As children are returning to school across America, we want to urge other mayors and community leaders to make what happens after the school day ends a real priority.
An estimated 15 million young people in the United States are alone after school. In our cities, like so many others in our country, we were dismayed to see so many children returning to empty homes at 3 p.m. Still others were falling through the cracks because they weren’t in school in the first place — either skipping classes or they had dropped out entirely. Unsupervised, these young people often wound up idle and at risk.
We came to realize that we needed to create opportunities to make sure children were engaged in constructive activities and stayed on track. Years ago, we decided to focus on afterschool programs, in particular, because children spend nearly 80 percent of their waking hours outside of school. We wanted to dramatically increase the number of young people able to participate in high-quality afterschool programs in our cities.
Participating in high-quality afterschool programs has been shown to promote positive behaviors such as school attendance, and may help boost academic achievement, civic engagement, and self-confidence, while reducing such dangers as obesity and juvenile crime.
And yet, when municipal leaders closely examine where afterschool programs are located, the landscape doesn’t always match the need. Very often, the poorest neighborhoods with the most crime have the fewest high-quality programs. In addition to such shortages, we find that while some cities do provide opportunities to their young people at their parks and recreation centers, libraries and museums, these programs often operate in isolation, making them less likely to reach the children who need them most.
Unified strategy
What we’ve learned is that a unified strategy through a partnership of city agencies, schools, nonprofit afterschool providers and funders has a much greater impact. We’ve found that it’s more effective to bring together these major players as part of a citywide system of public, private and community-based afterschool opportunities. Research by The Wallace Foundation and the RAND Corporation backs up our experience that local entities working together creates better programs and boosts participation.
What does it take to create an afterschool system? Research shows the key elements are committed leadership from many stakeholders, a coordinating entity to manage all of the moving parts, strong and reliable data, a focus on quality, thoughtful efforts to increase participation and careful multi-year planning. This kind of approach helps us determine not only the gaps in services, but also what’s already working in our communities. With this knowledge, we then can work to make sure quality programs are in the neighborhoods where kids most need them.
By making afterschool a priority, we’ve been able to serve increasing numbers of children in our cities. In Nashville, we allotted $400,000 in 2009 to create Nashville After Zone Alliance (NAZA). Since then, our budget has grown to $2 million in public and private dollars, including funding from The Wallace Foundation. We’ve gone from serving 200 middle school students to nearly 1,500, and we estimate it costs $1,300 per child per school year, an amount well worth it. In Fort Worth, we’ve gotten creative about funding our afterschool efforts, using partial proceeds from a voter-approved sales tax for crime prevention to cover some of the cost. A partnership between the city and the Fort Worth school district has expanded afterschool programs from 52 sites in 2000 to 94 sites where students do homework and participate in academic and enrichment activities.
Recent research indicates more cities are coordinating afterschool. A study last year showed that at least 77 large U.S. cities are coordinating afterschool programs to expand and improve services for young people.
This trend is encouraging, but we need to get more cities on board. We urge city leaders to bring together key stakeholders to talk about — and take action on — local afterschool needs. Mayors and city council members can lead key players to work together effectively. And we need cities, businesses and private funders to invest more in afterschool. Such an effort will change young lives, help families and strengthen neighborhoods.
Karl Dean is the mayor of Nashville, Tennessee, and Betsy Price is the mayor of Fort Worth, Texas.
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