BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - The Sara Holbrook Community Center has been providing full-day child support during the pandemic, but now that the Burlington School District is transitioning to four days of in-person learning, the center will restart their after-school programs next week.
“Seeing all of our classrooms full, it’s exciting, it’s a new building, it’s a new program," said Jarrell Watts, the elementary program director.
Watts has learned a little something about transitions in the past few months. He came to Sara Holbrook from Las Vegas ready to help the community. And as they opened as a Burlington child care hub for students to take their classes, he found success in early programming.
“Once we’ve been able to get a better understanding and get students into a flow, our program has been going really smooth. We have been excited about everything we have been doing so far,” said Watts.
But he says it wasn’t easy. Some students were coming to them after not being in an organized educational setting since March. But now it is time to transition again. “We are actually going to start our after-school program, so this will be our after-school program that we are transitioning from our full-day support program," said Watts.
The after-school program is what the community center is really built for. The full-day support program will remain on Wednesdays, which is the fully remote day for Burlington students, but the rest of the week will feature the after-school program from 3 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. The district will offer busing options from schools to the community center.
Sara Holbrook is complete with classrooms with access to fresh air, no shared bathrooms between public and other restrooms, as well as space for movement indoors and out. Their goal is to move from more school-based programming during their remote learning days and offer more options based on the students' interest areas.
“As we roll into more of an after-school setting, I think that we will be able to really start to engage them more actively in those projects that they want to get into,” said Katherine Cane, an after-school program staff member.
She says as they welcome new students as well as old, and they shift their programming, they plan to make the transition as easy as possible.
“Just bringing that energy to them helps them relax and helps them feel welcome in a space,” said Cane.
Watts says without the support of those around him, the transitions wouldn’t have been so smooth.
“We really didn’t have an idea of how things were going to go. Fortunately, with the experience not only of myself but of my staff, we were able to put together a program that was fitting the needs of our students. So in the beginning there were some challenges there but working through them we knew it was going to be tough. We have had a lot of support from the communities, from the families involved at Sara Holbrook, as well as everyone in the building,” said Watts.
The community center is open to all kids and there is tuition, and scholarships as well as stipends are available.
They plan to highlight some of the STEM and literacy programming they offer after school on October 28.
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October 21, 2020 at 04:43PM
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Burlington community center to reopen after-school program - WCAX
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