Wednesday, July 21, 2010

For about 10 years, the Boys & Girls Clubs has been allowed to use the May Sands School building in Key West for its programs. During this time, the building itself was underutilized, in disrepair and of little use to the school district.

Prior to the Monroe Association for ReMARCable Citizens program relocating to May Sands, we did our best to make our area safe, attractive and inviting, but the building itself continued to deteriorate. During this time, homeless people would often camp out at the entrance, harass our staff and break into the building, either looking to use the bathrooms or, on one occasion, I caught a homeless couple having sex in the bathroom.

The situation changed when MARC moved in and the conditions vastly improved, eliminating the homeless issue, about which we were extremely pleased. The building has now become desirable for another group, the Key West Montessori Elementary Charter School, and we will be displaced from May Sands School.

The message from the School Board is crystal-clear. When the building was undesirable and of little use, we could stay there. However, once plans were made to make it attractive and desirable, we were told to leave. There is little room for any other interpretation.

In all fairness to the School Board, we have been offered space at Glynn Archer Elementary School. The art room behind the gym has been offered to us to rent for $5 .74 per square foot. The room is about 1,650 square feet, and the annual rent would be somewhere around $9,500.

While we are willing to pay our fair share for utility costs, etc., the expense of moving is not in our budget, and the displacement was presented to us with very little notice or dialogue. In a subsequent e-mail from the school district, we also were told that if we were to use the gym and playground at Glynn Archer, there could be additional charges.

What is next, having a meter, like a taxicab, on the swings?

All of this has left us having to make some difficult financial decisions that will severely impact our future and ability to offer services to families and youth of Key West. We have all witnessed how the downturn in the economy has had a negative impact on local youth programs.

Gone are Big Brothers Big Sisters of Monroe County and the YMCA of Key West. Organizations such as the Boys & Girls Clubs are faced with the dilemma of trying to do more with less. The results are -- and we have all seen the recent headlines -- an increase in juvenile crime in our community.

There is no longer a teen center in Key West, and services and funding for youth are being threatened with extinction every day.

Our community must begin to look at the big picture and take the steps to address this void. Affordable after-school prevention programs are the key to stem this downward tide. The facts are quite clear: It costs Monroe County about $82 per day to have someone in prison. It costs the Boys & Girls Clubs approximately $15 per day to provide after-school programming for a child.

Where do we go from here? The first step is for our community to recognize the importance of this issue and begin to take the necessary steps for local businesses, schools, and nonprofits to partner. The lack of after-school programs impacts every member of this community.

It affects our work force and our local economy. Juvenile crime rates increase, high school dropout rates increase, teenage pregnancies increase and the list goes on and on. We all are affected by this in one way or another.

If you do not realize this, you are fooling yourself. This is a community issue that needs to be resolved collectively. An environment of true collaboration and sharing of resources, both private and public, must emerge in order to fill this void and to provide an opportunity for all of our children to succeed.

Without this, we are at the risk of creating a generation of children who will be unable to achieve the promise of a bright future filled with endless possibilities.

Daniel R. Dombroski is executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Keys.