Making After School Special

BALTIMORE — It is 3:30, and the Goodnow neighborhood PAL center is a happy pandemonium of kids arriving from school. But 9-year-old Kevin Diggs is mooning around glumly, his little-lost-boy look a mismatch for the bright yellow “Student of the Week” ribbon pinned to his jersey.

Taking in the scene, Natashia McMillian sweeps in to help. The 25-year-old AmeriCorps worker and tutor envelops Kevin in a bearhug, kisses his forehead and lavishes praise on him for his latest achievement. Then with a gentle shove, she packs him off to do homework for two hours.

Welcome to child care’s new frontier: after-school care, where the numbers are large, the stakes high and the political rhetoric, so far, quiet. It is a world to which national politicians have paid scant attention until recently. But ask any working parent what happens after the school bell rings, and the worried look in response will tell the story: Day-care woes do not end at first grade.

By the time Kevin’s aunt arrives to pick him up at 6 p.m., the fourth-grader will have completed his homework, taken an arts and crafts class, had a nutritious snack, played some basketball and chewed over his day with a mentor from the staff of the Police Athletic League, or PAL. Not long after he gets home, he will tumble, exhausted, into bed.

And tomorrow, he’ll do it all over again.

Only a year ago, that kind of predictability was missing from Kevin Diggs’ life. So were the after-school hugs, the homework, the sports, the nutrition. For children like Kevin, who walked home from school every day across mean streets to an empty home, dangers--as well as the temptation to engage in criminal and other antisocial behavior--were everywhere. Tomorrow itself could not be counted on.

But now, prospects are brighter not only for Kevin but for programs such as the one he takes part in every weekday afternoon. As never before, politicians in Washington are responding to the growing parental unease, and also to the newly vocal assertion of law enforcement officials that young people left unsupervised after school are a major source of criminal activity.

Leaving children with just a latchkey and a television set is not only bad for children, police are saying, but dangerous for society as well. And this support for after-school programs from a group with a reputation for hard-eyed pragmatism has begun to change the political atmosphere in Washington.

The Clinton administration has proposed spending $800 million over the next five years to jump-start after-school care programs nationwide, and two Democratic legislative packages propose even more.

Potentially more important, attitudes toward federal support for after-school programs have begun to shift within the Republican majority in Congress. The principal GOP counterproposal--a bill drafted by Sens. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah)--would double the federal government’s child-care block grant to states, allowing them to craft their own after-school programs.

That plan, although less direct than the administration blueprint, marks a distinct change from the atmosphere only four years ago when congressional Republicans attacked a raft of after-school programs Clinton proposed in a crime bill. One program in the package drew the particular ire of most GOP lawmakers: a plan to fund late-night basketball leagues for inner-city teens. In speech after speech, Republicans heaped derision on the Clinton package as a Democratic scheme to bring “social pork” home to districts and introduce “midnight basketball” to quiet communities across the nation.

Their scorn for midnight basketball soured the atmosphere for more traditional after-school programs.

Sen. Boxer Has D’Amato’s Support

This year, advocates see a shift in the tide. An after-school bill drafted by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) went down to defeat last month in the Senate by a mere two votes. The measure would have set aside $250 million over the next five years to provide grants for public schools seeking to start or expand after-school programs. Boxer expects to press the case for her bill again in the coming weeks and hopes to mobilize law enforcement officials to lobby for its passage.

Boxer points to the backing of Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) for her bill as a reflection of a changing environment for after-school care programs. Four years ago, D’Amato was one of the Senate’s loudest critics of Clinton’s “crime prevention” initiative. But this year, he is in an uphill battle for reelection.

“Al D’Amato is a very astute politician, and he knows people in his state want this,” says Boxer. “He’s crossing his majority leader, very carefully aligning himself with what he sees as the public view.”

Many Republican lawmakers remain wary of expanding the federal government’s role in funding day care directly. They argue that although parents may need help finding or paying for such care, the government can best assist them indirectly with tax breaks that would return more money to American families.

Others shrink from the price tag a major effort would carry--a price, experts say, that could clearly reach into the billions.

Still, experts aware of the demands of single parents and two-career households believe after-school care is the slowly waking giant of the child-care scene.

No one knows the true scale of the need for after-school care. For starters, parents are reluctant to admit to survey-takers that they leave their children alone. And there is no central clearinghouse for gathering or maintaining data on any regular basis.

But of 24 million American children ages 5 to 14, the National Institute on Out-of-School Time estimates that at least 1 in 5 are in unsupervised households after school. Those children spend an average of 10 hours a week home alone, and the proportion of those in so-called self-care rises steeply as children pass the 10-year mark.

Many other kids go home to Mom, Dad, a relative or a baby sitter. But experts say the patchwork nature of after-school care arrangements suggests that parents are scrambling mightily to see that someone is there for their children.

The U.S. Education Department reported in 1991--the last time such a measure was taken--that formal after-school care programs serve only about 1.7 million, less than 7%, of children ages 5 to 13. For the rest, whether they live in well-tended suburbs or inner cities, few even have access to after-school programs that keep them--to use the motto of Baltimore’s PAL program--”strong, safe and smart.” In California, only 31% of public schools offered extended-day programs in 1993-94, the last year for which figures are available.

The number of children--and parents--eager for after-school programs is likely to swell in coming years. As the children of baby boomers move through the nation’s schools, the number of school-age children in the United States is projected to increase each year until 2007, when it is to peak at 54.3 million. Nowhere will the rise be more dramatic than in California, where school enrollments are expected to jump 16% from 1997 to 2007.

But the greater pressure for after-school programs may come not from parents worried about care but from a society anxious about crime--and children’s role in it. Studies have found that violent juvenile crime, though down generally, escalates between 2 and 8 p.m. on school days, when many children are unsupervised. The rate at which children become the victims of crime also peaks during that period.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Thomas Frazier arrived at his post in 1994 to a dilemma: When the bell rang at the end of the school day, it was open season for juvenile predators in many of the city’s neighborhoods. Large parts of the city were so frightening during the after-school hours that social service agencies were afraid to staff after-school programs there.

Baltimore’s Troubles and PAL’s Birth

Into the breach stepped the Baltimore Police Department. Frazier argued that intervening in the lives of school-age children now might just be cheaper than locking them up later. And a network of PAL Centers was born. Today, the city spends about $5.7 million to keep 29 centers humming, and federal grants and philanthropic foundations kick in $2.3 million more. Baltimore police officers staff the centers. Most, such as Officer Lorie Wallace, have put in years on Baltimore’s tough streets. Wallace, a 12-year veteran who has served in vice and drug units, says unhesitatingly that running the Goodnow center is the best assignment she’s ever had.

Within a year of opening the PAL Centers, Frazier and his team decided that sports and activity clubs alone were not enough. They applied for federal grants to add tutoring and mentoring, and won a federal grant to bring in AmeriCorps volunteers to help with schoolwork.

Today, the Goodnow Center has a full-time staff of 10 AmeriCorps workers, who provide tutoring, mentoring and homework assistance under McMillian’s supervision. Academic assistance has become a hallmark of the PAL program, which serves about 7,500 children citywide at no charge. Although sports and clubs may draw many to the centers, all PAL participants--whether they are 7 or 17 years old--must put in two hours of homework before any games or activities begin.

Program’s Payoff Seen in Three Years

In the three years since the Goodnow PAL Center--the first of 27 throughout the city--began, the rate at which juveniles became the victims of a crime in the neighborhood fell by almost 44%, and arrests of juveniles dropped by 16%, a police analysis of crime statistics showed. The academic performance of children participating in the PAL program improved so markedly that teachers at the area’s nearby public schools were astonished. And preliminary studies suggest that teen pregnancy rates have also dipped.

This, says Frazier, is the payoff for a program of after-school care that replaces the latchkey with structure and supervision and positive role models at a critical time in a child’s social growth.

“There is no doubt in my mind that it’s the right thing to do,” says Frazier. “You walk into the center and you just feel it: It’s awesome. For kids this young to be this engaged, this late in the day, is just astounding.”

After-school programs beyond Baltimore have shown similar effects: In the 1980s, Ottawa, Canada, launched a comprehensive after-school program at one of its public-housing projects. Investigators found that over the next 32 months, juvenile crime fell 75% among children living in that single housing project. Among children at a project without such a program, juvenile crime rose 67%.

“The nice thing about after-school programs is that they have an immediate impact,” says James Fox of Northeastern University, an expert in youth crime.

The impact of after-school care on crime rates has prompted several prominent groups of crime-fighters to call for substantial government investment in such programs. In February, the Major Cities Chiefs, an organization of police chiefs from the U.S. and Canada’s largest cities, threw its weight behind after-school care programs, calling on elected officials to “fight crime by making sure all children have access to quality child care and after-school programs.” The police chiefs were joined in March by the National District Attorneys Assn.

“The bad news is that when we leave millions of kids without good child care and after-school activities--as we are doing every day--their risk of becoming serious delinquents, and every American’s risk of becoming a crime victim, skyrockets,” said the Police Chiefs’ chairman, Salt Lake City Police Chief Ruben Ortega. “The good news is that we could dramatically cut crime by making sure kids get good child care and after-school programs while their parents are working.”

Turning Around an Angry Boy

For children such as Kevin Diggs Jr. and parents such as Kevin Diggs Sr., the attention comes just in time. When Kevin enrolled in the PAL Center in September, he was failing several classes. The staff described him as a caldron of anger who was confused and upset about changes at home. In school, he was slipping away from teachers, who warned that his conduct was “interfering” with his learning.

The senior Diggs, with a new, full-time truck-driving job, could no longer be home after school, as he long had been. So Kevin Jr.’s afternoons were filled with television, video games and street play.

The senior Diggs, who gained sole custody of his son when the child was 3, was worried. Kevin Jr. had already been lured into smoking cigarettes by older boys on the block, and Diggs feared worse temptations ahead. He also feared for his son’s safety.

“Kevin is a roamer, he does get around,” said Diggs. “I’ve tried to keep him close to home. I keep telling him things happen to children when they wander away from home.”

For Diggs, the PAL Center has eased the daily worry about Kevin’s welfare, made full-time work possible and given him a more cooperative child.

For Kevin, too, afternoons spent at the PAL Center have effected a turnaround. Last week’s “Student of the Week” distinction marked the fourth time this year he has won the school-wide honor at Furley Elementary School. And last week, after he lashed out at a classmate at the center, he pulled himself together and sought her out to apologize. McMillian says the angry little boy who came to the center is becoming a young man looking to take control of his feelings and his future.

“His attitude,” says McMillian, “has had a major adjustment.”