The Escambia Children’s Trust Program Committee met yesterday for two hours. They approved to send the Trust board a proposal that would send local middle school students to the Flight Academy for one week during the school and a Micro Grant grants.
The committee also discussed how the measurement of its Out-of-School programs will be tighten heading into Year 3 of their grants.
National Flight Academy
Pat Everly presented the committee with a sole-source request to fund a National Flight Academy project that would send 42 students to the flight academy for one week. Each Escambia County middle school would choose a cohort of students that would have a week once during the school year. Flight Academy.
42 students per week x seven total weeks = 294 middle school students from the School District
Cost per student: $1,305
Total annual cost: $383,670
The total grant if it’s renewed for Year 2 and Year 3: $1,190,620
Sole-source requests are proposals from the community that weren’t solicited by the Escambia Children’s Trust.
“The overarching theme is to get an experience to the kids in Escambia County that wouldn’t necessarily get to go through one of our programs in the summer,” said Everly “This is a way, in a very contained controlled educational environment, to give them some very unique experiences and the ability to see some things they might not normally get to see it is.”
Committee Tori Woods expressed concerns about committing to three years as the Trust budget tightens when other programs expand and are also renewed.
“I think the program is great,” Woods said. “My biggest concern is we still in number of what money we still owe and so I’m not comfortable agree to this amount of money not knowing…We have other programs and so I make sure that we have that care of them.”
Executive Director Lindsey Cannon showed the committee a rolling five-year budget that estimated the Trust had about $1.8 million uncommitted annually. The Trust would like to use $500,000 for a proposed Micro Grant program, leaving $1.3 million for programs like the Flight Academy proposal.
Eventually, the Program Committee approved sending the Flight Academy proposal to the full board. The vote was 3-1 – Stephanie White, Dr. Rex Northup and David Williams in favor; Tori Woods opposed.
Note: I will have more in a later post about the Micro Grant program.
OST (Out of School) Programs – Year 3
Cannon informed the committee that the Trust staff has been meeting with OST providers and expects to tighten how their programs are monitored and measured. The programs are set to enter their third year in late February 2025. She warned not all of them may be recommended for renewal. Some may be recommended for a third and final year but at a reduced budget.
“We’re already having our collaborative meetings with them where we’re reviewing budget outcomes, attendance, all the things and how they’re going to proceed going forward, looking at their original proposal and what they proposed for their budget and give them the opportunity to adjust within the dollars that were there in their proposal,” the executive director said. “So we’re in the process of that. We’ll have a recommendation on those in December at our program committee and then the board meeting.”
Cannon asked the committee to consider doing a partial extension to the end of the school year so the Trust can see the school year data on the students in the various programs. Providers offering summer programs may be extended to the end of July. The committee didn’t vote on that recommendation, but she will bring it back next month.
Deborah Ray, the director of programs and performance, said, “You should have enough measures through February, at least two official ones as far as standardized tests. If their outcomes are aligning with what those goals would be, we would be able to see at least two data points for them.”
The committee expect the providers to show their results. Woods shared that in Year 2, the Trust and providers found “the kinks” in their programs and the Trust staff learned more about what data to request from them.
“So now we’re on get to Year 3,” she said. “Now it’s like, ‘Okay, we had two years; we have a little more experience. So now this is what we need y’all to do because we didn’t know that until you got experience.”
The Escambia Children’s Trust Board meets next at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 12 in commission chambers.