CAPE AMERICORPS OFFICE MOVING SOUTH

The Cape Girardeau AmeriCorps office will close Aug. 31, ending the organization's four-year involvement in the community.

The community service organization is closing because the Community Service Commission which administers the program in the state wanted it to move to the Bootheel, the administrator says.

Bill Thompson, an assistant professor of social work at Southeast and director of the program, said the commission placed restrictions on the program that made it impossible to continue.

To begin with, the office would have been required to move to Malden. "That's like telling a program in St. Louis to relocate to Jefferson County," Thompson said.

The program also was required to alter its method for securing matching money. AmeriCorps charged participating organizations a "partner fee" based on how many volunteers were used and whether they were full- or part-time.

"Primarily we were told we had to come up with another method of raising matching money," Thompson said.

The commission also wanted to limit the number of volunteers in the schools to two, Thompson said. Most of the current AmeriCorps volunteers are at school sites tutoring at-risk students.

The program also would have to operate in two additional counties in Bootheel.

The changes were prescribed one year into the program's three-year grant.

"I'm puzzled why we were placed under these restrictions," Thompson said.

He says he was given two days to decide whether to accept the changes and declined to do so. Among the reasons was that he had submitted a budget based on using Southeast work study students who would not be able to participate if the program was moved to Malden, he said.

Losing the program will have a definite negative impact on Cape Girardeau, Thompson said. "Mainly because of the number of kids they tutored. These were primarily kids teachers identified as being at-risk for failure. Those kids are not going to be getting that extra help."

The program was planning to expand to schools in Oak Ridge and Chaffee.

AmeriCorps is a national program comparable to a domestic Peace Corps. In return for a one-year commitment to perform community service, the full-time workers receive a stipend of about $8,000 a year plus health and education benefits.

Most of the volunteers in the Cape Girardeau office work 20 hours per week instead of full time.

Currently, AmeriCorps has 22 workers in Cape Girardeau. Most are in school-based programs.

At various times since the office opened in 1994, AmeriCorps workers have been stationed at May Greene, Washington, Jefferson and Franklin schools under the auspices of Caring Communities.

"We will lose some good workers who have been working with the schools," said Shirley Ramsey, executive coordinator of the Community Caring Council.

Southeast Missouri Partners for Community Services was awarded a $390,000 AmeriCorps grant in 1994. Johnny McGaha, a professor of criminal justice at Southeast, was the project director at that time.

Over the past four years, about 100 volunteers have done community service in Cape Girardeau with AmeriCorps. The AmeriCorps program also operates in Charleston, East Prairie and Sikeston.