Understaffing leaves after-school programs with unmet demand

The return to classrooms for the nation’s schoolchildren has not meant a return to work for many of their parents who, with workdays that outlast school days, are finding crucial after-school programs in short supply.

School-based providers list difficulties hiring and retaining staff as the biggest reasons they have not fully rebounded from pandemic shutdowns and they say they are as frustrated as the parents they are turning away.

“We’re in a constant state of flux. We’ll hire one staffer and another will resign,” said Ester Buendia, assistant director for after-school programs at Northside Independent School District in Texas. “We’ve just not been able to catch up this year.”

Before the pandemic, the San Antonio district's after-school program had 1,000 staff members serving more than 7,000 students at its roughly 100 elementary and middle schools. Today, there are less than half that number of employees supervising about 3,300 students. More than 1,100 students are on waiting lists for the program, called Learning Tree, which provides academic, recreational and social enrichment until 6:30 p.m. each school day.

It’s difficult to conclude how many parents of school-age children have been unable to resume working outside the home because of gaps in available care. But surveys point to a cycle of parents, mostly mothers, staying home for their children because they are unable to find after-school programming, which then causes staffing shortages at such programs that rely heavily on women to run them.

“There’s no doubt really that these after-school programs — the lack of after-school programs at this stage — are limiting women in particular being able to reenter the workforce," said Jen Rinehart, vice president for strategy and programming at the nonprofit...