Weekly Media Roundup, September 29, 2021

Children of the Valley Program Expanding to Burlington, Sedro-Woolley, GoSkagit.com (Washington)

At the onset of the pandemic, the Mount Vernon School District in Washington state reached out to Children of the Valley afterschool program to help provide in-person support to students facing the greatest challenges. The afterschool program doubled its program’s size and hours and became a valuable asset to the school district. “That temporary need last year grew into now a continued opportunity,” Flora Perez-Lucatero, founder of Children of the Valley, told GoSkagit.com. This fall, Children of the Valley has opened several new afterschool programs in the Mount Vernon School District schools and is working with Burlington-Edison and Sedro-Woolley school districts to open programs in their schools as well.

Opinion: Invest in After-School programs, Lifelines to Virginia Families, The Virginian-Pilot (Virginia)

Afterschool programs across the state of Virginia help students explore career paths, succeed in school, learn workforce skills, and more. For example, Hampton City Schools’ 21^st Century Community Learning Centers program has kept students engaged throughout the pandemic with free, live classes taught by local experts. But demand for afterschool programs far exceeds availability, and troubling gaps in access to afterschool persist. “With more of these partnerships and funding to support them, we can make progress to address the persistent race and income disparities that have been worsened by the pandemic,” Hampton City Schools Out-of-School Time Coordinator Dr. Daryle Rodgers and Virginia Partnership for Out-of-School Time Executive Director Blaire U. Denson wrote in a recent guest column for the Virginian Pilot.

Program Helps Kids Make a Slam Dunk in Class, On the Court, Spectrum News 1 (Kentucky)

Former teacher and high school basketball coach Wes Hinton founded the D.E.L.T.A. (Developing Educated Leaders Through Athletics) Foundation to give students in Louisville, Kentucky, a safe place to connect with mentors, get academic support and play basketball after the school bell rings. The foundation’s two afterschool programs, Hoops and Homework, and Books and Basketball, combine basketball practice with tutoring from certified teachers. “We use sports as a tool to get these kids in our facility, improve their grades, their attendance, and their behavior, teach them leadership, financial literacy, a lot of different things," Hinton told Spectrum News 1.

Florence School District 5 Hopes New Afterschool Program Will Combat COVID-19 Learning Slide, WBTW (South Carolina)

In Johnsonville, South Carolina, the demand for afterschool programming is great. Of the 500 students attending Johnsonville Elementary School, 200 applied to the school’s new afterschool program but the program only has 100 available slots. “For there to be that many applicants, we really see the need for an afterschool program,” Mirandi Squires, principal and afterschool program director at Johnsonville Elementary School, told WBTW. “I believe in my heart that this is going to be one of the best programs we’ve had in Florence School District 5 since I’ve been here.” The free program, funded through a 21^st Century Community Learning Centers grant, will provide physical, emotional and education support to students.