In the front lobby, a fourth-grader contemplates which grain is her favorite, finally settling on pizza. Down the hallway, students write out walking tours of their favorite spots in Providence. Outside the library, a giddy group illustrates the lyrics to a Disney song and stops occasionally for dance breaks.
For 174 of William D'Abate Elementary School's 411 students, the school day doesn't last from just 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thanks to state funding granted to Brown's Swearer Center for Public Service, the D'Abate school provides morning, after-school and summer programming through its community learning center.
These programs — run by D'Abate teachers, local organizations and more than 100 Brown student volunteers — range from the Grow Kids Garden Club on Mondays to breakdancing on Friday afternoons.
Without the support of the Swearer Center and student volunteers, "we'd probably not have programming right now," said Brent Kermen, D'Abate's principal.
Though the Swearer Center has run programs at D'Abate for 10 years, it greatly expanded its role there in January after becoming the lead agent on D'Abate's 21st Century Community Learning Center grant from the state.
The Rhode Island Department of Education first gave D'Abate this grant six years ago. When the lead agent on the initial grant, the Education Partnership, went into receivership in 2008, the YMCA took over the learning center for the rest of the year. The Swearer Center then partnered with D'Abate to secure a new three-year grant in January.
The Swearer Center was a "natural partner" for D'Abate — which sits west of College Hill in Olneyville — because of its history there, said Jackie Ascrizzi, manager of the 21st Century Community Learning Center grants for the state department of education.
"They already have a good working relationship," she said.
On top of its new coordination and oversight responsibilities at D'Abate, the Swearer Center created a number of new programs there last semester to fill gaps in the learning center's offerings, said Dilania Inoa '99, a Swearer Center program manager for elementary and middle school programs.
Because the learning center offered no math club or sports activities, Inoa asked Jose Loya '10 to create and coordinate "Math in Motion." The club, now in its second semester, "incorporates mathematics into learning various sports" and enrolls 32 students, Loya said.
"They can show you lots of tricks," said D'Abate fourth-grader Adrian Carrasco, a "Math in Motion" participant, while his fellow club members played basketball with Brown volunteers.
Despite a double turnover in leadership — Kermen took over as D'Abate's new principal the semester before the Swearer Center took over the learning center — the transitions have gone smoothly, said Roger Nozaki MAT '89, director of the Swearer Center and associate dean of the college for community and global engagement.
"We had some concerns about continuity, generally, with our presence there," Nozaki said, but the investment of D'Abate's faculty and administration in the learning center has been "phenomenal."
Brown students go west
As the Swearer Center's program offerings at D'Abate expanded last semester, so did the number of student volunteers and coordinators.
"The Brown students have really taken this initiative and run with it," Inoa said.
Brown students run 12 separate after-school clubs at D'Abate, according to Angel Brown, the learning center's director. Student volunteers and coordinators allow the learning center to provide a "much wider variety of programs at much less cost," she said.
The Swearer Center also put together D'Abate's first "full-scale summer program," Brown said, which offered math and reading classes every day as well as a variety of academic and extracurricular activities to choose from. The grant funded the entire operation, and 90 kids — "maximum capacity," Brown said — participated.
"We basically had to all start from scratch and design our own curriculums," said Adrienne Langlois '10, a Herald opinions columnist, who taught music part-time at D'Abate this summer. "There were a few hiccups. … But I was amazed that we were able to keep this together and run things smoothly."
Because the Swearer Center runs the entire learning center at D'Abate, student volunteers and coordinators get the chance to organize a program in the context of a "larger learning structure," Nozaki said.
"In the past, we were really asking them to work at the programmatic level," he said, adding that the opportunity to perform community service while considering larger urban educational structures "didn't really exist in that way for Brown students before."
‘Outside the Brown bubble'
Since the Swearer Center took over the learning center at D'Abate, more student volunteers have taken the opportunity to "step outside the Brown bubble" and interact first-hand with Olneyville's underserved community, Loya said.
The increase in volunteers "has been phenomenal for the students" at D'Abate, said Joshua Curhan '10, who coordinates the sports, mystery and adventure reading team at the learning center as well as the Swearer Classroom Program, which provides tutoring during the school day.
The learning center charges between $2.50 to $10 per family per week, Brown said. She added that around 85 percent of families earn below $1,600 per week, "the $2.50 range," but no families are on full scholarship.
"We debated a lot" about whether to charge families at all, Inoa said, but paying for the programs "gives them this sense of belonging and knowing that this is something they're providing for their children."
The learning center has improved school-day attendance, because the students "want to be there and they know they have clubs that day," Brown said. And after 5 p.m., when the clubs end, kids work on their homework in the cafeteria until their parents pick them up by 5:30 p.m.
Even though it is too soon to track the learning center's effect on test scores or student grades, the clubs "absolutely" help D'Abate's sizable bilingual student population, Kermen said. Students who stay for clubs interact with other English-speaking kids after school, rather than only speak English within "that 9-to-3, five-days-a-week situation," he said.
Swearer Center programs are also vital in making the school a community center in Olneyville, Kermen said. Even after the learning center closes, the school stays open — student volunteers teach English as a Second Language classes for community members in the evenings.
Planning ahead
The learning center's funding from the state will remain steady until the grant runs out in 2012. Until then, the Swearer Center will focus on improving existing programs rather than expanding offerings, Nozaki said.
In line with the requirements of the grant, the Swearer Center is putting together an advisory board of Brown coordinators and D'Abate administrators, teachers, staff and parents. The group will meet monthly to share ideas and concerns, Inoa said.
"We're really just trying to make sure that every constituency is included," she added.
The state's education department — which receives federal funds for these grants — is "pretty responsive" in allowing the Swearer Center to allocate funds to best meet D'Abate's needs, Nozaki said.
Though the grant covered buses to and from the learning center in past years, the learning center chose not to offer transportation, which Brown said has "in no way affected our after-school enrollment."
"I thought that was going to be a major, major hindrance," Kermen said, but after seeing how fam
ilies found other ways to provide transportation, he made no plans to use grant money for buses in future years. "If we can get away with not having transportation available," it will leave more money for programming, he said.
While Swearer Center administrators are unsure whether they will apply for another 21st Century Learning Community Center grant on top of this one, running D'Abate's learning center has been a "fantastic experience so far," Nozaki said, adding that the Swearer Center plans to continue securing funding for D'Abate's learning center.
The learning center and the Swearer Center coordinators are ‘incredibly influential here in the Olneyville community," Kermen said. "It really ties the school and the community all together."
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