Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel on Thursday was given a tour of an After School Matters event by its creator, First Lady Maggie Daley.
"This is just a glimpse of what we do, and I loved the opportunity to be able to show him, here at Foreman High School, which is one of our good high schools here in Chicago that does good work," said Daley.
She has expressed hope in continuing the program after her husband retires from politics next month.
"I have a hope to do it for a while, and so, you know, new leadership will obviously come at some point," she said. "I think we'll still be very busy and very engaged, and we're not going to disappear."
Emanuel said there's value in the After School Matters program and said it was a model for the rest of the country.
"We have 20,000 kids involved in After School Matters, all because of the leadership of one person and I can’t you enough, Maggie, on behalf of all our kids," said Emanuel.
"What you come away with is a sense from these kids of their leadership that they're learning; not just the particular program, whether it was a sports one or an athletic one or an artistic one, or, in the case of science, an academic one, they are all showing a junior-level and senior-level -- an incredible sense of leadership and self-initiative," he added.
