For Charlotte Campbell, a seventh-grade science teacher at Creekside Junior High School, the day doesn’t end when the bell rings at 2:31 p.m.

“I basically live here,” she said as she strolls the corridors, greeting students of all ages. “I stay until the very last student is picked up.”

Campbell is the site coordinator for the 21st Century Community Learning Center at Creekside, an academic tutoring program for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The Pearl River school is one of four locations around the parish to host the after-school program, now in its eighth year in St. Tammany Parish.

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Students travel by bus from surrounding area schools, and stay anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. Tutoring is provided by certified teachers and high school mentors in various subjects, such as math, reading and science, while a number of enrichment programs are offered, such as art, drama, cooking, knitting, scrapbooking and more.

Programs are also held at Brock Elementary School in Slidell, Chahta-Ima Elementary School in Lacombe, and Pine View Middle School in Covington, and each site organizes the program a little differently.

At Creekside, for example, seventh- and eighth-grade students in the cooking program prepare a three-course meal each week, consisting of an appetizer, entrée and dessert.

“This is dinner for some of them,” said home economics teacher Becky Singletary, who oversees the class. “We don’t always know if they eat at home.”

According to Jamie Huard, director of the St. Tammany program, 21st Century was established by Congress near the end of the Clinton-Gore administration, and is held at locations all over the U.S. and its territories. It is funded locally by a three-year grant from the Louisiana Department of Education.

The intent, Huard said, was to curb juvenile crime, teen pregnancy and the creation of “latchkey kids,” a term coined to describe children in lower-income families that must fend for themselves in the afternoons when both parents are at work.

“We want to give less fortunate kids the same opportunities as those kids who go to ballet, take piano lessons, play soccer, and so on,” said Huard.

The first half of each daily session is generally devoted to academics, while enrichment programs make up the second half. When parents come to pick up their children at the end of the day, it gives them a chance to interact with teachers and program mentors.

That has provided an unexpected benefit, said Huard. At Chahta-Ima, for instance, the PTA is comprised almost entirely of parents with children in the after-school program. Huard hopes that level of involvement will spread to other sites at other schools.

The program serves approximately 800 students throughout St. Tammany, over the course of the school year plus summer camp programs. The summer sessions are eight hours long, with academics taking up the morning and activities, sports or field trips in the afternoon.

Students can attend at any time during the school year, as long as there is an opening, but the summer program requires advance registration.

In addition to the peace of mind the program offers parents, who can rest easy that their child is engaged in constructive activities in a safe environment, another benefit comes in the form of the high school mentors involved. Each site generally has about 12 high school students that assist with the program, and many reportedly go on to major in education.

Campbell said the ratio of instructors to students hovers around 1-to-7, and as the program grows, more personnel are hired. That’s fine with her.

“Our goal is not only to improve academic performance, but to increase attendance and develop better attitudes towards school,” said Campbell. “Every student should have this opportunity, and I hope it grows and grows and grows.”