Portland families saddened by closure of Boys and Girls Club programs

Nov. 4—For years, Anna and Jacob Morgan knew what they’d be doing after school.

Jacob, 11, would get off the bus and walk to a stout white building in Portland’s Sagamore Village. It was no more than a five-minute walk from his mom and grandmother’s houses. His sister Anna, 10, would walk there from Rowe Elementary School. It was the Boys and Girls Club of Southern Maine’s Sagamore Village club.

They’d do arts and crafts, play soccer, and sometimes even take field trips. They’d get a meal and a snack every afternoon. They went ice skating in the winter and sailing in the summer. Jacob and Anna were eligible for scholarships through the club that let them both attend sleepaway summer camps this summer.

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

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

“Mostly sad,” said Anna.

Fliers went out around Sagamore Village announcing the closure just before the school year started, but they didn’t reach Kayla Theriault, 31, Jacob and Anna’s mom. She heard about it from neighbors, who told her the program was closing because of a funding shortage.

But Brian Elowe, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Southern Maine, said funding wasn’t the reason.

“The decision was based on equity and access. The sites that we have out there are limited in terms of space,” he said. “We made the decision that they can have much deeper, wider programming by transporting them to the facilities on Cumberland Avenue.”

Elowe said one staff member was laid off as a result of the closure, but the other four employees at those clubs were offered work at the bigger location downtown, though not all of them accepted new positions.

Theriault and her kids aren’t interested in the larger program. They liked the smaller size and proximity of the old one.

“The kids there were people they knew from the neighborhood, they’d known the staff there for years,” said Theriault.

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

Plus, Theriault doesn’t drive, so sending her kids to a program where she couldn’t reach them if something went wrong felt scary. Jacob has asthma and occasionally struggles with his emotions. She sometimes was called to come to the old club when he had a bad day, but if he were at a program on Cumberland Avenue that wouldn’t be possible.

“If someone is having a moment that needs mom’s attention I can’t get there, that makes me nervous,” she…