After-school programs in demand
Anna Brown had made several phone calls in search of an after-school program for her three children but was shocked to learn how expensive each was. If there was a program she might be able to afford, a lack of transportation was another deal breaker.
“I could probably afford (to pay for) one of my kids,” said Brown, a single mother living in northwest Oklahoma City, “and that was going to be very hard. But I have three kids.”
Then one day her children — Thailand, Arryanna and Kellen — came home talking about an after-school program called Kids Club that was based at an area church. Brown was surprised to hear there was no charge and free transportation to her apartment complex was offered.
“It was a blessing,” Brown said.
Brown’s three children are picked up and taken to the Kids Club program, which is based inside the Cole Community Center connected to Oklahoma City First Church of the Nazarene.
About 30 children attend the program, but many more are on a waiting list, which is an example of the demand there is for after-school care.
More than 230,000 children in Oklahoma would participate in an after-school program if one were available, according to the Afterschool Alliance and its America After 3 p.m. report released last year.
Most of the children who are unable to access an after-school program live in low-income communities, and some believe the growing demand is linked to the state’s growing rate of children living in poverty.
The majority of Oklahoma schoolchildren — 61 percent — are eligible for free or reduced price lunch due to their low-income status, which is the fourth-highest rate in the nation, according
to the Southern Education Foundation.
The late afternoon is a time when many children get out of school but are left on their own until a working parent comes home, especially in neighborhoods with high rates of single-parent homes. After-school programs are often the only source of extra study help, dinner or even shelter in high-poverty communities.
There are different types of after-school programs, ranging from those held at school, those put on by large nonprofits like the YMCA and Boys and Girls Club, or even at a local church.
Twenty percent of Oklahoma children are left unsupervised from 3 to 6 p.m., and the rate is even higher in rural communities, according to a report from the Oklahoma Partnership for Expanded Learning.
The organization behind the report advocates for expanding after-school programs as a way to increase child safety, reduce crime and improve academic achievement.
The organization also highlights the disparity in access between high- and low-income families.
“Where, on average, middle-income families spend roughly $7,000 per child on enrichment opportunities, lowerincome families spend about $1,000 a year,” said Megan Stanek, network director for the OPEL.
The academic achievement gap between students of high- and lowincome households is well documented, but after-school programs can help address the disparity, Stanek said.
“What high-quality out-of-school (programs) provide is another landscape for the children to learn in a nontraditional setting,” Stanek said. “What the research has shown is that those high-quality programs have ... closed the gap, especially with math scores.”
In a 2013 research paper by Deborah Lowe Vandell, a founding dean of the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, it was reported there exists a large gap in fifth-grade math scores between high- and low-income students who did not participate in an afterschool program. However, when participation was high, low-income students nearly matched the performance of highincome students.
The Kids Club program in northwest Oklahoma City not only provides time for students to do homework, but volunteers often provide support service to families and are student mentors.
“They knew that parents were either working after school, so there was no place for the kids to go, or parents wouldn’t get jobs because there was no safe place for their kids to go,” said Kaylee Vaughn, a program director at Kids Club, talking about the church’s motivation for launching an afterschool program.
Eleven percent of Oklahoma children participate in an afterschool program, which is nearly double the rate from 2004, according to the Afterschool Alliance.
Stanek said her organization is trying to help prospective after-school programs access information about resources, such as federal funding or available space.
“One of the things we are trying to do is create a kind of tool kit to help programs get started,” Stanek said.
Federal funding through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant provides support for a little more than 13,000 Oklahoma children, one of the lowest rates in the nation.
Brown feels fortunate to have her children in an after-school program that is free of charge. But she worries about other children in her neighborhood who might not have the same opportunity.
“A lot of kids don’t have that, it’s not there for them,” Brown said. “For a long time, my own kids didn’t have it as an option.”