The Providence After School Alliance (PASA) is an initiative of The Education Partnership, Rhode Island’s leading education public policy organization. PASA brings together public and private organizations to provide high-quality citywide afterschool programming.
Cityspan created a single integrated system that enables PASA to track enrollment, participation, and retention across 12 organizations providing out of school time (OST) services for more than 3,000 youth in Providence. Before linking the partner organizations, Cityspan customized a version of the system for each organization to reflect its unique needs.
The Cityspan OST system serves as a citywide data collection and management tool across a variety of linked after school sites, including recreation centers, libraries, and community-based organizations. Participating service organizations and PASA can now share information about one set of clients. PASA, in turn, now has an overview of all programs and can quickly demonstrate quantifiable results to both funders and stakeholders.
PASA and its providers have used the data to identify the most successful and popular sites, and then make informed future funding decisions. This data has been critical to the city’s development of AfterZones, campuses that provide a variety of after school programs for hundreds of middle school-age youth.
Results
- Online database to track and manage afterschool services to more than 3,000 youth Centralized program enrollment at any of 12 provider organizations
- Immediate visibility into daily attendance and overall enrollment percentages for all programs
- Reduced partner agency costs for staff to complete standard, repeated tasks (e.g., registration)
- Services targeted to youth and families in neighborhoods with greatest potential impact
- Integration of school district data to enable analysis of youth-level outcomes
- Greater coordination among Providence youth-serving organizations
- External Study – AfterZone: Outcomes for Youth Participating in Providence’s Citywide After-School System
“Having a citywide tracking system allows providers, parents, and schools to know where youth are spending their time after school. Once we know this, we can make better decisions about programming that will keep them busy, fulfilled, and off the streets.” -David N. Cicilline, former Mayor of Providence
