Steve’s off this week, so we’re finally able to deal with the long list of chores: doctors’ appointments, haircuts, and Aftercare for Jonah. Jonah has to go to Aftercare twice a week this fall, and we needed to sort out the paperwork.
Public schools have to contract with local providers, often the YMCA, to provide Aftercare for students after school hours. 60% of women work, but the school day ends at 3:10. Um, rather huge problem. We pay about $150 a month for the program. It would be cheaper to have a babysitter, but I like the dependability of the program.
Jonah is in Aftercare until 4:00 twice a week. He likes it. They feed him a snack and he plays with legos with some friends. Some schools are annoyed that non-working parents are using these programs to avoid having playdates for the kids at their homes. Other than the time that he forgot to go to Aftercare and took the bus home, we’ve been pretty happy with the program.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from the director at 6:30 at night saying that it was sign-up night, and in order to be guaranteed a spot for Jonah for next fall, I had to get down to the school gym that minute. Steve wasn’t due to come home until 8:00. One kid was doing homework on the kitchen table and the other was in the bathtub. She said she had forgotten to tell me ahead of time that that was the sign up night.
If I missed that night’s sign-up, she said that I would have to drive to their home office, twenty minutes away, and sign up in the next two weeks. Every single minute of every day, I’m either preparing for class, lecturing in class, taking Ian to speech therapy, making dinner, driving Jonah to TKD, or helping with homework. That’s it. I have zero free minutes in the day.
So, we’ve completely missed the deadline. Today, we call up to find out what we’re supposed to do.
Aftercare Lady: Since you’ve missed the re-enrollment weeks, you have sign up next Tuesday during the day. There’s a long line, so get there early.
Me: I can’t. I work.
Aftercare Lady: You’ll have to take off work.
Me: I can’t. I’m a college professor.
[She never suggest that my husband take off work.]
Aftercare Lady: You’ll have to take off work.
Me: I can’t. That’s why I need you guys. I work. I can’t take off work.
Aftercare Lady: You’ll have to get someone to wait on line for you.
Me: Who? Who’s going to spend hours on line for me? People have lives.
Aftercare Lady: Why didn’t you sign up that night at the school?
Me: I can’t leave my kids and run to a school in a moment’s notice. My husband doesn’t come home until 8:00.
Aftercare Lady: I’ll call you back.
Apt. 11d 
Wow- you make me feel grateful that our afterschool program makes it so easy on us. It’s in the school gym and cafeteria and all i had to do to sign up was fill out a form and my daughter was in.
But you do bring up the surprising issue of how many school related “sign ups” or events happen during the work day and make it hard/impossible for working parents. Kindergarten registration? 10-3pm on a Thurs.
Kindergarten portfolio day (where kids present their work from the yr to their parents) A Wednesday at 2pm. (and if your child is the only one in the class without a parent there? I don’t want to know)
Thanks goodness my husband does have a pretty flexible job where he is fairly high up so he can usually work it out. But I feel for parents with less flexibility!
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Most of the schools in my town only offer half-day kindergarten. Half day! It ends at 11:45! And even once kids are in first grade and above, every Wednesday ends at 1:15. At at least one school, people start lining up at dawn on the morning to register for the aftercare program the following fall.
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If there’s so much demand, why not try to start another aftercare program?
My kids’ public school didn’t have one at all, so a bunch of us got together and sent out requests for proposals to local daycare centers. We got six proposals, did site visits and interviews, and chose one that still provides care ten years later.
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Oh, frak! I’m especially cheesed that they forgot to tell you about the sign-up night the first time and left you in this mess. They should be making it EASIER for you after their mistake, not more difficult!
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Our aftercare program is easier too. It’s the random days off that always get me. Although our program offers to take kids on those days, it’s not all days. Some days count as holidays, etc. I can’t keep up with all that. As I tell some people, some days it’s a miracle the kids and I are clothed and fed.
And I just hate people that don’t get the whole working parent dilemma. I have a pretty generous package of days off, but there are days that you just can’t miss.
I really want the whole school schedule to change to sync with reality. Why can’t school start at 8:30 and end at 5:00? It’s much easier for parents to adjust work schedules to meet those hours than 7:30-2:30 or 8-3. It drives me crazy.
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Wow, can’t they arrange it so you do in by mail or over the phone or something?
Stuff like this is why I quit my full time job. I did it for 10 years, though, so I understand your pain.
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At PS 87 (78th between Amsterdam and Columbus), the signup for afterschool classes takes place twice a year, and we line up on the sidewalk in front of the school. If your child wants one of the more popular activities, you need to be lined up by the end of school–someone else needs to pick up your child that day. Numbers are handed out at around 6pm and then they begin sign-up around 6:30, so forget dinner with the family that night.
One year in February it was raining, and I wore rubber boots. After standing for a few hours, I realized my feet were getting numb from the cold. My neighbors graciously agreed to save my place while I got a Village Voice to line them.
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In graduate school we had to do the sit-in-line-all-day thing for aftercare. It wasn’t only students though, it was the whole very poor neighborhood, and most people couldn’t take the day off, nor could they not sign up for aftercare.
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What I found particularly annoying about this incident was that an aftercare program is specifically geared to working parents, but they assumed that I should be able to attend a sign up process during the day.
Should schools play a bigger role in childcare for the working parent? The agrarian school calendar is not compatible with M-F/9-5 worklife. What do we do with all this vacation time that the kids get? Schools have been resistant to expand their mission to acting as the nation’s babysitter. But there is clearly growing demand for this. Dealing with the school schedule may be the number one obstacle to getting more women in the workforce. There was an article in the front page of the Times a few weeks ago about schools moving to a full day schedule.
On the other hand, I’m not anxious for my kids to be forced to spend more time glued to a seat doing endless worksheets, so I don’t know.
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As we’ve discussed before, the more successful schools that deal with disadvantaged children use an extended day since they’ve got to make up a lot of ground. But they’re also very careful in using the time that they have.
I would be concerned that a long day would encourage carelessness with students’ time.
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Speaking of amount of time spent in school, if you google “disadvantaged summer gap” you turn up a bunch of very reputable sources (like Brookings) discussing research that suggests that children from non-disadvantaged homes hold their ground academically during the summer while disadvantaged children fall behind. The articles have titles like “summer vacation hurts low-income children.” I haven’t looked closely at the material, but it seems that while non-disadvantaged children learn equally well whether at school or at home, disadvantaged children learn primarily at school. Catherine Johnson of kitchentablemath.blogspot.com mentioned this research recently in passing. She didn’t say much about it, but my feeling is that her interpretation would be that the schools that well-off children attend aren’t providing that much “value-added” if they learn just as well during the summer.
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Of course, “at home” during the summer does encompass a lot of potentially enriching activities outside the home, for instance summer camps.
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I think there should be government sponsored day-care (i.e. after care, pre-school) available for low/no cost, like public schools. But, I don’t think that public schools should extend their schedule. I don’t want the time to be mandatory. My daughter’s (private) school has before/after care available, so that it is theoretically possible for my daughter to be there from 7:30 AM to 6 PM. There are days when we avail ourselves of this opportunity and let her stay from 8-5. But, I would be horrified if this schedule was required.
I wouldn’t mind the deal I have being available to everyone, though. We do pay for our care — I think it’s $6/hour (the before care is “free” — in quotes, ’cause of course, we pay for school itself). It’s drop-in (except on high-use special holiday days). It was one of the benefits we knew we’d get from the private school (our neighborhood public school has a more problematic after-care situation).
bj
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I don’t understand the requirement/need for families to sign up in person, especially if they are returning to a program for another year. Does it attract more interest to make people miserable and stand on line? What’s so important about filling out/turning in paperwork by hand? They should let you fax or mail in the form with any required deposit. Also, why was there no notice, and, if the director forgot to inform you, some remediation on the part of the program for sticking you in a very bad position?
I know I just stating the obvious but your post made me really angry. Childcare in this country has enough problems without adding needless headaches for working parents.
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I’ve been feeling the same way as Lucy, because the rules seem like some kind of weird test — the requirements for signups for camps, daycare, school. In our area, there’s one camp, where all the apps have to be in by March 1, and they do assignments by lottery, another where they won’t look at your app if it arrives before April 1, yet others, where you have to log on and sign up at 8 AM in the morning of opening day. I think that the folks running these things really are trying to make the opportunity inclusive, but no system gets them there, so they keep the system uncertain and unstable in the hopes that no one will figure it out.
bj
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