Boys and Girls Club Aids Pro Active Tutoring Program
By Terry Miller
Published: Thursday, May 13th, 2010
By Susan Motander
The Boys and Girls Club of the Foothills has come to the aid of the Pro Active Tutoring program of the Monrovia School District. The Club has made a donation to the PAT program which will make matching funds available to provide tutoring at Monrovia High School as well as both Clifton and Santa Fe Middle Schools.
Duke Freyermuth who coordinates the tutors for the program said that Citrus College had federal funds available for the tutoring program, but that 25% of the funds had to come from the community receiving the support. Since there were no funds available through the school district, the Boys and Girls club provided the matching funds necessary to free up $25,000 in tutor salaries from the Citrus College Federal Work Study Program. According to Freyermuth, this will translate into an additional 2.777 tutorial hours helping students in Monrovia Schools.
Wilson presented the check to the Monrovia School District which administers the PAT program. According to both Wilson and Freyermuth, plans are being formulated for a summer tutoring program at the Boys and Girls Club as a joint project with PAT. This will be in addition to the three full-time tutors the club already funds at the Village after school programs at Santa Fe and Clifton.
As a result of the additional funding, funds originally earmarked for the middle schools, can now be reallocated to the elementary schools. Freyermuth said “We are now able to hire additional tutors for our elementary program.”
One of the new hires is Chrisy Alcarez, a Theater Arts major at Citrus College, who will be tutoring through June when she graduates. She is also Miss Azusa who says she began tutoring at the Azusa Homework House as a volunteer. Next year, Alcarez says she plans to attend Pepperdine University and major in Telecommunications with an eye toward broadcast journalism.
In the meantime, Alcarez is working with elementary school students at Plymouth school. She works one and one with a few students during the school day and then again after school in the Village Program. Her tutoring schedule spans three days each week for a total of 20 hours per week.
“I am working with a third grader in Mr. Fuentes’ class,” Alcarez said. “We are working on both his math and reading.” She explained that she enjoyed both the individual tutoring as well as the group sessions. She also expressed her gratitude to the PAT program for giving her the opportunity to work with the young people.
The PAT program was started as part of Monrovia Reads from which it still gets a great deal of its funding. The Monrovia Library also provides support through its ELLI grant. Other supporters are the Monrovia Schools Foundation and the Monrovia Rotary Clubs. Donations and grant funds from these sources enabled the program to provide 92 tutors with more than 22,000 tutorial hours in the last school year alone.
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