Ep 40 | Who’s Listening? How are Needs are Assessed & Met

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I also want to hear from some of the teachers. Is it the pay? Or is it because a child threw a chair at you every day this week? Or is it because the parents are coming in and screaming at you? You know, is your mental health suffering from being in the class where you're having to manage the mental health and behavioral health issues of the children?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

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 Escambi County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support every student's success. In between work and Walmart, every parent has thought the thought, you know what would be great? The brilliant idea that follows is usually left in the produce aisle, never to be actualized into anything that would actually solve your problems. So where do you go to voice your needs as a parent in Escambia County? My next guest is a part of that answer. She's the executive director of Escambia Children's Trust, one of 13 unique government agencies that assigns a portion of property taxes to local nonprofits that support the needs of the community based on what the community says they need. Today she's going to share the results of the latest Escambia County Needs Assessment, the resources that were funded as a result, and how you can be heard. UWF graduate, mom of three, professional solution broker, Tammy Greer.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Welcome. Hi, thank you. Oh, that's the best introduction ever. I'm so glad.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Well, we'll go with that. You've done so much work in the nonprofit space. And I my experience is with anybody that works in nonprofit, they always have a backstory of what inspired them to get in that field. So what's your backstory? Boy, my backstory is complicated.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Uh so I grew up in Pensacola. I was born in Alabama to a single mom, a teen mom. And then she got married and moved to Pensacola. So I came to Pensacola, and this is where I grew up. And we were not wealthy, not even close. Uh we were poor. And I got to live as a poor child in Escambia County. I don't think I've ever heard anyone word it that way. You got to live. Yeah, I got to live. Well, because then she got my my mother was married nine times. So yeah. So nine, as in the number after eight. As in the number after eight. Uh and so we moved around a lot. Uh I had experiences with the foster care system. Wow. Uh I everybody used to ask if we were in the military because we moved so much, but she was just kind of a gypsy. And, you know, she she was that young mother that didn't know how to be a mother and somedays didn't want to be a mother. And I I grew up in that situation. And then her fourth husband, he had a little bit of money. So I got to go to Pensacola Christian school. So I I went to a really nice private school. Uh then when she divorced him, I got dragged around and I went to 11 different high schools, one of which was Tate. And so uh I I've been, you know, just a little bit of everywhere. But I knew growing up that I wanted to do something for kids like me whenever I got the opportunity to make a difference. So at first I thought that was gonna be law school. I'm gonna go to law school, I'm gonna, I'm gonna save the world, I'm gonna be a foster care attorney. So, which I'm proud to say one of my board members is foster care attorney and and an adoption attorney. And so shout out to Stephanie White um for the work she does. But that was my dream. And then uh, but I was poor, and so I couldn't afford to go to law school. So I got a job at a university in San Diego because I thought I've, you know, I've got to get out of pen school. That's what everybody says, you know, when they finish school. Oh, I gotta go out into this great big world. But then you come back because it's home. And so um, so I started working at a university and they paid for me to get my master's degree, which was amazing. And I kind of shifted. Nobody ever says, Oh, I want to be a grant writer when I grow up. That sounds really fun. Like nobody wants to do that. For those who don't know, a grant writer basically, if you ever wrote a term paper in school, that's what you do for a living. You just write papers all day. And so it's super fun. And you read lots of like federal registers and you know, legislation. And so if that sounds exciting to you, there's a career path option for you. But so I went that route and then just stayed in the nonprofit realm. And I, when I came back to Pensacola after grad school, I was working in clinical research at West Florida hospital. And uh, and I had dated the man who would then become my husband previously when I was in Pensacola at UWF, came back, married him. He's a rheumatologist. Long story short, we end up in West Palm Beach because there's a great need for rheumatologists down there in the land of retirement. And so, uh, because I think there must be some kind of rule that if you're in New York City, you have to move to Florida when you hit a certain age. I'm sure. So, yeah, and you specifically have to, yeah, it's in them, it's in some kind of rule up there. And so, you know, they they kick you out of the state apparently, and you have to go to South Florida specifically. So he did quite well down there. And so I was in Palm Beach County for 16, no, 19 years. And I worked at the Children's Services Council there. So um here I am full circle. You know, I never thought we would see the day when there would be a children's services council. And I say that lowercase because that's what these entities, these government entities are called. Um, so I never thought that there would be one in Escambia County. So I'm so, so, so proud of our county and our voters for putting this in place because to get a new tax passed is not a small feat. And I'm just super pleased and cannot tell you how proud I am to have been given this opportunity to to do this work. Um, it's you know, it's challenging because we're starting up a new government agency, but it's very rewarding.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

It's so unique when to know that there's only uh uh you know a dozen-ish of these organizations in the state, and that we have one here. I think, especially like you, if you grow up here, you think that's not here. You just sort of have this um idea that where you live isn't special, or you know what I mean? It's like you're biased in a way that is um, you know, kind of like prejudice against your own town, like, oh, you're jaded, right? But Pensacola has a lot of resources, surprisingly. I'm learning a lot through talking with people like you. And I think it's really neat that this one is uh impressive to me because it makes decisions based on what community members are saying, not what the bigger government entities think you need. You know, government individuals who have never had needs like that, going, oh, here's what you need. You know, that can be a little pandering feeling, right? Yeah. Um, so I think it's it's now double special knowing your background with poverty and moving around and having lots of needs and and you know, being someone who could have easily fallen way through the system. And yet here you are. So I'd love to hear what needs came up during the last assessment. How long ago was that? So we took an interesting approach.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

When I got here, the board said, well, there have already been needs assessments done. And and there were, because the studer community group had they they had already done a dashboard with some great data. Um Healthy Escarosa. I'm trying to remember the names of all the different agencies to make sure I get them right. So forgive me if I leave one out, but Healthy Escarosa had lots of data around the health of children in the community. Achiva Scambia had a huge amount of data that they had collected in preparation for the campaign to get the children's trust off the ground. Uh, there were just all kinds of data points all around. And so what we decided to do instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, like some of our sister agencies do, to develop their own unique brand new needs assessment and go out and do all of the research themselves. What we did is just hired a staff person who would then be our director of program and performance and had her pull all of those other needs assessments that had just been done because the data was fresh, and pull all that together, call through it, and say, okay, these are of all the things that are on fire in the community, these are the things that we think we may be able to help put out. And so we pulled all that together instead of reinventing wheels, we just gathered up a bunch of wheels.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Well, I think that's a really smart way to do it because then you're, you know, this is voices united in education. So you're you know, partnering with resources that are established instead of, you know, um, not to say that when nonprofits pop up and do similar things, that they're competitors, but there can be that natural uh feeling that arises up within, you know, flawed human beings that, okay, now I'm I'm competing against you. And so instead you chose a path of collaboration.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah. And it was a it was a much faster route to get to where we needed because we needed a baseline. We how will you know if you're where you plan to be if you if you don't know where that is? Like we we needed something to tell us where to go. And so that was really where we needed to start. And so, as part of that whole initiative, we ended up with a huge document and it's on our website. If anybody wants to take a look at it, you'll see all of the different indicators that we found. And it's kind of cool the way that it's structured. Of course, I'm biased, but I I love the way that it's structured because it'll give you the numbers, which, you know, anybody who knows data knows that you can you can present that through different lenses. But we we put the numbers out there and we said, you know, here, here's what we found, and we gave the source of the numbers. And then we said, but here's what this means in terms of the community. And then we put a paragraph about, and so what could be done? And then we looked at what some of our sister agencies and other programs in the state of Florida and across the nation have done and said, you know, you could do perhaps something like this or like this or like this, and just kind of laid it all out there. So if anybody wants a sense of what we're trying to do, they can look to that document. And then it's got all of that data in there, all of those indicators. There are 24 unique indicators that we included in there. And so we'll be able to tell at the end of this experiment how far we've come because we'll have those indicators. And if we have moved the needle in the right direction, then we'll have really made an impact. So now this won't be quick. These are these are problems like child hunger, uh, childhood obesity, which that seems like those two would conflict that we have a high rate of obesity and a high rate of hunger. But when you look at things like food deserts in the community, the only food that the children have access to are really highly processed, high calorie foods. They're doing their shopping at convenience stores and dollar stores and not at produce markets. And, you know, and and maybe they they don't even have the equipment at home to prepare healthy meals. So that's one little teeny piece and two indicators out of 24 that we're looking at. It's things like youth violence, it's preterm births, it's low birth weight babies, because all of those things impact a child's success and well-being. Because ultimately, what we really want them to do is grow up and be healthy and safe and secure and strong and ready to participate as a citizen in Escambia County and pay those taxes back. I mean, really, that that's what that's that's what this investment is all about. So the return on the investment is that in the future, these children will grow up and be contributing members of society and not in that school to prison pipeline. That's interesting. So when was this data collected? The data was collected uh this time last year.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Oh, so it's fresh. It's fresh data. Okay. So the problems that you mentioned, hunger, obesity, low birth weight, were those kind of the the top, I don't know, were they the at the top?

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Oddly enough, I mentioned the ones that weren't. Um but those are the ones that obviously stuck with you. Yeah, they stuck with me. I'm just because I'm picturing the needs assessment in in my head. Um, the ones that really rose to the top. And so we did a couple of things. We we needed a quick strategic plan just so that we could get started because we also had to build this agency. We had to get staff in place. You know, a lot of people said, Oh, just get the money out. Well, what would that look like? Would we just give a million dollars to an agency that sounds like they're doing really good stuff and then tell uh, you know, and then just tell them, oh, tell us what you did with the money later. No, you can't do that. You have to put protocols in place, you have to have policies in place, you have to have computer systems in place to collect all the data. So we had a lot of that groundwork to do. Because these are grants that the organizations apply for. Right. And it's not unrestricted funds. It is not unrestricted funds. We are not a community foundation, we're a government agency. So it's just like if you were applying to the county or the state, these are tax dollars. So there's a huge burden of accountability with this. And so we had to make sure that we had the accountability built in as much as we could. Now, I will say that the first thing that we did right out of the gate is we we did a very small kindergarten uh readiness bridge program last summer. And we were very clear up front that we weren't really collecting a lot of data. There wasn't going to be a lot of accountability behind it because we didn't have our processes and policies and procedures and computer systems and all that stuff in place, but we just wanted to get something in place because we knew that one of the biggest issues in Escambia County is that 42% of our kids hit kindergarten and they're not ready. Wait, 40, 42? Mm-hmm. And that's an improvement because it used to be 48. So yeah. So nearly half of the kids that walk into a kindergarten classroom in Escambia County are not ready. They've never been in a classroom before. So if you could imagine having a bunch of four and five-year-olds running around, they've never been in a setting with other kids. Some of them, their parents have never read to them, they don't know their alphabet, they don't know their colors, they don't know any numbers, they don't know how to behave around kids, they don't know how to sit in circle time. Like it's chaos for those poor kindergarten teachers. And so, so that's a problem. And so if you start out behind, then you tend to stay behind. And then if you get a summer break and you're from a low-income community and you don't have any kind of supports in place to keep you reading and keep you performing, and you don't have books, and your parents are working two jobs and they don't have time to read to you and interact with you, then you have a summer learning loss, and then it just gets worse and it keeps getting worse. So we really need these kids to be in some kind of early childhood education program as early as possible. So that's one space. So that was why we wanted to do some kind of kindergarten bridge program so they could at least experience a classroom setting before they went into kindergarten. So that was the first thing we did right out of the gate. And then we started with our strategic plan so that we would just have a one-year plan just so that we could get going. And so we looked at, you know, what is the the worst? Like, what are we hearing in the community just from news articles and different task forces and things that are that have already risen up? Mental health was a huge one. That's a huge issue. Everybody seems to understand that there are struggles with mental health among kids of all ages.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Um who's trying to get a counselor for her kid. And uh, I think she's been through 14 names and none of them are accepting new patients. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

It's crazy. It's really crazy. And so, you know, unless you're in an emergency situation and then you get hospitalized, but then there's even then, there's no even then, there's no continuum of care afterwards. You have to wait months to to be seen. And so we wanted to do something in that space. That is something that we're gonna be working on next. And even though it's super important, the reason we didn't put that at the at the front of our agenda is because we knew that uh Representative Michelle Salzman has a mental health task force in the community, and they are working on a strategic plan and they're meeting with all kinds of agencies at the top level to find out where the gaps in services are, what's already out there, what's missing, some ideas about what they think they still need, all that kind of stuff. That is due to be released, I believe, April, May time time frame. And so we want to see the outcomes of that. And then parallel to that, we also want to do our own listening sessions because those task force meetings engage people like me. They they engage the executive directors, they engage the doctors, they, you know, the folks who are a little higher up in the organizations. I want to hear from the parents. I want to hear from the teachers in the classroom. I want to hear from the folks who are working in early childhood settings. I want to hear from the counselors.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Is that through, is that you're able to hear from those people through the assessments or through actually just sitting down with them? How does that what does that look like? Because I'm thinking listeners, you know, uh really just resonating with what you're saying, but they're thinking already, okay, well, how do I got stuff to say, lady?

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Like let me so, first of all, feel free to bombard me with emails. That's totally cool because my kids are grown. Uh, they're all in college. I I will sit and read emails all weekend. Um, so you can email me if you have just a burning idea or thought or question, shoot us an email.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Okay, put that in the episode description. You'll we'll put your email address in there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Great. And and it's on our website too, which is the longest website in history. It's escambiachildren's trust.org. So you have to spell out the whole thing. Um, but we're also going to be setting up some sessions. Uh I don't know what they're going to be called yet. We're trying to think of a really cute name and we're trying to figure out how we're going to get food there because, you know, when I was working in higher education, we had this saying, if you feed them, they will come. And so we're going to try to feed people. Uh, but we want to do a session in each district of the county. And and and we want to do it later in the afternoon, maybe into the evening, so that folks who are working during the day can come and and share their thoughts. And it'll be uh the kind of session where you can drop in or out. We're looking to do those in May of 2023 and just to kind of run through those sessions. Um, and we really want to hear from the people who are directly engaging with the children. It's it's one thing for folks to come in and say, Oh, I'm the expert. Here's what the community needs. It's another thing to ask the community, what do you think you need? You know, because we keep hearing, you know, oh, the teachers are burning out and we're having the, you know, this turnover in teachers, and it's the pay. And then it may be. And it's not that I don't trust the answers of those folks, but I also want to hear from some of the teachers. Is it the pay? Or is it because a child threw a chair at you every day this week? Or is it because the parents are coming in and screaming at you? You know, is your mental health suffering from being in the class where you're having to manage the mental health and behavioral health issues of the children? And when I say mental health, I don't mean that they have a diagnosis like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. I mean they're having a crisis or something is going on, and they just need some empathy, perhaps. And support.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

I think that um, you know, it sounds like from what I can gather, everything that you do is about gathering the right support. And that begins with listening to the needs, really listening and getting a list of the actual needs, not the perceived needs. Yes. So when you uh collected all this data a year ago, what was the first? Because you said the um the mental health aspect is has not yet been acted on. I but I love how data driven and like strategic that is. What was the first thing that y'all did with that data that you collected?

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Thank you for getting me back on track. I'm bad about tangent. So most researchers are probably thinking, what is she talking about? Uh so the first thing that we did was we wanted to target out of school time programs. That sounds pretty broad. That's after school programs, that's summer camp programs, that's places for kids to go when the school district is closed. So spring break, winter break. So those programs are super important and they're really underappreciated because you can look at that time between, you know, typically between three o'clock and six o'clock in the afternoon. That is a time that could either be used for kids to engage in risky behavior. That's when they may experiment with drugs or sex or alcohol or crime. Or it's a time for positive youth development where they could be engaged in programming where they're perhaps getting tutored on subjects that they may be struggling with in school, or they may be learning to play a sport, or they're in a theater program or a band activity or something of that nature. But if you are from a low-income family and you can't afford that, then where does your child go? They come home and they sit or they engage in that risky behavior, like I was saying. And so, so you get kind of a twofold benefit. You you keep the kids off the streets and you keep them out of harm's way and keep them from engaging in things that they shouldn't be. And then you also provide them with some really good supports and programming so that they're doing something positive with their time. So that was the first thing that we wanted to push out because that can cover the whole county. And so I was really thrilled. We we funded 19 programs.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

19. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Can you give examples of what those are?

SPEAKER_00 23:46

What the programs are?

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Yeah, they're super excited to say that we have one in Century and they're gonna have three different sites in Century. They're looking at serving 750 kids in Century over three years. Um, it's the Urban Development Center, had to think about what the the initials stand for. And so they're gonna be doing some really terrific programming. I think they even had coding in their curriculum that they're looking at, and they're setting up computer labs and they're doing all kinds of things in partnership with the City of Century. So that's really terrific. Uh, City of Pensacola has some really cool programs that they're rolling out for low-income children in the city limits.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

And you say they're rolling out, so they haven't launched yet their. Are these is that because there are summer programs and we're recording this in the spring? And so you're talking about the future or because they're going to happen in a different year? No, well, some all of the above.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

So we have some programs that are ready to start right now in March of 2023. And they are already providing services to some children, and then they're just going to expand what they're doing to additional children using our funds. Then we have some that are solely summer programs. So they're not started yet. They'll start when the school year ends. So they're they're gearing up to provide their summer programs. Some of the afterschool programs also provide summer programming. So they'll just continue. Some of them will not have everything in place because they need to hire new staff or they need to purchase curriculum, you know, various different things. They will start in August. So we have them staggered as to when they start. So when I say rolling out, so they all have to be either new programs or expanded programs. This is not to replace funding that they already have coming in. This is new funding to serve additional children.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

And when you uh push out the funds to programs like these, how are the people who gave you this feedback notified that there's a solution to the problem that they shared?

SPEAKER_01 25:58

So we had, as part of the application process, each of the different providers that applied had to put some detail in their application about how they would do outreach, how they would reach the communities that they're targeting. And this really was to target those children that otherwise would not have opportunities to attend these out-of-school time programs. So we really left it up to each of them. And then I have also sent something to the school district, uh, to Dr. Smith and some of the folks at the school district. We made just a flyer that shows the different programs and where they are. And it can be a little bit deceiving because the program may be located in, say, downtown Pensacola, but they provide transportation and so they pull from a lot of different areas. So don't just look at the map and say, ah, there's nothing in my area. Because if you have a child who's interested in the chorus program or the Pensacola Little Theater program, if that's something that they're interested in, there very well may be transportation. So, so call. And then we also have the information on our website. Um, we have a staff of five. So wow. So we're we're super, super, super swamped right now.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Well, it does seem more efficient that the organization that provides the resource would communicate to the families because then that's an opportunity for relationships to be built instead of you having to, you know, disseminate that information. Um how can parents be sure that they're heard in the future? Is there any is it the listening sessions? Is there another assessment on the books that they can um keep an eye out for? Because I'm sure, well, and emailing you, you said, but is there any other um organized data collection that people should be aware of? And if so, how can they make sure that they don't miss it?

unknown 27:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

So it will probably be another couple of years before we do another full-on needs assessment. Uh and that's just because we want to give ourselves time to see some changes from the baseline. From the baseline. And and these programs take, you know, they they take a while to work. You can't turn a ship this big on a dime. And so, so we, you know, we we hope that the community will give us a little bit of grace because it it will take time to see these changes. It took us, you know, decades to get here. It's gonna take us a minute to fix it. So, so there's that piece. But as far as the input, I would really, really like to have a constant influx of input. And and I would like that input to come from the people who are, you know, as they say, the boots on the ground. I really, really, really sincerely want to hear from the parents, from the teachers, from the children, because sometimes they know best what they need or what they don't need. And so any way that people can get that information to me, if you want to shoot me an email, if you need to call, send up smoke signals, whatever works. Um, but we are gonna do those listening sessions. And and I really do mean that there'll be listening sessions because we want people to engage with us. And my my hope is, and and of course everything that we do is open to the public because we are a governmental entity. But my hope is that the bosses will stay out of the room and let the employees really share what they feel and and not censor their their thoughts because I I really want to know, because we can't we can't put money towards a problem. We can't help fix a problem if the problem isn't fully defined. And so we've got, you know, we've got the numbers, we've got the indicators. Okay, so we know kindergarten readiness, for example, is an issue. Why is it an issue? And what can we put in place that may help? You know, just telling parents, oh, you need to put your child in in a uh early learning program, that's not enough.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

Anytime the answer is adding to a parent to-do list, I'm so suspicious of it. I'm like, that that isn't support. Yeah, I don't think you know what that word means. That's not support. Um, thank you so much for sharing all of this. Before we wrap, is there anything else that you want parents to know?

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Just that, you know, I I I am a parent and I know what it feels like to have more added to that to-do list. And if there is anything that we at the Escambia Children's Trust can do to make your life easier, to help you help your child, please let us know. Because otherwise, we're just gonna keep going with the information that we have. And I really, really want this to be the community's program. And and that's that's it. I really want this to be embraced by the community. And, you know, when 2030 rolls around and we look back and we go, oh gosh, what have we done in 10 years with you know with this money? I want people to know what has happened with the money, and I want them to be able to say things are better. Wonderful. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

This was thank you.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and share. Voices United in Education is a production of Escambia County Public Schools.