Children , Youth & Camp
Josh Shenker
Director of Children , Youth & Camping Services
2017 finished up very strong for the Children , Youth and Camping departments . As the first full year under new management , we are off to a very solid start for 2018 .
In our J-Care afterschool program we have had 134 different children throughout the school-year . Currently we have 112 children in the program with 18 of those being middle school aged youth only using the transportation aspect of the program . This calendar year we have stopped out-sourcing our transportation staffing and started hiring , training and supervising our own drivers . This switch has paid off not only financially ( estimated to save about $ 40,000 a year ), but also with the overall quality in customer service , supervision and safety . To maximize our space at the
JCC in the most efficient way and to allow for the most growth to the program we have begun incorporating extra rooms . The main J-Care room is now the K-1st room , the computer lab is now the 2nd-3rd grade room , and the youth lounge is now the 4th-5th grade room . All three rooms have been reorganized and redecorated to better suit childcare . We have also added extra staff to increase supervision ratios .
Programmatically , we have created a rotation schedule which allows each group to cycle through daily activities . Youth fitness classes such as Pound , Yoga and cycling have been incorporated into the schedule for the 4th-5th grade group . Parents Night Out , our monthly Saturday night program , has been very steady this school year , averaging over 30 children per month . Our School Days Out program has also been doing very well . Already in 2018 we are averaging over 30