21CCLC Blog

Out-of-school time programs provide incredible value to our communities and those within them, especially for working parents in need of an affordable, safe solution for their children in the summer months. These programs go above and beyond the typical childcare environment, offering opportunities for engagement and a myriad of enrichment opportunities.

Attendance matters. In addition to being a factor in funding, it is also a major factor in student success. Studies have shown that “high attenders,” or students who attended their after-school programs (including summer sessions) nearly every day, gain more math, language arts, and social-emotional skills than 75-80 percent of their peers. Students who regularly attend their after-school programs are likely to experience the following benefits:

Even though 21^st Century Community Learning Centers (21CCLC), or after-school programs, serve a great purpose for school-aged children and teenagers, funding for these programs has been on the docket for removal several times in the last few years. That is why it is vitally important to create a sustainable program through funding diversity.

With summer coming to a close, and schools getting ready to resume the task of educating, it’s a good time to reset, reorganize, and rejuvenate. That means not only taking time to determine if your program’s current methods are helping or hurting staff, but also finding out what processes could be improved.

When the goal is to maximize the benefit K-12 students receive from after-school programs, Spending hours on complicated or monotonous administrative tasks to ensure an after school program satisfies reporting requirements and gets the funding it needs can be daunting, distracting, and at times, disheartening. These efforts take time and resource away from the more critical goal of maximizing the actual benefit students receive from after school programs.

With millions of children currently enrolled in after-school programs across the country, there is a great deal of data to manage and report to the federal government. A portion of an after-school program funding can be dedicated to administration, such as after-school software system data management.

Educators already appreciate and understand that children are our future, and they need structure and systems to thrive in school and in life. After-school programs help lend structure to children after school hours, which is why after-school programs are vital to the continued success of our students. As recently as 2014, there were 10.2 million children enrolled in after-school programs in the U.S. This is up from 8.4 million in 2009. This number only continues to grow as more and more parents are forced to work full-time outside of the home and desire a safe place for their children when school is over where they can continue to expand on the lessons they received during the school day.

When a grantee is considering how to use its ESSA Title IV, Part B, 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21CCLC) funding, the first thing that usually comes to mind is after-school programs. While this is probably the most common use of these funds, there are three other ways (or ‘times’) that 21CCLC funds may be used. These funds are not limited to after-school. They may be used for any outside-of-the-regular-school-day programs, which include using 21CCLC funds for:

Receiving government funding for your after-school program is contingent on how well a 21st Century Community Learning Center’s (21CCLC) data is organized and reported. Reporting inaccurate data can cost after-school programs hundreds of thousands of dollars and put them in jeopardy of having funding withheld. However, there are many ways to keep important data organized, helping after-school programs ensure continued funding, and possibly even help programs receive future funding increases.

Whether your 21st Century Community Learning Center (21CCLC) program is funded for the foreseeable future or not, it can still be a challenge to expand on current program offerings or keep lights on due to budgetary limitations. However, with some creativity and even some fundraising efforts, it’s possible to not only expand current offerings, but also plan for future program offerings. Here are some ways to cultivate your 21CCLC program while still staying within reasonable budgetary boundaries.