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Thursday, July 17, 2008

Vista Grande To Continue With After-School Program

By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
      For the first time in a while the parents of San Antonito Elementary School students heard some good news.
    At a meeting on July 10 at Vista Grande Community Center they were told the after-school programs will be back, just the way they were.
    Parents signing up for the program can expect their children to be picked up from the school and taken to the community center where they'll be able to use some of the facilities and be supervised by county staff. Parents who pick their children up from the program before 6:30 p.m. won't be charged extra for being late, according to program manager Nancy Kline.
    The change comes after a struggle to find a way to transport the kids to the community center.
    After-school programs have been held at San Antonito Elementary School for the past year while the Vista Grande Community Center was closed for construction of the attached Fisher and Smith Memorial Gymnasium, a 19,000-square-foot, 500-seat facility. Now the gymnasium is basically completed, but that wasn't a guarantee the after-school programs would be moved back to the community center.
    While the center was closed, the county found a state statute that says its single-axle vans were not safe enough to transport students from San Antonito to Vista Grande, or to any community center for that matter.
    Instead, it was found that some of the students could be transported using APS school buses, but the issue was complicated by another issue: students who have transferred into the school but live outside the normal area for bus service could not be transported because the district is not funded to transport them, according to an interview early this month with APS director of student transportation Patrick Garcia.
    Bernalillo County deputy community services manager Julie Morgas Baca had said she didn't want to separate the students.
    Since then, the district agreed to charge a flat $25 fee per busload, a cost that will be pooled and paid by all the parents using the program.
    "What they're trying to do is recover the cost per busload," said county commissioner Michael Brasher in an interview after the meeting.
    The solution came just two days before the meeting, so many parents said they expected to hear bad news. According to Bernalillo County deputy community services manager Julie Morgas Baca, it was Brasher and his support staff who made the difference.
    "He's worked really hard on this," she said.
    Brasher has attended community meetings and worked on the situation for some time and he said he feels the relationship between the county and Albuquerque Public Schools has been a positive one.
    State Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort also got involved and said she will also pitch in to help pay for the $25 fee per busload.
    Beffort anticipates about $5,000 in recurring funding, but that money may not be available until July 1 of 2009, unless it is made available on an emergency basis.
    The arrangement between the county and APS may change things throughout the county, according to County Commission Chairman Alan Armijo.
   

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