Nine cities will receive a total of $7.8 million in grants to strengthen the after-school programs in their locales, the Wallace Foundation reported this week.
The cities—Baltimore, Denver, Ft. Worth, Texas, Grand Rapids, Mich., Jacksonville, Fla., Louisville, Ky., Nashville, Tenn., Philadelphia, and St. Paul, Minn.—all have half their student populations on free and reduced-price lunch plans and were selected given the probability of scaling up their existing after-school infrastructure.
These cities were also included as part of a report on 27 cities that were heavily promoting and improving after-school programming in their communities, published by the National League of Cities and supported by the Wallace Foundation.
According to the foundation’s release, the efforts will focus on improving quality and gathering reliable data on student participation. Work in the cities could include developing city standards for after-school, providing professional development and program assessment tools, and building an online directory that helps parents find good after-school programs.
Intermediaries, like the City of Forth Worth Parks and Community Services Department and the Family League of Baltimore City will each receive up to $765,000 over the course of four years to facilitate the systems building efforts in the nine cities.