🤔 New Afterschool Data. 😠 The end of K lottery Data. ⛱️ And pools.
Waiting for the upcoming afterschool timeline + whether youth center prices will really go up as high as they said.
[1.] ☀️ DHSP Summer Camp lottery open until Mon, March 3
All the info you need.
👏 This timeline is a big improvement from earlier years. (In 2023, families only got their lottery results in June!) Thank you to DHSP for making it easier for families to plan their summer childcare.
[2.] 🤔 2024-25 afterschool data
The City released their final Fall 2024 afterschool data in November. (See the 2-hour video of City Council discussing the results with DHSP leaders, and the slides.)
Note: The meeting had no public comment — DHSP seems not to have done much to publicize it. But they have a mailing list. Why not let families know public meetings are coming up? (Please let us know if we somehow missed an email on this subject from them.)
6 things that stood out to us from the data:
[A.] Few new seats in 2024 - DHSP touted having added ~160 new seats "recently," but, in 2024, only 38 of those were added. Our ongoing message to DHSP: we want to see plans for how they intend to expand after school to serve ALL families who need a spot.
Nearly 80% of “priority” applicants (ie: from low-income families) received an offer. That’s great, but why not 100%? What about the ~130 priority students who didn’t get a spot?
We guess those 130 were left out due to DHSP's incumbency policy (ie: guaranteeing spots to previously enrolled students) and possibly because some families applied late.
Bottom line: Adding seats would make it easier to serve these families who most need city-support for afterschool.
[B.] Barriers to expansion: space & staffing
DHSP just started saying finding space in schools has become a barrier to expansion. However, they’d said this was not an issue only a few public meetings back.
Is space for afterschool an issue in your school? Please reply to this email if you have any insight.
Given the amount of CPS classroom space available, it would be nice to see a breakdown of what schools are causing issues and why afterschool can’t access classrooms.
In the November meeting, a DHSP official also said they “can’t expand under a rocky foundation,” referencing their workforce. Hiring has been a challenge since the pandemic. What are they doing to address this? (See pg. 22.)
Interestingly, as in the past, DHSP did not mention $$ as a barrier to expansion. This makes sense given that all families pay at least something for afterschool.
[C.] Students with IEPs -
👏 - This is the first report that has released data on students with IEPs — great!
DHSP reports they have placed 80% of kids with IEPs in programs. Their numbers show that 336 with IEPs were “accepted” — but, of those, 160 were enrolled, while 176 were “held” for assessment. Of the 176, 110 were eventually enrolled with some sort of accommodation.
This has been an area of enormous pain for families, so any improvement is welcome. Still, we’d like to see DHSP share the reasons for not enrolling students and give detail on their inclusion practices.
Moreover, DHSP say they have two full-time inclusion specialists. Why have families had to wait so long to learn about placement?
[D.] Funding nonprofit afterschools -
DHSP funds 91 seats at nonprofit afterschools, costing $1M/year. It would be nice to have more data on these finances — that’s $11K per seat, which seems high.
Again, parents do pay for this service, albeit at varying rates. For example, the highest income band pays under $8K/year for five-day Community School. (Tuition rates here.) Does the City subsidizes even the highest income bands?
DHSP also said the funding for this is in federal Rescue Plan dollars which are expiring soon. Thus, possibly these seats will disappear next year.
[E.] Afterschool for 4 year olds
As we shared earlier, when the Cambridge Preschool Program (CPP) launched this September, the City ended afterschool eligibility for children in the program. The City recently reported that CPP is undersubscribed (slide 24). Could this be due to the lack of aftercare options?
In January, the School Committee mentioned they will work with DHSP to "think creatively" about how to extend afterschool to CPP students (slide 8). What does that mean? We’d love to hear about changes DHSP and CPS are making bring back afterschool for four-year olds.
[F.] Fall 2025 timeline: We’re still waiting to learn the timeline for the 2025-26 afterschool lottery. Let us know if you have any news!
[3.] DHSP finally comes clean on its sibling discounts.
In a meeting in May 2024, Councillor Patty Nolan asked about sibling discounts at afterschool. DHSP responded — erroneously — "We do not currently have a sibling discount but it is something we could explore." This hits on a major issue we are passionate about — DHSP's need for greater transparency.
After many, many email requests form parents, including sharing tuition invoices and bringing in City Council, DHPS finally admitted that it does offer a 50% discount for siblings, only in the King Open Extended Day and Childcare Afterschool programs. (See page 1 of the updated tuition rates.)
This raises the obvious question — Why a sibling discount for those programs, but not Community Schools or Youth Centers? Maybe there’s a good reason, but we don’t know it. We welcome your thoughts! However, at least we’re happy to see this information finally be made public.
[4.] Youth Centers — a massive price increase is likely soon
Remember last year when DHSP tried to raise Youth Center pricing to the rate of Community Schools tuition? After many of you joined in raising concern over this steep rise, DHSP agreed to only increase tuition by half of the increase for Fall 2024. But they also said the full increase would indeed go into effect in Fall 2025. So the question now is, is that still about to happen?
Note: these price raises are only for grades 4-5 of Youth Centers; they remain free (yes, free) for grades 6-8.
If you will be affected by this potential price increase in Fall 2025, please write to your City Councillors and the City Manager - CityCouncil@CambridgeMA.GOV, CityManager@cambridgema.gov
[5.] 😠 Cambridge Public Schools is no longer sharing lottery data for the Kindergarten Lottery
Remember how helpful the recent Kindergarten lottery data was to families trying to decide which schools to choose? Current families no longer have access to it.
From an email by CPS’s Kathy Sampson:
“We did not publish lottery data in 2024 and we aren't doing so for 2025.
“With the implementation of the new CPP, our K Lottery last year had no comparison to any of the previous years and this 2025 K Lottery is not comparable to 2024 or to any of the previous years.
“Thus, there is no data that is useful as a source of estimations akin to the 2023 data to which you refer.”
No data that is useful? We disagree! Historic data is still indicative of demand. It can still help parents get a rough sense of the most and least popular programs. If CPP is undersubscribed, we might expect the 2025 Kindergarten choices to correlate with those of previous years.
As an example of the utility of this data, CPS argued that they are closing Kennedy Longfellow due to low demand. We now have no public record of the demand behind this claim.
We urge CPS to make the historic lottery data public again. Write to School Committee if you agree - SchoolCom@cpsd.us
[6.] ⛱️ Pools closed over the holidays! Why?
Yes, this newsletter loves pools!
War Memorial pool was closed for ALL of the December school break, with many of the university pools also closed. C'mon, DHSP! Make your public services work for the community. Not everyone can afford to fly to the Caribbean to take their family swimming. School break is exactly when parents need affordable, kid-friendly activities.
Thoughts, questions, corrections, suggestions, insights? Please email me at amanda.beatty@gmail.com