Program Operations, Staffing, and Recruitment

Operations and Schedule

Kent Learning Together offered programming throughout summer (2024) and school year (Fall 2024-Spring 2025) sessions. Summer programming was held for four weeks, Monday through Thursday; East Hill’s program ran from 9am-1:30pm and Springbrook’s program was from 9am-4pm.  During the school year, one site offered one hour of before-school programming Monday through Thursday (Springbrook) and both sites had two hours of after-school programming, Monday through Thursday. East Hill and Springbrook had regular, early-release Wednesdays during the academic year, which allowed site coordinators to run the afterschool program earlier in the day.

Staffing

Both sites had a full-time 21st CCLC site coordinator responsible for overseeing staff and programming at their respective sites. In 2024-25, additional staff included paid and volunteer roles, as follows:

• For the school year program, East Hill had a total of five paid staff: two high school students, two other non-teaching school staff, and one school day teacher.  East Hill’s summer program staff included two East Hill paraeducators.
• For the school year program, Springbrook had a total of three paid staff (one administrator, two high school students) and one parent volunteer. Springbrook’s summer staff included six parent volunteers and one college student volunteer (in addition to three paid staff).

Recruitment

Recruiting students for the Kent Learning Together program includes a range of approaches. At East Hill, students are recruited through referrals from school day staff because students need additional assistance in reading or mathematics and for students with behavior-related issues, special needs, or challenges with regular school-day attendance. At Springbrook, students are recruited through these approaches, as well as based on students being “below proficient” on local or state assessments, having failed to receive a passing grade during a preceding grading period, or being a multi-lingual learning. At both sites, the program is open to all students who want to participate, and enrolls students on a first-come, first-served basis. Springbrook also gives enrollment priority for certain groups of students. For some activities, East Hill restricts enrollment to certain groups of students who are able to participate. Most participants returned from the prior school year and/or continued from the Summer 2024 program into the school year.