Students in the Mural Art program in Carver Middle School's Woodcraft Rangers made this piece, spraypaint on canvas, amongst others.
Leon Mostovoy was once a professional photographer. But a favor for a friend who was putting on an exhibit for inner city youth changed that. Now, he's one of many who share their love for art with impressionable youth in South L.A. after-school programs while they try to ignore the challenges of doing so.
Mostovoy, a senior program consultant for Woodcraft Rangers, works at the programs Carver Middle School branch and at other campuses over the week, organizing and approving group projects to bring out youths’ budding artistry.
Whether it’s soccer or football, skateboarding or mural art, Woodcraft hosts activities for Carver students to keep them off the streets after school lets out at 3:26 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. There’s enforced homework time and a budding music video project with students from other branches.
Making do with little
As long as Woodcraft continues to satisfy Carver’s needs, its branch remains funded with proposition-established state funding, and has weathered the budget crisis without having to cut much programming. There's been other cuts, though.
“I can get staff, but paying the staff is the issue,” said Woodcraft at Carver Site Coordinator David Perez.
Perez has had to strip his staff’s hours down to their minimums and stagger their hours to make up the gaps. If enough students don’t show up to groups to warrant a staff member’s hours, he’ll dismiss the staff member early — but not the youth.
“We never try to send kids home early,” Perez said.
The Woodcraft Rangers also have to pay for a security guard to watch the school lobby — a request from the school, but a needed one — older siblings of students have come on campus looking for retribution on their younger sibling’s behalf.
A girl stumbling in to Carver’s lobby recently with blood streaming down her face reminded Perez of the dangers outside school walls. She’d gotten beaten near the school’s steps and ran into Carver asking for help.
“I don’t want to say it’s dangerous, but it is,” Perez said of the area around Carver.
Woodcraft must even protect its equipment from the kids themselves. Perez and his staff take care not to expose students to all their equipment — only bringing equipment out for kids to use and never showing where they store it.
The Woodcraft Rangers room in Carver used to host an innovative streetbike construction class, with students building their own bikes and locking them in the classroom at night; after thieves broke in and stole the bikes, the class was canceled due to lack of materials. Later, a roomful of recently-purchased PlayStation 3 gaming consoles were stolen. Last fall, enough laptops were stolen to cancel the entire computer class.
So Perez takes few chances. Parents are generally instructed to wait outside; only a handful come in to pick up their students. Students are slowly being reintroduced to computer instruction as more are bought.
Shaky future for after-school programs
At most schools, students sit on waiting lists to get into programs like Woodcraft Rangers — only 83 students per campus are paid for through California proposition 49’s After School Safe Education Act (ASIS).
Funding for the proposition, which passed on the 2002 ballot, can only be cut by voter initiative, leaving it momentarily safe from looming budget cuts.
For every student not in an ASIS-funded program, free after-school care is up on the LA Unified School District chopping block.
Beyond the Bell, LAUSD’s after-school organizational arm since 1915, provides optional after-school programs on every elementary and middle school campus in the school district. With dwindling options, LAUSD is slated to cut funding for the free after-school permissive programs — and end free programming from the end of the school day until 6 p.m., a period that is statistically risky for youth without places to be.
“There are lots of ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ before that happens, but worst case is it could be cut,” said Alvaro Cortés, director of Beyond the Bell. “It would be very difficult for parents. It wouldn’t give them much of a choice.”
Currently, the new LAUSD Superintendent, John Deasy, is negotiating with LAUSD unions and organizations and asking for givebacks and furlough days to bridge LAUSD’s $408 million budget deficit.
Cortés hopes to hear the final word on funding for after-school programming from Deasy and the LAUSD Board of Education by next month. In the meantime, he’s looking into other funding options, including donations from foundations, Cortés said, but funding need not come just form large organizations.
“I’m starting now — going to reach out to the public,” Cortés said. “There’s lots of exemplary programs and we’re being cut to the bone. We need to make sure kids have these valuable experiences and keep the flow of learning going all day.”
It isn’t just after-school programming at stake: Beyond the Bell hosts citywide sports leagues, an outreach program for the LA marathon called Students Run LA, and the All City Marching Band of 350 students that plays in the Rose Parade. The program’s summer camp, held in Angeles National Forest, is also attached to the tumultuous funding to be cut.
The after-school programs may not be able to keep the streets completely out of the schools, but for several hours until they close up shop at 6 p.m., they try their best.
