After-school program to double enrollment $8 mil. expansion will provide more training, paid apprenticeships

After School Matters--the year-round arts, sports and technologyprogram for Chicago teenagers that sprung out of Gallery 37--willreach into 11 more neighborhoods this school year and double itsenrollment, thanks to an $8 million expansion unveiled Thursday.

Mayor Daley said Chicago is bucking a nationwide trend by findingways to positively engage 14,000 teens--up from 7,000 currently--during after-school hours when high school students are most at riskof delving into sex, drugs and crime.

"Around the country, many schools are dropping after-schoolprograms because they say teenagers don't find them interesting, butAfter School Matters has shown that teens want to be engaged," themayor told a news conference at Garfield Park, 100 N. Central Park.

"The arts, cultural institutions and after-school programs have ahuge effect on educational issues. Those kids--once they get engaged--they can speak. They can write. They can count. They can doeverything."

Gallery 37 is the award-winning arts apprenticeship programconceived by the mayor's wife, Maggie, in 1991 to use Block 37, theembarrassing hole in the Loop.

In 2000, at the behest of Maggie Daley, the program was expandedto sports and technology, under an after-school initiative that nowprovides training and paid apprenticeships in areas ranging fromcoaching, Web site design and newsletter writing to broadcasting,video production, robotics, dance and poetry.

The goal was to reach 50 percent of Chicago public high schoolstudents by the end of 2005. Thursday's expansion puts Chicago ontarget to more than meet that goal--at a time when there are threetimes as many applicants as there are vacancies, said Nancy Neir-Wachs, executive director of After School Matters.

Donations from corporations, individuals and foundations will fundpart of the expansion, and the Park District and Chicago Board ofEducation will finance the rest.

By increasing the annual budget of After School Matters to $17million--up from $9 million currently--teen programs will reach intounserved neighborhoods such as Chatham, Douglas, Mount Greenwood andWest Town. Programs at Schurz, Collins and Robeson High Schools,where demand is particularly high, will double. Six other unservedhigh schools--Kelly, Calumet, Kelvyn Park, Roosevelt, Foeman andProsser--will join the list.

Daley publicly thanked his wife for prodding him to broaden theGallery 37 umbrella to cover as many teens as possible.

The mayor said Maggie constantly reminds him "how important it isthat we, as a community, really provide more programs for teenagers."