TEA awards SA Youth $1.79 million grant

Texas Education Agency awards SA Youth $1.79 million grant for new 21st Century Community Learning Centers
Grant will help serve 1,350 underprivileged youth each year, primarily on South Side

For years SA Youth has served underprivileged children, primarily on the West Side of San Antonio, and now – thanks to a grant from the Texas Education Agency – the nonprofit organization will be able to serve an additional 1,350 students each year, for five years on the city’s South Side for $1.79 million for year one.

The grant allows SA Youth to open eight additional program sites in addition to the nine it has now. Each site will serve between 100 and 220 students and between 40 and 75 adults, 90.7 percent of which are economically disadvantaged. SA Youth will also employ an additional 60 to 70 people, 11 who will be full-time staff.

“We’ll definitely be able to serve a greater number of children in neighborhoods that may not have had services like this before,” said SA Youth CEO Cynthia Le Monds, adding that the grant is expected to continue for up to five years dependent on successful performance from the previous year. “We’re giving those parents some alternatives to their kids being on the streets and kids being home alone.”

The grant also will allow the organization to collaborate with the Salvation Army in which the Salvation Army’s Mission Corps facility on Southwest Military Drive will house one of the new sites and its students from two South San Independent School District schools. The remaining seven sites will be located at schools throughout the South San and San Antonio Independent School districts.

“We’re really excited about partnering with the Salvation Army to provide a center on the South Side,” Le Monds said. “That location is going to be very important to us. We’re really looking forward to that.”

The Texas Education Agency awards the grant in order to, “provide opportunities for academic enrichment, including providing tutorial services to help students, particularly students who attend low-performing schools, to meet state and local student academic achievement standards in core academic subjects, such as reading and mathematics and offer students a broad array of additional services.”

The funds from the grant will go specifically towards supporting out-of-school time programs and staffing costs. Le Monds says the grant will enable donors to maximize their giving since so many additional students will participate in SA Youth.