Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) will introduce an amendment this week to increase funding for after-school programs that would be cut under President George Bush’s budget proposal, which potentially ends after-school services for 12,000 Massachusetts children.
‘It’s hard to believe that an education president could submit such an anti-education budget, which includes this drastic cut to the after-school program that has been proven effective, and which the president supported just last year,’ Kennedy said in a press release last week.
Bush’s proposed budget, being debated in the U.S. Senate this week, would devote $600 million to the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, compared to $1.75 billion called for by the No Child Left Behind Act Bush signed into law in Jan. 2002, according to a report by the nonprofit group Afterschool Alliance.
The program currently serves 29,000 Massachusetts students, though 70 percent of applicants are turned away for lack of funding, according to Jen Rinehart, a spokeswoman for the Afterschool Alliance. The president’s budget would fund only 17,000 students in the state, Rinehart said, while the No Child Left Behind Act calls for funding providing 52,000 Massachusetts kids with after-school services.
Rinehart said the cuts in the federal budget for the fiscal year 2004, which begins on July 1, 2003, could affect how states decide to fund after-school programs as well.
‘It sends a message that states and governors pick up on,’ she said. ‘States will start cutting that same funding. That translates into pretty significant numbers of children who will lose services.’
The cuts are particularly damaging at a time when schools are facing higher federal standards enacted in the No Child Left Behind Act, Rinehart said.
‘Everybody supports the goals of No Child Left Behind, but we’re concerned that the government is pulling funding that would help those kids and schools meet those standards,’ she said.
The after-school program also reduces crime by keeping children off the streets during the hours ‘when youth are most at risk,’ according to the press release.
The bipartisan group Fight Crime: Invest in Kids released a report in February that said the cut to after-school funding ‘will result in 41,000 crimes and cost taxpayers $2.4 billion.’
Dan Langan, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education, said funding for the 21st Century program is being cut because the program is not as effective as it needs to be. He cited a study, commissioned by the department and released in February, that showed limited academic improvement among program participants.
‘The goal is not to abandon this program,’ he said. ‘The goal is to strengthen it.’
‘We want to make sure that taxpayer money will go to programs that work,’ Langan added, saying the administration has increased funding for education overall.
Kennedy will fight for the funding to be restored, spokesman Mike Spahn said yesterday.
‘The senator thinks it is extremely important to retain the commitment to America’s children through budgeting,’ he said.
The budget amendment is in the works, Spahn said, and Kennedy expects to introduce it by the end of the week.
‘The senator has consistently said budgets reflect a nation’s priorities,’ he added. ‘We think this has to be a priority, even in a time of war.’
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
