The largest expenditure of the Escambia Children’s Trust has been for Out-of-School (OST) programs. With the third and final year of the agreements up for consideration, the staff met with all 16 providers, reviewed their metrics, and recommended that 11 should be renewed for Year 3. The Escambia Children’s Trust (ECT) met on Tuesday to discuss the programs.
“I want to assure all of you that children are being served regardless of what you see in this report. There are children who are in need; they are children who are being fulfilled in these particular programs,” said Executive Director Lindsey Cannon when she presented the OST renewal report. “But we do have to look at this from a financial standpoint and the perspective of what was proposed versus what’s being provided.”
She noted the programs cover traditional after-school care, summer programs and camps, and specialty programs that work with children maybe once a week. “You’re not going to see apples to apples in every single part of this. You’re going to see apples to orange just to bananas. And that’s okay for now. We will be looking at this very differently as we release an OST going forward for Year four, which will have some metrics that are for everyone to achieve.
As reported last week, Gulf Coast Freedom School canceled its contract so its board could regroup. Four other providers were tabled to give ECT staff more time to work with them: the City of Pensacola Parks & Recreation, Covenant Hospice, Pensacola Little Theatre and Pensacola MESS Hall.
“We spent a tremendous amount of time, specifically yesterday, as a team looking into proposals, reviewing the review committee videos to see what was said, what was changed, looking at original budgets versus what those changes looked like, and any sort of change of scope that has happened or that we feel probably will need to happen if we move forward,” said Cannon. “We really do want more time around those four.”
The programs approved for Year 3 include the Boys and Girls Club, Children’s Home Society, CMB Visions, Dixon School of Arts and Sciences, James B. Washington Education & Sports, Omega Lamplighters, Chain Reaction, Epps Christian Center, Pensacola Children’s Chorus, SALT Ministry and YMCA of Northwest
Florida.