Weekly Media Roundup: May 15, 2024

This Affordable Housing Project Wasn’t Going to Happen – And Then an Unlikely Partnership Formed, Fast Company

By teaming up with a new affordable housing development, the Boys & Girls Club of New Rochelle in New York doubled the size of its facility to 22,000 feet. The new building, called The Renaissance, includes a teaching kitchen, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) laboratory, a podcast studio, spaces for job training and more. The building also includes 179 units of subsidize family housing and is part of an effort to bring investment and opportunity to the Lincoln Park neighborhood, where most families are low-income. “It’s not just affordable housing units or just a community center,” Becky Mazzanobile, CEO of Boys & Girls Club of New Rochelle, told Fast Company. “It really was thinking holistically about how to revitalize that area.”

With Hundreds of Kids On Waitlist, Wright-Patt Breaks Ground On Expanded Base Child Care Center, WYSO (Ohio)

At Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, military families face long wait lists for afterschool programs at the base’s four family centers. “On average, 250 to 350 children on our active waiting list,” Nancy Adams, deputy director of the 88th Force Support Squadron, told WYSO. This week, the military base held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new child care development center that will provide afterschool programs to an additional 300 students.

Expiring Grants Could Mean Loss of After-School Programs For Thousands of Illinois Kids, CBS News (Illinois)

As many as 300 21st Century Community Learning Center programs are at risk of closing in Illinois due to a miscalculation of federal government funding. “These programs are essential and we need to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to fully fund them, and make sure that our youth have these opportunities,” Illinois State Senator Ram Villavalam told CBS News. The Illinois State Board of Education has allocated $10 million to afterschool programs in 2025, but advocates note this will only support one quarter of the programs.

Students and Families Join Michigan After-School Partnership at the Capitol, WILX 10 (Michigan)

Last month, legislators in the Michigan State House proposed a $75 million investment in afterschool programs to expand access to more students. In response, students, families and afterschool program leaders gathered outside the State Capitol with the Michigan Afterschool Partnership to highlight the need to invest in afterschool. “We’ve got decades of research that shows that youth who partake in afterschool programs will have better math scores, reading scores, science scores. They might have increases in attendance, help with behavioral issues, leadership skills, all across the board,” Erin Skene-Pratt director of the Michigan Afterschool Partnership, told WILX 10.