The Escambia Children’s Trust Board held a meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 9, that lasted over two hours. The staff brought the board three funding proposals. Only one was responsive to a request for proposals regarding public education and outreach. The two others were unsolicited requests.
The requests were presented without any review by a grant committee—because the committee had yet to be appointed. ECT’s Needs Assessment was still out for public comment. The board is waiting on the public comments to develop a strategic plan to guide its allocation of funds and grant process for the $20 million its set to distribute during the 2022-23 fiscal year.
The responsive proposal was from Studer Community Institute for $444,400. Children’s Home Society was asking for a match to expand its Community School Partnership ($77,650), and the other was from Kidz Club ($55,000). Inweekly has requested the full proposals from ECT. I will post them upon receipt – the abstract summaries are below.
As you can imagine, the board was chaotic. David Peaden proposed killing the process until Needs Assessment Plan was approved and the strategic plan finalized.
“I still believe that the people who voted for this didn’t look for a marketing campaign,” Peaden said. “They want more grassroots results with these kids.”
He added, “My motion would be not to table it but to kill this process right now and then get our ducks in a row, do our planning, and then move forward. There are good pieces in that that I do like, but I think the timing is not right.”
Melissa Sidoti argued, “We have to do something, and then we have to determine whether what we did worked or not. That’s how we’d be accountable. If we just sit and sit and sit because we don’t like it, and we’re not spending the money the citizens ask us to spend, and then we’re not accountable to the citizens of Escambia County.”
Commissioner Lumon May said,” Just to say we’re putting money out because the community is demanding put money out, that’s just untrue because the community is not coming out to this podium every meeting saying, ‘Give money out, give money out.’ That’s just not true. I mean, what they do want is stewardship, accountability, and money to go impactfully into their communities to make a difference.”
The motion failed.
Executive Director Tammy Greer pointed out that ECT can do more than fund direct services “because then that makes us a foundation basically.” She said. “So, you can absolutely do public education. That is within the realm of what a council can do. The RFP was to do this public education around the importance of early childhood education because we don’t have a lot of parents who want to put their kids into the quality program.”
The board then discussed the SCI proposal. Dr. Rex Northrup was concerned whether it focused on ‘individual needs throughout the entirety of Escambia County.”
Chair Stephanie White said, “Until we have the needs assessment completed and strategic plan, I can’t vote for anything until we know where we’re going to spend the money and where we’re going to allocate it. If we’re going to do all four things, if we’re going to do three things and how we’re going to allocate it.”
Sidoti said, “My only concern is the amount of dollars on the marketing communications, but I do understand that we, as a board, can change that amount if we so desire.”
Tori Woods echo Northrup’s and Sidoti’s concerns. “I also have a concern about the area and the RFP in all of Escambia County, and it only focusing on a small area of Escambia County. And I also have a concern about so much of the budget going to marketing.”
Lumon May motioned to delay a vote for 10 days until a grant committee would review the proposal and return a recommendation. However, the delay wouldn’t work because the Grants Committee had not been appointed.
In the end, the board approved tabling the proposals until the September meeting and asked all the proposers to be present to explain their submittals.
Here are the abstracts of the proposals: