Boys and Girls Club offers summer after school, full day options

The Poplar Bluff Boys and Girls Club summer school program is growing this year to include students from the Neelyville and Twin Rivers school districts.

If an area school is offering summer school programs, Boys and Girls Club staff will provide after-school programs for their students. The staff’s target is to keep 150-175 students active and engaged for the summer.

Lesley Warren, Kat Hall, Robbie Toth and executive director Chris Rushin gathered recently to discuss plans. Warren is elementary unit director. Hall is middle school unit director and Toth is teen unit director.

The club “is a fun place for the kids to come after school, hang out with their friends and get to do hands-on learning versus just going home,” Toth said.

The club gives them a safe place to go after summer school. Parents know they are being taken care of, and it helps take the stress off of the parents, as well as giving the students opportunities and good experiences they might not have gotten.

“We have several kids who get to do stuff here normally that they would never be exposed to or be able to have the opportunity to do,” Toth said.

To qualify for the program, students’ age may range from a 6-year-old who has completed kindergarten to 18 years old.

Hall said, “so we are having kids bused from the (Poplar Bluff) elementary units to this facility. We are going to have all of the grades here.”

As soon as they get off the bus, they will receive a snack before doing the other things.

Warren said, “elementary kids will do activities like STEAM, art, games, anything to keep them actively engaged when they get here at 3:15 until we close at 5:30.

STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and math, Warren explained.

For the middle school, Hall said, “it’ll be around 2:30 to 5:30, since they get out of school a little bit earlier. Instead of doing fourth, fifth to sixth grade groups, I’m mixing them so it’ll be like three middle school groups. They’re going to be doing basically the same things as the elementary, and it’s going to be doing STEAM, art and physical activities. I’m not really going to focus a lot on the homework aspects since they are going to be in summer school all day.”

Toth said, “We have full days. They are going to have a little bit more of a schedule. We’re hoping to go on field trips with them.” The club received the Ultimate Journey Grant for the Boys and Girls Club program, where they will partner with the National Park Service. “We’re going to get to take them, hopefully, on some field trips to the national park, Alley Springs, Big Spring, and do some activities outside with them,” Toth said. “We’re also going to do a lot of community service projects. Whether it’s taking things to the animal shelter, cleaning parks or just different types of community service projects.”

Toth said, “We’ll have after summer school for (Poplar Bluff) junior high in June, but then in July, we’ll have full days for junior high kids.”

The program will be open 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Poplar Bluff High School student programs will be in June and July and will be full days.

“In July, we’re hoping to have a group of out-of-district kids full days, because they are only doing summer school in June in those districts,” Toth said. “We’ve reached out to all of the out-of-district schools to let them know we’re an option for their kids. We have gotten a better response this year.”

The program will be open full weeks July 6-9 and Aug. 2-6, for full days to everybody, because those are the weeks in between summer school.

The summer programs are $15 a week during summer school, and the full days are $60 a week.

Scholarships are available to everybody if they need it.

To enroll for the summer program, parents may go online to bgcpb.org website. Go to the menu button, then the parent portal and click on the 2021 Summer Enrollment form. Fill out the form and send it back. The staff will email you as soon as your student is accepted into the program.

If they don’t have access to internet, parents may call 573-776-1690 and staff will be able to help.

Parents of students from the other districts will need to bring them to club. The staff explained a lot of the parents work in Poplar Bluff, so they can bring them on their way to work and pick them up on the way home.