SOS After-School Program at the
Aberdeen Recreation Station
for
Aberdeen Elementary and Southern Middle School Students

SOAR Newsletters - just click the newsletter to download a copy of current program activities

• January 2010 Newsletters

About SOAR

The SOS ‘SOAR’ After-School Program is a CIS initiative in partnership with the Town of Aberdeen Parks and Recreation Department, Southern Middle School, Aberdeen Elementary School and many community groups: The First Tee Program, The Roosters Wife, Junior Achievement, Goshin Dojo, etc. The program provides academic support, enrichment and a safe healthy after-school environment for fifth grade students from Aberdeen Elementary School and 6th – 8th grade students from Southern Middle School, Monday thru Thursday from 3PM – 6PM at the Aberdeen Recreation Station. The ‘SOAR’ program began in September 2008 and has 50 students attending each week.

The North Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (DJJDP) administers Support Our Students (SOS) funds for the implementation of after school programs designed to create supportive extra learning opportunities that have a positive impact on the lives of school-aged children. DJJDP awards SOS grants to non-profit, 501(c)(3) private, nonprofit organizations to run quality after-school programs for students during the afternoon hours when the majority of juvenile crime occurs.

Programs such as SOS are important for three primary reasons:

• Too many children have little or no adult supervision after school.
• Unsupervised children are more likely to become involved in criminal activities and other related behaviors.
• After-school programs have been shown to prevent many of the consequences that take place when children are left unsupervised.

The SOS Program is governed by legislation (North Carolina General Statute (N.C.G.S) 143B-152) which outlines the following six (6) goals:

1. Reduce the number of students who are unsupervised after school, otherwise known as latch-key children;
2. Improve the academic performance of students participating in the program;
3. Meet the physical intellectual, emotional, and social needs of students participating in the program and improve their attitudes and behavior;
4. Improve coordination of existing resources and enhance collaboration so as to provide services to school-aged children effectively and efficiently;
5. Reduce juvenile crime in local communities served by the program;
6. Recruit community volunteers to provide positive adult role models for school-aged children and to help supervise after-school activities.

DJJDP currently contracts with EDSTAR, Inc. to evaluate SOS programming across one-hundred (100) counties.  The evaluation is designed to accomplish the following primary goals:

• Provide a research-based rationale for the SOS Program.
• Describe the goals and structure of the SOS Program.
• Describe the students whom the SOS Program serves, both demographically and from their own perceptions of themselves contextually.
• Provide academic and behavioral outcomes of participating students.
• From research, survey results, and by identifying practices that resulted in desired outcomes for students, provide recommendations that may be used to improve programs.
  To accomplish these goals, evaluators analyze a variety of data, including Program Director, teacher, and student surveys; demographic descriptions of participants; academic outcomes, and standardized North Carolina End-of-Grade achievement test scores.

Now in its thirteenth year of operation, the Department’s SOS initiative operates in all 100 counties in North Carolina.  During the 2006-2007 fiscal year, SOS programs served over 14,000 youth across the state at over two hundred (200) after school program sites.