Greetings OST Family,

Thank you for electing me to serve as your chair for the out-of-school time (OST) SIG. As the former treasurer and secretary, I receive this new office with humility and a great sense of responsibility. It is an honor to continue serving our special interest group.

I want to extend a heartfelt “thank you” to our former chair, Elizabeth Devaney, for her excellent leadership in carrying out the vision of founder Sara Hill. She provided opportunities to present research and share resources related to OST teaching and learning. We are also grateful for the contributions of the outgoing leadership team who worked collaboratively to ensure that the SIG would be representative of the growing field.The new leadership team is working hard to carry on the SIG’s vision and mission.

We hope that you have found the quarterly newsletters helpful, as it was our goal to share opportunities for book projects, grants, conferences, resources, and cutting-edge research for practitioners, researchers, and graduate students.

We all believe in the importance of out-of-school time, and how essential it is for life-long learning and development. The leadership team has synthesized and summarized your thoughts from the annual business meeting regarding how we can improve recruitment and retention and best leverage the expertise of our diverse membership. We will present an action plan in our next newsletter.

I hope that you enjoyed the 2019 conference, and I look forward to seeing all of you at next year’s AERA meeting in San Francisco, California.

Warmest regards,

Natalie S. King, Chair