More Than 300 School Districts to Receive Afterschool Help

U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige today announced the award of nearly $206 million in new grants to 308 school districts to create high-quality learning opportunities after school and during the summer.

"Quality afterschool programs give our young people more time to learn, more challenging enrichment and academic activities and the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships with caring adults," Paige said. "These afterschool programs can build on instruction taking place during regular school hours and provide students in danger of being left behind extra time to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to meet or exceed state and local academic standards."

The 21st Century Community Learning Centers program helps schools stay open longer to provide youth tutoring and homework help, academic enrichment, college prep activities, enrichment through the arts, technology education, drug and violence prevention counseling, supervised recreational opportunities, and services for youth with disabilities.

The new awards bring the total number of 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21stCCLC) grants awarded since 1998 to 1,587, with 6,800 centers open and serving about 1.2 million children. Some 400,000 adults are also served by the centers through activities such as citizenship education, literacy training and access to technology. The grants announced today will support approximately 1,420 new school-based centers in high-need urban and rural communities in 47 states and the Marshall Islands. Joining the school districts as partners are faith-based organizations, colleges, non-profit agencies such as Boys and Girls Clubs and YMCAs, scientific and cultural organizations, and other community groups.

President Bush has proposed offering parents more options for afterschool programs by allowing community-based and faith-based organizations to receive grants directly. Other elements of the President's No Child Left Behind plan include giving priority to projects that serve high-poverty schools that need improvement and having states administer the competitive grant program.

Paige said afterschool programs can offer children significant help to improve academic achievement. Of the current 21st CCLC grantees, 95 percent report that they provide help to improve reading skills and more than 90 percent provide help with mathematics. Two-thirds of current grantees operate a summer program of at least 25 hours per week in addition to their school-year program. And more than 90 percent coordinate with the regular school day program by providing feedback on students, sharing teaching strategies and coordinating goals and objectives.

The new grants are funded under $846 million appropriated by Congress last year. In addition to these new grants, the funds are supporting 383 community grants announced earlier this year, as well as 800 communities that started afterschool programs during the past two years. The average grant award is nearly $650,000 and supports four or five centers.