Cuts to After-School Programming Draws Protest
BY PATRICK EGAN
Also published on Mount Hope Monitor
When school started this past September at three local schools, hundreds of kids, and their parents, had to face the reality that the afterschool program they’d once counted on no longer had room for them.
The program, run by the non-profit Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, served 635 children last year. After funding cuts, it provides for only 320. The non-profit no longer serves PS 306 on West Tremont Avenue, and at PS/MS 279 and PS 59, it eliminated the kindergarten program, capped enrollment and stripped the programs of many special features.
On a recent afternoon, the fortunate kids gathered with program and school leaders in the PS/MS 279 schoolyard on Walton Avenue to give thanks for what they have and to call for restoration of $427,000 in lost funding. Jocelyn Robles, a fifth grader at PS 59, a school on Bathgate Avenue, was brave enough to stand before a sea of giddy, fidgeting children in bright yellow T-shirts with “Lights on Afterschool” across the chest.
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Cuts to After-school Programs Draw Protest BY PATRICK EGAN When school started this past September at three local schools, hundreds of kids, and their parents, had to face the reality that the afterschool program they’d once counted on no longer had room
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