Older youth most at risk after school

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Education Writer

Hawai'i does well in providing affordable afterschool care for its elementary school children, but shares the difficulty other states have in providing supervised activities for older youth.

Don Anderson, president of the YMCA of Honolulu, credits the statewide A-Plus program with Hawai'i's high ranking. "Hawai'i has done more for the elementary school children than anybody," he said.

According to the survey results, only 15 percent of Hawai'i's children from kindergarten through 12th grade must care for themselves, compared to a national average of 25 percent. However, the Afterschool Alliance cautions that the sample size for several states, including Hawai'i, was small.

The gap in afterschool activities in Hawai'i, as well as on the Mainland, begins at the middle school level.

Approximately 14.3 million of the nation's children in kindergarten through 12th grade care for themselves after school, according to the survey. Of these, 11 percent are in first through fifth grade, 34 percent in grades six to eight and 51 percent in high school. Grades for the other 4 percent were not identified.

The Afterschool Alliance said 4 million of these children would participate in afterschool programs if they were available. Supervised programs keep kids safe, help working families and improve academic achievement, the group says.

Only 11 percent of the nation's K-12 youth are in afterschool programs, the survey found.

Anderson said once a child reaches middle school, parents aren't as willing to pay for afterschool activities and children aren't as willing to participate in them. However, he said, that's the age when kids start getting into drugs and other antisocial activities. "At that most dangerous age is the age when we just let them run free," he said.

The hours they are alone coincide with the peak hour for teen-age crime, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., Anderson said. "That's really a danger zone, the period between school ending and parents coming home, and they're unsupervised," he said.

At the elementary level, the A-Plus program, created to provide a safe place for public-school latchkey kids, reduces their ranks with wide availability, as well as a good price — $55 a month. Similar programs on the Mainland cost $240 a month.

The A-Plus program is available to 183 of 198 elementary schools in the state — excluding only those that have fewer than 20 latchkey children. About 22,750 of the state's 99,829 public elementary school children attend the A-Plus program.

Joanne Swearingen, who oversees the A-Plus program for the Department of Education, was pleased to hear Hawai'i had the highest percentage (35 percent) of students enrolled in supervised afterschool activities. "Our program is very popular with parents," she said. "Hopefully that means that we are indeed filling the need in Hawai'i as best as we can."

But John Fujioka, director of program operations at the Boys and Girls Club, was surprised the survey showed so few latchkey kids. "I don't know where they got their sources," he said. "Most of the kids that come here are latchkey kids."

Programs such as the Boys and Girls Club help reduce the numbers of children home alone. The organization offers a safe place for children between the ages of 7 and 17 from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. at its seven locations statewide. The club has 5,500 members, and serves 13,000 other youth each year.

"A lot of kids come here because no one is home. Some of our statistics show that a lot of the kids are from single-parent families and that parent is working pretty hard to keep food on the table," Fujioka said.

The survey was conducted by mail sent to 30,000 participants across the country.

While high schoolers have sports, clubs, extracurricular activities and jobs to keep them busy, middle school children have few organized activities.

Kendyl Ko, an educational specialist with the DOE's Safe and Drug Free Schools division, has been developing an afterschool program for middle school children that could be rolled out as a pilot program in some communities next year.

"We look at the middle schools because there's nothing for middle school kids other than community-based activities, and if they're not into sports or hula or some of the programs that are out there, there's virtually nothing for them to do." Ko said. "That's the age when kids are at risk."

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8014.