Out-of-School Time (OST) is supervised programming that youth regularly participate in before school, after school, and during summer break. These programs keep young people safe, provide child care for working families, and organize activities that help youth develop skills and improve academically. Sometimes, these programs are collectively referred to as “afterschool”.
OST in Iowa
Starting and Supporting a Program
Congratulations on developing an out-of-school time program for youth in your community. Research tells us that youth who are engaged in high quality out-of-school time programming demonstrate greater positive results than their peers who do not participate. Some of these key indicators of success include:
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Improved literacy skills and scores
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Improved math skills and scores
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Improved behaviors
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Decreased juvenile delinquency
This toolkit is designed to assist programs who are starting from the ground up, programs that are developing out-of-school time programming from an existing source, and for those who are well established but need some additional support or fresh ideas to re-engage and reconnect programming. This toolkit can be downloaded as one PDF document or each section can be accessed individually below.
Individual Sections
Resources
For more information, please visit these sites.