The Escambia Children’s Trust Program Committee met on Tuesday to discuss its largest budget item, Out-of-School programs, and whether to fund all of them for the final year of their three-year agreement.
The Trust has had issues tracking the wide variety of programs covered by the grants, which range from summer camps to after-school reading programs to chorus and theater.
Some are not helping the number of children identified in their proposals. Executive Director Lindsey Cannon said, “They shot for a very high number, and I don’t know that they were ever going to achieve that high; I’m just being honest.”
However, they are receiving the full amount of their grants. The executive asked the committee to consider renegotiating the contracts. “When we go forward, do we want to lock dollars up in a contract that we can’t spend and they’re not going to use? Or do we want to go back and have some negotiation through Year 3 that really will reduce the number of kids they serve and the cost per participant as well?”
Another issue is the inconsistency of the metrics used by the providers. Deborah Ray, the director of programs and performance, said, “When we have the metrics all aligned, it’ll look different because now, even if you have them going for 45 days or more, it’s hard to track if they’re being successful because of the data that they selected to track. So once we have all that aligned, we’ll be able to see those outcomes. Y Reads is easy that you’re tracking reading, but some of them are very different regarding seeing if they are truly being successful.”
Gulf Coast Freedom Schools
Cannon said she had met with the board members of Gulf Coast Freedom Schools. The program has failed to meet its participation goals in Years 1 and 2.
“We wanted to do a change of scope because, remember UWF was not involved with it and were, we had to go back and forth with them to try to find out what they were actually measuring,” she said, adding the program’s executive director had resigned.
“We met with five or six members of their board and had a very frank conversation with them because my assumption is when we’re having a conversation with an executive director, they’re bringing that to their board and having that, that did not happen for them, and they were very upset. So they are going to recuse themselves from a Year 3 contract and rehire and start over. So we will not be funding them for Year 3.”
Changes Coming
As the committee reviewed the summaries of participants, dosages and funding, several committee members expressed concern that the programs needed to be fulfilling the commitments made in their original proposals.
Committee member Tori Woods questioned if the programs still fit the original criteria of being an afterschool program. She worried about the denied programs because the approved ones wrote better proposals.
“I always go back to what we asked for and the people that we denied and this,” she said. “But what we are asking for and what we’re holding other programs accountable for, they are not meeting standard…I have to go to church, and I have to go to my son’s football games, and I have to go out of community, and I have to look at people and tell them why I said no.”
Woods continued, “Some (approved providers) see people for three days, and they get $2,600 a kid. Another afterschool program would see the kids every day, and we told them no. And then this doesn’t seem like afterschool based on the criteria that we asked for.”
Other members wondered if it would be better for programs, such as Pensacola Children’s Chorus and Pensacola Little Theater, would be better as auxiliary additions to other afterschool programs as subcontractors.
Ray noted that several programs have strayed from their proposals. “We ask the same 50 questions every time we do these (meet with providers). This is what the RFP stated; this is what you propose. I don’t even know if people have looked at their proposal looking into Year 3. Those things aren’t coinciding as far as looking at their dollars and their services, and what their initial proposals are. But you learned a lot right now. I think we do need to have some adjustments before we go forward.”
The program committee made no final recommendations on Year 3 funding but agreed to continue the discussions in January.
Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash
