An after-school program in Winterport that was unsure of its future with a national, for-profit company taking its place at the Leroy H. Smith School has found a new location in town.
Starting this fall, the Bangor Region YMCA will move the after-school program it has run for the past decade at the Winterport elementary school about a mile away to the Samuel L. Wagner Middle School.
The move comes after Regional School Unit 22 signed an agreement with Champions, a division of the for-profit company KinderCare, which will instead offer the after-school programming at the Leroy H. Smith School.
Under its agreement with RSU 22, Champions will also offer before- and after-school programs at the George B. Weatherbee and Earl C. McGraw schools in Hampden.
That arrangement has forced the Hampden Recreation Department, which previously offered before- and after-school programs in those schools, to move them to the Old Hampden Academy.
[National company takes over after-school programs at some Greater Bangor schools]
RSU 22 Superintendent Rick Lyons has said the new partnership is meant to expand the before- and after-school programming available to families in the district, which serves Hampden, Newburgh, Winterport and Frankfort.
But Diane Dickerson, the Y’s CEO, said she’s heard from families who “aren’t satisfied” by the new arrangement and “want us to remain at the Smith School, where we have been for 10 years. What our families are telling us is that they don’t understand why this new company wasn’t just immediately sent to Wagner and have us remain at Smith.”
To help families send their kids to those new places, RSU 22 has agreed to use its buses to transport students to and from the programs, according to Lyons.
Shelley Abbott, director of the Hampden Recreation Department, declined to comment on the new arrangement this week.
Under its agreement with RSU 22, Champions is also offering additional summer programs in both towns. Those programs have not forced any existing services to change locations.
[View RSU 22’s out-of-school care agreement with Champions]
Under the agreement, the district will not pay any fees to Champions. Rather, families will pay the company, and RSU 22 will receive an 8 percent cut of the company’s net revenues in the district, according to an agreement signed in April by Lyons and KinderCare’s chief executive officer.