Good ideas often originate outside D.C. — What I learned in Colorado

For a political columnist, a downside of the pandemic is the limit on travel. There’s interesting policy stuff going on around America, different than in Washington.

On a rare trip last month, I found an enlightened example in a surprising place: Vail, Colo. It’s an after-school and summer program called YouthPower365 that helps 4,000 to 5,000 school kids in the Eagle Valley, a rural county. 

Let’s first dispel your skepticism, a sense that Vail is the playground for the affluent. It is. But there are tens of thousands of families — waitresses, bartenders, lodging help, maintenance people, ski instructors, maids, plumbers, clerks — who struggle in an expensive community.

YouthPower365, a joint effort of the Eagle County School district and the Vail Valley Foundation, serves children in these families. About 60 percent are Latino, half live below or only a little above the poverty line.

“Most families in Eagle County cannot afford quality, safe and healthy educational opportunities for their children beyond the school bell,” says Sara Amberg, the executive director of the program. A third of these families, she says, work two or three jobs, and almost a third speak a language at home other than English — mostly Spanish.

The program has an early childhood education initiative that works with and supplements Early Head Start and Head Start. From the inception, the year-round instruction is bilingual.

When kids enter elementary school, there is an after-school program from 3:15 to 5 p.m. in 13 schools in the district. This is all optional, but the vast majority of families participate; over 100 underpaid teachers have a chance to make an extra $32 to $40 an hour. This year ten of the federal Americorps volunteers are assisting.

The program offers what it calls social enrichment, music, art, shop, emotional support. The focus, however, is on academics, especially for kids falling behind.

“Our core mission is to identify kids operating below grade level,” says Mike Imhof, president of the Vail Valley Foundation. A number of these families have inadequate or no internet capabilities. This digital divide, nationally, was devastating for virtual learning and is a disadvantage even with regular in-person school.

The program’s particulars and priorities shift as the students go to middle school and high school. The aim is to keep high participation.

“A lot of programs focus only on early childhood education, which is important,” Imhof told me, “but we believe strongly that kids need to be followed and offered the same opportunities through high school.”

YouthPower365 has a $4 million budget. A small portion comes from corporate donations, about 15 percent from a state program, a quarter from foundations and the rest from generous donors, most of whom live around the Vail Valley.

A terrible tragedy of COVID-19 has been the learning losses that many children have experienced, likely leaving lasting damage. Much of the focus nationally, as it should be, is on economically distressed inner-city schools and families. But nearly one fifth of kids in America go to rural schools where many families face the same economic woes and sometimes an even worse digital divide.

With most education financed by property taxes, there are marked quality inequities in many of these rural districts, says Mara Tieken, a Bates College professor of education who specializes in rural schools. There are other innovative rural school programs, she says, with an important element being “a close relationship between parents and teachers.”

Yet, Tieken notes, only about 7 percent of private philanthropic giving goes to rural communities, limiting the support for under-resourced schools. 

Tieken says the high participation rate in the Eagle County program suggests a high quality. Still, she adds, “Replicability is always a challenge, as so much is context specific.”

There are very few rural counties with the wealth capabilities of Vail. But foundations, corporations and state government should look at YouthPower365 as a model of how to start addressing a serious education gap in much of rural America.

Al Hunt is the former executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for the Wall Street Journal. For almost a quarter century he wrote a column on politics for The Wall Street Journal, then The International New York Times and Bloomberg View. He hosts Politics War Room with James Carville. Follow him on Twitter @AlHuntDC.