The New York Times May 26, 1998

The Homework Club, a Refuge for Children During the Hours of 3 to 8 P.M.

By JANE GROSS

[H] ASTINGS-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. -- Pam Carrano tells one child to take off his hat before dinner, another to abandon the computer and the rest to settle down. She asks who wants sesame chicken and who wants baked ziti.

Homework is finished. So is softball practice and a few screechy turns on the violin. There will be enough daylight after dinner for a tussle with the dogs.

The scene could be a Saturday Evening Post cover of a suburban family spending an evening at home. But it is not. This is Ms. Carrano's business venture, the Homework Club, a place for children to go after school and before their parents come home from work, where they study, play and enjoy the amenities of home from 3 to 8 p.m.

It is also one small effort to bring some safety and order to these five weekday hours that have become the focus of growing national attention, anxiety and debate -- particularly for preteens and young teen-agers who seem too old for baby sitters and too young to be left on their own.

These are the hours that working parents everywhere dread, and that experts agree are the most dangerous time of the day for youngsters.

Studies -- and common sense -- indicate that unsupervised youngsters are more likely to use drugs or alcohol, have sex, get poor grades or commit crimes. But even for children who steer clear of such trouble, the after-school hours can loom long and empty.

In recent months, policymakers have turned their attention to the risks and opportunities of these hours, particularly for vulnerable early adolescents. In Washington, President Clinton has proposed spending $200 million a year on after-school programs. In New York City, George Soros, the philanthropist, is offering up to $25 million to establish such programs.

And across the nation, there is a push to keep schools open from dawn to dark, sanctuaries for the children of working parents.

"A majority of them are lonely," Ms. Carrano said. "Who wants to go home to an empty house? It goes against nature. Kids this age are social creatures."

The twin perils for these children are over-scheduling and isolation. Some race from Little League to rehearsals for "Guys and Dolls," without a moment to spare. Others pass afternoons at home with only Oprah, Final Fantasy and a bag of Doritos for company.

"Both create the sense that nobody cares," said Edward Zigler, director of the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University.

And that has two results: "One is the acting-out, aggressive kind of stuff," he said. "And the other, which is rarely discussed, is depression."

Around the country, people like Ms. Carrano have begun to see opportunity in the changing face of America's families. Car services have proliferated in recent years in the suburbs, to replace the mothers who once spent their afternoons ferrying children to play dates and activities. Tutors are hired to supervise homework, so parents can spend their meager time at home in more pleasant pursuits.

The Homework Club, Ms. Carrano says, tries to be scheduled without being hectic. Loneliness is not a problem. After snacks and school work, a half-dozen children fall into a circle of bean-bag chairs and dissect their day. They talk about a math teacher so mean she does not allow gum chewing during tests. They debate the merits of the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys.

Ms. Carrano, who started the Homework Club for elementary school children in 1995 and added preteens six months ago, tells parents that her philosophy is to try to fill their shoes.

"I tell them, 'I want your child's life to be as normal as if you were home,"' said Ms. Carrano, who gave up a career in New York City as a fashion stylist to rear two daughters. "If your kid forgets lunch, I'll bring it to school. If your kid falls in Sugar Pond, I'll bring dry clothes. If they're sick, they come here with a pillow and I feed them chicken soup."

The Homework Club is just one place in the after-school universe of this economically diverse Westchester County village of about 8,000 people. Indeed, at a cost of $25 a day, and $10 more for dinner, for each of the 30 children who take part in the sessions either at Ms. Carrano's house or at a nearby church, the club is the sort of solution only the relatively well-to-do can afford.

Here in Hastings, 3 to 8 actually begins at 2:45, when youngsters rich and poor tumble out of the red-brick building that houses the middle and high schools. Toting backpacks, sports equipment and musical instruments, they fan out in all directions: to confraternity classes and dance lessons, to tutors and karate instruction, downtown for pizza or up to a meadow where the police often find empty beer kegs.

Many actually stay at school. Seven of 10 youngsters belong to sports teams, the elementary school runs a popular after-hours program and the high school library and computer lab stay open until 5. However, the district's commitment to keeping schools open later to accommodate working parents is matched by only one-third of the nation's schools.

But those teen-agers whose parents cannot afford music lessons or the Homework Club after the schools close their doors are often left to fend for themselves, looking after younger siblings and preparing their own dinners.

They also get in trouble more often. During a recent week, one was arrested for scrawling anti-Semitic graffiti on parking meters and six others for scaling a fence at the local swimming pool to have a beer party.

Their hangouts are a shabby community center that has cigarette butts littering the stoop, cast-off furniture and a boom box that works only sometimes, and a village landmark known simply as "the Wall," a stone rampart outside the VFW Hall where generations of teen-agers have congregated.

The middle class and wealthy children are more likely to be supervised, but even in richer families, stay-at-home mothers are rare -- the middle school principal, Jennifer Dolan, can find just a few when she rifles through her Rolodex of parents.

It is these working parents who keep Pam Carrano's dinner table full -- the parents who juggle work and home and sometimes end up feeling they are doing neither terribly well.

Many of the children there complain that their mothers are inattentive after a long day of work and their fathers do not get home until bedtime.

Danny Lebost, who is 11, says his mother is so cranky at night that he dare not "get in her way one tiny bit." And she does not contradict him.

Sondra Lebost says that a job at the New York Botanical Garden, a husband who works all hours and elderly parents who need her help leave her frayed. She comes home to a pile of mail, a blinking answering machine and a dog who needs walking. Too beat for anything better, the evening meal is often a can of soup.

"He enjoys Pam's dinner table enormously," Lebost said. "I know he's lonely."

Homework is the centerpiece of Ms. Carrano's program, with the younger children at work in her basement and older ones at the parish hall at the Grace Episcopal Church. One recent day, Kate Frey hunched over her fifth-grade social studies workbook, answering questions like "Why did the founders think we needed a government?" Next, for a language arts lesson, she used new vocabulary words in a sentence: The king has a lots of dictums. The girl would gloat about her tests.

Bennett Faber, also 11, invaded her tranquility to announce that his class had just seen a film about puberty. Kate shut him up with a sharp, "Thank you, Bennett," before he could offer details. "I had to go to the nurse, I felt so sick," Bennett said, determined to get the last word.

Supervising, from a respectful distance, was Melanie Anderson, a former psychologist who now works for Ms. Carrano. She had picked up the children at school, given them a snack of crackers and peanut butter and set them to their homework.

"If you have practically nothing to do, that means you have something to do," she told one recalcitrant boy. "So get to work on your something."

Next came an activity -- pottery, carpentry or cartooning, the last taught by a high school senior, Zack Mason, who showed the children how to change a face from worried to angry just by reversing the tilt of the eyebrows. Most of the children were picked up by a parent before 6 p.m., the rest by Ms. Carrano, who drove them up the hill for dinner.

The last to leave the parish hall was Bennett, who grew agitated as other mothers came and went with no sign of his. He finally settled into his favorite activity, drawing gory pictures of a man with his head cut off and another with blood dripping from his mouth, the sort of images common in war-and-mayhem computer games.

All the mothers look haggard when they come to claim their children. And they agonize about the appropriate age to leave youngsters unsupervised. Susan Frey, Kate's mother and a librarian in nearby Dobbs Ferry, lets her 15-year-old son go home by himself after school. But he is not allowed to answer the telephone.

And some children experiment with independence. Bennett is now permitted one day a week at home with a friend, a concession his mother made after much pestering.

"I call constantly," said his mother, Ginny Faber, a book editor. "This is the age where they say they don't need you, but they really do."

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