YMCA expands reach for summer programs with funds from Ohio Department of Education

Jacob Moore's favorite parts of Y Camp at Marion City Schools' George Washington Elementary were the game room and the relationship he was building with his summer camp counselor, Ethan Castle.

“Last year I saw the same guy, but he growed a mustache,” said Moore, an incoming second grader at St. Mary School.

The feeling was mutual for Castle, who said his favorite part of the job was seeing the kids have fun.

“They always come in and they’re really excited and excited to see us, and it just puts a smile on my face,” he said.

Eighty elementary students like Moore who are enrolled in Marion City Schools and St. Mary participated in Y Camp programming through the Marion Family YMCA this summer. This provided a safe and fun place for students in morning summer school to go after school.

This was the second year of the summer afterschool program. The first year the Y received funds from the Marion Community Foundation to run the camp. This year the organization received the Summer Learning and Afterschool Opportunities Grant.

For 161 community partners like the Marion Family YMCA across the state, the Ohio Department of Education awarded $89 million in funds to expand out-of-school services addressing both academic needs and overall well-being for students most in need following the COVID-19 pandemic.

This funding made not only the Y Camp through Marion City School possible, but it also launched a summer educational program at Ridgedale and allowed for Pleasant students to be integrated into the Y's traditional summer camp.

Marion Family YMCA Executive Director Theresa Lubke said though it was a quick turnaround to launch this summer programming just a month after learning of receiving the grant funding, the fact the Y was already planning on running these programs with other funding took away a lot of the stress.

“The nice thing is that we’re able to use this state funding and the local funding can be used for something else,” she said.

Grant funding from the state also allowed the YMCA to purchase a social-emotional learning curriculum for its traditional camp, be able to hire more staff and pay staff higher wages.

She also said the grant funding has allowed the Y the flexibility to contract the summer programs with Marion City Schools and Ridgedale to provide them with the ability to run the programming on their own.

The camp director at Y Camp at George Washington, Trent Ramsey, is an eighth grade teacher at Grant Middle School.

He said he leading the program is rewarding because it gives the students something to look forward every day after going to summer school, and getting to watch relationships form between the students and their counselors, much like that of Moore and Castle, is meaningful to him.

“Watching these kids just in one month have inside jokes and memorable relationships and memories with their counselors is a pretty cool thing, and it’s something that a lot of these kids really value having,” Ramsey said.

At Ridgedale, Elementary Principal Jessica Parthemore leads the summer academic program contracted by the Y.

The district had already been in communication with the Y about offering in-person summer learning for students after seeing a need, but Parthemore said she was grateful the grant funding allowed for the summer program to come to the district in-house.

“This has been an amazing partnership. I’m so excited that we were able to get together this school year and develop the partnership. They’ve been so supportive and encouraging as we’ve gotten started. They’ve given us over at Ridgedale the opportunity to have some really great autonomy over our program,” she said.

For Parthemore and the six Ridgedale staff members helping run the program over the summer, a favorite part is seeing the kids’ confidence grow.

“Part of that is through that social-emotional learning that they’re doing, learning how to persevere and persist in hard things, which we’ve all learned in the past several years is something that we all need to work on,” Parthemore said.

The help the Y is giving the community through the grant funding doesn't stop in the summer.

Going into the fall, the Y is planning on launching brand new before-and-after school programming.

What Lubke said she is most excited for is the opportunity for the Y to start an all-day childcare center for preschoolers at one of the Marion City Schools buildings through the grant funding, providing childcare before and after preschool which runs from 12:45 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

“Now a working parent can bring their child just to one building, and they’ll get childcare and that public preschool all in one day at one location,” Lubke said.

“We’re just really excited that Ohio Department of Education saw the same need and believed us when we said there was a real need for that,” she later said.

Story by: Sophia Veneziano (740) 564 - 5243 | sveneziano@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Marion Star: YMCA expands its reach for summer programs with funds from ODE