Don’t forget: today is Lights On Afterschool day—the annual celebration of after-school programs nationwide. The Afterschool Alliance reports that there will be Lights On events in approximately 7,500 communities today. The idea is to highlight the importance of high-quality after-school initiatives.
Not coincidentally at all, Afterschool Alliance Executive Director Jodi Grant has a piece today in The Washington Post‘s Answer Sheet blog. Grant writes about the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program and the danger her organization sees in a Senate plan to expand the program to cover extended-learning-time initiatives, as well as after-school, before school, and summer school programs as it has done till now. As readers well know, this is a complicated issue.