With school coming to an end many working parents are enrolling their children in various summer programs. Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with Jodi Grant, Executive Director, Afterschool Alliance and Gigi Antoni, Vice President, Youth Development, The Wallace Foundation (which supports summer programs).
RUSH: Schools out and summer months are just around the corner. This is Don Rush. Many working parents find themselves looking at programs for their children. So the Afterschool Alliance took a look at how parents are doing with a survey of more than 30,000 parents of school aged children. We talked with Jodi Grant, executive Director of the Alliance, and Gigi Antoni, who heads up The Wallace Foundation team that provides assistance for such programs. And we begin with Jodi Grant.
GRANT: And what we found was that for far too many of our parents, summer is a struggle. And only half the parents who want summer programs for their kids are able to send their kids to a summer program. And cost is the biggest barrier. So when we're talking about parents not having access for low income parents, only 13% of their kids are in summer programs. When you look at higher income parents who can pay a lot more, it's almost 50% of their kids are in summer programs.
RUSH: So what kind of programs are we talking about?
GRANT: Most of them, it's something holistic. So it's a chance to be outside, to have fun, to have healthy interactions with their peers, with caring adults, but also a huge opportunity for enrichment. So for an older child, it might look like career exploration or a job or a class of some type, maybe a math class or a STEM class. For younger kids, there might be learning that hands-on science, music, theater, sport. So think about cross between what camp always was, but also with far more sophisticated learning embedded in what our students are doing.
RUSH: So these afterschool programs still require funding. What kind of funding do you see out there? Obviously your foundations involved with it, but is there a role for lots of, say, private donors or private foundations like yourself? Or does the government in some way need to get involved?
ANTONI: There is not enough private sector money to fill this gap. There has to be public investment and private sector money, like The Wallace Foundation investments in research, for instance. That information that we're sharing with you today, but also in community solving problems of how to do this. I mean, programs that Jody were talking about, they can take place in lots of different places and faith-based organizations, libraries, recreation centers, schools, and community-based organizations. So bringing all of that together and leveraging money that's already being invested, private sector business, and then public sector investment is what it takes to fill this gap.
RUSH: So what about poor areas and cities, for instance, like Baltimore, who don't necessarily have the resources to put into these kinds of programs?
GRANT: So I think it is across the board we need to be doing more. So you can talk about Baltimore, but it is our cities, it's our suburban areas and it's our rural areas. And in every case, we need to look to every source we can to leverage them to support our kids. And the good news is parents want this. The parents that are lucky enough to have kids in the summer program, 96% of them are satisfied with their programs. And what we learned in this report and what we've learned when we poll voters is they all want to see more public investments. Whether they're local, whether they're statewide, whether they're federal, they believe that all children should have access to these programs because it's good for our kids, it's good for our working families, and it's really important for our communities, both now and in the future.
RUSH: We've been speaking with Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance and Gigi Antoni, who heads up The Wallace Foundation team. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
