Reply to Panicking about cuts to DCPS aftercare at our elementary school

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[quote=Anonymous]After weeks of rumors, I finally learned this week what's happening to DCPS-funded aftercare (that is, the only aftercare) at our Title I school, Bancroft. It seems that only students below a certain income cutoff will be eligible for the Out of School Time program. This means that 50 to 100 or more families will not be eligible. Many have probably been paying for the DCPS aftercare (I know we have, and the coordinator says he's been diligent about collecting payments) so it's not a matter of money. (Although maybe the cost will go up--but that's not really the issue.)

This news is a huge, devastating shock coming 4 weeks before school starts. (Yes, there have been rumors for months, but I had the sense that Title I schools would be protected. At the Ward 1 schools meeting last month with Henderson, she said DCPS was trying to find funding to keep the program going at individual schools; the last thing I had heard from the school was that we would still have a program, but it would end at 6 instead of 6:30, which would not be a big deal.)

The assistant principal met with a few parents this week and they discussed what could be done to set up separate, non-OOST aftercare classrooms. The school can find the staff (they were with the current school-wide program) but isn't sure how to up payroll, insurance, etc.  So there was discussion of seeing if OSST could handle the payroll or of finding an existing aftercare program to handle it.

So what does the school do now? We have an active PTA but running an aftercare is not something we've given much thought to until now. Are there existing aftercare providers who we could quickly bring in to oversee a new program?

Also are other elementary schools being hit with this now too? (I know there was a recent thread about Deal, but people seemed to think it wasn't a huge deal--older kids, not that many of them.)

I'm also very concerned because we will now have a school that segregates the kids by income during aftercare (like Oyster, some Hill schools)--too bad that Bancroft will now have separate programs for rich and poor kids, too. [/quote]

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