After-School Plan Gets Mixed Reviews

Nearly 18 months after announcing that they would create the most ambitious after-school child-care system in the nation, Los Angeles County officials said Wednesday that about half the programs are up and running.

The progress drew praise from some educators and parents, but also criticism from some child-care advocates who said that it is taking too long to bring all of the 225 targeted elementary schools on board.

More than 4,000 children are enrolled free of charge in programs at 115 schools around the county, officials said at a news conference at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in South Los Angeles.

“This program is much more than just baby-sitting,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. “L.A. County is implementing a program that is innovative and opens up new social, cultural and educational opportunities for our children.”

Officials say that by June, when it is expected to be fully operational, more than 16,000 children will be served by the program, which will run from about 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. at most of the schools. Besides participating in academic instruction designed to complement regular-hours curriculum, students engage in sports and in cultural activities such as drama programs.

The after-school program is designed to address the acute and growing need for child care countywide, but is meant especially to help welfare mothers who face a five-year federal deadline for finding work. The bulk of the money for the program--$74 million--was allocated by the Board of Supervisors from unused welfare funds.

But during its initial phase, officials have opened the program to families of all income levels at the targeted schools in the hopes that Los Angeles Unified and other school districts will be able to tap more state and federal funding to pay for students who are not from welfare families.

“We can’t ask women to go back to work if they’re worried about their children and we can’t provide the appropriate child care,” said Lynn W. Bayer, director of the county Department of Public Social Services.

Bayer said that there are more than 1 million children between the ages of 6 and 12 in the county and that 10% of them are in families receiving welfare benefits. Overall, the county estimates that there are 39,963 licensed child-care spaces available for school-age children but a need for 200,000. About 100,000 children of all ages are on waiting lists for subsidized child care.

“The after-school program is one of the best things that has happened to me as a working parent,” said Chondra Milo, 30, a welfare mother with a 10-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter attending King Elementary and the afternoon activities there. “It has taken a lot of stress away. I no longer have to rush home to pick up my children or pay someone to pick them up.”

Many women such as Milo are still eligible to receive welfare benefits because they don’t earn enough to be fully self-sufficient.

Travis Thomas, an 11 year-old fifth-grader at King, said he used to spend afternoons on the school playground waiting for his parents to come home but now has more than sports to keep him occupied.

“Now I do homework and they can check it,” he said, addressing the assembled county and school officials at the news conference. “The best thing about it is we all get along as a family.”

Child-care advocates said they are generally pleased with the county’s efforts, but identified a number of problems, including the long time it has taken to expand the program, what they called insufficient efforts to inform welfare families about the program, and a lack of activities and resources at some schools.

“We did a number of site visits and the conditions at one program were really heartbreaking,” said Margaret Prescod of Every Mother Is a Working Mother, which campaigns for the economic rights of women and was instrumental in pushing for the after-school program. “At another program, the principal took a real interest and was very involved. But he had to put out a lot of effort to make it work. The county itself should be motivated to provide help for every school.”

County educators said Prescod made her visits early in the program before schools had full resources. “We’re not willing to set up a program until they are ready; otherwise, we will end up with poor quality, throwing money away, and we don’t want to see that happen,” said John Berndt, the county Office of Education’s after-school coordinator.