SuccessLink, its long-running school-year jobs program for teenagers, and replaced it with a smaller city-run program without a traditional announcement or public comment process, according to a hearing order filed with the Boston City Council for its Wednesday meeting.

The order, filed Oct. 16 by Councilor Henry Santana, asks the council to hold a hearing on the status of SuccessLink and its replacement, the Boston City Youth Corps, and on ways to support and find additional funding for the nonprofit groups that had employed SuccessLink participants. It appears on the council's Oct. 21 agenda.

According to the order, "recent communication from the Administration stated that the SuccessLink Program has been discontinued and replaced by the Boston City Youth Corps — also known as the Red Shirts program." The order says some nonprofit organizations that had been SuccessLink employer partners "were neither informed of the changes being made to the program nor given the opportunity to be awarded a spot in the new Boston City Youth Corps pilot program until numerous other partners had been selected."

Those organizations relied on the money they received through SuccessLink each year and were not given adequate notice of its replacement, "leaving many in a dangerous fiscal situation," the order states. It also says students who had been building relationships with SuccessLink employers "will now no longer have the opportunity to continue doing so."

SuccessLink connected more than 1,700 students with school-year jobs in 2025-26, fully subsidized by the city, according to the order. The program placed teenagers in afterschool jobs with employers across the city.

The change follows a budget decision made in the spring. In April, Mayor Michelle Wu proposed cutting $5.5 million from school-year youth jobs in her fiscal 2027 budget, The Argo, the student newspaper at Boston Latin School, reported, a move expected to eliminate about 1,800 positions. The Boston Globe reported in May that City Hall was moving to cut the program. The council approved a fiscal 2027 operating budget that "contained a large cut to the afterschool portion of the SuccessLink Youth Employment Program," Santana's order says.

On June 1, Wu announced a plan to redesign school-year jobs through a public-private coalition with a goal of 2,000 part-time positions for students ages 14 to 18, according to The Argo.

The city detailed the new structure on Sept. 15. In an announcement with Boston Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper, the mayor's office said school-year jobs would be funded and managed through three streams. Through the publicly funded Boston City Youth Corps, students would have access to 400 jobs across city agencies and programs, including the Boston Housing Authority, Boston Centers for Youth and Families and the Boston Public Library. Philanthropic contributions would allow partner organizations to host 340 paid youth jobs, and corporate, nonprofit and institutional partners committed to directly hire 663 young people, the city said. The city also said it was launching a stipend-based career readiness model for 200 Boston Public Schools students and immigrant youth.

Those figures total roughly 1,600 positions. The city said in September that it had reached 80% of its goal and was on pace to connect 2,000 young people with school-year jobs by January 2027. A founding coalition that includes the Boys and Girls Club of Boston, the YMCA of Greater Boston, Artists for Humanity, the Boston Private Industry Council, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Foundation and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston committed an initial 475 jobs, according to the announcement.

Santana's order focuses on the publicly funded piece. It says only 400 positions will be available through the Boston City Youth Corps, which it calls "far below the stated goal of 2,000 school-year jobs, and even farther below the demonstrated need." The order says the Youth Corps "should be available to as many young people as possible," with the aim that every Boston resident ages 14 to 18 who wants an afterschool job can have one.

The Youth Corps revives the city's historic Red Shirts program. Councilor Gigi Coletta Zapata said in the city's September announcement that she had introduced the budget amendment that made the investment possible, "reimagining the historic Red Shirts as the Boston City Youth Corps." In the same announcement, Santana said the work "isn't done" and that he would keep pushing to expand youth jobs in fiscal 2028.

According to the program's application site, the Boston City Youth Corps is a pilot for the 2026-27 school year. Applicants must be full-time Boston residents ages 14 to 18 who are legally authorized to work in the United States. Applications opened Sept. 28 and close Dec. 11, and employment runs from Nov. 2 through March 19, 2027. The site notes that applying does not guarantee a job.

Santana's order cites research, including work by Northeastern University economist Alicia Modestino, finding that the city's youth jobs programs are associated with reductions in violent and property crime and improved high school graduation rates.

The order does not name the nonprofit employers it says were left out of the new program. The council's Wednesday meeting begins at noon in the Christopher A. Iannella Chamber at City Hall, according to the agenda.