Escambia Children's Trust reaches 5,000 kids through local programs. Are they helping?
The Escambia Children’s Trust is reviewing the first round of services that local programs were contracted to provide children this year, before renewing them for a second year. While most service providers are delivering on what they promised, several others are not, revealing where more work can be done in the ECT process to hold providers accountable for the taxpayer dollars they’re given.
During the Escambia Children’s Trust board meeting on Nov. 15, staff asked the board to weigh on contract changes requested by four different providers of out-of-school programs: Urban Development Center, Valerie’s House Pensacola, Children’s Theatre Company and Pensacola MESS Hall.
It's the first time the board was faced contract request changes by service providers.
Pensacola MESS Hall, a hands-on science museum, had a straightforward change request that the board granted: to reduce the number of weeks they are providing an after-school STEM program because it was late getting underway and to reduce their budget by 17%, accordingly.
The other three requests are more complicated, because unlike Pensacola MESS Hall, these organizations want to make significant changes to the scope of their contracts for the same money, and in some cases, have already made the changes and spent their money without first consulting the board.
Urban Development Center asked to lower the ages of children it serves. The program's grant was awarded to provide a workforce readiness and technical skills training program for middle and high school youth in Century.
Not only are they not reaching as many children as promised in the contract, most are younger than the organization was contracted to serve. More than half of the 56 children they are serving are elementary school age.
The elementary age children are also receiving more basic educational services because of their age, and while board members said they understand the need and they support children and families getting help, that service is not what Urban Development Center was contracted to provide.
Valerie’s House Pensacola, a nonprofit organization providing ongoing grief support programs for children and families, wants to rework a meet-kids-where-they-are type mentoring program they received ECT money to fund because not enough children are taking part in it.
The organization has requested changes in some of their performance measures and how they would be held accountable. They also want to allocate some of their grant money to fund a regional director position, instead of hiring a full-time counselor like originally intended.
Children’s Theatre Company, an organization based in New York running a program in Pensacola, promised to serve 200 children with a social justice minded theatre program funded by a nearly $200,000 grant from ECT.
The first session of the program ran two-and-a-half months over the summer and was supposed to provide more sessions through February, but the organization is already out of money and requesting reimbursement for services that staff say did not meet contractual obligations.
“We're looking at a program that was proposed to serve 200 children to the tune of almost $200,000,” said Kimberly Krupa, ECT director of programs. “They actually only served 89, but as we're doing their audit, we see some of those kids are over age or live in Santa Rosa County, so it's closer to 80 children and they spent all their money. They're out of money for a program that started on July 15th and ended on the last Saturday in September. The reason that we didn't know about it is because they were very behind on their reimbursement requests.”
The board asked staff to review those three contracts and voted to bring them back before ECT’s program committee, which meets on Nov. 28 to discuss all service providers' contracts for the upcoming year.
Nineteen service provider contracts are being reviewed and submitted for renewal, a $5.1 million investment.
Board members were concerned about the holes in the process that allowed the last three service providers to get reimbursed for work they weren’t providing according to contract.
“That’s a failure on our monitoring,” said ECT board member and Escambia County District 3 Commissioner Lumon May.
“We have to recognize who the participants are and what they’re doing, so I would ask staff to give us that evaluation and make sure that we understand exactly, ‘Did they meet the goals and objectives that they put into their proposal?’ Either they did or they didn’t. Are they compliant or non-compliant?”
Krupa said the process is showing where they need to make changes to ensure service providers are abiding by the terms of their contract and they are planning to eliminate any cracks moving forward.
They are also preparing a report for the ECT board and the public to review that shows how providers are doing, if they’re meeting the terms of their contract, and where there is room for improvement.
“Did they reach the number of children they propose to reach? Are they being good stewards of taxpayer dollars? We have a breakdown of how many did they say they were going to do, meaning we contracted with them to serve that number, and how much have they reimbursed the taxpayers of Escambia County? And then how many children did they actually serve and what does that cost per child?” Krupa explained.
“Because some providers are really being good stewards. They're being efficient, they're leveraging other dollars, they're really being careful and how they allocate staff time. I have to say out of the 19, it's just a handful that are running into some of these issues. The majority of the providers are really doing an outstanding job. They're over-serving and they're under budget,” she said.
Most Escambia Children's Trust programs off to good start
Donnell Snowden, 17, loves playing football. He’s dedicated to it, going regularly to games and practices, but as much as he may want a career playing pro ball, he knows that may not happen.
Like a lot of high school athletes, he needed a back-up plan and someone to show him what that could look like. Teen leadership and service program Chain Reaction helped him see he also has what it takes to succeed in other areas of life.
Snowden was one of nearly 50 members of the Washington High School football team who signed up to attend the program once a week for 10 weeks. The goal is to learn a variety of leadership, communication and soft skills through service projects.
In this case, the team made a collection of wine cork birdhouses that they sold and donated the proceeds to a local nonprofit that serves children. During the work and the meetings, they also learn to recognize their own innate talents that can translate into good grades and a good career, either through higher education or a trade school.
“It started making us open up more, just explore stuff that we didn't know we had inside of us,” Snowden said. “It doesn't make us shy or like, scared to come back, or scared to express how we feel or even talk. We can just be ourselves.”
The first 10 weeks just wrapped up and Chain Reaction founder and Executive Director Kristin Fairchild said testing shows it was a big success. The students showed a marked improvement in their behavior, especially soft skills.
The students can still participate in the program and Chain Reaction is expanding the partnership to Pensacola High School, where they’ll be working with seniors who need help to get back on track to graduate.
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Fairchild said it’s important to have a program that helps with the handoff between high school and what happens after graduation.
“They have to do the work, but we are going to give them the step by step formula to do it,” said Fairchild, who said the ECT grant has made it possible to take Chain Reaction off site and reach more teens.
“Children's Trust has the funds to invest in those programs that are doing the good work and can show the accountability with all the stuff on the back end. It's a lot of infrastructure, a lot of learning, but I think with the students we serve we'll see the graduation rates go up and kids being more successful. I really think it's going to cause a huge chain reaction and I think we'll get more funding from other places. I think it’s a tipping point for us.”
The ECT out-of-school grants are meant to help new programs serve new populations. The nearly $200,000 grant Chain Reaction received for the first year is enabling them to help students who otherwise couldn’t afford it.
CMB Visions Unlimited, an education and support program in Pensacola, is also serving children and families who otherwise couldn’t afford their comprehensive summer and after-school programs for elementary, middle and high school students.
Located off Creighton Road, CMB provides transportation, food, tutoring and soft skills training to children. They also help families with food, bills and counseling.
During its summer program, CMB served 55 children. For after school care they currently serve between 35 and 40.
CMB founder and CEO Chandra McClain Burgess says there’s already a waiting list and the only thing holding them back from growing is providing more transportation, an issue they are working to address.
Burgess received a nearly $300,000 grant from ECT to expand services to more children and families. Although from Pensacola, Burgess lived in Miami for decades where she ran a similar, successful program since 2001, with the help of the Children’s Trust that serves the South Florida area.
She said working with the Escambia Children’s Trust has been a good experience and their support is helping her reach more children since she returned to her hometown.
“Typically as soon as we invoice for our expenses, they review it,” said Burgess. “They let us know when there are errors. Now they're very meticulous about protecting their money and that we're doing what we're supposed to do, but they're very quick about turning those invoices over. They know it how important it is for organizations to have the cash flow to continue.”
Fifth-grader Carmen Benjamin said she looks forward to coming every day after school.
“It's fun and we do crafts and stuff. It’s very entertaining,” said the girl, adding she also gets the help she needs with her schoolwork. “When I did my homework, it was dividing decimals and I forgot what my teacher said about it. And then my (after-school) teacher, she showed me how to divide decimals and now I understand how to divide decimals.”
Burgess noted, “To me that's the measure of a program, when the kids want to be here and they're happy, when it's time to go home, they’re not ready to go right away, and when the parents are thankful.”
The Escambia Children’s Trust was approved by voters in 2020 and is responsible for allocating more than $10 million in property taxes to fund initiatives and services to help children and their families, especially those with the greatest need.
In the past year, ECT staff say the trust has gone from serving no children to serving 5,000 children, mostly by funding programs that provide after-school care and summer programs free of charge for young ones and their families. At least 2,000 more children will be served in the coming months as more programs come online through the trust.
The programs that are up for renewal will be discussed at the Escambia Children’s Trust Program Committee meeting at 9 a.m. Nov. 28 at Pensacola State College; 1000 College Blvd., Building 11. That meeting will be followed by the ECT’s Executive Committee meeting at 10 a.m.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Escambia Children's Trust determines if providers are helping children
