ODEM, Texas – Parents in Odem are upset after being notified that Odem-Edroy Independent School District’s after-school latchkey program was being discontinued less than a week before school starts.
Parents said they are now left scrambling to find childcare alternatives.
“Less than a week before school starts, and we have to find somewhere for our kids to go after school,” parent Tehrra Johnson said.
School begins in Odem-Edroy ISD on August 22 and parents received formal notice of the cancellation for the first time around 10:30 a.m. on August 17.
In an alert sent to parents, the district explained that the resource was cut to save the money. Administrators justified this cut saying the latchkey program was not “educational.”
Odem-Edroy ISD Interim Superintendent Ann Dixon said this is not the only program being nixed after assessing a budget deficit in the hundreds of thousands back in July.
Parents are now asking why they weren’t notified earlier.
A full statement from Odem-Edroy ISD is below:
“The Odem-Edroy School District is experiencing over a $700,000 shortfall in funds. We have already released nine people and looking at other programs such as eliminating equipment purchases that are necessary for the upkeep of our schools, reducing travel for teachers’ training, and the first thing that we did have to look at was the non-educational cost overruns and unfortunately, latchkey was one of those programs.”
