On February 28th, the Human Services and Veterans Committee of the City Council held a public meeting to discuss the status of after school programming in Cambridge.

Assistant City Manager, Human Services Ellen Semonoff, and Michelle Farnum, Assistant Director of Children Youth and Families presented plans to expand the number of available slots for children in Cambridge After School Programs.

Michelle mentioned the presentation at the OST Coalition Meeting. If you are interested in more detailed information about the city's plans to expand programs and staffing, please review the slides, click here. The video is available here.

Both Michelle and Ellen have repeatedly stated that the city must collaborate with non-profits and school-run programs in order to meet the needs of families for out of school time care and enrichment. Over the past few years AFCOST has been managing City resources from the Department of Human Service Programs and Cambridge Public Schools for school age childcare scholarships to non-profit organizations serving low-income families. There is a commitment from DHSP and CPS to continue to provide those resources next fiscal year.

At the April 3rd Cambridge City Council Meeting, the Council unanimously passed Policy Order and Resolution POR 2023 #59 "to develop a three-year plan to expand and improve After School Care for Cambridge children." In 2024 and beyond, DHSP will continue to work with The Agenda for Children OST to map out a process to examine continued OST expansion opportunities across Cambridge.

Discussions with non-profit organizations are underway to explore expanding the number of seats they are able to offer in September 2023 with additional City subsidies for expanded service. We will be finalizing the details of this work in the coming weeks so organizations can prepare for expansion and families can access the information. If you would like to know more, please contact Susan Richards, srichards@cambridgema.gov.

Based on the enrollment data you have submitted through the Community Partner Portal (CPP), we're excited to announce that we have launched a pilot cohort group of OST providers to explore and use CPP Data Dashboards. These Data Dashboards include aggregate data from all programs (for which enrollment data has been submitted into the CPP) run by each organization, and over multiple years. We are also able to create Dashboards that aggregate anonymized data from across all programs that have submitted data into the CPP. This work will soon be expanded and has exciting implications for our OST ecosystem and overall community. For assistance in entering enrollment data into the CPP, please contact AFCOST Network Associate Zeena Brown - zbrown@cpsd.us

Please contact Susan Richards (susan@agendaforchildrenost.org), if you have any questions or if you would like to discuss your reflections on this data and to let us know how we can support your professional development planning efforts.

9:30am-12noon