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Wisconsin will receive at least $219 million over 10 years from a settlement with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, over claims its platforms harmed children’s mental health. The funds are a portion of a $17.1 multi-state settlement.
Advocates say some of those funds should be used to provide mental health and other support for students in after-school and summer programs.
Addressing mental health and other challenges with limited support has been a struggle for many local programs, which have seen resources dwindle over the years.
Many programs are forced to make due with what they have.
Children at Neu-Life Community Development’s Safe Place after-school program at Gwen T. Jackson School can talk to a Milwaukee County social worker when trauma hits.
At its other two sites, Neu-Life connects children and families to partner organizations for clinical mental health care.
Executive Director Jody Rhodes said that’s a change from eight or nine years ago.
“Now we’re very proactive in offering support and resources for the kids and families because we know how hard it is to navigate tragedy or something traumatic,” Rhodes said.
The challenge, Rhodes said, is helping as many students as possible with little money.
In Wisconsin, programs like the Safe Place at Jackson School have no dedicated state funding.
Wisconsin Partnership for Kids, a coalition advocating for sustainable state funding for after-school and summer programs, wants $10 million each year from the settlement to go directly to after-school programs like Safe Place and 20% of the money each year placed into an endowment to support them long term, said coalition organizer Jackie Scott.
Under a July state Supreme Court ruling, the decision is in the state attorney general’s hands. Attorney General Josh Kaul, who retained his seat in this month’s election, said the Wisconsin Department of Justice is actively evaluating how it wants to allocate the settlement dollars.
At least half the settlement funds must target youth mental health and social media harms, and after-school programs are an allowed use.
Money not allocated by January will be used at the discretion of Kaul, who was interviewed prior to the election.
‘A constant hustle’
In summer 2025, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee was weeks away from closing more than half its school-based after-school sites.
Federal money for its 42 Community Learning Centers was weeks late.
The club’s board had already approved a plan to shrink to fewer than half those sites, said Dave Knutson, senior vice president of government affairs at Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee. The doors stayed open when the federal government released the funds 20 days after they were due, on July 21, 2025.
The club got those dollars on time this year, but the funding was cut 14% after about 15 years of flat funding, Knutson said.
The club’s programs were among nearly 100 after-school programs in Milwaukee schools that received Child Care Counts funding, federal pandemic relief payments that helped them keep staff, serve more kids and stay open.
At their peak, the club’s Milwaukee Public Schools-based after-school programs collected $1.2 million a year.
That federal money ran out in 2025, and the state-funded payments that followed ended in June.
Neu-Life’s after-school programs, which don’t receive Community Learning Center funds, get by mostly on Wisconsin Shares and grants, Rhodes said.
“It’s a constant hustle to keep all our kids served,” Rhodes said.
Why after-school?
Scott said people often see after-school programs as “extra, as fluff, when really it can be the antidote to a lot of what ails us.”
The hours from 3 to 6 p.m. are when children are least supervised and most likely to be on their phones, Scott said, and after-school programs can fill that time by connecting kids in person with peers and trusted adults.
According to the state Office of Children’s Mental Health’s 2025 annual report, the share of Wisconsin high school students who feel they belong at school fell from 73.7% in 2013 to 53.6% in 2023, and less than half of girls, Hispanic, Black, lesbian, gay and bisexual students feel they belong at school.
The report said extracurricular activities are linked with less depression and anxiety and give children a basic sense of belonging.
Scott also wants to see the settlement dollars help children with serious struggles who need clinical support.
Kaul said “after-school programs are certainly important.”
“We’re just not at the point yet where we’ve made final determination as to precisely where all of the dollars will be going,” Kaul said.
Many of the people who have contacted his office about the money have asked about after-school programs, he said.
What other states have done
Wisconsin wouldn’t be the first state to increase funding for after-school programs or to use settlement money to do it.
Michigan’s grant for after-school programs has grown from $10 million in 2021, half from American Rescue Plan Act funding, to $135 million for the 2026-27 fiscal year.
Schools, churches and community groups, including YMCAs and Boys & Girls Clubs, all can apply for the grants, said Stephanie Van Koevering, director of public affairs for the Michigan Afterschool Partnership.
Demand still outpaces the money: In 2025, programs requested $123 million for $57 million available, she said.
Each year’s funding becomes the starting point for the next push, Van Koevering said. “That’s a win that we are celebrating today. Tomorrow, it becomes our new floor.”
Idaho has taken another approach. A portion of the state’s tobacco settlement dollars goes into a Millennium Fund. For the past two years, state lawmakers have directed money from this fund to after-school programs through a grant called Beyond the Bell.
The first year’s amount was about $1.5 million, said Anna Almerico, senior program director with the Idaho Out-of-School Network.
But lawmakers decide each year how the Millennium Fund’s money is spent, and the after-school funding “can be taken overnight, basically,” Almerico said. She said she would like Idaho to add a dedicated line in the state budget as well.
Scott said Meta settlement dollars would just be a start to after-school funding in Wisconsin.
“Ten years seems like a long time, but it’s really not,” Scott said. “I want to see investments at every level of government.”
Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
After-school programs could see new funds as a result of social media lawsuit is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
