As I mentioned in my previous post, "Why Did I Quit Teaching?," I had some encouragement from others to go into freelance grant writing before I got my job as a teacher. Unfortunately, the Great Recession coincided with my resignation, and I spent three years unemployed. It was a difficult time for me and I was pretty discouraged. I had to give up my apartment and live with my parents for about a year until my husband and I got married. Besides the twin storm clouds of "What should I do with my life?" and "I failed at my first real job" looming over my head, career-oriented job openings were slim and multiple interviews were followed days later with a thin envelope or short email notifying me that another candidate had been selected for the position, or the position itself had been canceled.
So after we got married, my husband encouraged me to find some volunteer work to do that would at least help me get some skills in another field. I thought that non-profit organizations might be more welcoming of my writing skills and liberal arts background than for-profit corporations, and that would give me a better chance of networking my way to a job. Since we didn't have a lot of money to spend on gas, I looked for the closest non-profit and found a local high school education foundation a few miles down the road. I emailed its director, offering to volunteer.
The director and board were very welcoming to me, even though I was not an alumna of the school. In helping out with various fundraisers, I was invited to assist with a conference for various education foundations in the state that was hosted at the high school. There I met the grant writer for the local school district, and told her about my interest in grant writing. From there, she brought me in to volunteer on a 21st Century Community Learning Centers Grant for one of the district's elementary schools.
It was actually the perfect opportunity for me, and I was grateful to have it. The grant itself was for a large amount of money and was very complicated, requiring great attention to detail in everything from the schedule and budget of grant-funded activities to the formatting of the application documents. Because it was so complex, I and many other eager applicants attended a preliminary workshop provided by the state's Department of Education to learn successful strategies. The workshop was well-done and informative, but as I walked away with a sheaf of personal notes and a large three-ring binder of info provided by the presenter, the complexity of this grant was again impressed upon me.
Following that workshop and another taken at the State Library, I worked together with the the elementary school's assistant principal and a college psychology professor (contracted to provide staffing for the after school program) on the grant proposal. The district grant writer provided me with necessary data for the proposal, such as school behavior and free/reduced lunch statistics, but allowed me to attend the majority of planning meetings alone. I took that as a great vote of confidence, and worked hard to make our proposal worthy of funding.
However, along the way I found myself questioning the true need of this grant. At some moments, I was almost in disbelief at the information I was given. For instance, the free and reduced lunch rate at this school was almost 80%. In an interview with the school nurse, I learned that some students would be sent to school with nothing but a candy bar for their lunch. When a teacher or staff member would see this, the child would be immediately enrolled for free lunch. It boggled my mind that any parent would think a candy bar could be an appropriate meal for a growing child. Moreover, it didn't make sense how five one-dollar candy bars in a week would really be much cheaper than five peanut-butter and jelly or bologna sandwiches. Since this scenario had apparently happened multiple times with different children, I wondered if parents had simply discovered that sending their child to school with a candy bar once would ensure easy, free lunches for the future and had shared the idea with each other. It just didn't add up, especially when I was told that many of the parents of the school had jobs.
Ultimately, the grant was submitted on-time and was approved for the full amount. It was cause for celebration but also time for me to move on. I ended up interning for a pediatric cancer charity and taking a night course in accounting before landing an entry-level role with a non-profit sports organization (and that's story for another blog post). Meanwhile, I still tried to take in free webinars, seminars, and lectures wherever I could.
At one point in this volunteer period, I helped out with the annual conference of a statewide consortium of after school programs. One of the perks as a volunteer was that I got to attend the main lunch and keynote address. Though I don't remember the speaker's name, one line from his speech struck a chord. "I truly believe," he said, "that all parents want what is best for their children." Really? I thought. If all parents want what is best for their children, why don't they provide proper meals for them? Why do they abuse their children or neglect them? Surely that's not the best. If parents want what is best for their children, why are we even here, discussing the apparent epidemic of obesity, violence, and ignorance among these kids? It is either because many parents do not want what is best for their kids enough to get it for them, or because these parents have failed abysmally at providing even the bare minimum. I can see why the phrase "it takes a village to raise a child" has so much traction at these events, and in some ways is the tenant underlying the entire 21st CCLC enterprise: because if a parent can't raise a child by providing food, clothing, shelter, moral and intellectual education, the village must step in. And increasingly, it seems like the village is the real parent-- rendering mom and dad as little more than genetic contributors and vague "participants" in the child's life.
But who is the village? Once upon a time, the village was just what it sounded like: local neighbors and businesses. People like you and me who lived together and worked together and worshipped together and cared about making our mutual life a pleasant one. But a look around this conference's vendor displays for businesses selling curriculum materials and state health programs seemed to indicate that today's village had but few local ties. The majority of funding for the 21st CCLC comes from the federal government, in grants such as the one I proposed. Although grant proposals are required to include ideas for fundraising and sustainability, according to this article from the Finance Project, : "No known national or state data exists to accurate determine how many previously funded 21CCLC programs have sustained programming thus far." My guess would be that very few have the full financial support from their local community after the federal money runs out (read the Finance Project article to learn more). At least as I recall, this was the case in the school that I worked with-- after their first 21st CCLC grant had expired, the program ended and the school endured the mandatory waiting period before creating a new 21st CCLC proposal (the one I worked on).
Meanwhile, the administrative ranks of schools and districts continue to increase with professionals who are pursuing grants, maintaining grants, and following up on accountability standards and compliance training. This article from the Heritage Foundation says that "Since the 1950s, the number of teachers as a percentage of school staff has declined from 70 percent to approximately 51 percent. Over the same time, administrative support staff increased from 23.8 percent to 30 percent. In the mid-20th century, public schools employed 2.36 teachers for every non-teacher on their rolls; today, the ratio is closer to one-to-one." Since these grants are short-lived and require so many resources to obtain, are they really helping children for the long-term? Are they really a solution at all? By now I am sure you know my opinion: the majority of these grants are inefficient and ineffective means of improvement in the lives of children and their families-- a short-term, non-solution to some serious problems.
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