Education
After-school achievement
Old Town pupils finding fun outside the classroom
Source: Bangor Daily News
Published: Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Photos: 2
Edition: All
Section and Page: B1 (State Front)
Headline: After-school achievement: Old Town pupils finding fun outside the classroom
BY ANDREW KNAPP
OF THE NEWS STAFF
OLD TOWN, Maine — School’s out for the day at Leonard Middle School. Children escape classrooms to join a stream of classmates in the hallway. Some head to a softball game and others to track practice. Even more youngsters, however, take the lonely walk home to care for younger siblings while their parents work.
Thanks to an after-school program now in its second year, however, a growing number of sixth- to eighth-graders at LMS are getting their homework done early and having a blast.
“The number of kids on academic probation has dropped, and discipline problems are declining,” John Keane, LMS principal, said last week.
The offerings are eclectic and unexpected: ballet, fencing, baby-sitting, photography, belly-dancing. There’s even a club for fans of the board game Risk. But best of all, it’s free.
The program, which runs from 2 to 4:30 p.m. weekdays, is funded by a 21st Century Community Learning Center grant as part of the No Child Left Behind Act. In 2005, $4.8 million in grant money was distributed in Maine to target children at risk for academic struggles and disciplinary problems. Thirty-one sites in Maine received a grant.
Before the endowment, Old Town spent $5,000 yearly on the program. The grant provided $76,000 this year for after-school sessions and a two-week summer camp to be held at the school.
Since fall 2004, LMS after-school sessions have started with the end of sports seasons, offering athletes and interested pupils the chance to try something new — dynamic opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t be afforded because of cost and conflict with other activities.
At 2 p.m., a required hour-long period of tutored homework help, supervised by faculty and volunteers, begins. After that, they break for a snack.
Then the fun starts.
Pupils split into groups to attend a preferred activity, which varies daily. On Wednesdays, for example, they walk down the street to the bowling alley.
At 4:30 p.m., children are bused home. Because LMS includes Old Town youths and tuition pupils from Alton and Bradley, the two buses servicing the program facilitate participation. According to program coordinator Matthew Cyr, transportation is the primary reason parents don’t permit extracurricular involvement. Grant money that subsidizes busing destroys that barrier.
Instead of walking back to an empty household, children are engaged in healthful, productive activity, he said. Cyr, 30, who teaches skateboarding, said participants view teachers in a light not visible within the confines of the school’s brick walls.
“It’s a relaxed and nonthreatening place for kids and teachers,” he said. “It made me very popular with all the skateboarders, too.”
Four sessions over 110 days this year offered varied activities, including guitar lessons.
Sammy Ketch, an eighth-grader, has been practicing acoustic guitar since the current session started on May 1. One recent afternoon, she sat in a classroom with her friends, working on her music. After playing “Louie Louie” with a dissatisfied look on her face, her fingers started strumming chords of “Smoke on the Water.”
“Go Sammy,” one classmate chimed in.
“Yeah, Sam,” piped another.
Guitar instructor Misty Burgess nodded her head.
“A lot of kids come in with low confidence,” she said. “None of them leave that way.”
About 250 of 326 pupils have participated at least once this year. Since the program’s inception, LMS has seen a 150 percent increase in children attending the after-school program for 30 days. Overall enrollment has swelled by 40 percent.
Six parents also have become involved by instructing pupils. Kathy Johnson, mother of a sixth-grade girl, teaches bicycling and arts and crafts. After her family moved to Old Town last August, the program helped her daughter adjust, she said.
“The actual time is less structured, so it allowed her to interact socially,” Johnson said.
LMS has always maintained an after-school program, but the grant money has expanded offerings and heightened participation. Volunteers are needed, Cyr said, considering only one year of full funding and two years of partial funding remain on the grant.
Whether the program lasts depends on community support, and Cyr said he hoped the funding situation will solve itself.
“[Financial support] should never fall solely into the hands of a city or legislature,” Johnson added. “It’s a community’s responsibility to get involved.”
With the recent shutdown of the Georgia-Pacific paper mill, however, future funding is questionable. According to projections, Old Town schools face $315,000 in budget cuts, and there may be no money to continue the program.
“We know what we’re here to do,” Cyr said. “We’ll focus on students regardless of what goes on outside school walls.”
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