Changes to Berkshire Hills’ Out-of-School Program
For the past fifteen years Berkshire Hills Regional School District received a federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant to fund its afterschool, before school and summertime programs. In addition to providing essential childcare for working families, its primary aim was to extend instruction in core subjects. This year’s program, called CLEO, will be operating without those federal funds and with an additional goal.
CLEO’s Program Coordinator JP Okin says that thanks to belt-tightening and a new tuition structure, the program will still be able to serve 60 students in grades one through eight, and to do it over a longer time. (While CLEO had historically run for 30 weeks, it will now go all year.)
It will also continue to partner with local nonprofits such as Flying Cloud, Greenagers, and Berkshire Botanical Garden. Responsiveness to local conditions rather than to official mandates is the secret to CLEO’s success.
“The state office was saying that we needed to be doing lessons that looked like school,” Okin says, “but overwhelmingly the feedback that I’ve been getting from parents, students, and teachers is that that is not what our students need.”
A growing body of evidence affirms that among the long-term consequences of Covid era deprivation is a sharp decline in interpersonal skills. “We’ve decided that we need to be focusing on plain old fashioned socialization,” Okin explains. “Kids need to be engaged together in fun, structured activities, the skills that kids have learned for generations from games, playing baseball or soccer or Monopoly.”
Molly Murray, CLEO’s Muddy Brook Elementary Site Coordinator, agrees after assessing last year’s program. “The more hands on, the better outcomes and the more happiness we saw.”
CLEO’s summer camp was so much fun that some of the 52 participants lingered after the final dismissal, unwilling to leave.
“There were lots of games, lots of fun, and lots of tears on the last day,” said Okin.
Eleven more BHRSD middle schoolers just wrapped a CLEO-organized summer program at Greenagers’ April Hill campus in Egremont, gaining gardening skills. No one was turned away this summer, an open door policy they hope to maintain.
The program can sustain itself without 21st CCLC funds mostly through Title 1 funding, federal support which is targeted toward school districts with a high percentage of low income families. (BHRSD’s low income rate for the 2024-2025 school year was 43%, the first time that number exceeded the state average.)
Additionally, Berkshire United Way has increased its support for CLEO to $50,000, and BHRSD expects to be re-allocated a state After School and Out of School Time (ASOST) grant.
But while the program will remain no-cost for low-income families, others will be asked to pay $10 per day for afterschool and $5 for before school. (Actual costs run to about $26 per day per student.) The program is achieving cost-savings by reducing Okin’s role from full-time to half-time, locating all activities at Muddy Brook Elementary rather than across campuses, limiting the number of community partners and, most significantly, by cutting back late bus offerings from four to two.
With the picture uncertain for so many public entities, creative adaptability is in order, and Berkshire HIlls’ CLEO program is, fortunately blessed with that quality. Butterfly Lionel
