Central Texas Afterschool Network

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Professional Development and Training section of the website! Find upcoming training for administrative and direct care staff hosted by CTAN's Afterschool University, as well as a list of local and online sources of training.
Please see calendar for details of upcoming meetings and events.
Top News Stories from Afterschool Alliance

The Middle School Forum hosted by CTAN was a great success. On September 27, over 100 school administrators, policymakers and afterschool providers joined IBM, Work Family/Directions, The National Institute on Out of School Time, and Family Connections to participate in "Making the Most of the Middle School Years." The day began when Judge Sam Biscoe addressed the group to set the local context about how important afterschool is in our community. We were dazzled by the comments of a group of middle school youth who shared with us what they want and need in their afterschool programs. Steve Amick with the San Diego Department of Education discussed how to market your program to middle schoolers. Andy Sullivan from the National YMCA shared with us the elements required for a quality program. The day ended with the distribution of an RFP by IBM. Programs serving children of IBM employees are encouraged to apply for funding.

The RFP and the attendee list are posted below:

RFP (Word doc)

Attendee List (Excel doc)

Lights On Afterschool! Kicks off in Central Texas with the Annual Breakfast of Champions

Lights On Afterschool! kicked off in Central Texas with the annual Breakfast of Champions on October 12th. The Breakfast of Champions awards breakfast, with its signature Wheaties box personalized trophies, commemorates outstanding individuals who have served afterschool programs in the Central Texas area this past year, as nominated by their peers.

Award winners in 8 categories were:

Afterschool Staff Member: Mike Rodriguez, YWCA of Greater Austin
Afterschool Volunteer: Bernie Henneberger, Heart House
Policymaker: Mark Williams, AISD Board of Trustees
School District Employee: Chris Harvey
Donor: The Field Family
Media: Jane Greig, Austin American-Statesman
Partner: Dell Inc. Products Group Division
Community Advocate: Harley Gambill, Communities In Schools

The Costs of Out-of-School-Time Programs: A Review of the Available Evidence

By Christianne Lind, Nanette Relave, Sharon Deich, Jean Grossman and Andrew Gersick
May 2006, 23 pages

Commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and written in collaboration with The Finance Project, this report reviews a variety of studies conducted since 1993 in an attempt to gain a broad sense of what it costs to run out-of-school-time programs. Among the report’s findings: there is a lack of up-to-date information about program costs; researchers and practitioners do not have a standard methodology for estimating costs; selected cost studies suggest wide variation across programs—from $449 to $7160 per child per year; much of this variation is attributable to differences in sample size, how costs are calculated and whether in-kind resources are taken into account; and not much is known about the cost implications of investments to improve the quality of out-of-school-time programs. This report is part of a larger study being conducted by P/PV and The Finance Project (with support from The Wallace Foundation) to asses the costs of out-of-school-time programs. A second report, including a comprehensive guide to the costs of various types of programs, will be published in 2007.

Download the CTAN Afterschool FAQ

CTAN is pleased to provide afterschool providers with the new Afterschool FAQ paper for use in your advocacy and grant writing. You may download the FAQ in either format for your use. For more information on advocacy, please see our Issues & Advocacy section.

*This document is in Acrobat (PDF) format. You need Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to be able to see these files. To download Acrobat Reader for free, click here.

Best Practices Program Quality Self-Assessment Tool

CTAN is pleased to present the Program Quality Self-Assessment Tool to afterschool programs and providers in the greater Austin area.

The CTAN steering committee was charged last year with identifying existing model programs as well as reviewing national standards. The Program Quality Self-Assessment Tool is the result of the sub-committee work over an eight-month period. Big thanks go out to Willa Rosen, Round Rock ISD, for heading this initiative. This document seeks to educate the community about best practices in out-of-school time programs. The intent of this self-assessment is to assist providers examine national trends and to ultimately ‘raise the bar’ for all after school programs.

You will notice the last page of the assessment is an opportunity for programs to list their 3 top areas of strength and 3 areas where more information could be beneficial. This information will guide CTAN in creating meaningful community-wide training in the near future. The demographic information is requested to offer a snapshot of services being provided to youth in our community. Providing identifying information is strictly optional.

Download the Program Quality Self-Assessment Tool

A final note: it is wholly understood that this instrument does not cover every aspect of the service provision of afterschool programs. Equally true is that every program does not participate in all suggested activities. Use the information that is applicable to make your program the best it can be.

For questions regarding the Program Quality Self-Assessment Tool, please call Willa Rosen, CTAN Best Practices Committee Chair, at (512) 464-5466 or email Willa_Rosen@roundrockisd.org.