Never forget — including the New Yorkers too young to have any memory of that day.
The New York City Council is putting $1 million behind a new scholarship fund aimed at teaching the city’s youngest students about the devastation and legacy of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, The Post has learned.
The significant education funding will support the 9/11 Memorial & Museum as it broadens its programming, with a special focus on children and teenagers who were not yet born when the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil changed the country forever.
“It’s about teaching the next generation,” City Council Speaker Julie Menin told The Post. “In the days and weeks after 9/11, the city was really unified.
“You felt that unity, and there were so many heroic acts from first responders and from everyday New Yorkers, and it’s really a focus of trying to remind young people what the events of 9/11 meant, what the terrorists tried to take away from our city and our country,” she added.
“It’s an educational initiative to ensure that this next generation is fully aware of what transpired on 9/11, and all of the different acts of heroism, the loved ones that were lost, and the rebuilding efforts as well.”
Menin is set to formally unveil the major investment Thursday during a wreath-laying ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial, one week before the 25th anniversary of the tragic day.
The funding was included in the city’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget and is expected to sharply expand the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s educational reach as new generations of students grow increasingly removed from the attacks and their aftermath.
Nearly one-third of Americans alive today were born after Sept.11, 2001, and millions more were too young at the time to remember the day firsthand, according to the museum.
A whopping 75% of the money is dedicated to funding free field trips to the museum for the city’s 20,000 public school eighth graders.
Each audio-guided field trip can cost upward of $23 per student — a cost that is priceless when it comes to hearing the victims’ final calls to loved ones, seeing the charred remains of FDNY rescue engines and feeling the thousands of names etched into the reflecting pools.
The tragedy — and the incredible unity and rebuild in the following years — is integral to the fabric of New York culture, even for those who weren’t there to witness it, the speaker emphasized.
“We want to make sure that more young New Yorkers have the opportunity to come to the memorial, to experience the Memorial & Museum firsthand, to hear the stories of family members, of first responders, and to understand why Sept.11th is very important to always remember and to never forget,” Menin said.
Roughly $250,000 of the funding will go directly toward the museum’s virtual educational programming to reach students well beyond the five boroughs, including virtual field trips for students not able to be there physically and for providing educational materials for teachers looking to reflect on the tragedy within their classrooms.
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum, for years, has run a series of workshops, conferences and trainings for teachers of grades 3 through 12, and will launch this year a live program on the 25th anniversary.
The Anniversary Digital Learning Experience (DLE) is a free 35-minute on-demand film featuring first-person accounts from the attacks and their aftermath, plus a live chat with museum staff throughout the day.
“It’s important for the students to realize what the terrorists were trying to take away from us. They were trying to take away our way of life,” Menin said. “They were trying to destroy our freedom. And we were able to fight back and rebuild. And that’s really what the 9/11 Memorial honors.”
