The largest after-school program in Brookline, the Daily After School Enrichment Program, has been halted due to a rent dispute with the city’s school system.
Executive director Lauren Bernard said she was caught off guard with a request for rent higher than expected — and higher than the program could afford. She said the Public Schools of Brookline has not responded with the urgency that would’ve allowed them to keep the program going this fall.
DASEP operates at the Florida Ruffin Ridley School in Brookline and began paying rent in 2018. During the pandemic, the district allowed the program to continue using the space without paying rent. But in early 2023, a school committee member told DASEP Executive Director Lauren Bernard they would have to resume paying rent in 2023-24 academic year.
Bernard said she told that committee member, Mariah Nobrega, that DASEP had been paying $9,300 to $11,000 in rent before the pandemic, and wouldn’t be able to go much higher than that. Nearly a quarter of the students in DASEP come from low-income families, and the program subsidizes tuition for those students.
The 2023-24 school year began and Bernard hadn’t heard from the school committee.
Months passed and still no word from the district, until May when DASEP received a rent invoice for $14,000.
“I spent that contingency because I assumed with nobody responding to me, in the end, we weren’t going to be responsible for rent again. We hadn’t been billed since 2019,” Bernard told GBH News.
“We would have to pretty much eliminate that program of subsidies to be able to pay rent to the district in the amounts they’re expecting,” Bernard added.
Nobrega, who is also chair of the finance subcommittee for the district, said that there were miscommunications between DASEP and Brookline schools due to staff turnover. “But those miscommunications have long since been cleared up,” Nobrega said in a written statement.
“It’s unfortunate that the messaging from DASEP makes it sound like there is a lack of care and attention from the PSB side when both the School Committee and staff are working hard on this, and had been before it was brought to the media’s attention,” Nobrega’s statement continues.
Brookline News, which first reported on the dispute, noted that the program’s suspension has left some families scrambling.
Nobrega said the district is eager to resolve the rent issue. Last Wednesday, Oct. 30, the full school committee voted to allow negotiations to occur directly between their operational staff and organizations that rent their facilities. Nobrega told GBH News that in addition to the vote, the district has met with Bernard to identify the reason for the rent discrepancy and the program’s needs for reduced payment.
Bernard said that last week’s vote was “too little, too late.” But as of Monday, Bernard has been in contact with Jose Albuquerque, the district’s director of operations, about potential next steps. Bernard said that she and Albuquerque will be meeting later this week to get the program resumed as soon as possible.
“It sounds like they’re open to flexibility,” Bernard said. “What’s happening now I wished was happening in August.”
There’s no date on when the after-school program will restart. But Bernard said she’s hopeful that the program could resume for the spring semester if conversations begin to happen soon.
“If they’re willing to forgive us for last year’s rent, for example, I could … try to get this up maybe sometime in December,” Bernard said.
