QuickTake:

The after-school care organization would be the anchor occupant of the Bethel School District building, taking up several classrooms and managing the day-to-day operations of the space in exchange for reduced or free rent from the district.

The Bethel community will soon say goodbye to Shasta Middle School, but the building will likely continue serving youth in its second life.

The Boys & Girls Club of Emerald Valley is in talks with the Bethel School District to become the primary tenant in the building following the school closure. Bethel is closing Shasta Middle School at the end of the year due to enrollment decline and rising personnel costs. The future of the building, however, remained unclear until a recent Bethel School Board meeting. 

Shelly Ivey, executive director of Boys & Girls Club of Emerald Valley, presented the organization’s informal proposal to the board Feb. 25. The Boys & Girls Club is now located across the parking lot at Clear Lake Community Center. The organization’s move to Shasta would expand its after-school and summer programming to meet the area’s growing child care needs.

Ivey said in an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield that the Boys & Girls Club hopes to sign a formal agreement with the district by June and move the club to Shasta in September. While the board will have the final say on the matter, Superintendent Kraig Sproles supported the idea.

“The district benefit is that we have a strong relationship with the Boys & Girls Club,” he said at the Feb. 25 meeting. “We’ve hammered this relationship out, and they’re reliable, they’re consistent, they show up, they do what they say they’re going to do.”

Affordable after-school care for Bethel 

The Boys & Girls Club, which has three other locations in Eugene, moved from Prairie Mountain School into Clear Lake Community Center last summer.

Ivey said the Clear Lake club serves an average of 100 youths per day in its after-school program and has about 150 kids on its waitlist at any given time. Moving to the Shasta building would double its available seats. As additional funding is secured, Ivey said, it could eventually add even more capacity.

“I truly think that we could reduce or remove that waitlist altogether, so that whoever needed care would have an option,” Ivey said.

The cost for the program is $50 a month per child for after-school care from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. and $200 a week for summer camp that runs from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The club collects donations and grants from supporters to cover the remaining costs of the programs.

The expansion would also give older students a dedicated space to hang out after school. The Boys & Girls Club currently serves about 30 middle schoolers per day at Clear Lake Community Center. In the informal proposal to the board, Ivey lays out a plan to make the Shasta library a teen center for middle and high schoolers.

“We would have a whole separate area for our sixth grade and up to have a program that’s designed for them, around their interests and exposing them to career pathways and workforce development and leadership and character,” she said.

Funding for building operation, management

The terms of the agreement between Bethel School District and the Boys & Girls Club are still being hashed out. 

The organization is proposing hiring a manager to oversee the building, which will likely house other entities including Food for Lane County and the Indian Parent Committee. In exchange, the Boys & Girls Club is asking for free or greatly reduced rent from the district, which is $36,000 a year without any reduction, according to the informal proposal. The club says the manager role would cost it $85,000 a year in salary and benefits.

How the district and the Boys & Girls Club would split facility costs and repairs is also still up in the air. Ivey said any arrangement could resemble the agreement the organization has with the city of Eugene at its Westmoreland Park location, Ivey said. The city owns the building and covers the costs of the roof, boiler and air conditioning, while the club covers cleaning, smaller maintenance, electricity, water and programmatic costs.

Shasta, built in the 1950s according to KLCC reporting, will need renovation, Ivey acknowledged. But the Boys & Girls Club has community partners who are willing to fund capital improvements. Ivey said private donors and corporate sponsors are interested in supporting the Boys &  Girls Club’s expansion at Shasta.

If the Boys & Girls Club and other organizations at Clear Lake Community Center move to Shasta, the community center, which used to be an elementary school, would also be in limbo. Sproles said the district is hoping to receive a preschool infrastructure grant to improve the site for expanded early childhood education opportunities. The district will find out whether it receives the grant in mid-March.

Lilly is a graduate of Indiana University and has worked as a journalist at the Indianapolis Star and in Burlington, Vermont, as well as working as a foreign language teacher in France. She covers education and children's issues for Lookout Eugene-Springfield.