Advocates: Proposed US budget threatens student programs
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - Tionna Howard said she wouldn't be where she is today without the after-school program at Fairview Elementary School.
When she was a student, Howard struggled to keep up with her peers in class, particularly in science and social studies. But at Fairview's after-school program, she could get one-on-one tutoring with a community volunteer, usually a student from Indiana University. She started developing relationships with the staff of the Banneker Community Center, who run the after-school program at Fairview.
Without that mentoring and just having somewhere to go after school, she said, she would have gotten into "all kinds of trouble."
"When I was here, I got that help I couldn't get in class," Howard said. "It made a big difference."
Howard, who is studying to get her GED, now spends every afternoon volunteering at Fairview's after-school program, giving the same help she was given to the 55 children enrolled. Three of those children are her younger brothers.
But the program might become less accessible to children such as Howard's brothers and the other students at Fairview who come from low-income families.
Every one of the 55 after-school participants at Fairview receives a scholarship that makes it possible for them to attend, said Terrance Thomas, Banneker's programming specialist and the coordinator for the after-school program. The scholarships come from a federal grant called the 21st Century Community Learning Center Program - a program that President Donald Trump's recently released federal budget proposal would completely eliminate.
The 21st Century Community Learning Center program funnels about $1.2 billion to before-school, after-school and summer programs to school districts throughout the country - particularly to districts with Title I schools, which have high concentrations of low-income students. Eliminating the program is part of about $9.2 billion in cuts proposed for the U.S. Department of Education in Trump's budget blueprint.
While the budget is not set in stone, those who benefit from the learning center grants worry that Congress will pass the cuts as presented.
In the Monroe County Community School Corp., grant funding supports after-school programs at six Title I elementary schools: Fairview, Arlington Heights, Highland Park, Grandview, Summit and Templeton. Laura Threlkeld, program director of MCCSC's School Age Care department, said the learning center grant primarily provides scholarships for students from low-income families, giving them access to quality after-school care for free.
The grant enables similar scholarships for MCCSC's EdVenture Camps. Last summer, 82 percent of families enrolled in the EdVenture Camps received some kind of scholarship assistance.
The funding for those programs is part of a four-year grant cycle, awarded in 2014. The upcoming 2017-18 school year would be the last year for the current grant. As of December, MCCSC was approved to receive another four-year grant to supplement after-school programming at Clear Creek Elementary, with $75,000 projected for the first year.
But if the federal budget is passed as presented, Threlkeld doesn't know if there will be any funding available to finish the current grant cycle or begin the one for which they've already been approved.
"Like many others in the state, I have already been asking if those contracts will be moving forward, or if they will be placed on hold, or aborted all together," Threlkeld wrote in an email Tuesday. "As of this moment, I have not received an answer."
The Boys and Girls Club of Ellettsville, in partnership with the Richland-Bean Blossom Community School Corp., also received approval for a four-year grant and was set to receive $262,000 for the 2017-18 school year. The club currently has a partnership, also funded by a previous 21st Century Community Learning Center grant, with the local YMCA to provide free after-school programming for K-5 students. That grant, issued in 2013, is also reaching the end of its four-year cycle.
The club's partnership with the school district will begin in earnest when the club relocates to Edgewood High School in the fall. The new grant was earmarked to strengthen the club's after-school programming, to double the number of children served and to supplement the school district's fledgling science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM) program with educational activities in those fields.
If the grant were to be eliminated, those programs would all still continue, but officials said they would be considerably hampered in their efforts to reach children - particularly low-income families, the people most benefited by the grant.
"We will only see students fall further behind as we remove the support of quality after-school programming," Rod Hite, assistant superintendent at R-BB, wrote in an email Monday. "I anticipate this will lead to a greater gap in achievement within our state testing among at-risk students."
In MCCSC, the district's after-school programs also would still exist, "but significant changes will need to be made in order to maintain program quality," Threlkeld said. "It will also mean that families who depend on scholarship assistance to participate in the program could find that they would have programming fees."
For schools such as Fairview, where every one of its 55 after-school students receives scholarship assistance, it could mean that many will have to drop the program due to cost. Thomas said without the grant funding, he wouldn't be able to provide the same level of academic enrichment and one-on-one attention for free.
There is a safety component to it as well, he said: Many of the families the programs serve work irregular hours and cannot afford baby sitters or other out-of-school care. When the students are at Fairview from 3:45 to 6 p.m. every day, parents can know their kids are safe instead of being home alone, and can know they are spending that time getting extra academic help, mentoring and cultural enrichment activities through MCCSC's many community partners.
"This is not a baby-sitting service," Thomas said. "I'm here to keep our kids safe and prepare them for middle school, high school, college and beyond."
Debra Zipes, president of the Indiana Afterschool Network, an advocacy group for after-school programs, said her organization is working with the national Afterschool Alliance and programs in other states to lobby for the grant's continued support. She said those who felt strongly about the issue should contact their local legislators to urge them to protect the learning center grant.
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Source: The (Bloomington) Herald-Times, http://bit.ly/2nahI3w
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Information from: The Herald Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com