Designing a program that encourages learning is difficult, also. The biggest problem, though, is finding qualified people to run the program on a consistent basis. Most of our students could benefit from a good after school program, but we are unable to recruit people to run it. For the most part, teachers in our system are over-worked due to the demands of No Child Left Behind and we cannot pay enough to attract other qualified people.

Producing and implementing programs that are enriching and educational, but that are also fun and don't seem like a repeat of school.

The BIGGEST problem facing the Saturday enrichment program that I run is...ATTITUDE! The program I run has no funding problem - it is funded by the State. It has no shortage of applicants - parents hear about it and rush to get the application. I have no problems getting committed and qualified people to work with the students - our campus is filled with Graduate students who want to give back to society and who want to work with middle and highschool age children. We also have committed teachers who spend a great amount of time preparing lessons and coming up with materials and sources for great activities.

However, when the students come here, they bring the same distractions they carried to school during the week. The cell phones, the ipods, the psps, the unbreakable habit of wanting to play and socialize instead of getting down to using the time wisely on the Project Based Learning that infuses our curriculum. I'm not that old that I do not remember how much I too wanted to have fun in school, (and the lengths to which I would go to get it) so we have constructed a program to provide students with ample means of interaction with each other and with many many opportunities to have FUN while engaged in meaningful learning. These students say they want to excel and go into rigorous professions, so why the resistance to doing the extra work -which is what it takes to be competitive? OLD ATTITUDES. They want instructors to tell them what to do, how and when to do it, and if there are no high stakes attached to it, (grades, transferable credits) then it must not be worth anything. The program is voluntary and there is no punishment, no tangible reward except the intrinsic joy of knowing that they are becoming independent learners - true scholars. Yet even though attandance is good, they refuse to DO THE WORK.

Finding enough qualified instructors willing to work additional hours for about $19 per hour.

I had been teaching an after school art program after semi-retiring from the elementary school where I've been teaching for the past twenty years - until this year. Now no-one, however qualified and however successful their program has been, can have an after school class without their own personal insurance or insurance through an umbrella organization. I was told that this is becoming common among many school districts. That would cost $500 a year which would preclude my teaching these popular classes unless I was to offer many more classes at various school sites. It means all of our after school programs have been cancelled except for chess, which has a national (insured) organization. Who decides these things and why? I'm still trying to find out and to see what can be done about it.

We have community members and students interested in after school programs but struggle with the transportation issue. We bus all of our students and provide a degree of after school transportation at the secondary level. However, no transportation is available for our elementary students due to the high costs. Working parents are not able to transport elementary students home; therfore student participation is restricted.

You need the right people running the program. As in teaching, the right people make the program work.

I have run a credit recovery program for high school students for almost ten years. Participation in the program has dropped significantly over the last four years. It is supported by the district to keep cost down and we are charging the same as we did 7 years ago. Increasing focus on our state testing program has shifted emphasis away from having enough credits to graduate to passing the state test. The schools and district get too much public attention on test scores and almost none on students failing their classes. Seems ironic, but all too true.

Traditional schools especially in rural communities have been providing a host of enrichment programs in the area of sports for all seasons, (Sports would be a letter for a different time.)
thatre, forensics, speech, drama, music (band, choir, and the like.) Urban communities, strapped by a lack of will of the tax payer to provide basic infrastructure replacement, have lost much of their after school enrichment activities. The district I work for has closed rather than improved schools. We are no longer manufacturing but we are warehousing our youth. School is still the life blook of many communities.
Another more cynical way of looking at it is: What, another unfunded mandate which makes me miss more time from my family. I am sorry for students that do not have family; is that a reason I should have to abandon mine?

For my city, Boston, Massachusetts, the greatest single barrier to participation in after school programs is lack of transporation. Lack of transportation is concealed within the "lack of funding" catch all that garnered the most votes in your poll but should be separated out and looked at as a single issue. Likely funders of all stripes - state, federal, private foundation and individual donors - have demonstrated willingness to fund all aspects of program growth and improvement but none has been willing to begin to help local districts to pick up the costs of "late buses" so students ca get safely home. True enough, districts and funders have not given enough to make after school programs widely available or even high quality where they exist, but until there are late buses for after school programs there will be inadequate parent confidence and student participation to push after school participation past the tipping point to make the programs an integral part of public schooling.