Still waiting on afterschool data from the fall + DHSP summer camp chances

What we learned in our recent meeting with the City Manager.

We were able to meet with Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang recently, who took the time to candidly discuss issues the City is having understanding how afterschool placements shook out.

We hope to have a more satisfying update for you soon. ITM, here are our main take-aways:

1. The City is still analyzing the data from Fall 2023. Results expected “in a few weeks.”

DHSP’s last data update was on August 31. It’s not the final tally — students moved off the waitlist after school started. (We shared our thoughts on the data released on Aug. 18 here.) Families need the final Fall 2023 numbers to assess their chances of getting afterschool spots this coming year.

2. DHSP is hoping to start it’s afterschool lottery earlier this year.

Last year, the lottery closed in late May; families were notified in late June/early July. That timing makes it hard for families who don’t get spots to work on a Plan B.

We’re excited to see the lottery happen earlier this year, hopefully in April or even March. However, CPS’s extension of the school day could affect afterschool and busing planning, which could delay the lottery.

3. There are no Fall 2024 expansion plans as of yet — the current priority is clearing up unexpected complexity that arose in the data.

In particular, the City is working out whether, despite increasing staffing, the programs are adequately staffed. And whether non-income priorities (in particular incumbency, a new priority as of Fall 2023) are crowding out priority student placements (ie: students from low-income families).

4. DHSP must stop telling families inaccurate information.

We discussed two instances of DHSP communicating the wrong info to families:

• Busing — With some caveats, CPS *does* allow busing to afterschool locations closer than a mile, and it’s unacceptable for DHSP to wrongly claim that they do not. (Yes, we’ve harped on this before.)

• Universal pre-K — The City and CPS sent out some FAQs that didn’t mention that students placed in a CPS preschool are ineligible for afterschool. That omission was also unacceptable. (Same.)

4. DHSP treatment of special needs student

A parent of an IEP student shared some of the issues IEP families face in applying to afterschool at our meeting with the City Manager. She said that:

• DHSP has its own IEP investigative team. 

• It seems that DHSP automatically flags students with IEPs for investigation. 

• Communication seems lacking around what the investigation consists of and what it looks for. Families have raised questions about the good faith of this investigation, claiming their students are excluded from afterschool with little justification. 

• Some families have had success navigating this process by hiring an advocate (email Eugenia to learn more about this).

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🌞 A note on DHSP Summer Camps 🌞

• Camp applications are in full swing (deadline: THIS Sun, March 3).

• 👏👏👏 to DHSP for running the camp lottery much earlier than in 2023. This is progress!

• But families are applying blind. And debating whether to put deposits down elsewhere. DHSP should post acceptance rates by site for at least 2022 and 2023 (when they started doing lotteries).

• You *should* be able to get a spot — in 2022, DHSP said that every child who wanted a spot got one (even if it wasn’t at a top choice and families had to wait for the waitlist notifications). Yet, confusingly, DHSP’s camp FAQ says, "Every year, there are more applicants than there are available seats." Still, Amanda and I don’t believe there’s a ton of excess demand based on emailing with DHSP and the 2022 statement.

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