This year was like no other, but one thing was consistent — our amazing community of supporters. During the last several years, we’ve been fighting to increase public funding for LA’s BEST and afterschool programs across California. With broad support from our community, over the past four years we’ve been successful in securing an additional $100M for afterschool statewide. We began this year excited to build on that momentum but, when COVID-19 hit, everything changed.

The pandemic and economic downturn had a severe impact on the state’s budget and, in May, Governor Newsom proposed cutting $100M in state afterschool funding — a 15% funding cut that would have been devastating to LA’s BEST and the families we serve. We are grateful to so many of you who spoke up for afterschool programs by contacting elected officials, posting on social media, and more. Your voice was heard by our legislative leaders and, happily, the final budget state budget protected funding for afterschool programs.

We know this work is not over and, together, we will keep pushing to maintain and eventually grow afterschool funding (sign up for email updates to stay in the loop!).

Laura Beebe, Director of Public Partnerships