This past year we launched the opening of (2) new after-school sites in Trenton at the MLK and PJ Hill Schools. This brought the total number of program sites to (12) with 3 in Ewing Schools, 7 in Trenton Schools, along with our Trenton and Lawrence Community Centers. This September also saw the Trenton Schools re-districting their grades and school assignments. They moved from a K-5, 6-8 and 9-12 configuration to K-3, 4-6, 7-8 and 9-12 configuration. The goal was smaller schools for better learning environments. The reconfiguration meant more family members attending different schools, and many youth having to travel outside of their community to get to lower middle and upper middle schools. Learning if this new configuration is good or bad is still years away.

In the short term there was a drop in overall Trenton board of education enrollment, with more students moving to charter schools due to the uncertainty/confusion of the re-districting. We also saw a lower enrollment per school in our after-school programs (ASP) this year. We determined this was partially due to each school having a lower than anticipated student enrollment this year (most schools went from 350-400 students down to 275-300) and that many students in grades 4-8 no longer lived in their neighborhoods, and thus parents weren’t willing to pick them up daily at the after-school program. While we were still able to meet our enrollment goal of 650 students, we had more school sites with lower enrollment per site. We are actively working to increase enrollment at each site for the next school year, as keeping lower enrollment per school increases the cost per student and limits the number of activities we can offer each week due to less staff per school. We are working to combine enrollment from some smaller school sites into one for next year. Our Spruce & Centre Street locations are currently at capacity.

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