A long-running afterschool tutoring program and summer camp based at Ebenezer United Church of Christ in Burlington could be devastated by the freeze on federal grants that took effect on July 1, its executive director confirmed for The Alamance News Wednesday.
The U.S. Department of Education announced on June 30 that it would pause grant award notifications until a federal funding and program review is complete (see related story, this edition).
The program is housed at Ebenezer United Church of Christ in Burlington and is the only recipient of a 21st Century Community Learning Center grant in Alamance County, Rev. Larry Covington said Wednesday in an interview with The Alamance News.
Champions Academy could lose $471,251 in federal funding for 21st Century Learning Centers that supports the program, based on a July 3 analysis by the Office of School Business Services within the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI), which administers the federal grants.
In addition to leading the congregation at Ebenezer United Church of Christ in Burlington, Covington founded Champions Academy in late 2015 and serves as its executive director. [The church also founded a private Christian school in 2024 for students in kindergarten through third grade, Excel Christian Academy, which is unaffected by the federal funding freeze, according to DPI.]
Champions Academy provides afterschool tutoring and other academic enrichment activities for students in Alamance-Burlington schools that are designated as Title I. K-12 public schools are designated as Title I, based on the proportion of economically-disadvantaged students who are also are at risk of falling behind their peers academically, according to the federal education department.
Title I schools have historically received additional federal funding for additional instruction and other academic support such as the afterschool program that Champions Academy offers.
The nonprofit education program, housed in the gym at Ebenezer UCC in Burlington, previously received two federal grants that ran for three-year terms prior to receiving the current, 21st Century Learning Center grant. “It’s just in the first year of the three-year cycle,” Covington told the newspaper Wednesday.
Champions Academy serves five ABSS elementary schools that are classified as Title I: Andrews; Eastlawn; Grove Park; Hillcrest; and Newlin Elementary School, according to its website.
“We pick up students from area Title I schools for tutoring, enrichment; we feed them a nutritious snack,” Covington said Wednesday. “We hire licensed teachers and aides to make sure [what] they’re getting is comparable to what they’re getting in the public schools.”
ABSS students who participate in Champions Academy receive tutoring; instruction in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) subjects; and other enrichment activities aimed at boosting their academic outcomes, the executive director explained in the interview.
“Most of these kids are on the bubble, and what we provide helps them to move to the next grade with some competency and some confidence,” Covington elaborated, referring to students who are at risk of falling behind academically.
For the 2024-25 school year that just ended, Champions Academy served close to 50 students on a daily basis, Covington said, plus students who participate in a summer camp that’s also provides academic enrichment activities for local students.
Covington said it was heartened to run into one of those children who’d been “on the bubble back” in the day but is now an educator herself. “Just yesterday, a young lady came to pick up her niece and nephew from the camp,” he said, referring to a now-grown woman who’d attended the summer camp from the time she was a young child until she reached her teens. “She would volunteer [with the camp]; then she went off to college – now she’s teaching in the Durham public school system.”
“It would be a vital loss to those children, their parents, and to local public education,” Covington said Wednesday. “We partner with the local schools; to lose the grant would be a tragedy and would possibly impair these young people’s academic experience.”
“We have enough funding for the summer and probably the beginning of the school year,” he added, “but everything else is up in the clouds.”
