Weekly Media Roundup: August 14, 2024

Virginia Designates Additional Aid for At-Risk Students, Virginia Mercury (Virginia)

Beginning this fall, Virginia schools will have an additional $180 million per year to support at-risk students. A 2023 study found that Virginia provided less state funding for at-risk students than the national average, nearly $1,900 less per student. “Our schools just didn’t have the resources that those [at-risk] students needed to be successful,” State Delegate Rae Cousins told the Virginia Mercury. The additional funding will provide added staffing, nutritional meals, and before-school and afterschool programs.

‘Our Place After School’ Program Helping Kids With Special Needs and Their Parents, KSNB (Nebraska)

At Our Place After School Care in Hastings, Nebraska, teenagers with special needs not only learn how to prepare meals and manage money but they also make items to sell at their Freedom Factory gift shop. “This program was created in order to help teens with disabilities learn some life skills, some academic skills and social skills because all of these things are things they need extra help on,” Adeline Johnson, founder and executive director of Our Place After School Care, told KSNB. “These are kids, who often don’t get invited to after school activities, so this is the place where they get to do that.” Johnson hopes to expand the program as there are few afterschool options available to families with special needs children.

Lindale ISD, Mentoring Alliance Collaborate with Afterschool Program, Tyler Morning Telegraph (Texas)

This fall, the Mentoring Alliance afterschool program in Tyler, Texas will expand to 23 locations, including a new partnership with Lindale Independent School District. The new program will include free transportation, mentorship, tutoring, games, and life skills activities. Lindale Superintendent Stan Surratt told the Tyler Morning Telegraph, “They’ve done such a great job in the Tyler area, in several different school districts. We wanted to give our families and our students those opportunities.… If (Mentoring Alliance) can have a great impact on children after school, it’s going to help them during school and … all the way through their lives.”

Johnson City After-School Programs See Higher Attendance for Back to School, WJHL 11 (Tennessee)

As the new school year begins, the afterschool programs at the Boys & Girls Club of Johnson City/Washington County and Coalition4Kids in Johnson City, Tennessee have both reported a significant uptick in registrations. Program leaders say the growing need for afterschool can be attributed to the area’s population boom as well as the recent closure of Girls’ Inc., which had long provided out-of-school time programming in the community. “There’s a sense in the community that this is a big deal, that a non-profit serving kids is no longer serving [them, that’s] been around for decades is no longer here,” Coalition4Kids Executive Director Randy Hensley told WJHL 11. “That’s a big deal. And we’ve got to pay attention because these are all our kids, and it’s up to us to take care of all these kids.”