Introducing DELTAS

Think for a moment about how much time our children and youth spend outside of school. Weekends. Before and after school. Holidays. Summers. When you total up that time, children and youth spend about 80% of their waking hours outside of school. It may be hard to believe, but do the math – 80% of their waking hours is spent outside of school! That means that if a child’s 80% is filled with trauma and danger, it will most likely overshadow whatever happens during the 20%, no matter the quality of the instruction. This also means that if the majority of a child’s free time is spent constructively, the excellent work of teachers is amplified.

Since August 2000, the Boston Public Schools (BPS) has dedicated full-time staff to address the critical need of students to have productive, enriching out-of-school time (OST) experiences. From within the Office of Curriculum and Instructional Practices, this team helped schools start and improve their afterschool programs, served as a liaison to community agencies seeking to work with schools, supported the link between what happens in the classroom and what happens during OST, and managed the BPS involvement in the OST sector. I am proud to announce that these efforts have culminated in the formation of a new BPS department – the Department of Extended Learning Time, Afterschool, and Services (DELTAS). The mission of DELTAS is to ensure that every student in the Boston Public Schools has access to quality out-of-school time activities and extended services. DELTAS helps remove barriers to learning and promotes well-rounded, successful students through collaborations with community agencies, health organizations, higher education institutions, families, and other government agencies.

While DELTAS is technically not “new,” its establishment does exemplify an important shift in BPS philosophy. Historically, community-based organizations have been the ones ensuring that OST was safe and edifying for children and youth with the passive endorsement of BPS. Given the academic, social, emotional, and physical challenges facing our students, the BPS perceived it could no longer afford not to be actively engaged in OST and steadily increased its involvement over the past 7 years. DELTAS represents the renewed commitment of the BPS to caring for the “whole child” and its acknowledgment of the inability of schools to prepare students for the world-to-come in isolation. Put simply, DELTAS enables the BPS, in concert with families and community-based organizations, to take full advantage of a student’s time.

If you are still reading this article, you are probably now wondering, “What, if anything, can DELTAS do for me?” Hopefully, this blog will answer that question. In addition to being shameless propaganda, it will contain information on the services we provide, resources available to you, and some strategies that have proven effective. It is our hope that in some way it will help you provide a better experience for the children and families you serve. I hope you enjoy this inaugural edition of the DELTAS blog (an instant collector’s item). Until next time, make every moment count.