Families join to fight city’s after-school cuts

Fourth-grader Noah Clanton and his mother are circulating a petition to keep his after-school program open. 

He aims to pressure the city into providing the $280,000 it will cost to run the Marble Hill Community Center after-school program so he won’t miss out on his last year and kindergarteners through fifth-graders in his community will have the same educational opportunity he has been afforded for the past five years. 

“It’s important because a lot of kids my age, they’re going to be bored and just play video games and forget all their knowledge. During the school year, they might fail,” said Noah, a Multiple School of Intelligence, PS/MS 37 student.

Noah and his mother are among 200 families fighting to prevent the Marble Hill Houses’ after-school program and summer camp from closing because of the mayor’s proposed $19.5 million budget cut in the Department of Youth and Community Development’s Out-of-School Time (OST) program. 

The city grants OST contracts to programs that provide free academic and recreational activities for either elementary, middle school or high school students after school, during holidays and over the summer. As OST absorbs funding reductions from prior budgets and plans for the proposed $19.5 million cuts in this budget, Marble Hill and other OST locations have been put on a list of sites that are unlikely to remain open unless additional money is funneled into OST. The Marble Hill programs have a much better shot at — but are not guaranteed — OST money if the $19.5 million is restored.

IN-Tech shut out