Back-to-school season is an ideal time to advocate on behalf of afterschool. Below are a sample letter-to-the-editor and a sample letter to your Member of Congress. Submit the letter-to-the-editor to a local newspaper on its website, and submit the letter to Congress at www.afterschoolalliance.org, going to the blue Contact Congress button on the left.



To the Editor:

With summer break over and classes back in session, parents across the area are again focused on making sure their children are safe and constructively engaged in the hours immediately following the regular school day. Research demonstrates that the late afternoon hours are when children are most likely to engage in risky behaviors.

Many families solve the problem by enrolling their children in afterschool programs, knowing that they keep kids safe, inspire them to learn, and relieve the worries of working parents. But programs are in too short supply and, as a result, the parents of 15 million children say their kids aren't enrolled in an afterschool program because one is not available to them.

In the No Child Left Behind Act, Congress and the President mapped out a multi-year roadmap for increasing federal funding for afterschool. If they'd followed the map, we'd be a lot closer to serving those 15 million kids. But they didn't, and many programs are cutting back or closing down as a result. This fall, Congress will again take up the question of funding for afterschool. As it does, let's hope our elected representatives recognize the value of afterschool programs for our kids, families and community.

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Dear Representative:

As you know, later this fall, Congress will take up the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill. As it stands now, the bill provides just $981 million for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers initiative, the principal federal funding stream for afterschool programs. That's far less than the authorized $2.5 billion. In fact, since passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, funding for the 21st Century initiative has never reached the authorized level, and we're falling farther behind each year.

As a result of this ever widening shortfall, a wildly popular and plainly effective program is now funding afterschool care for 1.5 million fewer children than No Child Left Behind called for. I hope you'll agree that we need to do better for our kids.

Afterschool programs keep kids safe, inspire learning, and help working families. They provide a vital service for families in our state and across the nation. But we need more of them. I realize you face difficult budget choices, but this is too important an investment to delay. Please support efforts to increase funding for the 21st Century initiative when the appropriations bill comes to the floor.





(info from www.afterschoolalliance.org)