District updates ‘big picture’ for future of expanding after-school programs
Elementary school students in the Sioux Falls School District will see a new model for after-school programming starting in fall 2023 that brings community nonprofits into the school setting.
The district reported during Monday night’s school board meeting that all elementary schools will soon move to a “community learning center model” that will run off of the framework set by Kids Inc., the district’s long-running after-school program, and will collaborate with local nonprofits to run the programs.
Monday night's report is an update on the "big picture" for after-school programs that the district last shared in August.
This model will rely on existing facilities — schools — and partnerships with nonprofits that already provide after school programming and care — such as the Boys & Girls Clubs, Volunteers of America, YMCA and EmBe, for example — to provide direct care and enhanced programming under a unified framework.
This type of after-school setting has been piloted at Garfield, Hawthorne, Jane Addams and Terry Redlin Elementary Schools this school year with the help of Volunteers of America.
If one were to visit Terry Redlin after school, for example, they would see six or seven staff leading approximately 100 students, Rebecca Wimmer, coordinator of community partnerships and after-school programs for the district, explained to the school board Monday night.
“When you walk in there, you will have no idea which staff belong to a nonprofit, or which staff belong to the school district,” Wimmer said. “You’ll have no idea which children … have their parents paying for the program. You have no idea which children are behind in their academics, which children have behaviors. All you see is kids engaged in after-school programming that are getting the same opportunities as every other child should get.”
By August 2023, all 21 elementary schools in the district will transition to this new model of afterschool programming, Wimmer said.
The need for afterschool programs
Kids Inc., a fee-based after-school and summer enrichment program, has run for about 15 years in the district and serves 1,500 students after school and 450 students each summer. But there’s a waitlist, a need for more staff, and families are citing cost and transportation as barriers to access.
Right now, 500 students are on a waitlist to enter Kids Inc. There continues to be staffing challenges, Wimmer explained. She told the Argus Leader more than 30 staff would need to be hired in order to have enough staff to cover the amount of children on the waitlist.
Last school year, about 47% of district students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, but only 12% of these qualifying students were enrolled in Kids Inc. programs. Tuition discounts were available, but the discounted rate still proved unattainable for many families, the district reports.
A Sioux Falls Thrive and Augustana Research Institute study from 2018 estimated 4,800 elementary-aged students in the district spend time unsupervised after school and in the summer, and more than 1,400 of those children spend more than 15 hours each week unsupervised.
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School board member Nan Baker praised the proposal during Monday night’s meeting and thanked the community for its focus on what the Gen X generation called “latchkey kids,” or children who returned home to an empty house after school instead of going to an after-school program.
“It’s probably taken us 40 years to really be honest on the impacts of being home alone,” Baker said. “Not home alone in the sense of the Christmas movie we pull out this time of year, but the real impact of home alone, and what that means for children who truly have, of no fault of their own, nor their parents, no other option.”
“You really hit it out of the ballpark in terms of what you’re going to offer after school,” Baker added.
New format will better meet the needs, interests of students
The goal of the new after-school model is to make after-school programming more accessible to a greater number of students and families in the district. Wimmer told the Argus Leader that the elementary school after-school program will still be called Kids Inc. this fall but that there could be the opportunity to change the name or rebrand down the road.
Instead of different community-based or nonprofit-based after-school programs using vans and buses to pick students up from their schools and take them off-site to a program in the community, Wimmer is proposing each school have its own nonprofit partner that provides afterschool services on-site each day.
This will save community nonprofits money instead of spending it on transportation to and from the schools, Wimmer explained, and save money on operating costs as nonprofits spend millions to own, rent or operate their own buildings. This will allow nonprofits to redirect funds to support other community needs.
Each school will function independently with its chosen after-school provider, but all after-school programs in the district will be overseen by an advisory board with its own set of standards for how each school’s after-school program operates. A third-party evaluator will also review the programs each year, Wimmer said.
Other nonprofits may come into schools on a less frequent basis to provide enrichment activities for students, such as cultural programming from the Multicultural Center, mentoring from Lutheran Social Services, programs with the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts or Washington Pavilion, for example, Wimmer said.
“I could probably name 50+ providers that have said, ‘We want to come in and we want to meet the needs of your kids,’” Wimmer told the Argus Leader.
New programming will include mentoring, tutoring, homework help, science and technology programs, art, music, sports and community service.
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Middle and high school programs will be interest-based, and also offer tutoring, Wimmer said. At the high school level, there will also be opportunities for postsecondary readiness, like helping students prepare for college or workforce development.
Before COVID-19, Wimmer said schools experimented with culinary, bowling, chess and board game clubs in the middle schools, and the “response was huge,” with waitlists to get into the culinary program, for example. Now, schools are working on setting those back up.
At the middle school level, Wimmer said the district is “contemplating” adding onto buildings and putting extra space in the school to serve as dedicated after-school sites. All middle schools have an after-school program now, but they’re severely underutilized due to space issues, Wimmer said.
“There’s not (enough) space for students to really have a space to hang out, play basketball. Our gyms are full of athletic groups and things like that,” she said. “What we have to offer isn’t space that is attractive to kids. We don’t have the activities there that really would excite kids.”
George McGovern Middle School will be the first school to see facility expansion, according to Wimmer’s report. Fundraising is underway to add a dedicated facility space to the school to serve students after school and in the summer. Expansion at the school may be complete by 2024-2025 and could serve more than 300 students each day, according to Wimmer’s report.
Affordability, access will change with new model
Current Kids Inc. fees are set at $50 a week during the school year, $140 a week during the summer and an additional $31 per day charge for care on days when school isn’t in session.
Those in the free and reduced-price lunch program were offered a discount in the past on their after-school and summer tuition, but Wimmer said even the reduced tuition was unaffordable for many families, especially for those with multiple children, as tuition was set on a per-child cost.
The district’s new tuition system will be on a sliding scale that weighs household income and what is considered affordable for household size, Wimmer explained, noting scholarships will be available. Families with multiple children will only pay a flat family rate. Grants and donations from businesses and individuals will help offset some families’ costs of attendance, too.
The district received a $252,000 grant from the United Way for after-school scholarships for families, and a $1.5 million 21st Century Community Learning Center grant to be spent over five years. The two grants will help as many as 200 students attend after school and summer programs at no cost.
Significant funds have also been pledged from business and individual donations to help initiate the programming, Wimmer said, especially in the middle and high school level programs, which do not charge participation fees.
There are no costs directly to the district, according to Wimmer’s board report Monday night.
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Whether it’s money or transportation, many kids in the past haven’t had the opportunity to participate in programs after school, board vice president Carly Reiter said, but that will change with this new format.
“It’s an amazing opportunity for our community,” Reiter said. “How can we come together and work (to) take care of these same kids and say, ‘Let’s all do it together.’”
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Sioux Falls School District's Kids Inc. program will change in 2023
