Three months after funds for after-school programs at nearly three-dozen schools—including I.S. 89 in Battery Park City—were dumped from the city’s budget, City Council members voted Tuesday night to restore the programs’ funding.

The Council voted 48-1 on a $63 billion budget for the coming fiscal year late Tuesday night. Contrary to announcements made by the Mayor’s office in March, the new budget will carry nearly $6 million for afternoon clubs and classes in 35 public schools in the city, including the $120,000 needed to I.S. 89’s slate of after-school programs.

“It’s an essential resource for parents and kids in Lower Manhattan, and will continue to be in the future,” Councilwoman Margaret Chin said in a statement on Tuesday. Chin, along with fellow Council members Lewis Fidler and Speaker Christine Quinn, had been leading the push for the funds’ restoration.

“This really shows that we can come together as a community and fight to preserve the programs that matter most,” Chin said.

Until city officials announced in March that the $5.95 million set aside for after-school programs was being slashed, those programs at I.S. 89 had been contracted to Downtown-based Manhattan Youth. Approximately 200 students were enrolled in the school’s afternoon organized sports, drama, science and arts clubs last semester.

Bob Townley, Manhattan Youth’s executive director, said he was relieved Tuesday afternoon when he got word that the funding would be restored in the city’s budget.

“We’re very happy that the City Council understood that this is an important thing in a lot of people’s lives,” Townley said.

In the absence of city money, Townley said he had promised parents that at least some of the offerings at I.S. 89 would continue, but that he and others involved with the program would have to find another source of funding—individual and corporate donors, most likely. And even if they were successful, Townley said, the range of programs available would probably have been limited at best.

“It was going to be a very hard thing to accomplish with so little time over the summer,” Townley said, “but we would have been able to do something.”

With the funding restored, Townley said his priorities will shift to installing similar programs at P.S. 276—set to open in Battery Park City this fall—and in the new P.S. 397 building on Spruce Street that will be ready in 2011.

He said he also needs to reconnect with his after-school staff from the I.S. 89 program.

“I went down to say good-bye to the staff here when we had our end of the year party, and I wasn’t sure how many of them were coming back,” Townley said. “Now I’ve got to find out how many of them went looking for other jobs.”