Instead of funding more activities for students after they leave school each day, the mayor and the Providence School Alliance look to link existing programs.

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, May 11, 2005

BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- To hear Elvis Pena talk, after-school programs made him stronger in body and in spirit.

"Wrestling trained my body and taught me to keep going even when I knew the odds were against me," he told 300 people at Perry Middle School yesterday. "Debate taught me that to change someone's perspective is to change the world. And break-dancing. . . . well let's just say that you can't succeed in everything."

Pena, the student government president at E3, was one of several teenagers to speak about the importance of after-school programs at yesterday's kick off of the Providence School Alliance's After Zones program.

Mayor David N. Cicilline and the alliance announced the creation of After Zones in five neighborhoods. Rather than spend money creating new programs, the After Zones will connect programs run by schools, libraries, city recreation centers and nonprofit groups with the hope that together, they can expand on what already exists.

The neighborhood hubs will be located in the lower South Side, the North End/East Side, Olneyville, Smith Hill and the upper South Side. Each hub will receive $400,000 over three years to pay for a full-time coordinator, transportation, public relations and technology.

The money will also be used to train staff, conduct a program evaluation and create a Web-based method of tracking student participation.

Funding for the After School Alliance, part of the nonprofit Business Education Roundtable, comes from a $5-million grant from the Wallace Foundation and $1 million from Bank of America. The Nellie Mae Education Foundation donated $100,000 to help get the hubs off the ground.

"Right now, we're fragmented," said Hillary Salmons, the After School Alliance's director. "Why not pool everyone's collective genius and work together?"

The idea is to create a network of connected campuses. A student would go to one location for a healthy snack, then perhaps bused to a community arts program, then walk to the library for homework help.

Another student might play flag football at a middle school, like students at Perry were doing yesterday. Then he might go to a recreation center to play chess or participate in a debate club.

"We, as adults, have to learn to play in the sandbox together," Salmons told a crowd of educators, leaders of nonprofit groups and members of the arts community.

By combining forces, she said, the hope is that the groups will have more time to concentrate on providing high-quality programs to more students.

The alliance decided to focus on middle school students because that age group has the fewest after-school activities and the greatest need for something to fill the gap between the last school bell and the time their parents get home. According to Cicilline, 48 percent of middle schoolers go home alone.

"Our responsibility to children doesn't only occur between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.," said Cicilline, who played a few minutes of flag football with Perry students yesterday. "It's thinking about education in a much broader way."

After the news conference, community organizations and schools broke into small neighborhood groups to discuss how they can begin to collaborate. They have until June 8 to submit applications to the alliance. Pilot programs will begin this fall and the first of the neighborhood hubs will open in January.