Beyond the bell: how after-school time shapes youth experiences in D.C.

As demand for structured after-school programs grows unevenly across the district, students in Wards 7 and 8 face some of the largest gaps in access to supervised time.

Early in the spring of 2024, when my hair was blonde and I still wore a JanSport backpack, a District of Columbia Metro Police Department officer stopped me. He asked if I was in middle school or high school gesturing to the long line of students waiting behind a black divider. I laughed and flashed him my American University ID, making my way through the automatic double doors mildly shocked I appeared so young.

On weekdays around 3 p.m., the Tenleytown Target transforms into something like an unofficial after-school checkpoint. For some students across Washington, D.C., the hours after dismissal are not spent in structured programs or supervised spaces, but in places like this, retail stores, along with sidewalks and metro stations where time is unstructured.

While I was stopping into the target to put together an Easter basket for one of my friends, the Jackson-Reed High School students were spending their time between getting out of school for the day and waiting for their parents to get off work, looking for something to do and Target appealed to them to fill that time.

According to the D.C. Policy Center, out-of-school-time programming (OSTP) in D.C. reflects deeper systemic barriers that shape access to opportunity. With over 400 dedicated after-school programs in Washington as of 2022, The D.C. Policy Center reports that “low-income families are more likely to report dissatisfaction in afterschool options, and less likely to be enrolled in OST programs.”

Third Spaces

Third spaces have grown in popularity in American culture since rebuilding life after the COVID-19 pandemic. Third spaces, coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, are defined as social environments outside of home ‘first place’ and work, ‘second place’ where people gather for voluntary interaction.

For adults, third spaces are pickleball courts, food halls and rock-climbing gyms. For children these spaces are playgrounds, parks, museums and zoos. Access to third spaces in D.C. is shaped by access to transportation, the ability to afford costs that go into OSTP and the number of seats available to students across the district.

Research from the Journal of Youth and Adolescence focusing on a meta-analysis of systemic barriers in afterschool programming shows that structured after-school programs do more than fill time. OSTP provides supervision, skill-building and positive social environments that can shape long-term outcomes.

Noel Schroeder is the executive director of Girls Rock D.C., an OSTP serving girls east of the river. Schroeder’s experience operating an OSTP has been navigating how to fill a void of third spaces targeted at youth “When third spaces that young people previously had access to are increasingly shut off from them, what else are young people supposed to do?”

Girls practicing their instruments after-school at Girls Rock D.C. (Photo/Girls Rock DC)

“For every one child in an after-school program in D.C., another is waiting to get in,” said Njeri Jenkins the OST advocacy manager at D.C. Action. Jenkins says the problem is not only reflected in D.C., but nationwide with organizations like the Afterschool Alliance calling on executive change.

Mapping Disparities

“Wards 7 and 8 are the critically most underserved wards across the district,” said Jenkins. “There are programs that are there, but there are some challenges. People traditionally neglect those wards the most when it comes to programming.”

“Those historically are also the lowest income wards, as well as the wards with the highest populations of Black and brown communities,” she added.

According to Jenkins the issue of access in D.C. disproportionately affects wards 7 and 8. The lack of resources east of the river is a key factor in mapping systemic barriers. Lack of access in these wards is a leading factor of why some children are getting that extra support after-school and why some are not.

In D.C., nearly half of all juvenile crime on school days occurs between 3 and 6 p.m., the hours immediately following dismissal, but all blame can’t be placed on the children according to Jenkins, “There’s a lot of deeper rooted, systemic issues that have to be talked about.”

The disparities across wards access to OSTP is not just D.C. based, it is a nationwide issue that leads to an oversaturation of high-income children being able to access after-school opportunities.

“There are tons of opportunities… west of the river, but less equally distributed around the city,” Schroeder said.

The core of student’s not being able to sustain seats in OSTP east of the river isn’t interest, its access. “More than 19 million children nationwide would participate in an after-school program if one were available,” Jenkins said.

Risks of Unstructured Time

The imbalance places high income children into structured programming leaving others in unstructured environments between 3 and 6 p.m.

Police Service Areas (PSA), the city’s smallest policing units don’t align perfectly with ward boundaries which complicates efforts to track how public safety and access to resources varies across neighborhoods, but through an analysis of PSA and juvenile arrests, patterns emerge between limited access to after-school programs and where juvenile arrests are concentrated.

The Metropolitan Police Department juvenile arrest dataset, published through the D.C. Open Data Portal, from January through June 2025 shows around 50 percent of arrested juveniles were from Police Districts 6 and 7 which primarily serve wards 7 and 8.

Graph of Juvenile arrests by PSA from MPD's biannual juvenile arrest dataset from D.C. Open Data Portal. Jan. - June 2025. (Photo/Isabella Smith)

The increased arrest rates in the district speak directly to the effect unstructured time has on children living in wards 7 and 8, part of a reason why programming in those neighborhoods is increasingly important.

“Young people can tell you… the city isn’t providing those opportunities,” Schroeder said reflecting on how disparities east of the river are affecting youth access.

Programs Showing Promise

For James Morgan, the executive director of Higher Achievement, OST programming has driven his career for 15 years.

Higher Achievement, which focuses on OST programming for middle school students to set them up for success in high school, has been a driving factor in increasing school attendance, high school choices and test scores for students living east of the river.

“From the social perspective, what we see is a lot of philanthropic support going to high school students, and then also going to elementary and preschool, there’s a lot of support there but middle school, there’s not a lot,” Morgan said.

During sixth through eighth grade students are navigating rapid academic, social and emotional changes, shaped by less institutional support than elementary school years. “It’s so often called the ‘forgotten middle,’ but it’s bizarre because it’s so incredibly important,” said Morgan.

The gap in support becomes especially visible in the hours immediately following the school day. Across D.C., students who are not enrolled in OST programming are often left to make the city their third space.

“Large groups of kids after-school, walking through the neighborhood, with no structure creates this recipe to engage in risky behaviors,” Morgan said, “They’re not bad kids, they’re just acting their age to some extent.”

Programs such as Higher Achievement aim to fill that gap by creating consistent, structured environments where students can build both academic skills and personal confidence.

Beyond better test scores and a better understanding of best fit high schools, after-school programs create a lasting impact on students, “There was a scholar in the program who had just emigrated to the U.S. with her family. She didn’t speak a ton of English, she was very shy, very introverted, but she worked incredibly hard,” Morgan said.

“She was in the program for three years, and over that time you could see so much growth. Then her family moved, and she wasn’t able to continue in the program.”

“Years later, I got a message from her. She told me that even though she didn’t complete the program, it laid the foundation for her entire educational journey.”

For Morgan, its stories like this that reflect what cannot always be measured in attendance rates or test scores. He noticed increases in confidence, belonging and the long-term impact of having a consistent, supportive environment during a critical stage of development through his time working with middle school students enrolled in Higher Achievement.

OST programming doesn’t just have to reflect academic outcomes, Girls Rock D.C. is committed to creating a space for girls to grow through music. Beyond safe havens between 3 and 6 p.m., OST programming gives youth freedom to create “Young folks are not getting as much opportunity to practice freedom of expression in more formalized academic settings, “said Schroeder.

For Schroeder success in the afterschool hours is defined by character development. “We see increases in confidence and love and trust in themselves, we see increases in teamwork… and ability to move through conflict in a positive way,” she said.

Back at the Tenleytown Target, in the Spring of 2026, I was getting some final supplies for a party, when I noticed a swarm of students taking over the self-checkout line.

This time, instead of being corralled by an MPD officer they were struggling to hold on to packs of golden Oreos, Alani Nu energy drinks and tubes of Pringles. One girl reached over to a friend and asked where she found the Tru Fru, the girl laughed saying she got the last bag.

They were preparing for a long Friday night of rehearsals for their spring musical production of SpongeBob the Musical, youth edition.

A space that was once patrolled and restricted to students after-school transformed in that moment to a place where students were gathering before the backstage mania the night would include.

A routine scene in the suburbs of a busy city, the students may go unnoticed to some, or create a feeling of nostalgia to others, but for them it is something more immediate. This is their space between school and home.

In a city where after-school time is increasingly defined by what is available rather than what is needed the hours between 3 and 6 p.m. continue to reveal how unevenly opportunity is distributed across Washington, D.C.