Portland families saddened by closure of Boys & Girls Clubs programs

For years, Anna and Jacob Morgan knew what they would do after school.

Jacob, 11, was getting off the bus and walking toward a massive white building in the Portland village of Sagamore. It was no more than a five-minute walk from his mother and grandmother’s houses. His 10-year-old sister Anna went there from Rowe Primary School. It was a boys and girls club from the village of Sagamore in southern Maine.

They did arts and crafts, played soccer, and sometimes even went on field trips. They were given food and snacks every day. In winter they went ice skating and in summer they went sailing. Jacob and Anna were eligible for a club scholarship that allowed them both to attend summer camps this summer.

But in August, the Boys and Girls Club announced it was closing that location, along with another in Riverton Park.

“When I found out, I was sad, angry, confused and went through a lot of emotions,” Jacob said.

“Mostly sad,” Anna said.

Before the start of the school year, flyers were distributed around the village of Sagamore announcing the closure, but they did not reach Kayla Theriault, 31, mother of Jacob and Anna. She learned about it from neighbors who told her the program was being closed due to a lack of funding.

But Brian Elow, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Southern Maine, said it’s not a matter of funding.

“The decision was based on equity and access. The sites we have are limited in size,” he said. “We made the decision that they could have much deeper and broader programs by moving them into the Cumberland Avenue facility.”

Elow said one employee was laid off as a result of the closures, but the other four employees at those clubs were offered jobs at the larger downtown club, although not all of them accepted the new positions.

Theriault and her children are not interested in the broader program. They liked the smaller size and the proximity of the old one.

“There were kids there that they knew from the neighborhood, they knew the staff there for years,” Theriault said.

“It felt like a safe place,” Jacob said.

Plus, Theriault doesn’t drive, so sending her kids to a program where she wouldn’t be able to contact them if something went wrong was scary. Jacob has asthma and sometimes struggles with his emotions. Sometimes she was called to the old club when he was having a bad day, but if he was at the Cumberland Avenue program, that wouldn’t be possible.

“If someone has a moment that needs mom’s attention, I can’t get there, and that makes me nervous,” she said.

Theriault grew up in Sagamore Village and attended the club on Cumberland Avenue as a child. But she had an unpleasant experience when the bus dropped her off inconsistently, sometimes at home and sometimes at the bus stop. One day in the middle of winter she found herself on the street alone. It was dark and her parents were at the bus stop, but she was dropped off at a locked house. After that, my mother stopped sending her. Even though she says she has been assured buses are now running better, she doesn’t want to risk her children having a bad experience too.

The children also visited the larger location on Cumberland Avenue. They don’t feel as comfortable there as they do in the small neighborhood club they’re used to.

“It’s completely different, it’s much scarier. There are a lot of people talking loudly all the time,” Jacob said.

Brian Frost, executive director of the Portland Housing Authority, which runs both Sagamore Village and Riverton, said he was sorry the programs also closed. He stressed that the PHA was not involved in the decision. He said the PHA paid $18,000 a year to host the programs at its facilities. He said he was notified of the closure shortly before families.

“I think the program once they get there (to Cumberland Avenue) will be better, but there is a component of having to take the bus. When you have a program on site, it’s more accessible to the kids who are in the hotel,” Frost said.

PHA continues to operate training centers at both sites, with Jacob and Anna occasionally going to the training center.

“They are trying to do some of what the club did, but they can’t do everything. It’s really more of a place to study and do schoolwork,” Theriault said.

Now, without the club, children spend more time at home.

“They are homebodies. They either go to a training center or stay at home. When they’re home, they’re mostly inside,” Theriault said.

She tries to get them more involved in extracurricular activities like Girl Scouts and Odyssey of the Mind, but the club’s closure has left a hole in their lives. Children say they feel less connected to the friends and staff they knew at the club because they no longer see them. Some kids were on Cumberland Avenue, but not all.

According to Elou, Jacob and Anna may be in the minority. He said that when the clubs opened in Sagamore Village and Riverton, each location served about 20 children a day. Now, 40 children from Riverton and Sagamore have signed up for the programs on Cumberland Avenue.

“We’re serving at least as many people as before,” he said.

But Jacob and Anna are not among them.

“It was a really special place,” Anna said. “And the worst part is that we can’t even do anything about it.”

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