SamPratt.com

Carole Clark, who organized and taught the popular Kids in the Kitchen class at the Hudson Youth Center until it was unceremoniously cancelled early this year, has shared the following submitted yesterday to the Register-Star.

To the Editor:

Your concern as stated in your editorial for the children at the HYC is warranted. The city’s policy for hiring and firing of department employees needs revamping. The city needs to establish clear and fair practices for hiring. The city’s Charter grants the power to hire and fire staff to the mayor’s appointed Commissioner of Youth, not to the Youth Director as you erroneously imply. Clearly this needs to change. Why would the city want to give a volunteer the power and responsibility of hiring staff for its youth center when it has a qualified, full time youth director professionally equipped to make these decisions?

Not only should a strict background check be included in a new hiring policy as you suggest, but jobs should be advertised as fair employment opportunities for all qualified applicants. The criterion for jobs that involve working with children should include appropriate education, knowledge, aptitude, enthusiasm and experience in the field.

While you acknowledge the “wonderful programs” that were offered at the center, you suggest that the person who created and supported them should resign. Because they were funded by a foundation, not by the city, Youth Department head Trudy Beicht was able to bring in competent, trained professionals to design and teach these specialized programs. The youth center “house staff” has been hired by the Youth Commissioner, not by the youth center director, Ms. Beicht.

Ms. Beicht’s understanding of contemporary thought about the value and importance of high quality afterschool activity inspired her to initiate specialized programs. Evidence shows that the expanded learning time offered by these kinds of enriched activities support children’s healthy and creative development. The children at the center were hungry for the classes and many signed up for more than two different programs. There were children on waiting lists that had not yet had the opportunity to participate when the Youth Commissioner canceled the programs. Although his reason was that he wanted to provide new activities, in fact, no new programs have been offered since.

While the center provides a safe place for children when their parents and guardians are at work, the children want and need activities that improve engagement, motivation, learning and achievement. Ms. Beicht’s programs offered opportunities and resources that the schools and families don’t.

The Hudson Youth Center should be directed and staffed by professionals who are child oriented, whose decisions for the Center reflect only the needs of the children not his/her own personal interests. The children at the Center have demonstrated that they want new learning experiences and relationships with qualified, respectful adults. Their eagerness to discover new interests and aptitudes should be an important factor in decision making on the part of those individuals or groups who are instrumental in determining policy for the center.

The Center can and should be more than a child care service featuring knock hockey, pool, foosball and computer games. Trudy Beicht has attempted to improve this situation and provide what the children of Hudson deserve. Yet it was her inspired programming that the city targeted and canceled.

The opportunity to establish fun, learning opportunities beyond the traditional school hours is nationally recognized as a mandate for afterschool youth centers. Why is it that only Trudy Beicht and the successful afterschool administrators at the Hudson City School District are cognizant of this guideline? Those supervising Ms. Beicht should be aware of the evidenced based practices utilized nationally in afterschool programs. Incorporating this knowledge in an effort to restructure the policy making at the Youth Center will allow Trudy Beicht to do her work unimpeded.

CAROLE CLARK
Livingston