Archived -- Safe and Smart: Federal Resources

President Clinton Proposes An Increase In After-School Opportunities
As Part Of A Historic Initiative To Improve Child Care

As part of the President's 1998 State of the Union address, the President proposed spending over $20 billion over five years on child care initiatives that can improve the quality and supply of after-school programs and child care for America's working families. Included in his child care proposal are opportunities to help build a good supply of after-school programs, help working families pay for child care, improve the safety and quality of care, and promote early learning. Specifically, the new initiative would:

Expand access to safe after-school activities by increasing the 21st Century Community Learning Center Program by $800 million over five years to provide school-based, after-school opportunities for up to half a million children a year.

Make child care more affordable for working families by investing $7.5 billion over five years to double the number of children receiving child care subsidies to more than two million by the year 2003. The initiative also invests $5.1 billion over five years to increase tax credits for child care for three million families and provides a new tax credit for businesses that offer child care services to their employees at a cost of $500 million over five years.

Increase access to and promote early learning and healthy child development by establishing a $3 billion Early learning Fund that helps local communities improve the quality and safety of child care for children ages zero to five and increasing the investment in Head Start, doubling the number of children served in Early Head Start to 80,000.

Improve the safety and quality of child care by stepping up enforcement of state health and safety standards in child care settings, facilitating background checks on child care providers, increasing scholarships and training for child care providers, and investing in child care research and evaluation.

U.S. Department of Education

Many of the U.S. Department of Education's programs support after-school activities. They include:

The 21st Century Community Learning Center program is authorized under Title X, Part I (21st Century Community Learning Centers) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The funds can be used to build a school's capacity to address the educational needs of its community after school, on weekends, and during summers. The focus of this program is to provide extended learning opportunities for participating children in a safe, drug-free and supervised environment. Under the FY98 appropriation, over 300 schools will receive funding to support after-school activities. The president is proposing a billion dollar expansion of the program in FY99, at $200 million a year over five years, pending Congressional approval. For more information, call 202-219-2164.

The Partnership for Family Involvement in Education is a growing grassroots network of thousands of family-school partners, employers, community organizations, and religious groups that support family-school-community partnerships for learning. After-school activities are a national priority for the Partnership. Call 1-800-USA-LEARN for more information.

The America Reads Challenge calls on all Americans to support teachers and help ensure that every child can read well and independently by the end of 3rd grade. This summer, over 50 community coalitions, at least one in every state, are participating as America Reads sites. These sites match reading partners--college and high school students, community volunteers, parents, senior citizens--with young children to read together and do activities that build literacy skills and to encourage children to read for at least twenty minutes every day.

Thousands of college students are answering the challenge by serving as reading tutors for pre-school and elementary school students. These tutors can be a great resource for after-school programs. To encourage more colleges and universities to participate in the America Reads Challenge by allowing their Federal Work-Study students to work as reading tutors, the Department of Education has waived the institutional match for Federal Work-Study students who tutor kindergarten and elementary school students in reading. Effective July 1, 1998, this waiver will be extended to include Federal Work-Study students who work in family literacy programs. To date, over 1,000 colleges and universities have committed to the America Reads Challenge. For information, call 202-401-8888.

Title I encourages greater and more productive use of time outside of the classroom. Extending Learning Time for Disadvantaged Students: An Idea Book produced by the U.S. Department of Education, provides information on how Title I schools can enhance learning outside of the traditional school day, week, or year. Contact your State Department of Education for more information on your state's Title I program or contact the U.S. Department of Education at 202-260-0826.

The Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act provides funding through the U.S. Department of Education to help schools build local partnerships to reduce violence and drug use. The law authorizes "the promotion of before- and after-school recreational, instructional, cultural, and artistic programs in supervised community settings." Over 3,000 schools use this funding for after-school programs. The act offers school districts the flexibility to design their own comprehensive school safety programs and coordinate them with community agencies. For information, call 202-260-3954.

The TRIO programs fund postsecondary education outreach and student support services designed to encourage students from disadvantaged backgrounds to enter and complete college. Upward Bound provides intensive academic instruction, tutoring, and cultural enrichment activities to high school students in Saturday and summer classes, and funds mathematics and science regional centers to encourage students to pursue postsecondary degrees in those fields. Talent Search identifies disadvantaged youth ages 11 and up with the potential for postsecondary education and encourages them to graduate from secondary school and enroll in college by providing services such as mentoring, academic counseling, college admission and financial aid information, and a special initiative focusing on academic enrichment for sixth- and seventh-graders. For information, call 202-347-7430.

U.S. Department of Justice

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is co-administering the President's Crime Prevention Council, Ounce of Prevention Grant Program. These funds assist community-based, youth-led private, non-profit organizations in developing activities designed to combat youth substance use. A separate grant has been awarded to conduct a formative evaluation of the Youth Substance Use Prevention Grant Program.

The Pathways to Success (PTS) program is a collaborative effort among the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the Bureau for Justice Assistance (BJA), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). PTS has funded four local programs that promote one or a combination of the following activities: the arts, recreation, vocational skills, and entrepreneurial skills during after school, weekend, and/or summer hours. Programs may include a combination of a youth baseball league, academic tutoring, one-on-one interaction with an adult mentor, alternative activities, prevention education and skill-building, peer support, and linkages with professional arts and other community resources.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Juvenile Mentoring Program (JUMP)<--/a--> provides funding for local programs matching at-risk youth and caring adult role models in a school-based or community setting. Mentors include law enforcement and fire department personnel, college students, senior citizens, Federal employees and other private citizens representing a wide variety of professional and occupational backgrounds. The young people are of all races and range in age from 5 to 20. Some are incarcerated or on probation, some are in school, and others are dropouts. Programs emphasize tutoring and academic assistance, while others stress vocational counseling and training. In its first year (July 1995 to July 1996), JUMP worked with more than 2,000 at-risk young people in 25 states through one-to-one mentoring.

In FY1998, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), in partnership with the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL's) Employment and Training Administration, is providing funding support to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America for demonstration and evaluation of the TeenSupreme Career Preparation Initiative. DOL is providing $2.5 million to support the program, and OJJDP is providing $250,000 to support the initial costs of the evaluation. This initiative will provide employment training and other related services to at-risk youth through local Boys and Girls Clubs with TeenSupreme Centers. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America currently has 41 TeenSupreme Centers in local clubs around the country and may consider expanding the number of centers in 1998. DOL funds will support program staffing in the existing 41 TeenSupreme Centers and provide intensive training and technical assistance to each site. These funds will also be used by the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to provide administrative and staffing support to their program from the national office.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has awarded funds to support gang prevention efforts of local Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) chapters. BGCA has developed programs to prevent youth from entering gangs, intervene with gang members in the early stages of gang involvement and divert youth from gang activities to constructive endeavors and programs. BGCA proposes to provide training and technical assistance to 20 new gang prevention sites, three new intervention sites, and six SafeFutures sites and initiate a national evaluation of the Gang Prevention and Intervention program in FY 1998.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provides discretionary funds to the six sites under the SafeFutures initiative, which calls on communities and jurisdictions to enhance their partnerships in order to address the needs of at-risk and delinquent youth collaboratively. The goal of the initiative is to prevent and control youth crime and victimization through the creation of a continuum of care during child development (ages 0-18). SafeFutures offers prevention, intervention, treatment, and graduated sanctions. The strategy involves key leaders, agencies, community organizations, residents and youth, working together at both the planning level and the operational level.

In FY 1997, OJJDP funded an impact evaluation of the Quantum Opportunities Program (QOP) through an interagency fund transfer to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). QOP was designed by the Ford Foundation and Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America as a career enrichment program using a model providing basic education, personal and cultural development, community service, and mentoring. The purpose of the OJJDP funding for the evaluation is to determine whether QOP reduces the likelihood that inner-city youth at educational risk will enter the criminal justice system, including the juvenile justice system. The QOP impact evaluation is designed to measure the impact of QOP participation on such outcomes as high school graduation and enrollment in postsecondary education and training. Other student outcomes to be examined include academic achievement in high school, misbehavior in school, self-esteem and sense of control over one's life, educational and career goals, and personal decisions such as teenage parenthood, substance abuse, and criminal activity. Data on criminal activity is being collected from individual student interviews.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

This block grant is the primary federal subsidy program to pay for child care, enabling low-income parents to work. Funds are distributed by formula to the states to operate direct child care subsidy programs, as well as to improve the quality and availability of care. As part of the President's child care initiative, he has proposed to expand the block grant by $7.5 billion over five years to double the number of children receiving child care subsidies.

National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth
Family and Youth Services Bureau
Administration on Children, Youth and Families
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
P.O. Box 13505
Silver Spring, MD 20911-3505
(301) 608-8098
Fax (301) 608-8721

National Child Care Information Center
A Service of the Child Care Bureau
Administration on Children, Youth and Families
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
243 Church Street, NW, 2nd Floor
Vienna, Virginia 22180
(800) 716-2242
TTY (800) 516-2242
www.nccic.org

U.S. Department of Agriculture

The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture sponsors a number of food programs aimed at improving the nutritional status of America's children and youth. Services that can be used in before- and after-school and extended learning programs include:

National School Lunch Program, currently used by more than 26 million children in 94,000 schools across the country;

School Breakfast Program, currently used by 6.9 million children in 68,000 schools;

Summer Food Service Program, serving more than 2 million children during school vacation periods;

The Child and Adult Care Food Program, a year-round nutrition program currently serving 2.3 million children in child care programs;

Special Milk Program, which provides milk to children in schools, summer camps and child care programs when no other federally supported meal program is in operation.

In addition, the Nutrition Education and Training (NET) Program is available to support nutrition education in the food assistance programs listed above. Through its Team Nutrition, Food and Nutrition Services provides schools with nutrition education materials and other support for children and youth and technical assistance for food service professional staffs to assist them in preparing nutritious meals and snacks for children and nutrition-related learning activities. For more information, contact:

USDA Food and Nutrition Service
3101 Park Center Drive, Room 819
Alexandria, VA 22302
703-305-2286
http://www.fns.usda.gov/newsite.htm

A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Federal Resources

U.S. Department of Education

U.S. Department of Justice

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

U.S. Department of Agriculture