Mill Creek creates community center

Students at Mill Creek Middle School now a have a safe place to hang out after class.

Communities In Schools of Kent, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department and the Latino/a Education Achievement Project (LEAP) have partnered to create the Mill Creek After-School Community Center, which is open from 3-5 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays in the school’s project room.

Marit Murry, who has served as the Communities In Schools site coordinator at Mill Creek for three years, said there was not really a place for students to go after school.

“We don’t have the Boys and Girls Club or the Y(MCA) that would normally fill the after-school gap in a lot of ways,” she said. “A lot of the students we are the most concerned about aren’t necessarily involved in sports or more streamlined activities after school. We have a policy that at 3:15 we have to send students off campus if they are not at a supervised activity. That will leave us with 30-50 kids every day that we are sending off to nowhere exactly.”

The center, which opened in March, provides a “structured free time” where students can have a snack, do arts and crafts, play board games, video games, foosball, pool or table tennis or spend time outside playing basketball or soccer.

About 60-70 students were using the community center before the track and field season started, Murry said. Now there are about 30-40 kids each day.

Students provided Murry with input on what they wanted at the center and a board of students and teachers oversees the center.

“We have tried to meet what they have requested as best of our abilities,” Murry said. ” It doesn’t work to just tell them what they want. That defeats it. We want to give them what they feel would be most beneficial.”

Eighth-grader Demiko Fox is one of the students who has helped get the community center running. He said he wanted a place where “kids could stay out of trouble and come here and have fun.”

Even after he moves on to high school next year, Fox plans to stay involved with the community center.

“I will come after school every day and hangout with them,” he said.

Older students work as mentors

Kent-Meridian High School students volunteer at the community center.

“We have these awesome peer mentors to help us facilitate things but also just start to build these relationships with these (Mill Creek) students to help the transition up to Kent-Meridian,” Murry said.

Astrid Fiallos and Jasmine Contreras, freshman at Kent-Meridian, attended Mill Creek last year and have come back as mentors at the center.

Fiallos said she wishes there would have been a program like this when she was at the school.

“Sometimes I didn’t want to go to my house (after school),” she said. “I wanted to stay here, but it was the rule at 3:15 we were supposed to be out of the campus.”

Both girls intend to stay involved at the center.

“I like talking to the students and seeing their backgrounds,” Fiallos said. “Everyone is different. No one judges here. You can literally just walk up to someone and talk to them.”

Helping out at the center has forced Contreras out of her comfort zone.

“Talking to everyone is a unique thing,” she said. “I don’t really communicate to people unless I am here.”

Organizers are looking for ways to improve the center for next year, Murray said.

“This year was a little more difficult because we started partway through the year, and establishing how the heck this was going to go was a bit of challenge,” she said. “I think we have all learned about what we can pull in and tie in.”

A similar after-school program could easily be set up at other schools, Murry said.

“It is totally recreatable,” she said. “There is no magic potion for this we had space, we had people and a few activities and that has been about it.”