YMCA grant provides students free water safety, swim lessons
This summer, about 50 kindergarten through fourth grade students from Hot Springs School District are taking part in free swim lessons from the Hot Springs Family YMCA thanks to a grant.
The school district has partnered with the YMCA for at least 10 years, according to Melissa Edwards, district instructional specialist. The partnership started with the Supplemental Educational Services after school program.
“That program developed into the current achievement gap programs that we continue to offer through our partnership,” she said.
Edwards said that during the school year, the district partners with the YMCA to implement the Langston After School Signature Program. For the last three years, this program provided 70 students with help in homework completion, individualized targeted tutoring, global learning, 21st century skills, leadership skills, physical education, social and emotional learning, as well as enrichment activities including martial arts, dance, arts and guest speakers.
Currently there are three achievement gap programs that address and work to prevent the summer slide, including Summer Literacy Academy, Summer Learning Loss Prevention and Power Scholars Academy.
“New this year, our partnership received a grant from YUSA for 50 SLA students to participate in swim lessons twice per week,” Edwards said. “These lessons are delivered by nationally certified swim instructors and are completely free of charge to our students.”
According to Annmarie Kaylo, director of operations and advancement for the YMCA, this $6,000 grant is to teach 100 students swimming lessons. The organization embedded the grant into the SLA program, which is common practice in order to “get the most bang for our buck.”
“Our first priority is making sure that if kids find themselves falling into the water, slipping in the water, that they have the
basic skill set to breathe deep, roll to their back and get to the side of the pool. Besides that it’s just skill,” Kaylo said.
Because the grant is for 100 students to take swim lessons, Kaylo said about 15 students in the regular day camp are also receiving these through the grant. Additionally, there are about 15 slots available for the general population who might not be able to afford swim lessons for their child.
“To the students that are in day camp, they’re learning safety around water, skills appropriate to that age, and then anybody in those 15 slots to the general public would just be part of the regular scheduled swim classes,” she said. “They would fill out financial assistance information, we would allocate the money through that grant, but then they would go to regularly scheduled classes at whatever the appropriate level is.”
Jim Norman, aquatic director, said free swim days have been a part of the SLA program in the past, and that students taking the formal swim lessons this summer “are really loving it.”
“I think it’s been a really good thing to be able to provide for a program that we were already servicing, just in a different way,” he said. “Before they had just come in for free swims, but now we’re able to move in and provide this.”
But it’s more than just swim classes students are getting as summer enrichment.
“In the morning they really focus heavily on literacy and then in the afternoon, our part of the partnership is that we come in and provide all kinds of enrichment experiences,” said Sarah-Jean Grisham, director of SLA enrichment. “This is just one of those enrichment experiences we offer in the afternoon.”
Grisham said enrichment ranges from STEM activities, arts and yoga. Students get involved with clubs that use the Hour of Code curriculum, focus on engineering and making, arts like painting and drawing, and Superhero Yoga.
“Everything that we do, we try to integrate social and emotional learning into, teaching them social skills,” she said. “So everyday when they’re coming into their enrichment time, they’re doing some sort of team building activity.
“We have superhero yoga club which is all about being mindful, getting an opportunity to practice those emotional regulation skills, but it’s in a really fun format where they have their superhero masks and are having a great, fantastic time. We try and cover through our clubs the whole child. They are getting some sort of arts experience, some sort of physical activity experience, and some sort of STEM. All of our clubs are set up that they get all three of those experiences each week.”
Kaylo said the common misconception is that the YMCA is “just gym and swim,” but in their educational partnerships they are able to help students reach their full potential in the classroom.
“The question is why should we as a community at large want to invest in these types of works,” she said. “The reality is that it’s all strategic based layering. We know that kids that learn how to ride bikes at an early age are better readers later. We know that kids who experience social and emotional skill sets in safe environments actually learn more in the classroom during the school year. We know that kids that can put their hands on tactile robots, and manipulate and maneuver actually have better reading comprehension. So that’s what our work is about.
“Why we partner with schools and why we are a strategic partner is because schools are so focused, rightfully so, on academic gains and how kids are going to perform on proficiency testing. What we can do is come in and do the research on those soft skills and say ‘Let us partner with you in giving kids opportunities in building those soft skills so that they can find academic success in the school year.’ It truly is a win-win and every penny is stretched to the umpteenth degree.”
The YMCA partners with several Garland County school districts, Kaylo added, Lakeside being another strong partner in after school programming. Partnerships like these, she said, will be more common with the implementation of new standards through the Arkansas Department of Education.
“As we move to Arkansas R.I.S.E., which is the department of education ESSA standard, they’re going to require these types of collaborations to be had between community-based organizations and academic organizations, educational institutions,” she said. “So Hot Springs School District went out on that limb and took the chance five years before the curve and that’s cool work.”
The swimming program for SLA students also meets certain standards the YMCA has set out to achieve such as youth development and social responsibility, according to Lisa Autry, executive program director.
“We really feel like we’re hitting these two areas of focus with these students in particular because they might not have the opportunity to take swim lessons and learn to save their life,” Autry said. “So we just love the grant from YUSA and the opportunity to bring that to these 50 students and give them those lifesaving skills.”
Edwards said the district’s partnership with the YMCA has fostered several positive things in the lives of its students.
“Experiential opportunities, social emotional learning, school attachment, and growth mindset are just a few of those things,” she said. “We are blessed to have a team like this one that comes together for our community.”