OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – Tuesday marks the deadline for the Federal Department of Education to notify states about their budgets for the next school year.
While conversations about incoming funding usually begin in February, First Alert 6 was told that this year, they haven’t begun at all.
“That’s going to hurt families quite a bit,” said Robert Patterson, CEO of
Kids Can Community Center
.
After-school and child care programs are essential for working parents. That’s why the threat of budget cuts is so concerning for organizations like Kids Can.
“Most child care runs on a pretty thin margin or profitability, who without one of those stool legs, it will falter,” Patterson said.
Nicole Everingham from the
Collective for Youth
explains that the grant they receive each year should have been allocated by now.
“This year we haven’t been notified that we will get the funding on July 1st, and what we found out is that the federal Department of Education has not yet taken those steps to allocate the money locally to our state Department of Education,” Everingham said.
Nicole says is they don’t get a notification about the budget, aftercare programs would be forced to make tough decisions for the six thousand kids benefiting from them here in Omaha.
“it would force us to think about consolidating sites. It would force us to think about staffing. It would force us to think about opportunity gaps and not being about to provide some of the enrichment resources here locally,” Everingham said.
If forced to make cuts, parents would start to see impacts as soon as the upcoming school year.
“These after-school programs are a lifeline for working parents. Their kids are enhancing their education and enhancing their enrichment after school. After school is a very important time to make sure kids are in a safe place and they’re continuing to be engaged in school, but it’s also important that parents can continue working.”
First Alert 6 will continue to give updates on whether the state is notified about the budget Tuesday.
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