Sports and After-School Programs

Announcing YMCA-Gateway After School Program Partnership for 2013-14:

Dear Gateway Middle School Families,

I would like to update you on our plans to improve our After School programming for the upcoming school year. After restructuring our program to the current fee-based, sliding scale program in September 2012, we began investigating other successful after school programs in San Francisco as well as organizations that we could partner with to develop an even stronger program. We also sent a survey to our families in December 2012 to get your input on after school programming. Based on this research and your feedback, we decided that it was important to change our after school program model and we have established a partnership with the Buchanan YMCA for the 2013-14 school year. 

Goals and Benefits of the YMCA-Gateway Partnership

We are very excited to be working with the Buchanan YMCA to run Gateway’s After School program for we believe this partnership will allow us to provide better support and programming for our students. For example, by partnering with the YMCA we can:

• continue to provide students with a safe space for studies and activities Monday through Friday after school.
• continue to have teachers work with small groups of students who need more intensive academic support after school.
• continue to provide after school programming beginning at 2pm during our Wednesday early release days for teacher professional development.
• offer longer hours for after school programming to meet working families’ needs.
• Offer more enrichment activities within our after school programming.

Gateway’s staff will be working closely with the Buchanan YMCA who will staff and manage the after school program. Mr. Mkonu, Mr. Slife and I are all working with the YMCA on the hiring of staff and planning of programs, so we feel confident that program will be closely aligned with our school goals and values. The daily program will continue to include an hour of quiet homework time, and Mr. Mkonu will be working closely with the YMCA’s Gateway Site Coordinator to ensure a strong connection between our school-day academic programs and the after school program. 

Fees and Financial Assistance for 2013-14

The YMCA-Gateway After School program will be a fee-based program, with a strong commitment to financial assistance for families who demonstrate need. There will be an increase in fees over our fees for 2012-13 for many families; however, the 2013-14 fees are comparable to similar programs at elementary and middle schools at San Francisco public schools.  In addition, through our partnership with the YMCA, we will be able to provide financial assistance to families in the following ways:

• The YMCA provides need-based scholarships of up to 50% of the fees for its programs. Families can apply for scholarships when they enroll.
• Gateway and the YMCA have also secured a three-year after school program grant from the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Families to provide scholarships to students enrolled in our program. We will use the grant funds to provide full (100%) and partial scholarships.

Enrollment Process: Please enroll this May for Fall 2013

The Buchanan YMCA will manage the after school enrollment process and the monthly collection of fees from families. We will work with the YMCA to distribute and collect enrollment forms during the month of May, so that we can plan for the beginning of school in August.  We plan to distribute enrollment packets to current and incoming families the week of May 6.  While students may enroll for the start of school through August 1, we encourage you to enroll students by May 31 and financial assistance will be granted as long as funds are available.  More information will be sent home soon. 

We are confident that this partnership will result in better programming for our students and please contact us should you have questions.

Sincerely,

Aaron Watson, Principal

Chad Slife, Assistant Principal

Mwapagha Mkonu, Academic Support Coordinator

Applications
 

Paper applications are available in our office in English and Spanish. 

Applications in Spanish and English can also be downloaded here:
http://www.ymcasf.org/buchanan/what_we_offer/for_kids/afterschool_programs