Ep 12 | The Super WalMart of Community Services

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You name it, we were there. Our whole point is to get to the yes. If a family needs something, our point is to get to the yes for them. Even if it's not something we directly offer, we find the connection for them.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Welcome to the Voices United in Education podcast. Each week we showcase the teachers, administrators, and community members who go the extra mile to contribute to the success of every student in Escambia County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support every student's success. Say what you want about Walmart, but there's a reason why so many people shop there. It's a one-stop shop. You get your groceries, your hair cut, your oil changed. If only there was a community version of that for families. Turns out it's a thing. My next guests are going to share about the unique school community business partnership at CA Weiss Community School and how having easy-to-reach resources can remove barriers to education. They're principal of CA Weiss and the Community Partnership School Director of CHS, community activists and diehard Saints fans, Dr. Kimberly Thomas and Lisa Coleman. You know I had to put that in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

I appreciate it. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

You know. And I feel like we have Panama City well represented here too. Both of you started your careers there. Uh Lisa, 20 years in health and human services, and Dr. Thomas, 19 years in education. Y'all have been it in the for the long haul. Seeing the good, the bad, what works, what doesn't work. So I'd love to hear from both of you about what makes this partnership new unique. So I'll start with you, Dr. Thomas.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yes, um, I am completing my first year as principal of CAY's Community School, and it has been an amazing experience. Uh we have so many different resources right there at your fingertips to remove barriers that would otherwise be in place for both teachers and staff and myself as an administrator, but we have those extra resources there to help fill in the gaps of what our students need each and every day. And so it's been an amazing experience to have Children's Home Society on campus, to have Community Northwest, uh Health Northwest Florida on campus as well. And also the UWF partnership, it's been a very uh great experience to have that connection as well, along with the school district supporting this endeavor, has just been an amazing experience.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

The whole on-campus thing to me is just mind-blowing. Well, you've been in Health and Human Services, serving families for a very long time. How, from your perspective, how is this partnership unique?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

I think it's unique and unique in the sense that all of us bring something else to the table and we can utilize each other's resources to make our children and their families and the community a stronger entity and remove those barriers for education.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

So when you say you can talk to each other, it's almost like you can better collaborate, would you say? Absolutely. Because you're literally in the same building. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

And if we're not in the same building, we meet regularly, we constantly in contact with each other, trying to help each other just get those resources out to our families.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

That's really interesting. I at first I thought that this program or partnership, I should say, was a lot like the Navigator program, but it has your your partnership has some really specific features. And it includes, as you said, UWF, Children's Home Society, the school district, of course, and then Community Health Click Clinic of Northwest Florida. And here's the thing that just blew my mind was all of them have given a 25-year commit. That is longer than most marriages, okay? Why why 25 years? Why is that a thing?

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Well, it's a huge thing because we you to be able to build trust in a community, you have to be able to be there. And they have a lot of people that come in for a short time and then they're gone again. We're we're here for the long haul. We're here to strengthen that community, make it stronger, and I'm pretty sure we'll be here longer than the 25 years, but it's a twenty a minimum of a 25-year commitment that we're headed towards.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

That's 2039, like from when it started. Yeah, that's crazy. Have you ever seen a partnership like this?

SPEAKER_00 4:34

I have not in my years of experience so far. I have not seen this, and it's just unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

Wow. Okay, so Lisa, tell me what uh about the involvement of UWF and CHS. What does that mean for kids and families?

SPEAKER_01 4:50

What it does is we can utilize their resources to be able to strengthen our kids as far as like we have um student teachers from UWF that come in and help with uh tutoring and reading for our after school program. University University students who are who are in the process of becoming teachers come in and it benefits both because they get that hands-on experience and our kids get that extra one-on-one attention. So they come in and they do that. They also do our needs assessment, which is every two years we do a needs assessment and they go door to door in our community in the school trying to find out what our community needs because we, I mean, we would be wrong to try to tell somebody else what they need. So they do that and we set our goals for the community partnership school based on that needs assessment.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

That is really cool. So, how what's the um what's the reaction from families giving that information? Are are they pretty familiar with the partnership and they know someone's going to be literally knocking on their door to ask about it?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Um, we start with like the parents. We start letting them know we're coming out to do the needs assessment. And so if they see us in the community, they'll let the neighbors know, hey, we know who they are. You can go ahead and talk to them. And and it's not necessarily us doing it, but UWF students. They're part of the social work department that come out and do the the needs assessment. We just go with them so that they have a face that they recognize.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

Oh, interesting. Okay, so that's UWF and then Children's Home Society. What kind of services are they offering?

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Well, inside the school, we offer behavioral and mental health, but we also, because CHS is such a large company and we offer so many other services, we have that connect to like um I'm losing my train of thought, but we have all these other services that CHS offers, like outreach and different things like that, and the navigator program that we can connect families to. Because the navigator program is just one arm of all of what CH off CHS offers there. We're more of the um like the con conveyor of all the services. We just kind of help connect everybody to them. And the hub form we have we have a hub form. So if a teacher recognizes that a student needs something, or somebody in the front office, or whoever, we can fill out an on they can't they have an online hub form they can fill out, or they have a paper one that they fill out and it gets sent to us, and then we reach out and track that and track to see what the family needs from food to clothing. We have we have a small food pantry, we have clothing pantry, we have um housing resources that we can connect families to. You name it, we were there. Our whole point is to get to the yes. If a family needs something, our point is to get to the yes for them. Even if it's not something we directly offer, we find the connection for them. And play matchmaker a little bit. And we do that. And we we it's not just the four core partners, but we also have faith-based partners that we work with, but we have the four core ones and then the other community members and those partners that we reach out to and we connect with and we make it work so that we can, you know, build build up what our families need.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

So with the online form, you're getting immediate feedback from the people that are face to face with the students. And so there's no because you know, in a lot of services and and definitely in any government entity, there is a lot of delay, right? And so it's like too little, too late kind of thing, or there's a wait list. This sounds like there's an immediate There is.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

And the other thing it does is it removes the that barrier for a teacher being able to teach because they don't have to like take the time out to come hunt us down. They can instantly do it, we can connect with them. Sometimes we can, you know, resolve the issue during the day while they're still teaching. We can go ahead. If they needed food, we make sure the child has food to take home. Or if they need new clothes, they can come down and we can you know set that up for them. Or if they're having issues getting a hold of a parent, we can go out to the home. So that that's moving that that extra thing off the teachers and they're able to focus on just teaching.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Which I'm sure is a huge relief to them because they do so much. Oh, they do. I would love for you, Dr. Thomas, to talk about the um significance of the school district and the health clinic within that partnership.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Sure. So with the health clinic, um, of course it is it is on site. And what was interesting to me was how a lot of families that utilize community uh health northwest Florida in different areas or agencies throughout the community, they didn't realize that it's the same facility on site. So so many parents had aha moments when I would just tell them, you know, well, you know, we have a the same clinic on site down here that have your medical records already here. You know, you can just go down the hall and you know, make an appointment and do this right here. It's like, oh, I didn't know that. I never knew that. Oh, well, that's easy, that makes sense. So showing them that that accessibility was right there on campus was a huge aha moment for parents this year that I noticed in regards to, you know, getting your mutations done, physicals done, just taking care of those basic medical needs that that's right there while the students are there. And so it helps because they don't have to, you know, worry about travel or missing so much work. You know, they can just kind of set those appointments up and do it while everyone is right there at the school. Um, also, we started this year, which is very exciting, is our health ambassador program as a result of this. So it's third, fourth, and fifth grade students that expressed an interest in the health field. And so what they did was once a month, they would actually get a chance to go to the clinic, answer the phone, learn how to take blood pressure, learn how to do different types of things in the health atmosphere. And they did that all year long. So at the end, their culminating activity was to actually go to the home office and they did like scavenger hunts and they talked to physicians, they talked to nurses, they spent the day at the corporate facility and just experienced the whole medical thing, and they just showed them different areas in the health field besides just, you know, being a nurse, being a doctor. You know, they just kind of learned different um aspects of that profession. And so as a result, we have students now that's saying, Oh, I want to pursue this career. You know, I want to, I'm thinking about this now, which they, I mean, we have it right on campus, and it's just amazing that they were able to experience that. And we're hoping to build on that next year and just to continue to build on. It's so funny, so an interesting story. One of the students, a fifth, I think it was a fourth or a fifth grader, said, Um, we have some students we would like to recommend for the program for next year.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

They're dominating each other. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

And it taught so many different leadership skills, and that's what we want to do. We want to build future leaders in the community and to show students that they are leaders and that there are other avenues, and here are ways to show your leadership skills.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

That is, first of all, I want a fourth grader to take my blood pressure at my next doctor's appointment. They did at one of our after our STEM night.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Yeah, at our STEM night. We one of the stations were the health ambassadors, they were taking blood pressures, they were um, what they were doing. Wait. Wait. I avoided that one. So they were involved and engaged in that night. You know, that was one of the stations for our STEM night. So it's always a plus and a win when you can get your students involved and engaged in that way. It's it just And the parents that show up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

We have so much more community engagement with yes. When you when they see their students are there doing stuff like that, the parents show up more. And so we're really trying to increase community engagement, not just through that, but through our other ambassador, our lead ambassador program, and then we're gonna have a exquisite ambassador program for after school next year for the girls. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

So why do you think that increases parent involvement?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

I think that when they when their kid has a project or something they're working on, the parents will show up to see that. And just like when we have fifth grade graduation, or not graduation, but fifth grade ceremony, the parents show up for that. So our step team from after school performed, our drumline performed.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Oh my gosh, there's a step team. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

I'll send you the video.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

I love, I love a step team. Yeah, okay, send me that.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

So yeah, and the same STEP team's going tomorrow night to dancing with the stars.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah, at the Singer Theater. Yeah, that's gonna be dancing. And they've been offered the opportunity to maybe next year to be a part of the act and to do a performance next year.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

Wow. Okay, this is really blowing my mind. So, what I'm hearing you say is the kids' basic needs are met, which is no surprise to anyone learning about a program partnership or service in the community, right? Because usually that's where it starts when you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? That's like health and human service day one in college, um, is those safety, security, foods. Um, but what we don't always get to hear about is what y'all are talking about, the next level, children thinking about their future, imagining themselves in a different place than maybe their parents were. And then from what you're describing is the parents are also able to imagine their children in that way because they're showing up.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Not only that, we have a we have adult education programs too that are connected for our families and our community members.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

So they can come do the GD program, financial literacy, and different things through other partners that we have, like with Penn Air, they come out and do our financial literacy to help them like teach them about created and what it means and how if you have the created, how to restore their created. I mean, we had so many families that were very interested and engaged in it. And I mean, it was a great turnout.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

Wow. Okay, so this program's been going on since the 2014-2015 school year. Um, how are how are you measuring outcomes? How what's the success tracking?

SPEAKER_01 14:52

One of the largest successes I think we have, we've had a 90% decrease in behavioral referrals.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

90%, 90%?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Yes. Since the 2015 inception. And so we've also, you know, we have, like I said, we have parents that are getting their GED, which their kids see that and they're like, I, you know, I I can go past this. And so we're trying to connect with other people so they can get further education past that. We've had that success. We've had, I mean, families, I mean, I I didn't even bring all the statistics, but we have um families that aren't hungry anymore, they have a safe place to come play because we have the park outside that's open to the public after school and on the weekends. We have I know the the utilization of the clinic on site, it has a high um rate of so much so that they're able to um provide wise eyes for us, which was where all of our kids get an eye exam. And if they need glasses, they provide those too at no cost.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

It's wise eyes, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

We we the utilization of the clinic has gone up so much, and they're doing such an amazing job down there that it's it's been able to financially fund our um eyes and our dental.

unknown 16:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

But I do want to also highlight a great point, and that, you know, we're talking about all of the things that students are gaining from this. But another thing that we're teaching the students too is about giving back and doing community service work and really instilling in them that, you know, it's something about giving back to your community. So they do community service activities to show them the importance of giving back to the community. So they will like go around the school picking up trade. I mean, these are things that they kind of came up with on their own. Like, what are some things that you can do to give back to a community that have given so much to you? And so that's a very important life lesson our step team.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Yeah, our step team went and read our kindergartners and pre-K. And that was their idea. That was their idea. Oh my god. They wanted they wanted uh cookies and milk with myself and Dr. Thomas. So instead of that, we we provided the dinner that we went to with them. So it was really cool to just have to, they they were it were teaching them to be able to advocate for themselves, which is huge. I mean, I at that age could not advocate for myself like these, like these kids have learned to do. So I think it's a huge thing for them.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

Wow, that is so incredible. This really paints a really exciting picture of what could be in 10 years, right? Like who are these kids gonna be in our community in 10 years? How are they gonna come together to help future families, future neighborhoods in 10 years?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Well, it's funny that you say that because we have fifth graders that have asked to come back and volunteer.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

We've asked them we've had a couple of things. We've had a couple come back this summer and volunteer and help us out. They did volunteer hours with us.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

This partnership seems like it's really making a very fast impact on the community near the school. Is there any possibility another school in our district would also have uh this kind of partnership in the future?

SPEAKER_01 18:00

I think that's the hope.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Yes. Okay, so y'all are like the experiment.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Well, we're actually the there there are 29 community partnership schools across the state of Florida.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

We were the first elementary school because we believed in starting where we thought we could do the most impact, which was at the elementary level and going forward. And we were the first to be accredited, first elementary school to be accredited and affirmed through UCF. Not that I'm bragging. But um, with that, you know, we've taken that and we we we understand the the the burden and the blessing that that is, is that we have to continue to grow it. We have to continue to improve on everything that we do. Because I'm not gonna say every step of the way was easy for the my predecessors. They it was a struggle getting to figure out because figuring out what we did wrong, what we did right, and and I think we've got the right people in place right now. We're doing a really good job at just making sure that it's about the community and our kids and just keeping that focus.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

That's so exciting. Well, as we wrap up, I would love to hear from each of you on what you want people to know about Escambia County Public Schools.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

What we really want the public to know is that our school district is a united school district, and we believe in all students and making sure that all students have equal access and have the opportunity to learn and to grow. And the the whole goal is to graduate these students with tools and resources to prepare them for a global world, global society, and make sure that they're equipped with what they need to be functional and productive citizens. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

I think for me, it's just making sure that we understand it's not just in school, as Scambia County understands that. It's not only in school, but it's in school and beyond. Kind of like she was saying, for that global picture for us to be able to continue to grow them so they can go out and grow others. And we can, I mean, that's the only way we're going to strengthen that way.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Well, the future seems pretty bright. Thank you, ladies, for being here. Thank you. Voices United in Education is a production of Escambia County School District. Special thanks to Pine Forest High School for their recording studio facilities and hospitality.