The United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County received the city’s permission to use the Veterans Memorial Hall to provide after-school programming to students of the Solvang School District after it lost its space at the Solvang Elementary School campus.
Solvang City Manager Xenia Bradford said during the Dec. 14 City Council meeting that the nonprofit first began working with the Solvang Elementary School in the 2019-20 school year and became a popular program providing after-school child care at a reasonable cost.
According to a staff report, while the elementary school was on a remote-only schedule due to COVID-19, United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County provided on-campus care from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., and its programming included assistance with online learning.
“It’s a program that’s proved very effective and gained membership rather quickly. It reached nearly 100 kids and is an alternative to other after-school programs that were on campus,” Bradford said.
But on Aug. 13, the school shifted to a modified schedule where students attend school part time to allow for social distancing. Due to the shift, Solvang Elementary needed more space for classrooms, and that left the United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara in need of a facility to run the program for the rest of the school year.
Michael Baker, chief executive officer of the nonprofit, said during the meeting that the program has been tremendously successful and felt the school’s superintendent could attest to that.
“The last thing [Solvang School District Superintendent Steve Seaford] wanted to do is pull the program off-campus but they needed the space to social distance the kids,” he said.
Baker worked with the city to identify a location for the after-school program and agreed on the Veterans Memorial Hall but said the nonprofit could not afford the city’s rental fees.
The city’s rental fee for the hall is $200 a day for nonprofits and would equal more than $20,000 if United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara used the space for the rest of the school year.
In order to keep the program’s cost low and to afford cleaning supplies to keep the Veterans Memorial hall clean after a day’s use, Baker asked if the council would waive the rental fee.
He said many of the parents of the children participating in the program are essential workers and rely on the program.
Mayor Charlie Uhrig told the meeting’s virtual and in-person attendees that he understood the importance of the program and if the city could “hold the cost down it would be very helpful.”
The council voted to unanimously approve United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County’s request to use the Veterans Memorial Hall for its after-school program for six months—the remainder of the school year—and waive the rental fee.
This article appears in Dec 24-31, 2020.