The Trump administration recently unfroze about $1 billion aimed at after-school and summer programs across the country.
The 21st Century Community Learning Center money, though, is just part of the overall education money federal officials had held back. There’s about $6 billion that is still frozen, including around $100 million earmarked for Arizona.
Among the groups that will now get the money that’s been released is Boys & Girls Clubs of the Valley. They had about $1.3 million frozen by the administration. The Show spoke with President and CEO Marcia Mintz and asked about the significance of finally getting that federal money, after a nearly three-week delay.
Full conversation
MARCIA MINTZ: Well, the nice thing about it being unfrozen is it actually is giving us some time to really figure out how we're going to continue to serve those 2,000 vulnerable youth for the long term. As people might not know, the money that was frozen was already committed for this year, but we also know that there is $0 put in the budget for next year, so we want to fix the problem not just for right now, but we want to fix it for the future.
MARK BRODIE: So does having that money coming in now allow you to do what you were expecting to do for at least this school year?
MINTZ: For this school year, yes, but it might be done in a different way. We're taking this time right now with each of our school partners to really evaluate what is the best way to even provide the service this year so we can continue it next year. Because if not, we're going to end up with the same problem next year and that's not a long-term and sustainable solution.
BRODIE: What are some of the options? I mean, if you know that you're not getting money for the next school year. How do you try to adjust what you're doing now to keep that sustainable?
MINTZ: So I think we are absolutely going to lean on the philanthropic community to come forward and say, “hey, we've identified with our schools the most vulnerable of youth in this position. Will you help us, make sure they're hitting their academic achievements, getting those critical youth development and life skill pieces from 3 to 7 p.m.”
And I think a good deal of the philanthropic community will step up.
I also think it's working with schools in a different way to deliver out of school time programming and it might look different than it has in the past given the limited resources.
BRODIE: Yeah, I mean, do you have to maybe scale back now so that you maybe do less but can do it for longer?
MINTZ: It might be. You might need to scale it. I wouldn't say scale back, but do it in a different way. It could be, for example, maybe it's not 'til 7, maybe it's till 5 p.m., maybe we can actually go to our families and say, can you participate or open it up to other youth and have some other families pay to help offset the cost of the program.
BRODIE: Understanding that this is still fairly early days since the unfreezing, I'm curious what you have heard from schools about all this, especially given that you know, they're not necessarily sure about the rest of this funding.
MINTZ: So that's a huge challenge for schools. Many of them have chosen to not continue 21st Century funding even though the funding has unfrozen, and they're coming to Boys & Girls Club and saying, "hey, we'll just send our kids to you, but that's not sustainable for us as well."
We'd love to take in as many kids as possible. But there is an operational cost, you know, and there's, you know, for every 20 kids we take in, that's another staff person. There are really hard costs involved with continuing to serve kids even in our existing facilities.
BRODIE: When you talk about needing to rely on the philanthropic community, what kind of support are you needing here? Like, I would imagine it's not a small number.
MINTZ: No, these are seven-figure problems, and I think When we've had challenges in the past, it's really taken the public and private sector to come together, the business community, the philanthropic community and create some of those multiyear, long-term funding strategies to help get us to the place we need, give us that operating runway, really help us build stuff up and work with families.
I will say our families do pay. They pay what they can, and for some families they can pay the cost, and for many they can't. So having that financial assistance and that scale really is what it's about and helping as many kids as possible through financial assistance.
BRODIE: How do you think about what the programs themselves might look like given the resources that you have or may have and given what the needs are of the students that you're serving?
MINTZ: Unfortunately, the needs and what we're seeing has just increased and it's very, very challenging for us as youth development professionals to say, "oh, let's scale back or let's not provide this program."
How do you choose between academic success and support, you know, healthy lifestyles, making kids sure kids are physically active, getting healthy, nutritious food, mental health support, arts, STEM, music technology, AI programming?
This is everything kids need today and more importantly those life skills, those social skills, how to interact with other people and our career development program, which honestly starts in third grade. It's helping young people see here in Arizona what kind of careers of the future they could have. You know, how would you choose?
BRODIE: Given the timing of when this money was unfrozen and, you know, how Arizona is maybe a little different than the rest of the country, some schools had already started. Some were just about to get underway when the money was unfrozen. Some will be starting up, you know, in the next week or two.
What did that mean, even though you have the money now for this school year, did that impact what you're able to do or what schools were thinking they were going to do given the timing of this?
MINTZ: Absolutely. We started the conversation as soon as it was frozen on July 1 and with some schools we are looking at different ways to deliver the program this year to still serve the kids that were enrolled in the program, but you have to remember a lot of schools just went on pause and they said, "oh, we're we're just going to wait," and it's up to the schools to identify the students that really need to be in these programs.
So I think they're trying to figure out how to do that now, but families are nervous. They're nervous about, you know, doing it this year and then what about next year? And I think that also impacts school choice when parents are looking, especially working families, where to place their kids. They need to know they have a place after school because then their jobs are not sustainable and that's going to impact our workforce tremendously.
BRODIE: So understanding that crystal balls are often very cloudy, I'm curious when you sort of close your eyes and think about what the future of these programs might look like at this moment. What do you think?
MINTZ: I think we have to be as innovative as we can and as efficient as we can with the resources we have to try to serve our existing club members and youth and figure out a way to continue to serve more again. I think it could look differently I think you know, it might not be the same hours, it might not be the same location. It could be a different model of program delivery, but nothing is off the table at this point, and we have to really dig deep and figure out what's the most important services we can deliver to, you know, the youth who need us most and our working families.
I think that it's important that this community, honestly, this state, this country really do some soul searching about priorities right now. And know that this is something that if you don't invest in right now there is such a long term ripple effect that would take, you could say decades or a lifetime to catch up with or never.
And the question is, you know, what do we care about as a community and a society? My experience with this community here in Arizona has always been that they have stepped up for our youth and the most vulnerable youth, and I am extremely optimistic that they will do so again.
