H.I.M., part four: City lends support, notes importance of program
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final installment of a four-part series about the local nonprofit organization High Impact Movement and its significance in the lives of area students and their families.
In a partnership with the local nonprofit after-school program High Impact Movement, the city of Hot Springs retains a $125,000 annual contract for its services.
The program, which began in 2018 after the Boys & Girls Club of Hot Springs shut down, has about 320 registered students and typically sees anywhere between 120 and 150 students a day.
“When we lost the Boys Club, it really shook not only our youth sports but also our after-school care for so many students,” Hot Springs City Manager Bill Burrough said.
“Then Amos Gray with High Impact Movement, he came in to fill that gap and has done really well. I mean, the program has grown. … I can tell you it’s extremely important, and we’re serious partners with (H.I.M.),” he said.
H.I.M. founder Amos Gray said while the program serves students from Lakeside School District and others in the area, about 95% of its students come from the Hot Springs School District.
“Aligning ourselves with what the school is doing will help facilitate further growth when kids leave school,” Gray said. “And so we’re always working hard to try to strengthen our partnership with the school district so that we can really impact young people’s lives.”
This coming school year, the Hot Springs School District will switch to a hybrid school calendar and is working with local organizations like H.I.M. to provide care for students after school and during intermittent breaks.
While the Cutter Morning Star and Mountain Pine school districts use a fourday school week calendar, the remaining four — Lakeside, Lake Hamilton, Fountain Lake, and Jessieville — use a traditional calendar.
“That’s going to be an interesting concept, one that we haven’t had before,” Burrough said of HSSD’s new calendar. “And I’m sure it’s going to impact (Gray’s) particular program. We have certain metrics that are built into the contract for service that we have with them, and that has to do with academics, discipline, as well as attendance.”
Burrough noted that H.I.M. has about a 90% attendance rate with students from the district, and he believes it will benefit both the district and H.I.M.
“You know, idle hands can cause a lot of things, so we’re just pleased that not only do our youth have a place to go and congregate, but also to be able to continue their learning,” he said. “Any time we can have a program that’s focusing on that tutoring and that enrichment, it makes a better adult as they become older.”
H.I.M. provides various enrichment activities as well as tutoring for students. Burrough said based on its metrics, there has been about a 76% growth in students’ academic scores.
“I think that’s very important. But it’s also important that these sometimes underserved youth have a place to go that they feel a belonging to. And it also helps many parents throughout the city that have kids that go there after school until they’re able to pick them up after work,”
he said. “We don’t really have any type of program like that anywhere else.”
Gray said the program’s continued growth is vital so that it can more adequately serve young people. He said its finances are presently good thanks to such grants as the 21st Century from the Arkansas Department of Education and Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds from the state.
The 21st Century Community Learning Centers program supports the creation of community learning centers that provide academic enrichment during nonschool hours for children, particularly students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools.
“We work with those people not only with the financial side, but to develop our programs,” he said. “Because I think Arkansas is working extremely hard to better the education system in our state. I didn’t really know that until about three years ago.
“But we are working extremely hard to keep our education system growing to keep education in the forefront of our young people and our families. And then they begin to really see the value of after-school programming.”
Burrough, when asked what he would tell families who are thinking about sending their kids to H.I.M., said he would tell them it is a safe environment and the kids are well taken care of. He noted, however, it will need additional funding in the future to continue its success.
“The agreement that Amos has with the Champion (Christian) College to be able to use that facility, it’s a safe environment, and all of the kids that I’ve talked to that are there are very happy,” he said. “I can’t imagine trying to do what he does in two or three hours after school, but to see how these students and kids, how they rotate their tutorers to enrichment to sports and just see how they move from one to the other is really an organized operation.
“And the people that are working there, from the Grays to the other staff, they have a true servant’s heart. I mean, they believe in what they’re doing and we are blessed to have them in our community.”