The school year is beginning and once again parents are faced with the struggle of filling those after-school hours. The typical student is in school 32.5 hours per week, yet the average working parent is at the office at least 40 hours per week. For example, schools from Bellevue School District end at 2:25 p.m. four days per week and 12:05 p.m. on Wednesdays. This creates a huge gap for parents to fill.
However, instead of catering to the interests of the child, parents have to utilize whichever organization provides the after-school care. Parents may search for other enrichment opportunities but are bound by logistical difficulties – either leaving work to drive their children to their activities or finding organizations that offer transportation from the school.
Ex-Microsoft computer scientist and 6crickets’ CEO Helen Wang wanted more for her children. She wanted her schools to be grounds for an excellent education AND the best after-school enrichment. She wanted more enrichment options than just after-school care.
She quickly discovered that enrichment management comes with significant complexity for schools, enrichment coordinators, providers and parents. For enrichment coordinators, managing after-school programs and registrations with multiple providers and maintaining up-to-date rosters is time consuming. For parents, completing many repetitive registration forms for after-school activities at each provider’s website is tedious.
In August last year, Helen and her 6crickets team launched an after-school enrichment management tool for schools and PTAs, fulfilling her vision of giving the best after-school enrichment to children right at schools. This tool brings together schools, parents and after-school enrichment providers. Parents can come to a central website portal for their school to see all programs offered and register for classes with a single login, registration form, and payment across vendors. No more endless registration forms to fill out and passwords to remember, and most importantly, no more transportation issues. Providers receive automatic and instant payment without the burden of manual invoicing. And, the schools have central, real-time roster management making it easy to keep track of providers and children.
Schools in California and Washington are adopting this service and raving about its convenience. Even vendors enjoy such a central, standardized process rather than dealing with numerous processes at each school with ever-changing PTA personnel.
To get help from 6crickets for your school, please visit 6crickets.com/afterschool or email support@6crickets.com.
