PROVIDENCE — When the final bell rings at Roger Williams Middle School, several hundred students make a beeline for the doors, but the school doesn’t empty out for the evening, nor do the doors shut for the night.

Now, thanks to a unique after-school alliance that is drawing national attention, approximately 1,000 students from almost every middle school in Providence stay on campus to participate in a host of non-academic activities, from puppetry to circus arts.

In the basement of Roger Williams, several girls are practicing their dance moves. As three visitors approach, they dissolve in self-conscious giggles and their routine briefly falls apart.

Across the way, a group of seventh and eighth graders prepares to conduct a science experiment with their mentors from the University of Rhode Island. The program, called SMILE, for Science and Math Investigative Learning Experience, introduces middle school students to the fun side of science. The students have visited URI, where they learned the rudiments of computer programming through a system designed for young students. “It’s more fun than school ’cause you get to do hands-on stuff,” said Jasmin Fajardo, an 11-year-old student at Roger Williams.

“You get to make experiments here,” said 13-year-old Asia Britto. “It makes science more fun.”

The Providence After School Alliance is the brainchild of Mayor David N. Cicilline, who, three years ago, envisioned a partnership among the schools, the city’s recreation centers, the Boys & Girls Clubs and other nonprofit groups that would provide middle school students with a rich and meaningful selection of activities.

The mayor targeted middle school students because that is when they begin skipping school, experimenting with drugs and seeing their grades begin to plummet. Middle school is where many kids tune out of education. By high school, it’s often too late to get them back.

Elementary school children are enrolled in after-school care. Not so with middle school students, who often go home to an empty house where the combination of boredom and lack of adult supervision is a recipe for trouble.

PASA, the creation of Hillary Salmons and the Education Partnership, a business-backed education organization, formed nearly three years ago to offer safe, high-quality after-school programs to the city’s middle school youth. Salmons was smart: she hired a marketing group, which held a series of focus groups that asked youngsters what they wanted. They said they wanted sports, dance, art and music — the programs that had fallen to deep school-budget cuts several years ago.

“We wanted to validate the urban youth culture,” Salmons said during a tour of some of the afterschool programs. Even the name was vetted by middle school students, who thought the term “after-school” implied child care but liked the idea of “zones,” which sounded vaguely scientific and cool.

Salmons and her staff did their homework: they discovered that only 500 Providence middle school students were taking part in any kind of after-school activities and less than 10 percent of the 26,000 school-age students in the city were enrolled in regular after-school programs.

As Salmons said, “We wanted to add depth and breadth to the existing programs.”

But PASA didn’t want to add yet another layer of bureaucracy; it wanted to enlarge the current after-school offerings and improve their quality.

PASA also spoke with parents, who said what they wanted most was the feeling that their children were safe and cared for.

PASA created something called “after-s” that linked a couple of middle schools with a network of neighborhood libraries, recreation centers and Boys & Girls Clubs. In the beginning, the biggest challenge was persuading all of the nonprofit organizations to work together.

“We are a very turfy state,” Salmons said. “The inclination was to fight for your piece of the action. People worried that the Education Partnership would get all of the money.”

PASA had to convince these disparate groups that there was more to be gained by pooling resources and staff than by going it alone. So far, the collaboration has attracted some impressive partners, including Save the Bay, the Urban League of Rhode Island and the United States Tennis Association. Several universities, including the University of Rhode Island, Brown and Johnson & Wales, have partnered with PASA, offering student volunteers.

The next challenge was creating a set of program standards and then training the providers to make sure that they were offering quality after-school activities.

The alliance has two major goals: to improve school attendance and reduce suspensions by offering students a carrot not only to come to school, but, ideally, to do well in school. To bridge the gap between the schools and the after-school programs, PASA hired someone in each zone to coordinate its activities.

Although it is difficult to measure the success of “soft” educational programs like this one, Roger Williams Principal Rudy Moseley said that he has started to see the first signs of progress.

“I’d say that their attitude is starting to change,” he said. “We’re starting to see that PASA is the carrot that gets them to school. We can tell them that education is important, but often they don’t see the value. PASA grabs their interest.”

The way it works now, a student has to show up for school in order to participate in an after-school activity. But Salmons and Moseley agree that the schools — and PASA — need to figure out a more precise system to reward students with strong attendance records. Currently, the reward system is informal and ad hoc. For example, students with an attendance rate of at least 80 percent were recently invited to visit the Black Repertory Theater downtown.

As Salmons said, “We’re trying to get kids excited about their full day of school” from the moment they walk into homeroom until long after the last bell rings.

If schools form the hub of the after zones, then the city’s recreation centers are among its invaluable spokes. At the Davey Lopes Recreation Complex on the South Side, the basketball court was humming with anticipation recently as Roger Williams students prepared to face off against students from Gilbert Stuart Middle School.

One of the hidden benefits of PASA is nudging students, who are very turf-conscious, to make friends with students from across the city. Everyone is aware of the East Side-South Side rivalry which sometimes erupts in rumbles at Kennedy Plaza. The hope is that students from Perry Middle School will be less likely to brawl with their peers from Esek Hopkins if they meet on neutral ground, if they are able to put a name to the face.

Even the Police Department is getting in on the action. A number of school-based police officers are paid to work with middle school students at the recreation centers. At Davey Lopes, Patrolman Jesse Ferrell is refereeing a basketball game. But it goes much further than that. By getting to know him beyond his uniform, Ferrell hopes, these teens will see the police in a less intimidating light.

Davey Lopes is a perfect example of the kinds of relationships that the alliance has forged. Under one roof, the recreation people are working with the local police, who are working with high school volunteers, who are working with paid PASA staff.

In the basement, on what was once a swimming pool, a bunch of girls perform a series of fitness routines in a boxing ring while two teenage employees shout out words of encouragement. Eventually, the girls collapse, sweaty but elated.

“Most of these girls were never part of anything growing up,” said Jaleesa Jones, 17, one of the PASA staff members. “Now they feel a part of something.”

“It keeps me in shape,” said Jenneh Borkai, another PASA staffer. “The girls look up to me. They ask me questions about dating and school.”

PASA is funded by a five-year, $5-million grant from the Wallace Foundation and $1.5 million from local donors. Three years in, Salmons has to start thinking about how to replace the Wallace money when it runs out. One possibility is licensing the after-zones as child-care providers, which would make them eligible for state funding.

Meanwhile, the program is generating national buzz. The mayor of Norwalk, Conn., recently toured the after-zones, and Salmons said that the mayors of Omaha, Neb., Cleveland and Atlanta have all expressed interest in the Providence model.

To see more pictures from the program, go to www.projo.com/providence.