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7 takeaways from DHSP’s “public records” response. (Includes a breakdown of your chances of getting into any Afterschool.)

8/5/2022

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[This post is our analysis of the data from the response to our FOIA request on afterschool. To join our advocacy mailing list, leave your email in our petition or email schraa@gmail.com.]

Background: Last time we heard from DHSP was just so frustrating — that was on June 16, when, at City Council behest,
DHSP presented on the status of its “Community Schools” afterschool program. 

The presentation made clear that DHSP isn't actively working on expanding afterschool to meet demand. (DHSP notably cited the need for a year-long, consultant-led study before even starting the work.)

If you're curious, we summarized our takeaways after that meeting in this slide from our presentation to incoming City Manager Yi-An Huang on July 19, 2022. 
Picture
As you can see from our June takeaways, one of our main frustrations is DHSP's lack of transparency. This is problematic for many reasons:
  • It chills parent speech — you can’t know that your advocacy won’t hurt your child’s lottery chances.
  • It makes it harder for families to figure out their options — in particular, because DHSP doesn’t reveal a child’s waitlist status to families. 
  • Generally, it’s a major obstacle to building trust.  
But the good news is that the answer to our FOIA request for public records does contain insightful data on the program and lottery for the 2022-23 academic year. 

(Our table of the likelihoods of getting into any afterschool is in #2 below.)
​

Here are our main takeaways (again, you can look at their full data here):

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"Public Records" response on DHSP Community After School numbers (7/29/22)

8/4/2022

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We're excited to share the City's 7/29/22 response to our FOIA request for information. 

Unfortunately, the City has not made this information available online, so we're putting the info up here. 

The response was in four parts:
  1. A narrative response to the questions (3pp). Link to PDF.
  2. Tables responding to questions 1-4 + 7 (3pp). Link to PDF. 
  3. A narrative on the lottery process (Qs 5+6), (2pp). Link to PDF; Google doc here.
  4. A page taken from the City's current budget (pg. 42), which itself draws largely from DHSP's October 2021 report. Link to PDF. 

​In addition, here is DHSP's October 2021 Report, which they didn't make available online. Link to PDF. 

Our analysis includes 7 main takeaways.
Your thoughts/analysis/pushback on our findings are extremely welcome.
Please email Eugenia (schraa@gmail.com) and Amanda (amanda.beatty@gmail.com) with your takes. 
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    Eugenia Schraa & Amanda Beatty

    Cambridge moms of young kids, going slowly nuts trying to wrangle basic info from the City about schools, after schools, preschools, and probably much more. 

    We won't stop until Cambridge offers affordable, quality afterschool for every child who asks for it. 

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