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Submitted to the House Appropriations Subcommittee
On Labor-HHS-Education
April 4, 2002
Suncoast
AfterSchool
Alliance
2634 69th Ave South, St. Petersburg, FL 33712
Chairman Regula, members of the Subcommittee, the Suncoast AfterSchool Alliance is a non-partisan coalition of citizens. It includes parents, educators, and business and civic leaders who share a deep commitment to the school age youth of Pinellas County, especially those from the low-income families of St. Petersburg/Pinellas County, Florida. The Alliance believes that children will be safer, they will achieve more academically, and their lives and that of their families will improve as a result of their regularly attending quality, free after school programs. The Suncoast AfterSchool Alliance is a project of the Florida Consumer Action Network Foundation, the USAction Education Foundation, and the AfterSchool Alliance.
Mr. Chairman, in Pinellas County, Florida schools, the twenty-first largest school district in the United States, there are over 26,000 children in grades six through eight who attend twenty-three public middle schools. According to Pinellas Profile, which compiles data every two years, in the 1999-00 school year, over 45% of the students at these schools participated in the free or reduced priced lunch program. This group of children showed higher than state and national average use of drugs and alcohol. They were arrested more frequently than their state and nation-wide age-counterparts. Their performance on the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Tests (FCAT) standardized test was 20% lower than the Pinellas school district average.
A Federally funded 21st Century Community Learning Centers program in Pinellas County can help reverse this condition. Nearly 90% of Floridians strongly agree or agree that, “Since most juvenile crime occurs in the afternoon, more and better after-school care would make (their) community safer.” (Children’s Campaign, Inc., 2001 Survey) Yet, at this time, not a single public middle school in Pinellas County has a permanent, quality, after-school program for adolescents that is free of charge to their working families. With full funding at the Federal level, the families of Florida and Pinellas County have your promise that their children will have safe, convenient, affordable, and educationally sound places to be in the after school hours. The communities of Florida can have your promise that their adolescents will be productively occupied after school instead of being engaged in criminal or mischievous activity. In 21st Century Centers children can bridge the achievement gap and enrich learning that carries over to basic academics. They and their families can receive services that help to improve their quality of life and ability to successfully make their way in the world so that they are contributors, not burdens, to their community.
In this testimony we will describe for the Subcommittee the following:
§ The need for quality after school programs in Florida, with Pinellas County, Florida as a case in point
§ A description of the positive impact on the academic performance and lives of students and families who participate in 21st Century projects: The example of the former program at John Hopkins Middle School in St. Petersburg, Florida
§ How a 21st Century Learning program can help address current and impending special challenges Pinellas County students and families have before them
§ Our recommendation to the Subcommittee to provide, within Title IV, Part B of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, $1.5 billion for 21st Century Community Learning Centers programs
Pinellas County is a peninsula located on the central West Coast of Florida bordered by Tampa Bay on the east and the Gulf of Mexico on the west. Its largest municipalities are St. Petersburg and Clearwater. It is the most densely populated county in the state with 3,185 people per square mile, nearly three times as dense as the next largest county. Since 1990, the county’s population has increased on average by 6,150 people per year, now nearly 912,000. The county is economically diverse with approximately 40% of its citizens at or below the poverty level.
Pinellas County’s school system has over 111,000 students. Seventy-two percent are Caucasian, 18.7% are African American, 4.8% are Hispanic, 3% are Asian, 1.5% are multi-racial, and less than 1% are Native American. Of the 20,000 African American students living in the county and attending regular school, 73% live in the southern half of the county. Of the more than 39,000 students applying for free or reduced price lunches, 68% live in that area as well. Over the last five years, Pinellas saw a five percent increase in the number of free or reduced price lunch applicants.
Pinellas County has had fee-based child aftercare programs in elementary schools. Parents of low-income-family students have used these child-care programs for younger children because of the need for adult supervision. Agencies providing childcare were shown to have fourth and fifth grader participants at eighteen percent of total enrollment, a drastic drop from the kindergarten through third grader enrollment. When parents were asked, they indicated that cost for programs was the limiting factor affecting their children’s attendance. They felt that their child was “old enough to take care of him/herself” at that age. These children became “latchkey” kids because their families could not afford to do otherwise. Five years ago, Pinellas County had a grant that offered a free after-care program to middle school aged students from low-income families. When funding stopped three years ago, and parents were required to pay, attendance dropped by 30% and the program closed. Recreation center programs in the city noticed that, “buses dropped off students at local recreation centers, and youth walked home, because parents could not afford the weekly adjusted fee for the program.”
Are the adolescents of Pinellas County mature enough to “stay at home?” Substance abuse statistics for Pinellas County (Pinellas Profile, June 2001) show recent use of alcohol by eighth graders at 39.6% in 2000 (national results: 24%). Marijuana use among Pinellas eighth graders was 18% compared to 9.7% nationally. Arrest records for youth ages 10-17 in Pinellas County for 1999-00 were 122.5/1000 (state rate: 90.9/100; county adult rate: 51/1000.)
Do the children of the families that qualify for the free or reduced price lunch program need tutoring to help them bridge the academic achievement gap to meet state standards? In 1999, 62% of these children scored below the “passing” level on the reading portion of the FCAT, Florida standardized test (Pinellas County: 41%, Florida: 51%.) Fifty-nine percent of this group of students scored below the “passing” level on the math portion (Pinellas County: 39%, Florida: 50%.)
One of the original, pilot 21st Century Community Learning Centers existed at John Hopkins Middle School in south St. Petersburg from the 1998-99 school year through the 2000-01 year. Hopkins is a public, magnet school located in south St. Petersburg that was established in response to court-ordered desegregation. It is located in an area predominately populated by African Americans. Its student body is over 1,600. Within a two-mile radius around John Hopkins Middle, there are of 5,600 middle-school aged children, 4,528 of whom are eligible for the free or reduced-price lunch program.
During its three years of operation, the 21st Century program at John Hopkins served an average of 125 children per week, ages ten to fifteen, who were enrolled at the school or who lived in the surrounding community. Demand for the program grew from 75-100 students served per week with the full program of academic tutoring and enrichment in the first year to 200-300 served per week by the third year. These numbers increased during the weeks before and during FCAT standardized testing. The six-week summer school program served an average of 60-90 children per day. The numbers of children using the program during the school year and the summers for the enrichment portion only was greater.
Over the course of the program, 40-45% of students who regularly used the program increased their grades in academic subjects by at least one letter. A survey of teachers showed that children using the center improved skills needed for academic success such as turning in homework and projects, completing work, increased participation in class, and being on task in class.
The main focus of the program was middle school, a time when students are most susceptible to peer pressure, when they have a need for positive cooperation and caring relationships with authority and adult figures, and when parents are struggling to get their child through this often difficult time. The program also opened as a facility to the community so that all Pinellas County youth could participate in the enriched programs offered at a magnet school. It operated from 4 p.m. when school dismissed to 7:30 p.m. Certified teachers, familiar with students’ academic curriculum, tutored students in pre-algebra and algebra as well as reading and writing. FCAT testing and study skills were practiced. Students also were permitted access to the school library and computers.
Enrichment activities at Hopkins, which is Pinellas county’s middle school for the arts, international and communications studies, included visual arts, ethnic and modern dance, piano and drumming, drama, and oral presentation. Computer labs and professional instructors taught basic skills, research tools, web paging, and graphic design and animation. In conjunction with the Marine Science Department of the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus, students studied the fragile aquatic ecology of Florida’s Gulf Coast. In the process, they were introduced to the many careers in marine science and developed an understanding of and civic conscience for the environment. The 21st Century program at Hopkins also included a wellness component that stressed health through proper nutrition, exercise, and abstinence from addictive substances. Cultural programs and youth development provided students with information upon which they could build lifelong goals and skills to be successful leaders in society by exploring future job opportunities, meeting professionals in various fields, and learning about college requirements.
The Wellness program, part of the Hopkins 21st Century project, Triathletes Against Tobacco, earned “Best Practice” status in the state of Florida for its last two years and gained the attention of the Centers for Disease Control as a possible model for adolescent no-smoking public awareness programs. Students in the computer animation and media production classes, using the school’s high tech, state-of-the-art technology facilities and working with the dance program, produced a music CD and video on tobacco issues and healthy lifestyles.
Since the program at John Hopkins closed, several parents have called the school to find out its status and were extremely upset when told that it was no longer available. Mr. Edward Baldwin, Principal of the school, expressed his strong disappointment at its closing because, “it helped many of the students (there) who needed it most.”
As the result of a lawsuit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund against Pinellas County Schools, the district has been operating under a federal court desegregation order since 1971. The order required the district to assign students to attend schools so that no school’s student body was more than 30% African American and that all schools had a seven percent minimum of African American students. Because the majority of African American students live in the southern half of the thirty-nine mile long county, compliance with the court order required the district to bus some students long distances throughout the county rather their being able to attend the school closest to their homes. Further, students were bused to a given school usually for a limited time. This policy was intended to minimize the burden of being bused by shortening the time a child was required to do so. An unfortunate side effect of these necessary and well-intentioned policies, however, was that children could not establish themselves in a single school community for all their elementary, middle, or high school years. Further, because children had to attend schools far from home, parents and children often were not able to participate in after school clubs, events, and organizations.
On December 17, 1999, the courts ruled that the Pinellas School District had achieved unitary status – that it no longer practiced racially discriminatory policies and processes. By August 2003, the district will phase in a new student assignment plan, the Choice Plan. The school district will be divided into four areas of elementary schools, three of middle schools, and one, countywide for high schools. The plan permits families to choose among any of the schools within their assigned area for their children. It gives geographic proximity preference in assigning students to schools, so that, eventually, all children will be able to attend the school closest to their home, if that is their desire. Thus, evolving toward the re-establishment of a system in which students can attend schools closer to home.
The school district recognizes that, among the challenges to making the Choice Plan work, all schools must be equally attractive to families. Under the desegregation order, the school system established magnet schools, mostly in the southern half of the county, to minimize some busing by attracting Caucasian students to voluntarily attend what would have otherwise been a predominately African American-attended school. Borrowing from this success, the school district is planning to enhance the desirability of the needed, new schools being built in the southern half of the county by giving each one a theme or “attractor,” such as Montessori or marine biology.
The presence of a 21st Century Center in many of the middle schools in the southern part of the county would be a significant “attractor” to families. The programs will provide quality, academic remediation and enrichment to children and keep them safe and “off the streets”; they will also offer a logical location for community programs and services for families, many of which must be realigned with the new system of student assignment.
The 21st Century Community Learning Center program has the promise of playing a major role in achieving the Choice Plan’s goal of having successful schools and healthy communities in Pinellas County including southern St. Petersburg. Indeed, it has the potential of making a profound impact on the ongoing process of bringing the opportunity for quality education to all students in Pinellas County regardless of their race or socio-economic background. With children spending after school hours at the 21st Century School and parents connecting with the services provided there, these schools can be the heart of neighborhood and community life. Residents in the neighborhoods surrounding these schools will be able to feel a sense of ownership and pride in them and will want to contribute to their success. The children, parents, and employees in these schools, in turn, will have a sense of responsibility and accountability to their surrounding neighbors.
Thanks to the bi-partisan leadership of the members of the Committee, Congress graciously provided Title IV, Part B of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA.) Title IV of the ESEA authorizes $1.25 billion for 21st Century Learning programs beginning in FY 2002 with $.25 billion dollar increases each fiscal year until FY 2007 at which time funding will achieve $2.5 billion. Evidence of Congress’ commitment to and confidence in this program lies in the history of its funding trajectory from $750,000 in FY1995 to $1 billion in FY2002. But, as you know, this is only a beginning.
For FY2003, we are recommending an increase of $.5 billion for 21st Century Learning programs to $1.5 billion, the level authorized in the ESEA. Last year’s appropriation was $.25 billion less than the authorized amount, so funding for this program is already lagging. This shortfall can prevent Pinellas County/St. Petersburg from establishing 21st Century Learning Centers in several of its middle schools.
Because the FY2002 funding will go to the states as a block grant based on Title IA formulas, the amount Congress appropriates directly affects the amount available to applicants for new projects within each state. Congress has been very generous in its funding of this program, however, its funding is still falling desperately short of meeting the need. For example, in FY’00, seventy-four school districts in Florida applied directly to the U. S. Department of Education for funding for new 21st Century projects. The Pinellas School District’s was among them. The total per year amount of those applications was $54 million. Only seven of those applications were funded at a total cost of $3 million per year. The per year cost of the Pinellas District’s application alone was $1.7 million.
Congress wisely legislated in the ESEA that state education departments must spend 95 percent of their allocation to fund 21st Century Learning programs managed by eligible local entities. This assures the American taxpayer that their tax dollars will be spent as intended: to help improve the academic achievement of students whose need is greatest, to help working families, to make neighborhoods safer, and to keep children safe after school. In its wisdom, Congress created 21st Century Community Learning Centers recognizing that quality education is the basis for healthy communities and a thriving nation. Congress’ extraordinary agenda to fund this program in $.25 billion increases to $2.5 billion by FY2007 provides strong leadership for real progress in education and all that education underpins in our society. We urge the Committee not to deviate from this strategy so that communities like St. Petersburg/Pinellas, Florida can share in Congress’ vision.
Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee, we are grateful for this opportunity to testify. If you have any questions, we would be happy to answer them. Thank you.
School Board of Pinellas County, Office of Community Services and Human Relations, Application for Federal Education Assistance, 21 century Community Learning Center, proposed project dates: 7/1/01 – 6/30/04, Sheila Keller, Project Director.
Please communicate questions and comments to the Pinellas County School District, Office of Community Services and Human Relations, 727-588-6090, attn: Sheila Keller; the Pinellas County School District;,Office of the Superintendent, attn: J. Howard Hinesley, Ed.D. 727-586-1818; John Hopkins Middle School, St. Petersburg, Florida, attn: Edward Baldwin, Principal, 727-893-2400 and Mrs. Irene Seybold, Program Director of the former 1998-00 21st Century Community Learning Center; and the Suncoast AfterSchool Alliance, 727-895-2491, attn: Ruth Barrens.