“I had to let him know I couldn’t be his dad, but I could be his friend,” said Padia, 49. 

The boy’s request made Padia, who was 18 at the time, realize the “impact that these programs make on young people,” and it’s stuck with him for over 30 years.

“Not every kid has both parents at home. Not every kid has somebody waiting for them at home after school. So, we give them a place to go,” said Padia, who currently serves as a recreation administrator in Arizona. “That’s what these programs mean to young people.”

That young boy was one of the lucky ones, a new study shows.   

Thousands of American families, mostly low-income and families of color, face persistent barriers enrolling their children in after school and summer programs, according to a report released earlier this month from the nonprofit advocacy group . 

The report found in a survey of more than 30,500 parents earlier this year  about 77% who want to enroll their children in after school programs can’t — most citing cost, accessibility and availability as the main issues. 

The “unmet demand” of after school programs affects about 22.6 million children and is expected to worsen unless states take action, according to the report, as President Donald Trump’s eliminates more than $1.3 billion in federal funds dedicated to these programs. 

The report found that 96% of families in the highest income bracket enrolled their child in some type of out-of-school-activity, “including organized sports and special lessons,” which was 30 percentage points higher than families in the lowest income bracket.

Access to a variety of programs often comes at a cost high-income families can afford, while lower wealth communities are more dependent on programs that are subsidized by federal, state or local funding streams. 

The report found that high income families spent about nine times more – about $6,500 per child – than low-income families who spend around $730 on average for after school programs. The spending gap has increased since 2020 when high-income families were outspending lower income families by five times as much, according to the report.

Though after school programs were one of the top investments when schools received an influx of COVID-19 funds to support learning loss, the report argued that “federal funding has not kept pace with demand” since – which limits opportunities and continues to shut families out.

“When families can’t access afterschool programs, we all pay a price. We cannot afford the opportunities lost for youth to realize their potential, for working parents to provide for their families,” wrote Afterschool Alliance Executive Director Jodi Grant and Lisa Lucheta, the organization’s board chair, in the report. “Millions of students are being left behind, costing our country dearly now and dampening our prospects for the future.”

Grant, at a news conference in mid-October, added that while federal funding is “only a small percentage of the overall spending in after school, it is absolutely key to helping our low-income families access programs in the after school world.”

The report also found:

• About 84% of low-income families, and 73% of middle-income families, don’t have access to after school programs compared to 59% of high-income families.
• About half of low- and middle-income parents would enroll their children in a program if it was readily accessible.  
• Unmet demand is highest for Black, Latino and Native American children which has grown between 2020 and 2025 by seven, five and eight percentage points respectively. 

Most parents surveyed recognized the benefits after school programs provide, ranging from keeping students off screens and out of trouble, developing better relationships with their peers and supporting mental health. But it’s often hard to find programs to fit their budgets or that are conveniently located.

Fifty-six percent of families said the cost of after school programs were “an important factor preventing them from enrolling their child.” Nearly half also said their child did not have transportation to and from the programs. 

For families who did have their child enrolled in a program, a quarter of them said they had been on a waitlist; and more than 60% of those same parents said the wait was longer than a month.

“After school programs are seen as extra recreation programs … that are not necessary, not essential, but the harsh reality is that these programs provide so much development for young people,” Padia said. “When you talk about what these programs can provide to communities — it’s resources.”

The report cited the grant as the only “exclusive” federal funding stream into after school and summer programs. 

Investment into the grant program, however, has remained the same since 2022. When adjusted for inflation, “the federal dollars going to support our low-income families has decreased,” Grant said.

Earlier this year, Trump’s administration withheld , which was later released to states. But advocates worry the money is on the chopping block again, which means state officials are being called upon to step up. 

“There’s 27 states that have state funding streams. We want to get to all 50,” Grant said.

Washington D.C. in the largest percentage of students involved in programs, with 38% of K-12 students compared to the national average of 13%. D.C. also was named as the top leader in accessibility, which was defined by states that have prioritized funding for transportation and expanding opportunities in areas with limited options.

The report credited the city for its “significant investments,” in after school programming over the past eight years, including over $100 million of funding in its Office of Out of School Time Grants and Youth Outcomes. 

Hawaii, South Dakota, California and Connecticut followed as top states with the highest percentage of students involved in out-of-school programs. Kansas, New Mexico, Alaska and South Dakota were also highlighted as states leading in accessibility.  

Trump’s current budget proposal would consolidate 18 education grants, including the 21st Century Community Learning Centers, into one general $2 billion funding stream. 

The Afterschool Alliance said the proposal, if passed, would cut funding for education programs .

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Thursday announced — a partnership with five leading organizations to bring information and research about out-of-school-time programs together into one “centralized, readily available location.” The department will seek applications from an outside organization for a $3-$4 million contract in next year’s budget to run the initiative. 

“We’re at a pivotal point In America’s recovery,” Cardona said during an event in Washington D.C. involving students, education officials and advocates. “If we can reopen school during a pandemic, we can make sure students have access to quality programs.”

The event coincided with National Summer Learning Week, but Cardona didn’t offer specific details on how districts already running this year’s summer programs can benefit.

Coming a week after Cardona joined with White House officials to announce a new effort to recruit 250,000 , the announcement is the latest from the administration to emphasize urgency in addressing learning loss and students’ disconnection from school during the pandemic. According to the department’s release, the effort builds on two decades of funding for afterschool and summer learning programs in low-income schools through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers grants.The department seeks $1.3 billion in the fiscal year 2023 budget for 21st Century funding, an increase of $50 million over 2021 and 2022.

“We know that our young people have lost contact with friends, teachers and mentors over the past two years,” Daniel Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said in a statement. The organization is part of the effort, along with the Afterschool Alliance, the National Comprehensive Center, the National League of Cities and the National Summer Learning Association.

The new initiative can be helpful if it advises states how to use existing federal grant programs to pay for summer and afterschool when American Rescue Plan funding dries up, said Nicholas Munyan-Penney, a senior policy analyst at Education Reform Now. This week, the think tank released on how states are already using relief funds for summer school. 

Experts could also help states and districts evaluate which programs improve students’ academic performance and mental health outcomes so they can “phase out less effective programming,” he said.

But Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank that has tracked districts’ responses to the pandemic, said the additional funding seems small compared to the need to better understand what works. And it comes when the Institute for Education Sciences, the department’s research arm, already doesn’t have enough funding to meet the demand. 

“It feels a bit like a ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ moment for the feds,” she said. “Our students are facing extraordinary needs. Now is the time for a serious and strategic commitment of resources from the federal government for research and development.” 

The Center’s research also suggests districts are doing less this year, not more. Its showed a drop in districts planning summer programming, except for students with disabilities. And in June, the Afterschool Alliance released showing that just one in five afterschool providers has received relief funds.

Last summer, many districts also struggled to hire enough staff to meet the demand, despite pay incentives. And the Afterschool Alliance survey showed two-thirds of program leaders were worried they wouldn’t have enough staff this year. 

Even when districts plan to serve students with disabilities, they often end up cutting back. A Buffalo, New York-area district reduced for special education students because of staff shortages, and the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland shifted its program for about 175 students because of a lack of staff.

Some parents also question whether districts have done enough outside of the school year to move students back up to grade level. Alicia Aleman, who has three children in California’s Fresno Unified School District, enrolled them in last year’s summer program.

“They offer programs for math or science, but they’re only making cookies. They’re watching movies,” she said, adding that low-income families don’t have choices because they are working and “need someone to take care of the kids during the summer.” 

This year, she tried to sign up for a program through the city, but “all the spots are taken by the time the flyers go to the community.”

Fresno Unified, however, has significantly expanded summer programs with $40 million in state funding, boosting enrollment from about 4,000 at a limited number of sites last year to roughly 15,000 this year at every elementary school and middle school. The district is contracting with a range of nonprofit organizations and colleges to offer sports and arts camps, with tutoring built in. 

The funding “allows us to remove historical barriers [like] making kids get on the bus and go across town,” said Jeremy Ward, the district’s assistant superintendent for college and career readiness. “My biggest fear is that we consider this work as a flash in the pan — we influse money for a year or two and then we pull back.”

From 2014 to early 2020, just before the pandemic, the U.S. saw a 1.3 million-student drop in afterschool STEM participation, falling from 7 million learners to 5.7 million, according to the paper, which was published by the nonprofit organization Afterschool Alliance.

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Those drops were starkest among poorer students, who were already underrepresented in STEM fields. In that timespan, the number of young people from low-income households participating in afterschool programs, STEM or otherwise, fell from 4.6 million to 2.7 million — meaning 79 percent of afterschool attrition came from less wealthy families despite such students making up only 38 percent of all participants in 2020.

“We left those students behind,” said Nikole Collins-Puri, CEO of the California-based nonprofit Techbridge Girls.

Simultaneously, however, the share of afterschool programs offering STEM opportunities grew. Nearly 3 in 4 young people learning outside of school hours have science and technology programming available to them. That’s up four percentage points from 69 percent in 2014.

“The inequities are troubling and must not continue,” said Jodi Grant, Afterschool Alliance’s executive director, in a press release. “We need to increase access to afterschool overall, because even though parents report a greater percentage of programs are providing STEM, fewer children are in afterschool programs today than in years past.”

Data for the report come from a randomly selected, nationally representative sample of U.S. families, including a total of more than 31,000 phone interviews, making the report the most comprehensive look at out-of-school learning to date.

The interviews revealed that, even amid drops in afterschool program participation, more parents than ever before would like to see their children get involved in such opportunities. For every child in an out-of-school learning program, another three are waiting to get in, according to the study. The parents of some 24.6 million students said they would enroll their child in afterschool programming if the offerings were readily available to them.

Cost and transportation appear to pose key barriers. Fifty-seven percent of parents said afterschool opportunities were too expensive and 53 percent said they weren’t sure how their kids would get to and from activities. STEM programs may be particularly pricey, with a $107 mean weekly reported price, compared to $74 per week for other offerings.

Despite barriers, however, science and math opportunities are an increasing priority for parents. Some 72 percent of families, up from 53 percent in 2014, told researchers that STEM and computer science learning were important factors in their selection of afterschool and summer programs. Rates were especially high among Black, Hispanic and Asian families.

STEM-related occupations tend to be more lucrative than non-STEM fields, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts the former will grow by 8 percent in the next decade, while the latter will only grow 3.4 percent. STEM fields, however, tend to employ a more white and more male workforce than the general population.

Collins-Puri’s organization, Techbridge Girls, works to counter that trend by providing STEM learning opportunities to low-income girls of color and gender-expansive individuals.

Widening access to STEM programs, she said in a briefing held on the Afterschool Alliance report, means eliminating potential barriers to participation for underrepresented groups. For example, young women more so than young men tend to shoulder caregiving responsibilities, the CEO pointed out — which for many families only increased during the pandemic.

“When girls have the responsibility to take care of their younger sibling, to take care of their elderly family members, or even take on some of the economic responsibilities to support the household, that is a direct impact to their participation in afterschool programming,” said Collins-Puri.

“You have to make your afterschool programming flexible,” she continued. Adults should encourage students to come to activities, regardless of their home responsibilities, by telling them, “Make sure you bring your younger sibling so they can be part of the learning experience,” the Oakland afterschool leader advised.

Programs may soon have additional resources at their disposal, Grant, of the Afterschool Alliance, pointed out thanks to funds from the American Rescue Plan, which could allow some organizations to subsidize program costs, bolster transportation options or make other adjustments to meet families’ needs.

Even amid persistent disparities in access to afterschool programming, gaps have never been due to any deficiencies among individuals who belong to underrepresented groups, Collins-Puri reminded viewers.

“Our girls lack nothing. Our girls are capable. They’re ready and they’re willing to be in the STEM revolution.”

Then the pandemic hit—and like so many other facets of family life in America, Dallas’ afterschool programs felt the effects, closing down or drastically shrinking as program staff quit for higher paying jobs in other industries and fear over COVID-19.

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With fewer spots available, children are now waiting up to 60 days to be enrolled. Another way to see it: For every child in an afterschool program in Dallas, there are three to four waiting for an available spot.

“We saw there was about a 45 percent seat loss in programs that were either no longer able to run, or that had to close,” said Dallas Afterschool vice president of program services Marjorie Murat. “These afterschool programs are really a lifeline for working families, and they exist to support the working families and sustain the family unit.”

The afterschool shortage in Dallas is not unique.

As the pandemic has continued, afterschool programs across the country are facing staffing shortages, forcing them to reduce the number of children they serve or close down completely.

COVID-19 has exacerbated the long-standing issue of low wages of afterschool staff, advocates said. Most afterschool care programs have a starting salary of $9-$12 an hour. Coupled with rising concerns about the virus and now the Delta variant, many are not returning to work, with some leaving for jobs that pay much more and are less risky.

The staff shortages have resulted in child care headaches for parents like Jessica Canales, a Dallas employment recruiter, whose kids were waitlisted for weeks after returning to school in early August. Pent up demand created a huge need for afterschool care.

For weeks, with no childcare in place, Canales was forced to leave work, picking up her children at 1 p.m., halfway through the school day. “My kids would miss everything else,” she said.

It took a direct appeal to the principal to finally get her kids off the waitlist and into the program.

“It was very frustrating,” said Canales, “especially when you have two parents working … I was so stressed out, I thought I had to quit my job.”

The issue of retaining afterschool workers is longstanding, advocates say.

“Before working during the pandemic, these jobs barely paid a living wage, let alone access to sick leave,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance. Once COVID-19 hit, she said, workers became fearful about showing up for work.

In at least one state, afterschool workers who refused to get vaccinated have continued to come to work and are wearing masks — prompting some colleagues to leave their posts.

There have been warning signs the worker shortage in afterschool has been getting worse in the last 18 months.

A national report by the Afterschool Alliance found more than half of summer programs (52 percent) — many of which also run afterschool programs — have waitlists compared to 40 percent last summer. Officials say the increase is due to staffing shortages created by the pandemic.

The workers have found opportunity and less risk during the pandemic: Within the last 16 months, afters school staff in some Omaha, Nebraska programs have been leaving for higher paying jobs at outlets such as Target and other businesses where workers start at $15 an hour compared to the $11.50 to $12 an hour offered to starting afterschool workers.

“We have sites that will not be able to open because they just don’t have the staff,” said Megan Addison, Executive Director of Collective for Youth in Omaha.

“We have sites that will not be able to open because they just don’t have the staff,” said Addison, Executive Director of Collective for Youth in Omaha.

In addition to low pay, advocates say workers have little room to grow.

“People have to look into other industries not only due to money but also due to the lack of social mobility within the sector. It’s very hard for people to grow and move on into other positions,” said Lissette Castillo, the Director of Community Schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “For example, educators can move from paraprofessional to educators to administrators, there is a lack of support for afterschool staff to have access to programming like that.”

With news of the Delta variant, other afterschool care programs are also struggling to navigate vaccine and mask mandates and protocols. In Nebraska, when educators were able to get vaccinated in early spring, only 50 percent of the afterschool staff at Collective for Youth programs did so.

“A majority of our staff are younger, and we also work with a lot of people of color who had some concerns regarding the vaccination. Some staffers also already had gotten COVID-19 and didn’t feel the need to get vaccinated,” said Addison. “Being a Republican state, and having many opportunities to get vaccinated, many of our partners are leaning towards optional, to not seem self-superior.”

Some Omaha afterschool centers are operating with non-vaccinated staff, but are still short staffed as workers fearful of getting sick leave their job, said Chief Operating Officer of Kids Can Community Center, Josh Gillman.

“We’ve been operating with 70 percent of our staff being vaccinated, and the other 30 percent who have declined even though they’ve been offered. We require all staff to wear masks presently at all times,” Gillman said. “Our normal daily service scope of students would be 800 if we were fully staffed, but right now we have 20 vacancies with our normal 70 positions…which reduces our capacity by a couple hundred of students we can serve each day until we wait to fill those positions.”

In Minnesota, an afterschool official in Saint Paul said the most alarming issue for afterschool programs is the lack of follow through with COVID-19 safety protocols, as administrators avoid having the corrective conversations with staff and students.

“People will say it’ll be safe if we all wear masks and stay six feet apart. But when you enter a building, and people aren’t wearing masks and aren’t six feet apart, those that are a little bit more sensitive to the health risks of COVID-19 don’t feel comfortable,” said one official. “And the principals and assistant principals in the past haven’t done anything, because we did go back to school last spring, and that was a big issue.”

As the United States intends to return to normalcy, with some delays due to the Delta variant, afterschool care programs will be integral to aid those with children in order to go back to work.

“Many people have no choice but to go back to the workforce and put their fears aside…there are many reports out there and research on the impact of afterschool and how it is an integral part of children’s learning,” said Castillo. “And yet the [afterschool care] staff at the frontline have been shamefully neglected and disregarded and the field itself has yet to receive the recognition and the respect that it deserves. Keeping in mind how families need to go back to work and the ones at the frontline will be on the line helping them get back to work.”

For her part, Canaldes knows she was lucky — lucky that she could leave her job and pick up her children early while she wanted for a spot in the afterschool program; and lucky she was able to finally get them into the program.

“There’s certain families who cannot wait three to four weeks to find afterschool care programs, especially with the epidemic and everybody going back to school. It’s an immediate challenge,” said Canales. “It is very frustrating.”