Budgetary pressures may spell the end for California’s subsidized after-school and summer programs, which serve 859,000 low-income students at 4,500 schools.
In addition to providing a safe place for kids while parents are at work, the programs provide homework help, hands-on science and arts projects, field trips, sports, social-emotional support and meals. They’re free to parents of low-income students.
California’s After School Education and Safety program provides $550 million each year for programs for elementary and middle school students, and federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers grants kick in an extra $132 million for K-12 after-school and summer programs. Some programs also receive support from foundations, private donors, cities or their local school district.
California invests more than any other state in after-school programs. But lawmakers haven’t increased funding since the program was created in 2006. Since then, costs rose as the minimum wage jumped from $6.75 to $10.50 an hour. It’s going up again, to $15 an hour, in 2022.
State funding provides $7.50 per pupil each day for a program that must stay open until 6 p.m. on school days and operate at least 15 hours a week. There can be no more than 20 pupils per staff member.
The Trump administration has proposed ending the federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers grants. That could happen as early as the 2017-18 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
“If the president’s skinny budget comes to fruition, it would be devastating,” said Michael Funk, director of the Expanded Learning Division at the California Department of Education.
Program impact
Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, has justified eliminating the grants, saying “there’s no demonstrable evidence” that after-school programs are “helping kids do better in school.”
Research studies have found mixed test score results, but the potential effects of participation in after-school programs “on academic attitudes, work habits and social development should not be overlooked,” wrote researchers from the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing, or CRESST, at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.
CRESST’s study of LA’s BEST after-school program in 2007 found the primary positive effect of the program was the prevention of juvenile crime. Researchers said the cost savings associated with preventing crime and helping students graduate high school and build productive lives more than paid for the program.
In an evaluation in 2011 of the programs supported by the state and federal grants, CRESST researchers found improved English and math test scores for African-American, special education and the lowest-achieving students. They also found that programs that focused on developing social and emotional skills helped build students’ future aspirations, life skills and confidence that they could succeed academically.
Cash crunch
Both small and large after-school programs in California are struggling. A February 2016 survey of after-school providers in 250 school districts by the Oakland-based advocacy group Partnership for Children & Youth found 29 percent of the 676 program providers who responded to the survey said they were likely to close in the next two years without an increase in funding.
“The next time the district gives staff raises, the program will have to close,” said Jacqueline Olazaba at the Powell Academy for Success in Long Beach. She spends 97 percent of her budget to pay her staff, who are district employees. “For now we can only plan for the end of this year.”
Four of the largest after-school programs — serving about 200,000 students — are estimating budget deficits of more than $9 million combined by 2018 if funding remains the same, said Eric Gurna, president and CEO of LA’s BEST, who surveyed three other large providers: THINK Together, After-School All-Stars and California Teaching Fellows Foundation. Gurna is projecting LA’s BEST will end this fiscal year in June in the red to the tune of $850,000. That deficit will grow to a projected $1.6 million for the coming fiscal year and $2.3 million for the next.
“Whole organizations and the whole system is at risk,” Gurna said. “What will happen if there’s not a fix is that whole programs will close.”
LA’s BEST has been drawing on its reserves to cover the shortages in its roughly $32 million budget, but that’s unsustainable, Gurna said.
“Slowly but surely, over the last 11 years, the cost of doing business has gone up … everything from insurance to supplies and materials, permits and fees,” Gurna said. “And the funding has remained flat.”
What Sacramento might do about it
In the past, Gov. Jerry Brown has opposed any increases in state funding, saying if districts consider the program important, they can use Local Control Funding Formula funds to support it. The formula targets extra funds to low-income students, English learners and foster children, and gives districts authority on how best to use those funds to improve student achievement. In theory, districts could funnel those funds to their after-school programs for low-income students.
But the funding formula money for low-income students is “supposed to be used for increased or improved services, not backfilling budget gaps,” said Jessica Gunderson, senior director, policy and communications, for the Partnership for Children & Youth.
Senate Bill 78, introduced by Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, would raise funding to $9 per pupil per day and would tie future funding increases to growth in the minimum wage.
“We know there hasn’t been an increase since 2006. I’ve heard from a number of after school organizations across the district and the state and the $7.50 per pupil puts them in a bad spot,” Leyva said.
Most bills introduced by the Legislature never get signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, but Leyva said she’s optimistic.
“I wouldn’t introduce them if I didn’t think there was a chance of getting them to the governor’s desk,” she said.
Increasing the funding for these programs comes with a hefty price tag: Leyva’s bill would mean an addition $99 million from state coffers annually, but she said the cost is worth it.
“If we don’t have safe places for kids to go after school, they’ll find places to go, but they probably won’t be what we want them to do,” Leyva said.
Senate Bill 78 is scheduled to be considered by the Senate Appropriations Committee today.
Staff writers Antonie Boessenkool and Beau Yarbrough contributed to this story.