New Focus on Minding the Kids

After-school programs win support of foundations, but challenges remain

At P.S. 27, in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, 10-year-old Antasia Johnson has finished school for the day. But instead of venturing home, she and numerous classmates are getting ready for a visit to a center for mentally disabled adults. There, they will teach the adults how to make “pop-up” books — giving the youngsters a chance to learn more about arts and crafts, hone their reading skills, and appreciate the importance of community service.

Until not long ago, Antasia would not have had such an option. Instead, she and her friends would have walked in the waning afternoon light through this depressed neighborhood dominated by one of the city’s largest public-housing projects.

Opportunities to get in trouble were plentiful, since many youngsters returned to homes that would be empty for several hours until parents returned from work. Few parents in this neighborhood can afford to provide supervised after-school care for their youngsters, let alone enroll them in private educational-enrichment programs.

Now, however, with the help of the After-School Corporation, a non-profit organization established in 1998 by George Soros’s Open Society Institute, more than 100 programs serving 27,000 poor and middle-income youngsters like Antasia are being operated throughout New York City.

Mr. Soros, the financier, provided $125-million to allow the non-profit After-School Corporation to make grants to dozens of neighborhood charities that are working with school officials to create programs that bolster youngsters’ academic skills and give them opportunities to explore new interests. Unlike many after-school programs, those supported by the After-School Corporation charge no fee to participants.

The Open Society Institute’s commitment is but one example of grant makers’ burgeoning support of after-school and so-called extended-day programs to care for school-age children of parents with low or moderate incomes. The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, for example, last year pledged to spend $83-million to assist charities that work with after-school programs that are part of the federal government’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers program. And over the last several years, the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund has committed more than $96-million in grants to support programs designed to improve services to disadvantaged young people before and after school.

Charities and foundations have long supported after-school programs, but interest has intensified — and donations grown — in recent years for a variety of reasons. Many see after-school programs as a key ingredient in dealing with an array of social problems, from teen-age pregnancy to school shootings to low academic-achievement levels.

And, in fact, after-school programs provide much more than the recreation and athletic activities for which they are known. Many now provide daily homework help for kids, plus opportunities for them to explore career interests and to forge relationships with adult role models.

Indeed, Mr. Soros helped finance the After-School Corporation as a “strategic investment,” says Lucy Friedman, president of the charity. She says Mr. Soros figured that the after-school programs were key to his interests in improving education, strengthening families, and preventing drug abuse and crime.

He also felt strongly about giving the money to charities, rather than to schools, Ms. Friedman says. “He felt that if the money went to the school system it would be hard to keep track of,” she says.

Despite growing philanthropic support for after-school programs, demand for such services is growing faster than the supply. Some 17 million American kids have at least one parent who works, and 5 million to 7 million of them are home alone after school. Changes in federal and state welfare programs requiring adults on government assistance to find jobs have made after-school programs a necessity, experts say.

Among the many obstacles to providing such necessities:

* Financing. Charges to parents account for 83 per cent of the revenue to run after-school programs, according to Michelle Seligson, founder and former director of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time, which seeks to improve the quality and quantity of school-age care programs. Even though most of those fees are on a sliding scale to take into account a family’s income, many poor parents cannot afford to pay even a minimal amount.

After-school programs say they need to find alternative ways of attracting money if they are to provide services to the nation’s poorest youngsters. To encourage such programs to bolster their fund-raising skills, Mr. Soros offered the money for the After-School Corporation as a challenge grant: The charity has to raise $3 for every $1 it receives from Mr. Soros. So far it has raised a total of $10.5-million in support from foundations and corporations. This year alone, it has taken in $27.4-million in city and state government funds.

* Recruiting and keeping experienced staff members. Most positions at after-school programs are part-time and come with low pay and few benefits. As a result, many programs operated by non-profit organizations suffer from high turnover, low morale, and staff shortages.

* Attracting older kids. Often, the children who many say would most benefit from after-school programs — those ages 12 to 16 — are the most difficult to attract and keep involved.

For many non-profit organizations that serve young people, the call to action on the after-school front came after the Carnegie Corporation of New York issued a report called “A Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Nonschool Hours.”

Among other things, the 1992 report found that many after-school programs lacked coordination and were not challenging enough for kids. Many also failed to reach poor children and those most in need.

The report cited studies that have shown that kids are more likely to get into trouble with drugs, sex, and violence on weekdays between the hours of 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., when their parents are likely to be working.

Organizations that have long provided after-school services for youth, such as the YMCA of the USA and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, have been working hard to turn around the situation described in the Carnegie Corporation’s report.

“That report really helped to focus our strategic thinking and our strategic plan,” says Roxanne Spillett, president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Since 1993, the number of Boys & Girls Clubs across the country has grown from 1,400 to 2,300, including 350 in housing projects, 50 on American Indian reservations, and more than 350 in public schools.

Collaborating with schools and housing projects, which provide the space, has helped the organization grow quickly and efficiently, especially in places where no after-school programs were previously offered.

“We learned that you don’t have to have a new building to operate a club,” she says.

The organization is also implementing a new strategy, called Project Learn, that tries to make learning an integral part of all club activities so that kids have every opportunity to improve their academic skills — whether counting change at a club concession stand or taking phone messages. A $7.5-million grant from J. C. Penney — part of a $30-million commitment the company has made to after-school programs — will allow the organization to train staff members at all 2,300 Boys & Girls Clubs to make the best of such opportunities.

The YMCA, the nation’s largest provider of after-school activities, has also incorporated homework time, as well as tutoring, literacy, and mentor programs into its services, says Thom Campbell, assistant director for public policy.

One new program, City Agenda, is aimed at making sure kids can read at the appropriate level by the time they reach the third grade. Like other programs, the YMCA has tried to weave learning into fun activities that will keep kids coming back for more.

“Yes, you want kids to build their cognitive capacity, but that comes along with other things,” he says. “If a kid gets exercise in the afternoon, he’s probably going to do better in school the next day.”

Government is embracing after-school programs with as much zeal as private foundations and charities.

This year, the federal government has spent $200-million on its “21st Century Community Learning Centers” program, which awards grants to public schools that collaborate with local charities to provide after-school activities for children. The new budget passed by Congress last month provides $450-million for the 21st Century program.

However, many charities are frustrated by the financing structure of the program. While the schools that receive 21st Century grants are required to work with charities to create after-school programs, all of the government dollars go to schools and school districts, rather than to their non-profit partners.

The $83-million grant from Mott, which is earmarked for the charities participating in the 21st Century program, has helped to dispel some frustration. Meanwhile, a group of youth organizations, including the YMCA, the YWCA, and the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., is lobbying to change the way the program is financed.

Already, non-profit organizations have extracted a commitment from the Department of Education that it would ask Congress to set aside 10 per cent of the 21st Century funds for charities. Some groups are pushing to end the financing restriction altogether so charities can compete for all the money in the 21st Century program.

“We want to see the program opened up so that the best programs can get the funding,” Mr. Campbell says.

Most experts in after-school care believe that the federal government will need to provide even more financing if demand for after-school programs is to be met. But they are also searching for other sources of funds.

The DeWitt Wallace foundation has awarded a $900,000, three-year grant to the Finance Project, a Washington research organization to help after-school and extended-day programs that the foundation supports develop new sources of revenue, including local and state government funds and donations from corporations and community foundations.

“We’re helping them to frame some really important questions, such as what they’re doing to build public will to support funding,” says Sharon Deitch, senior program manager at the Finance Project, “and how they are integrating themselves into the community so that they can become more self-sustaining.”

The After-School Corporation is working toward the same end, Ms. Friedman says. “The goal is for these programs to continue after five years, whether the corporation is here or not.”

With better financing, experts say, after-school programs will also be better equipped to tackle staffing problems. People who run programs have a hard time attracting and keeping qualified staff members because the positions pay low wages and offer little in the way of career advancement.

Many programs rely on volunteers, such as parents, members of AmeriCorps or VISTA, or college students.

“College kids are good sources of bodies, but they’re rarely trained like they need to be,” says Mr. Campbell of the YMCA. “To be really effective, this sort of thing needs to be run by trained people, people who understand how to build all the different parts of a person.”

Some efforts are aimed at providing such training to those already employed in the field.

The DeWitt Wallace foundation is spending $55-million of the money it provided for after-school programs to help charity workers develop the the skills they need to provide educational enrichment and other services to youngsters.

Ms. Seligson, founder of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time, recently embarked on a new project, supported by four small foundations, to teach after-school staff members how to become better leaders and develop strong relationships with children.

Some programs have found their own solutions to staffing shortages. Citizen Schools, a charity in Boston that matches youngsters with volunteers and runs apprenticeships, shares part-time employees with local non-profit institutions, such as the Children’s Museum, and the New England Aquarium.

P.S. 27, in Brooklyn, meanwhile, has relied on paraprofessionals from a variety of fields, as well as teachers who lack a New York City teaching certificate.

“These people are so thrilled to have their own groups to work with that they bring an enormous amount of energy and creativity,” says Rob Abbot, who oversees the after-school program at P.S. 27.

After-school programs depend not only on strong financing and talented staff members, but on the kids who participate in them, and many programs have a tough time holding on to those most in need — adolescents who, adults believe, aren’t quite old enough to be left without supervision after school but who won’t hesitate to give up on a program the minute they stop having fun.

“If you are working with teen-agers, you know it is not business as usual,” says Ms. Spillett of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. “Kids will vote with their feet.”

The Boys & Girls Clubs has worked hard in recent years to improve the programs it offers teen-agers, she says, by asking them what they want and then trying to give it to them.

“They tell us they want a space of their own, and they want to be with people who understand them and who know how to work with them,” she says. Their other big interests, she says, are technology and career possibilities.

The organization is using a $15-million grant from the Taco Bell Foundation to open 100 centers for teen-agers across the country, some located in shopping malls, that allow young people to explore those interests. It is also using some of the Taco Bell funds to train staff members to better relate to teen-agers.

At Citizen Schools, in Boston, it is hands-on experience that keeps the 9- to 14-year-olds engaged, says Anuradha Desai, director of organizational development.

Through the program, young people work closely with volunteer professionals, such as architects, chefs, health-care workers, lawyers, and mechanics. Kids in the program have cooked gourmet meals and argued cases before a judge in a mock trial.

Citizen Schools, which operates in school buildings, was started in 1995, when Eric Schwartz, a graduate of Harvard University, taught a journalism class to public schoolchildren.

It has grown from serving 40 kids in its first year to 1,500 kids this year. During the school year it operates four days a week, but in the summer it runs all day, every day, and kids are served breakfast, lunch, and a snack.

Although annual tuition for the Citizen Schools runs about $200 per child on a sliding-scale fee, that fee accounts for just a small portion of the $1,600 per child it costs to run the program, Ms. Desai says. The balance of the money comes from foundation grants, corporate and individual donations, and government funds.

Beyond its success in attracting kids, Citizen Schools has also managed to recruit 1,200 volunteers who share their expertise with the kids.

Says Ms. Desai, “We are changing the way learning happens.”