St. Joseph County's Boys & Girls Clubs locally have offered summer programs since the pandemic as a way to try and fight against learning loss over the summer months. Now thanks to a $3.75 million grant from the Indiana Department of Education, the nonprofit will be able to bring summer learning to even more children.
With the state money, Boys & Girls Club will partner with two other educational nonprofits, The Mind Trust and the Lavinia Group, to hire instructors to teach reading and math skills to kids in Kindergarten through 9th grade. The initiative is an expansion of the Indy Summer Learning Labs that saw success by merging summer education offerings with existing community organizations.
"It's a comprehensive, it's an inclusive approach to summer learning. We're really trying to combat that summer learning slide, particularly in literacy and math fluency," said Boys & Girls Clubs CEO Jacqueline Kronk.
Locally, the summer program will be offered at 15 Boys & Girls Club locations, most of them in St. Joseph County. Thanks to the state grant, the program will be free for the 2,500 students who participate. Kronk said there lots of good summer learning options, but it can cost a lot of money to send kids to a camp and so eliminating that barrier is very beneficial to low-income families.
“If you’re coming from a lower socioeconomic background, childcare is your most expensive line item,” Kronk said. “So for us to be able to offer this to our families consistently over the past four years and then to enhance it the way we are this year … That’s what our mission’s all about.”
Kronk said the programs will combine the Lavinia Group curriculum with Boys & Girls Clubs enrichment activities like field trips, social learning dnd some career training.
Registration for the programs will begin in March.
