BY ERIKA ANDERSON

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--As parents head to and from work each day, many take comfort in knowing that their children are safe at their school’s before and after hours programs.

At the Donnellan School, the extended school program (ESP) is offered from 7:30 a.m. until 8 a.m. when school begins and in the afternoon from dismissal time until 6 p.m.

Kristi McCarthy, art teacher at the school, has coordinated the ESP since the school opened in 1996. She said there are normally nine to 12 children in the morning session, but in the afternoon as many as 25. During the afternoon, students work on homework or in the computer lab and use the playground.

“It’s more laid back than the school day, more relaxing,” McCarthy said. “We try to make it fun for the kids.”

Each day there are two teachers who work with children from 3-5 p.m. and one who stays until 6 p.m. McCarthy said that having teachers from the school is an advantage.

“The kids know them and, as far as discipline goes, we are on the same page,” she said.

The school charges $15 a day for after school care and $3 for morning care.

“I have to pay my teachers well. I don’t want to hire outside and this gives incentive for them to stay,” she said. “The money also goes toward buying great computer programs and supplies.”

“Parents would rather pay and know that their child is safe...that they aren’t going somewhere on a bus,” she said. “They are with friends and with teachers who care about them.”

Cindy Alexander, whose daughter Lauren is in the second grade, said it would be “amazingly hard to quantify” how much it means to have the after school program.

“As a working parent, your first allegiance is to your child,” she said. “First of all, it’s hard to leave her anywhere, but you want to make sure that she is well cared for and that she’s in a program that’s beneficial to her, not just a baby-sitting program. At ESP, she has time to do her homework, she has structured activities, she gets a snack if she is hungry.”

Most importantly, Alexander said that she and her husband know their daughter is safe.

“It really limits the amount of worrying you do about her,” she said. “I know she is well cared for and well stimulated between the time school gets out and the time I pick her up.”

Alexander said that she knows other parents whose children have to take a bus to an after school program and she feels fortunate to have the Donnellan School’s program.

“It would be very unnerving to me to think of her having to go through that every day, rather than walk down the stairs at her school into a friendly environment,” she said. “It’s a terrific program.”

Joanna Cangelosi’s first-grade son, Bill, is also a regular at ESP. His mother said that he enjoys interacting with the older children.

“It gives him exposure to a lot of the teachers and also the students that he wouldn’t have the chance to see otherwise on a regular day-to-day basis,” she said.

Cangelosi, who works for BellSouth, said that when she has the opportunity to pick her son up early from school, she is often given a hard time.

“One time I was able to pick him up at 3 p.m. and he didn’t want me to, he wanted to go to after school. He loves it,” she said. “It completely removes the guilt that I might feel leaving him.”

As a school psychologist for the DeKalb County School System, Dr. Delores Izegbu, whose daughter, Lauren, is in the second grade at Sts. Peter and Paul School in Decatur, praised her daughter’s after school program as well.

“The program is really flexible and very organized,” she said. “There are structured rules and regulations and it’s run by very devoted people. What I like best about it is that it’s a Catholic environment and there are activities devoted to that philosophy.”

At Sts. Peter and Paul, care is offered before school starting at 7 a.m. and after school until 6 p.m. for the cost of $45 per week. Sister Mary Jane McDonnell, IHM, principal, said that there are often as many as 70 children in the program each day under the care of three teachers and three aides.

“The kids can do their homework, they have a snack, play outside and, for the little ones, there is art and dancing,” she said.

Sister McDonnell also said that parents appreciate knowing their child is well cared for.

“It’s a safe environment. We know exactly where the children are at all times,” she said. “And if a parent can’t get there by 6 p.m., they stay at the convent until their parents come.”

Dr. Izegbu, whose husband, Larry, is an architect, said that having the program at her daughter’s school just gives her and her husband a “really secure feeling.”

“It’s a real blessing,” she said. “I don’t know what we would do without it.”