An after-school program navigates the impending closure of Clifton Elementary
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CLIFTON, Colo. — Sixteen kids walked quickly down the hall of the Clifton Assembly of God church. A chorus of adults calling out “no running!” followed after them.
The kids, mostly ages six to 10, attend Clifton Elementary School, and visit the church for an after-school program called The Hub. At the program on April 7, Pete Nuncio, age 10, started a loosely organized soccer game, while other kids dangled from the purple and green monkey bars in the church backyard.
The church is across the street from the soon-to-be-shuttered school. In the fall, volunteers will have to arrange transportation from three other schools, each more than two miles away from the Assembly of God for the same students to have after-school care.
They likely won't be able to help all the families who need after school care who currently use the Hub, according to Kathy Inman, who runs the program.
Johnny Merkling, whose three sons all attended Clifton Elementary, worries about the school closing and all the kids that go to the Hub being split up between three schools — Taylor, Rocky Mountain, and Chatfield elementaries.
“Every one of the kids that's in Hub she takes care of is as if they were her own kids,” Merkling said of Inman, the children’s pastor at the Assembly of God church who opened the program in 2019.
“She opens up her heart and her life to them and doesn't ever ask for anything in return,” he said.
Merkling’s youngest child, Jared, who’s in fourth grade, currently attends The Hub. The family lives south of Patterson Road in Grand Junction and, according to the new boundaries for former Clifton students, Jared will go to Rocky Mountain Elementary in the fall.
Merkling says many of Jared’s friends are going to Taylor Elementary and he’s considering moving this summer to the other side of Patterson, so his son doesn’t get separated from his peers. Jared plays youth football, on the 10U Little Broncos, and some of his teammates will end up going to Taylor Elementary.
All of Merkling’s sons have played in Grand Valley Youth Football, where Clifton Elementary was a homebase of sorts, the school culture supporting players and teams. Football has been a big part of his family, Merkling started coaching five years ago, and helping put on free summer skills camps.
For Merkling, football will be a constant, but navigating childcare for Jared in the fall, possibly without the Hub, will be a new challenge.
Volunteers finished cutting up oranges and brought PB&J sandwiches out to one of the picnic tables between the playground and the parking lot soccer game in the last weeks of the 2024-2025 school year. Inman, who runs the Hub, carried out one of the trays, thinking to herself that 16 kids is not that many. About 40 kids are enrolled in the free child care program, so some days can be much busier than this particular sunny Monday afternoon.
“The reason it's called The Hub is that Jesus is at the center,” said Inman, who is the children’s pastor at the church.
“We reach out to the kids, which then gives us a circle of influence with the parents, and as we reach out to the parents we’ve had them refer other people to the Hub [...] and pretty soon you have impacted your community,” she said.
There’s no contract or required attendance for the free program, some kids come once a week, others are there every day. A handful of volunteers, including Inman’s daughter, Brittney Inman, fix a snack and provide an activity every day after school, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., for the Clifton Elementary students.
The program, which costs $8,000 a year to run, relies entirely on donations, much of that support comes from the Assembly of God. Food and materials for the weekly science project are the biggest expense, Inman said.
The church building sits on 5th Street in Clifton, across the street from the school, a proximity that won’t matter once Clifton Elementary, along with two other schools in the Grand Valley, closes at the end of this semester.
School District 51 cites declining enrollment, and the high cost of keeping underutilized buildings open as reasons for closing Clifton and Scenic elementaries. School districts across Colorado, and the country, have made similar decisions in response to stressed budgets and low enrollment. According to D51, Clifton Elementary has a capacity of 492 students, and 305 were enrolled last year.
From 2023 to 2024, operational costs for the building were $136,684 — that includes utilities and custodial supplies. Clifton also had the most work orders in that time period of the three schools set to close, with 419. Nisley had 236, and Scenic Elementary had 153, according to a presentation about the school closures at a board of education meeting last year.
When D51 students return to school on August 6, kids who attended Clifton will be split up between Taylor Elementary, Chatfield Elementary and Rocky Mountain Elementary. About 10 to 15 kids from the Hub will end up at each school.
Inman opened The Hub five years ago after she saw a need for child care for parents who work long hours in the Clifton area.
The D51 program, Extended Hours, costs about $25 per child per day for the two hours before, and the two hours after classes, which go from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Extended Hours is for kindergarten through 5th grade, and is held on site at many schools in the district, but not all.
The Extended Hours Program website notes that families needing help to cover the cost of childcare can apply for assistance from the state. That program, Colorado Child Care Assistance, is currently frozen, and no longer taking applications because there’s not enough money to keep up with the pace of enrollment.
Eureka McConnell Science Museum runs a free after school program in Title I elementary schools in D51. Title I is the federal program focused on improving academic achievement for students in economically disadvantaged areas. In D51, 15 out of the 25 elementary schools in the district receive Title I funding, including Clifton, Chatfield, and Rocky Mountain.
The median household income in Clifton is $54,300, compared to $67,800 in Grand Junction and $61,600 in Palisade. Inman says over the years, parents learned about The Hub through word of mouth.
In a few cases, school staff would recognize a student was always being picked up late, and would offer to connect the family with The Hub so they’d have somewhere to go right after class.
The Hub, which is a faith-based program, is not part of the school district. It’s considered a neighborhood youth program and people who volunteer at The Hub are trained to work with kids who have trauma or are experiencing food insecurity.
For parents who have to be at work early, Inman also watches kids at school in the morning for an hour before the first bell rings. She worked with Clifton Elementary principal Amy Shepard to make the morning Hub available because the school previously had no before-school care.
There’s around 30 kids in morning Hub, and Inman says it’s mostly a different group of kids than those who need care in the afternoon.
Each morning kids get a snack, finish homework, and do arts and crafts from 7 to 8:30 a.m. Inman says there’s also a short, science-themed devotion, where they read a story about the concept of creation. She says parents haven’t asked to opt out of the religious instruction at The Hub and they understand it’s a faith-based program when they sign up for it.
Taylor Elementary doesn’t have a before-school care program, so that’s where Inman says she’ll move morning Hub. After class, she’ll pick up kids for afternoon Hub, and head to Clifton Assembly of God, about a 10 minute drive from the school.
Merkling has to be at work — he’s a service tech for Pepsi, describing himself as a “jack of all trades” for their equipment — before school starts. If he doesn’t end up moving so his son can attend Taylor, and go to morning Hub, he’s not sure what he’ll do this fall.
Inman says the church will get her a van over the summer, to help bring kids from Rocky Mountain to afternoon Hub, but as it is now, she doesn’t have enough room to transport students from all three schools.
The D51 Extended Hours Program, which provides paid before and after school care at Rocky Mountain Elementary, will be cancelled this fall, due to the influx of students from Clifton, KKCO reported. The physical space that had previously been used for the service is needed for instruction of more than 100 new students coming from Clifton, according to the TV station. In the current school year, 395 students are enrolled at Rocky Mountain.
Brittney Inman feels cautiously optimistic about the changes this year. She has a degree in fine art, one in literature, and another in paramedicine. Inman is now studying psychology, but has always wanted to work with kids. She just didn’t expect it would look like this: as an unpaid volunteer teaching the kids at The Hub about covalent bonds one day and building Lego sets the next.
There will be logistical challenges, but Brittney Inman says having kids at three different schools is a chance to expand the community of students and parents looking out for each other.
That’s the way Kathy Inman thinks of it, not just a before and after school program, or just free child care, but a way of building relationships, a way for kids and their families to feel like they belong.
“It's about changing the community and letting the kids know that there is something more out there beyond what they see here in Clifton,” said Inman.
Back in the kitchen, one of the volunteers getting out a giant tray of cookies from Sam’s Club is Judy Alexander, who’s retired from teaching elementary school in Salida, and chooses to spend her Monday evenings helping at The Hub.
“We partner with other people regardless of what church they attend. If you have a heart for kids and you see what The Hub does, you're welcome to fill out the volunteer paperwork, have a background check and come to it,” said Inman.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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