Kids are snacking at one of the lunch tables in the cafeteria shared by Highlander Charter School and New Urban Arts, an artists’ studio. I hang out with the group that will attend classes in architecture or ceramics. Chatting at other tables are yet more middle school students getting a little social time before spending the next two hours painting, drawing and working in other media. This cafeteria is only one of many cafeterias around Providence where roughly 600 middle school kids gather after school, Monday through Thursday, to participate in activities they call the “After-Zone,” organized by the Providence After School Alliance (PASA).

Also snacking with the kids at each table are at least two adults who are the teachers and leaders for the activities. So, getting to know these adolescents are librarians, police, coaches, artists, sailors and other people who know a cool skill that the kids want to learn. Through PASA, hundreds of city kids have two more caring adults in each of their lives.

I ask the architecture/ceramics group why on earth they’d rather go to another class instead of going home and goofing off? They waive away my cluelessness. Gabrielle says, “I wanted to learn how to make pots. I see people on TV spinning pots with their hands and it’s cool. Also, in the After-Zone, you’re safe and protected. If you go home, you might end up getting into a fight.”

While walking to his classroom, Michael, who is taking an architecture class, explains, “I like that we can create anything we want as long as it’s realistic. I don’t like drawing with boundaries.”

The students are each designing a dream house. They began by researching an architect of their choice and giving a little report to the rest of the class. They drew elevations for their house to see what it would look like, and from those they created floor plans using a quarter-inch-to-one-foot scale. PASA activities integrate academics, like reading, research and math, into the hands-on projects, both to reinforce skills and to impress the kids with the usefulness of the stuff they learn in school.

Michael’s house has a long, stately avenue of palm trees leading to what looks to me like a palace, but he calls a mansion. He proudly points out the glassed-in pool in an atrium at the side of the house, as well as the outdoor pool labeled “Fountain of Youth.”

Today the class is building architectural models of their houses, using foam boards and materials from the state recycling center. Michael is especially looking forward to installing his avenue of synthetic palm trees.

His instructor, Sara Ossana, says, “These students are learning things that I learned as a graduate student.”

On this same day, other kids are in athletic programs run by the Providence police and the recreation centers. The Tennis Association adopted PASA as a pet project, and lends portable tennis nets and other equipment so kids can learn that sport. D.J. and musician Terrell Osborne teaches kids how to write, perform and record songs in his recording studio at Davey Lopes’ recreation center. And this is only a small taste of the many offerings.

With budget cuts and educators obsessing about test scores, the Providence middle schools have been pretty well stripped of virtually everything kids find fun — arts, field trips and afterschool sports. Before PASA, the city’s public school adolescents left school only to enter a late-afternoon void with nothing to do, while many parents were still working. Nationally, youth crime spikes between 2 and 6 p.m., a time also rich with opportunity for risky behavior, like sex and drugs, or for turning kids’ minds to mush with TV and video games.

Even while still a candidate in 2002, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline championed youth development and “community schools,” which function as neighborhood community centers instead of as educational fortresses. Drawing on Providence’s deep pool of talent, the new mayor gathered artists, recreation directors, librarians, teachers and even police officers to begin building a public/private partnership to provide afterschool programming that would give kids a safe place to be. Cicilline wanted that dead, counter-productive afternoon time to come to life for the age group most often ignored by policymakers.

PASA director Hillary Salmons and her staff went to work making the program real by filling a master calendar with activities in five neighborhood-based After-Zones. PASA works with afternoon programs run by everyone, including remedial classes given by Sylvan Learning and the good work of the College Crusade. Even school-run homework clubs are part of the master schedule.

Salmons says, “Instead of competing, all the afterschool programs work together, because it’s much more cost-effective for everyone.” Furthermore, all the adults — agency directors, police and artists — take a 32-hour training that “puts everyone on the same page. We have a series of standardized protocols. We offer consistently high-quality programming, with the same positive youth-development messages, same format, schedule and transportation, but with plenty of flexibility within the groups so they can do whatever it is they do best. Together we learn how to solve problems and how to approach youth.”

Initially parents worried about safety, but no longer. According to PASA surveys, parents are very satisfied with the program now. Kids don’t have to be there, but participation is growing.

To my mind, the best part of PASA is how it connects kids to all kinds of grownups and opportunities in the community. The 32-hour training includes instruction in how to talk to students in this age group, who really can be tough to understand and engage. Now the recreation and arts centers report higher participation in their non-PASA activities, because the kids know the agencies and their staff. Kids tell their friends. And no single school could possibly offer boxing, hip-hop dance, print-making and yoga, as well as homework help. PASA can.

Here’s hoping it can expand to the high schools next. This is community building at its best.

Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, consults for government agencies and schools; she is co-director of Information Works!, Rhode Island’s school-accountability project. She can be reached at julia steiny@cox.net , or c/o EdWatch, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.