Afterschool programs being shut down

In New Jersey, this past February, Governor Christopher J. Christie "cut $560 million in previously approved education spending, including $5 million for after-school programs that serve 12,000 children in 115 schools. " This is all part of his $2.2 billion bidget deficit in the current fiscal year.

One afterschool program, at Linden's School No. 1, that helps 85 children after school will be closed this friday "after losing its state financing halfway through the year".

Mr. Christie and his education commissioner, Bret
D. Schundler, are expected to cut state aid to individual districts by as
much as 15 percent, and reduce overall school aid for only the second time in
more than a decade. That would probably mean laying off thousands of teachers,
and eliminating a host of extras like after-school and early-childhood education
programs that parents have come to count on.

If the schools had not recieved $1 billion in gederal aid, this "execution" would have occured last year when this whole education problem was starting to sharpen its horns.

'My take is, he’s trying to deal with this,” Mr. Cantrell [president of the New Jersey
Taxpayers’ Association] said of the governor. “I think the reality of
the situation is, it’s such a dire one that there aren’t a lot of choices right
now. Everyone is going to have to sacrifice to resolve this issue, and to say ‘I
should not have to sacrifice’ is just not reality.'

The Linden district, with 6,000 students,
partnered with Jewish Family Service of Central New Jersey in 2003 to start the
after-school program at School No. 1. It has since expanded to two other
elementary schools, serving a total of 274 children, most of whom are black or
Hispanic. More than half qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Families pay $250 annually per child for the program; most of the costs are covered by $259,000 in state financing awarded by New Jersey After 3, a nonprofit group that oversees a network of after-school programs (another $51,500 comes from foundation grants). Mark Valli, the group’s president, said that all but 25 of the 115 state-financed after-school programs would close in the next month; generally, only those that can make up the shortfall with district money, corporate grants and donations will stay open.