The Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio will only be running 27 after-school programs in the new school year, down from the 49 the organization had last year.
The nonprofit said Thursday despite raising almost $700,000 this year, it was unable to get enough funding to offset the loss of state funding and federal pandemic-relief funds administered by school districts. The Ohio Legislature in its biennial budget provided about $7.5 million in Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds to the clubs statewide in the last fiscal year, but none in the current year's budget, an Ohio Department of Job and Family Services spokesperson said.
That's meant a funding cut of about $2.5 million for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio, said CEO Allen Smith. While Smith said he was grateful for the state's support in the past, the cut came as a surprise.
"We knew that the federal funding was going away with respect to the (pandemic) Recovery Act funding, but we were not anticipating the federal dollars tied with TANF to be impacted," Smith said.
That funding cut - coupled with school districts like Cleveland Metropolitan School District cutting hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding they received from pandemic-relief funds - means fewer free after-school programs will be available to Northeast Ohio students this school year. Smith said these programs help kids stay safe after school and provide plenty of other benefits for parents and students.
"The kids get help with their homework, they get to engage in recreational activities with caring adults, and then they get a free meal each day," Smith said. "And so by the time a parent picks their young person up from the club, or the young person walks home, all they have to do is go to bed because they've already had, you know, a full day and the parents don't have to worry about anything."
Smith said the programs that will be cut were mostly located at or near school buildings, and amounts to thousands of students losing out this school year; the Northeast Ohio clubs last year served about 12,000 young people.
"These young people get exposure to caring adults who act as mentors and supports to help them make better life decisions, to help them stay away from drugs, to stay away from gangs," Smith said. "The hours from 3 to 6 are crucial."
Plus, now more parents will be left in the lurch to find care for their children after school, Smith said.
"Their parents may not be able to either find or afford or secure because of space additional service or care opportunities for their families," Smith said.
It's not clear why the Ohio Legislature did not provide TANF funding for the statewide Boys and Girls Clubs this fiscal year. Adam Shank, executive director of Ohio Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs, a statewide advocacy organization, said the clubs do receive funding from other statewide sources, and was hopeful that the state could come through with more support this year.
"While no such directive appears in the budget for state fiscal year 2025 which started July 1, 2024, the Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs remain hopeful that an amount, equal to or greater than state fiscal year 2024 can still be made available to assist our efforts in the next budget cycle," Shank said.
Clubs in Cuyahoga and Lorain counties are the ones most affected by the cutbacks, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio said in a news release: nine of the 16 Cuyahoga County clubs that operated during the 2023-2024 school year will not reopen this fall, while eight of the 20 Lorain County sites that operated last year will not be reopening.
Smith said pandemic relief funding helped the organization significantly expand its footprint in the region but he had hoped that they would have enough of a "runway" to fundraise to keep them open in the coming years.
