Sustained Funding for Youth and Out-of-School Time Programs

A Forum — February 7, 2003

Background

While there is a great deal of funding potentially available for youth out-of-school time activities from national, state, and local sources, these funds are often categorical in nature, narrowly allocated to a specific activity or category of youth, are time-limited, do not support sustainable efforts, and are not always packaged in ways that are easily accessible to local program providers. For these reasons, sustained funding of youth programs remains a challenge in many localities.

Cities and counties have long supported programs for youth through general fund revenues and the mandates of city agencies (such as parks and recreation or children and youth services). Increasingly, they are looking to a wider range of sources, including special set asides from general revenue, proceeds from targeted property and sales taxes, combined agency resources, and private philanthropy. At this forum, representatives from organizations that advocate for and serve youth during out-of-school hours spoke about the strategies and challenges to developing and maintaining sustained funding in San Francisco and Kansas City.

Forum Summary

Margaret Brodkin, Executive Director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth in San Francisco, California spoke about efforts in the San Francisco area to generate funding at the local level to support out-of-school and after-school programming. With the passage of Proposition 13, the California tax initiative that severely challenged the capacity of all education organizations to raise revenues for educational programming, San Francisco resorted to a variety of funding strategies (including developer impact fees and park bonds) to fund out-of-school and after school programs. The most significant strategy was a children’s fund that was passed as a ballot initiative by voters in 1991 and renewed in 2001. This fund (which became known as the Children’s Amendment) now generates financial resources for 120 different programs and serves approximately 8,000 children. It is a major source of funding for after school programs in the city and has transformed the services that are available to the city’s children.

Under this initiative, the city government automatically sets aside 3% of property tax revenue for services for children. Brodkin argued that one of the biggest advantages associated with this approach to raising funds is that it is no longer necessary to engage in annual budget battles to find funding for children’s programs. This initiative and the money that it has produced to support programs for children and youth also illustrates the potential power of elections and the political process in generating funding for youth out-of-school programs. This initiative was incredibly popular with the public and this popularity provided some leverage with politicians who might otherwise have resisted such an initiative. The initiative was also useful because supporters were able to use the money that was generated to leverage more money, for instance, by being able to satisfy the requirements to match funds to receive federal funding. One of the challenges, however, has been to create a whole new infrastructure for planning children’s services and determining how to allocate the funding. There have also been some challenges associated with implementation, such as establishing necessary and appropriate accountability, oversight, and training procedures.

David Smith, Vice President for Education and Community Outreach oversees education programs for the Partnership for Children (PFC), a metropolitan-wide child advocacy organization in Kansas City, Missouri. The Partnership for Children began in 1991 as a collaboration between multiple groups in the community advocating positive youth development. Smith described recent efforts by the PFC in the Kansas City area to generate sustained funding for youth programs.

One project that PFC has been involved with focuses on generating funding for out-of-school programs. In 1996, there were about 4,000 children in before and after school care in the Kansas City metro area and there was funding available for their programming from a desegregation case. However, as that money ran out, the community saw that they were in danger of losing many of the before and after school care programs. They came up with a plan to preserve these services that involved convincing school districts to use Title I funding for before and after school care and to provide free-of-charge use of the school buildings. This was possible in part because the community rallied around keeping these services intact and available. Today, about 5,000 children are provided the before and after school services. Early childhood and before and after school care advocates came together to look for sustainable funding to provide this continuum of services. The group is now planning a new campaign to educate the public and to raise additional funding to provide youth with out-of-school time services.

Marty Blank, Director for Community Collaboration at the Institute for Educational Leadership, served as a moderator for the discussion that followed Brodkin and Smith’s presentations. The audience asked whether other communities have been able to replicate San Francisco’s initiative. Brodkin replied that some have; however, she said, we should ask why it is that more have not been able to do so. She argued that for such initiatives to arise, there needs to be a force outside of city government that will be a strong advocate capable of circumventing established organizations and politicians who are content to sit around the table waiting for a consensus to develop. An audience member asked how advocates of out-of-school time programs can show that their programs produce improvements in student academic achievement. Smith replied that it is the responsibility of such programs to speak out clearly about the nature of positive youth development and to make evident that the outcomes expected of these programs should not be reduced solely to increased test scores. Brodkin agreed. An audience member stressed that an essential component of any initiative that seeks to generate and maintain funding for out-of-school time youth programs is advocacy. Without on-going advocacy, funds that seemed secure can be cut from city budgets. An audience member asked how Brodkin and Smith’s organizations were funded. Brodkin said that her organization is funded primarily through foundations and individual donations; Smith said that his organization is similarly funded. He argued that to receive adequate funding, it is necessary for such organizations to position themselves to do things that the community feels need doing.

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