Whittier Elementary third-grader Michael Provenzano says he likes coming to the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club after school each day.

“I do my homework on the computer, and then I do my creativity,” he said as he created a line drawing on the club’s computer. “The Boys and Girls Club is fun.”

However, after next week, Michael and other kids will have to find some other place to play and do homework after school. The program, located at 700 Independence Ave., will be discontinued March 28 because of low attendance.

The club’s teen program at 322 Callahan St. will continue.

“We only had 20 people enrolled in the after-school program and only 15 coming,” said Capt. George Hackbarth, commanding officer for the Muskogee Salvation Army. “We need to have at least 30 kids to break even. There are not enough kids to cover expenses.”

He said the discontinuation could be temporary.

“The club is not closing,” he said. “Rather it is seeking more effective methods of serving more children and their families in the community.”

Hackbarth said he is working with Muskogee School Superintendent Mike Garde about reinstating the program at district schools in the 2009 school year. He said the Salvation Army has been meeting with Muskogee Public Schools officials since last spring.

Garde or other school officials could not be reached for comment because it is the district’s spring break.

Hackbarth said the joint program could serve four times as many children.

In 2005, the Boys and Girls Club after-school program drew as many as 50 kids.

Last fall, program director Juliette Exupery said the after-school program lost some kids at the start of the school year when Muskogee Public Schools experienced a shortage of bus drivers and was not able to take kids from elementary schools to the club. She said many children had already stopped coming to the program when the district overcame the shortage.

“I’m just real sad” about the program’s discontinuation, Exupery said Wednesday. “It takes the whole community to make this work.”