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Attachment 3 Concerns about impacts on schools While the School District is in charge of facilities planning for population growth, planning and requirements for workforce housing can offer support for student achievement. Amenities such as space for after school activities run by nonprofits, tutoring, high speed internet access, and reference libraries should all be considered as part of or proximate to higher density workforce housing. A 2011 UCLA study of the BEST after school program in Los Angeles suggests students gain some significant benefits from participation: "Research indicates that school attendance is strongly associated with students' academic and social development (Balfanz & Byrnes, 2006; Johnson, 2000). At the same time, it has been suggested that the supportive environment fostered by high-quality afterschool programs stimulates more sense of belonging and interest in school for the afterschool participants (Palmer et al., 2009), thus leading to association with higher attendance during the school day(Schinke et al., 2000). The findings of this study support and further this notion by indicating that participation in LA's BEST in the elementary years has a long-term effect on these participants' sixth grade school attendance. Through this association, LA's BEST participants are also anticipating a better academic experience in their middle school years, such as getting better grades... With these evidences, it is encouraging for this study to find that participation in LA's BEST dt ring the elementary years helped to improve students' math performance both at the GPA and the CST levels. Additionally, this study also reveals that higher intensity of participation in LA's BEST also leads to higher GPAs in science and history in eighth grade. As for middle school course taking patterns,the LA's BEST participants of a minimum of 140 days have a significant positive value added estimate in their taking algebra in eighth grade, which indicates that these students were 1.26 times more likely to take algebra classes as compared to the non-participants. These findings are particularly reassuring in light of the anticipated decline in math efficacy and attitudes towards math upon entrance into middle school. Also encouraging is the fact that these findings come at a time when a solid foundation and interest in math is so critical to future academic studies and careers in science, technology, and engineering— the areas with great shortages of talent in our country(Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century, 2006). In comparison, while participation in LA's BEST does have its value added to participants' middle school English GPA, the effect is smaller than math. The demographic profile revealed that the majority of LA's BEST participants are English Learners. Perhaps this language barrier played a role in the benefits the participating students received. Future studies should examine this phenomenon in more detail. Meanwhile, it is highly encouraging that LA's BEST participants reaped benefits in math for both math GPA(whether they took the general math or algebra) and math CST scores(whether CST general math or CST algebra) in middle school. LA's BEST can add more program elements to specifically target English-language arts development so that participants can receive similar benefits." Excerpted from the conclusion of: Supporting Student Success in Middle Schools: Examining the Relationship between Elementary Afterschool Program Participation and Subsequent Middle School Attainments y Denise Huang, Deborah La Torre, Seth Leon, Nikki Duong, & Cheri Hodson, CRESST/University of California, Los Angeles