Can popular after-school programs survive Parks Tacoma’s cuts in some capacity?
Leaders at Tacoma Public Schools say they’re exploring ways to maintain free and subsidized after-school childcare programs after Parks Tacoma announced it was pulling a majority of its funding for them.
Parks Tacoma, which has a $9 million budget deficit, has said it won’t fund the elementary and middle school programs called Beyond the Bell and Club B for the rest of 2026. The announcement comes at a tumultuous time for the park agency, whose board asked its executive director to resign as a result of ongoing budget problems.
Former executive director Shon Sylvia’s departure and the proposal to eliminate funding for the popular programs have raised questions about a lack of accountability and oversight at an agency that until recently enjoyed a largely positive reputation in Tacoma. Sylvia left the agency with a half-million dollar payout. He underwent three performance evaluations during his nearly 10 years as executive director when he was required to be evaluated annually.
Though Parks Tacoma is pulling its $1.7 million in funding for the rest of 2026, the other organizations that fund the programs, including Tacoma Public Schools and the city of Tacoma, don’t plan to do so. Tanisha Jumper, spokesperson for Tacoma Public Schools, said the district will preserve the programs in “some form or fashion.”
Jumper said the district is working out the logistics of what the programs would look like, and district officials will update families by mid-summer.
The after-school childcare programs, called Beyond the Bell and Club B, are funded through a variety of sources, including Parks Tacoma, Tacoma Public Schools and the city of Tacoma. The Tacoma Parks Foundation, a nonprofit that raises money to support Parks Tacoma, has been the “fiscal agent” for the programs – meaning it’s responsible for distributing funding for the programs.
Beth Boggs, executive director of the Tacoma Parks Foundation, told The News Tribune that in the 2024-2025 school year Beyond the Bell cost roughly $4,778,146 and Club B cost roughly $1,382,569. Parks Tacoma has already provided $2.5 million for the two programs this year, according to Parks Tacoma spokesperson Stacia Glenn.
Jumper said Tacoma Public Schools provides about $500,000 per school year to Beyond the Bell and Club B about $500,000. The funding comes from the state to pay for student-enrichment activities. The district also receives about $1.1 million from the McKenzie Scott Foundation for the program, Jumper told The News Tribune.
The city of Tacoma also covers some costs related to Beyond the Bell and Club B through Tacoma Creates, a voter-approved sales tax in Tacoma that helps fund nonprofits and pay for arts and culture programming. City spokesperson Maria Lee said the city contributes funding from Tacoma Creates to cover costs of public school cultural-access programming that students can participate in through Beyond the Bell and Club B, and to cover some costs related to student transportation. That amount varies, Lee said, but between July 2025 through June 2026 the city shouldered about $740,000 of those costs.
That amount will increase to about $1,155,00 this July, the result of changes to the Tacoma Creates funding structure that the City Council approved last year. But Lee said Tacoma Creates dollars are bound by municipal and state code to fund specific organizations and programming related to arts, culture, heritage and science.
“While it does support cultural components within out-of-school time spaces, it legally cannot be used to backfill an operational budget shortfall for another agency,” she wrote in a statement.
Mayor Anders Ibsen said he has been convening with the school district, the city and Parks Tacoma to “look at creative options to this challenge.”
“We will all undoubtedly have to make tough choices,” Ibsen wrote in a statement. “But my priority is that whatever we all arrive at, we all speak with one voice as a community, and focus on the one thing that really matters: the well-being of Tacoma’s youth.”
Parks Tacoma Board president Matt Mauer said Parks Tacoma chose to make cuts to Beyond the Bell and Club B because those two programs receive funding from other sources, unlike the agency’s community centers and pools.
“Hopefully there’s ways that we can as a community rally around and unfortunately pick up our slack,” Mauer told The News Tribune.
Glenn said the agency is willing to explore programs that would cover the cost of such programs once Parks Tacoma has a more stable financial outlook and balanced budget.
“We understand the value of after-school programs like these and the immense benefits to children and families in Tacoma,” Glenn wrote in a statement.
Who should cover the cost of free and subsidized childcare?
Internal turmoil at Parks Tacoma and public outrage over the elimination of Beyond the Bell and Club B have raised questions about why Parks Tacoma was so heavily invested in paying for such childcare programs, and why Tacoma Public Schools hadn’t taken on the responsibility on its own.
Mauer said the decision to do so came before he joined the board, but it was “one of the reasons that we’re in this pickle.”
Mauer said the agency’s board didn’t have time to fully understand the costs of such programs when Parks Tacoma entered into the agreements because the board at the time had authorized the executive director to both write and execute the agreements. That meant the agreements went into effect before the board looked at them, Mauer said.
“It’s not like anything was done maliciously or in secret, but the order of operations were incorrect in my opinion,” he said. “We don’t approve someone else to write and execute the agreement, we approve the agreement. So I changed that when I first got here.”
Jumper said Tacoma Public Schools doesn’t get funding from the state – which funds the majority of its expenses – to cover out-of-school time. The district has faced its own budget deficits in the scale of tens of millions dollars in the last few years.
She said the district is committed to filling the need for free or subsidized after-school childcare, but it can’t do so alone.
“I think there’s just a misunderstanding – we don’t get a lot of money for extra things. We get money for educating kids between the hours of 7:30 and 3:30,” Jumper told The News Tribune. “So anything that we do beyond that, we are either doing that through partnership or through philanthropy or through working with other people to fill a need that we know families have.”
