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Community Corner

Parents Worried About Changes at the Boys and Girls Club

While members of the community express concern, Boys and Girls Club director says everything is fine.

Concerned parents and members of the community say they fear the local Boys and Girls Club is in decline.

Hot meals are no longer served after school, the dance class was moved uptown, and, they said, outside groups are taking over club space and time.

Club leadership, however, says there is an explanation for all of it.

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Late last month, the club's basketball coach Mike Mincey spoke up about unsanitary conditions at the Boys and Girls Club on Jefferson Street. 

"It was a wonderful place for a kid," said one parent who wished not to be named. She said that after spending thousands of dollars on an afterschool program for her child, she was surprised to find a quality program for just $12 a year at the Boys and Girls Club. But now, she said, the club has reduced its services, most notably the hot meals program, which was replaced by a snack program about a year ago.

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"Every child got a warm meal," she said. "It was chicken, baked chicken, with rice and beans. They’d have chili. I saw they had a little shredded beef. They had a good meal with protein every night." And the kids need it, she said, since many of them live in the Hoboken Housing Authority and have parents who are "low-functioning," meaning alcoholics or addicts.

Without the meal at the Boys and Girls Club, the parent said, some kids would go hungry.

Executive Director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Hudson County Gary Greenberg said the decision to end the hot meals program had to do with efficiency, not with funding.

"It took up a tremendous amount of time with prepping it, serving it, cleaning up after it," Greenberg said. "It cut down so much on activity time." Now the kids are offered a Rice Krispies Treat and Kool-Aid.

The parent said other parents are “following the food” and now sending their children to , a local non-profit organization that provides afterschool care and summer programs for underprivileged children.

Jubilee Center Program Director Craig Mainor wrote in a recent email that the center has had “an influx of children” in the last few months, but he believes it has more to do with Hoboken Day Care 100, a federally funded program, closing the facility on Grand Street last year.

“The Boys and Girls Club and the Jubilee Center have often shared enrollment in that many of our children have, at some point, been enrolled at the Boys and Girls Club and vice versa. We currently have a ‘big’ enrollment, but I can’t say that it’s because of our food program," Mainor wrote.

Greenberg said the elimination of the hot meals program did not cause a decrease in attendance at the Boys and Girls Club and that he might consider providing more food for the club kids in the future. “If there’s a way we can bring it back without it totally dominating the day or enhance the program that we have to come as close to a hot meal program, we are looking at ways to increase what the kids are eating after school,” he said.

Parents and club staff have also cited the loss of a dance program for club boys and girls of all ages as evidence that the club is diminishing. Greenberg said the club had received a short-term grant that had allowed the organization to hire one of its own staff members, Derrick Ladson, to teach the class. That grant eventually expired, said Greenberg, and another grant for , an afterschool program that receives some funding from the city as well as other sources, allowed the class to continue, but it was no longer part of the club.

Greenberg said it was Ladson’s decision to move the dance class to Hoboken High School, about ten blocks away at 800 Clinton St., because the school has a dance studio.

“The only reason why the dance program went up there is because he had a better place to dance,” said Greenberg. “It was better for him. It was just a better place to run a dance program.”

Ladson was unavailable for an interview before publication of this article.

People with ties to the club have also voiced concerns that outside groups have started subleasing space and, therefore, taking away time when the club kids could be using the facility. A local synagogue holds services at the club on Saturdays. Alcoholics Anonymous meets at the club on Sundays. And ZogSports, a social sports league for young professionals, sometimes uses the gym. The group also uses the Boys and Girls Club facility in Jersey City.

Greenberg said ZogSports only uses the gym after club hours end at 8 p.m. “It does not compromise what we do,” he said. But staff at the club said the group has interrupted the club kids’ practice.

Greenberg said renting space at the Boys and Girls Club “has always been a source of funding for the boys club” nationwide and that the revenue made in Hudson County is used for operational costs. He explained that the Boys and Girls Clubs of Hudson County raises money as a single organization to support facilities in Hoboken and Jersey City, not one or the other, at any given time.

Greenberg said it costs about $3 million a year to run all the facilities in Hudson County, and that figure includes approximately $500,000 for Hoboken. Greenberg added that Hoboken has been operating at a loss for several years. However, since Spanish immersion charter school HoLa moved onto the second floor of the club’s building, the Hoboken facility’s finances have gotten better.

“HoLa has improved the situation,” Greenberg said. “Now I think we should be running close to even, finally.” Other groups, he added, haven’t made much of a difference in the past few years. Alcoholics Anonymous has been meeting at the Hoboken facility for free for decades, Greenberg said.

The club’s subleasing has gotten out of control, said the parent who wished not to be named. “They are whoring themselves out just to get more money,” she said, adding that she worries the club will have the same fate as the YMCA on Washington Street that shutdown its afterschool program and closed without much warning in 2010.

Connie Viruet, another parent, said that the kids really need the club. “It’s a facility for kids who don’t have anywhere else to play on a rainy day, on a snowy day, a freezing day,” said Viruet, who has two kids at the club.

Greenberg said he appreciates all the concern for the club and especially for the kids. None of the changes, he added, mean the club is diminishing. “We are doing our best,” he said.

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