Juneau School District will end its after school program, plans to replace with private provider

The Juneau School District announced it is ending the RALLY program Tuesday. 

The after-school child care program serves more than 100 Juneau children during the summer. It will end Aug. 8.

Kristy Germain is the district’s director of operations and oversees the program. She said the district could not reliably keep the program staffed last school year. The district already closed the RALLY site at Sayeik: Gastineau Community School about a month before the end of the school year.

“This decision to close our RALLY program is not one that we have taken lightly, and our focus is in providing a continuity of supervised after school coverage, because we know that is so important to our JSD families,” Germain said.

She said maintaining child care remains a priority for the district, which is working with a local preschool to provide after-school care at the start of the next school year. While Juneau is in a better position than other parts of the state, many families struggle to access and afford child care.

The district is finalizing a lease agreement with Auke Lake Preschool, a licensed provider that currently serves children from six weeks to 12 years old. Germain said the preschool is the only provider that formally came forward to work with the district. The plan is for the preschool to provide child care at different sites independently from the district.

Derik Swanson co-owns the preschool. He said the district has been accommodating during negotiations and he’s invested in the success of a Juneau after-school program.

“I grew up in the RALLY program too, so it would be kind of sad to see it go” he said. “I know it had several closures in the past here, but it’d be an honor to kind of pick up the mantle and keep that service running as long as we’re able to.”

Swanson couldn’t give an estimate of how long it would take to set up the program after an agreement is finalized.

Emily Wright is a local parent. Her oldest child participated in RALLY both during the school year and summer. She’s a nurse and said RALLY worked best with her family’s needs compared to other providers.

“The RALLY program was really consistent for our family and affordable. I mean, we felt like we had made it, you know, getting a kid into that program – it was fantastic,” she said. “So we’re devastated to hear that it’s closing.”

Wright says she already switched to working part-time to care for her younger preschool-aged son. Without another child care option, she said she’ll probably have to take more time off work to care for both children when the school year begins.

“We don’t have a backup plan at this moment,” Wright said. “It seems like a lot of the day care centers that provide after-school care is not as affordable as RALLY was, and it was just really convenient to pick her up there at her school.”

The school year begins on Aug. 14.