Travis County Commissioners Court
March 21, 2006
Item 21
21 is to consider and take appropriate action on briefing from the Austin independent school district regarding performance of the Travis County after school care services contract.
>> as you requested regular updates on after school, today we are prepared to present information on the first quarter, October through December of 2005. And at the end of this month, obviously, we will have information on -- on the second quarter. But our plans are to come back in June and that will give us actually some annual information, the actual outcomes. To the program. So I think charlene justice is cuing up the computer now. We have a presentation that is actually include understand your packets. So hopefully you've had an opportunity to review that. Actually while we are waiting with that, we do have a guest with us. If you would like to introduce yourself, please.
>> my name is mark keister, I know several of you from my previous employment. Last week I became the new chief executive officer of the new boys and girls club here in Austin, consequently I will be doing a lot of work with aisd. I am very pleased to take the position. I think the organization is very dedicated to helping some of the most neediest children in our community. I just wanted to -- say thanks to the court now for the funding you provided on through aisd for boys and girls club's programs in Travis County and some particular schools. I have only been on the job less than a week, becomes very apparent but we have a lot of work to do to help these children. I did want to say one story from last week, my third day on the job, I came, I drove up to our south club on west johanna where our administrative offices are, where I have yet to move all of my stuff in. But at the club on the steps was one of our unit directors, bryan, and a -- a young hispanic girl and a -- two young black men and a young hispanic man. And they were engaged in a conversation. And I don't know what the conversation was about. But I felt what was so moving about it is here was a -- was a young man mentoring young people and -- in some form or fashion and I think what impressed me the most was the level of engagement of the children with our unit director. And that means an awful lot to me as a member of the Austin community in central Texas. And I -- I believe that -- that instances like that and scenes like that are repeated every day at the boys and girls club because a single most important thing that we bring to these children is -- is caring adults who want to help them become all they can be. And you by your support of these programs are also caring adults and people of good will and we certainly appreciate that. So -- so I hope to be more involved with you in the future. And look forward to working with you individually and as a group. Thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, good luck to you.
>> well, we are very excited to have mark on board. Well, I知 just going to take you through a brief presentation and let you know how things went from October through the end of -- I mean through the end of December. Basically we served about 1300 students technology is not my forte.
>> turn that microphone around, too, that will make it easier.
>> okay, we served about 1300 students during that time, about 50% of those students are what we would call our regulars, meaning that about -- you know, between 5 and 600 students at webb and pierce are the students that come, you know, three to four afternoons a week and a lot of students come on Saturday. One of the most surprising things to me is that at pierce we have managed to get between 180 to and 230 students to come to school on Saturday to do a combination of enrichment and tutorial type of activities. We do provide incentives for them to come. For them to give up their Saturdays to come to school is pretty amazing. That continuously surprises me. Our program, as you well know, is a combination of academic support, recreation, enrichment. Skills development, character and youth leadership, adult involvement, community and family support. Communities in schools has a full-time mentoring coordinator at pierce. We also have big brothers and big sisters that manages the mentoring program at webb. Full blown club at webb, also a lot of activities at pierce. Theater action project is a new organization that joined us this year doing all kinds of socially relevant theater prongs with the students at -- projects with the students at webb and pierce.
>> what type of -- I saw that on there. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was kind of curious, seems like new just like boys and girls club of Austin, seems a new deal, I really didn't get the full measure of what that actually organization actually do with the students.
>> okay, well theater action project is an organization that's been around for about 10 years. They work with a lot of different organizations like safe place and communities in schools and not only do they teach acting and screen writing and puppetry, parade development, everything that they do has some kind of socially, is some kind of socially relevant context. They do a lot of conflict resolution, anger management, and through self expression young people are able to talk about the issues that they find relevant. And we were looking for another partner that was more than just an enrichment program. But some -- a partner that brought kind of a keeper level of meaning to the students deeper level of meaning to the students. We know a lot of what you all are concerned about is behavior and juvenile croim and so we were looking for someone that could bring something interesting to the students, but also deal with the issues that these students have to deal with every day that's what the theater action project does. They work a lot in -- in a lot of different schools and like I said they have a partnership with a lot of different non-profits that work with kids in classes. So -- that's what they are doing. Did that answer your question?
>> yeah.
>> okay.
>> pretty much. But thank you.
>> like I said, we served about 1300 kids in this period and I just wanted to emphasize about 50 those -- 50% of those are our regulars. As middle school kids do, they come and go. They come a few days, leave a few days, they come back. We do feel like we are making a pretty good -- kids know what the after school program is, they know they can come there any time feel safe, be involved in meaningful activities. We have a very good adult youth ratio, we have a lot of volunteer mentors, a lot of volunteer u.t. Students, americorps volunteers that come that -- that cost us nothing. That come and work with these young people on a regular basis.
>> do you know about how many volunteers that you have?
>> angie?
>> [indiscernible]
>> we have about 87 volunteer mentors with cis and big brothers and big sisters at both schools, webb and pierce, u.t. Students and community volunteers who come in and help with the classes. They are not doing really in depth mentoring, but they are there as just adult friends of the kids. There's about 25 on both campuses combined.
>> okay.
>> so about 100.
>> and I believe also boys and girls club does have some dell volunteers that come in and work with the students as well. We have about 74 different types of activities that are happening on both of these campuses. One thing that I think is interesting is that we have a -- serving more boys than we are girls, I certainly wouldn't have expected that to happen. I don't know why. But probably because -- because we have a lot of boys participating in sports activities. As you can see, most of the kids that we serve are low income students, which I think was the intention of -- of what you wanted for us to do. Webb has a huge campus beautiful indication project planned. Beautification project. It's completely different now. It looked like a prison a couple of years ago, through the community efforts and after school program we have really done a lot to make it beautiful. Lots of plants, flowers, all of that kind of stuff that we are doing through the after school program. Americorps volunteers will be working with webb students doing service learning projects. About martin luther king, jr. And then on April 29th, of course we want to invite you to our annual showcase, that's where all of the students from all of our after school programs come and showcase the things that they have learned, the work that they have done and I think if you were to come you would see the diversity of programs and how actually meaningful some of the things these students are doing. How meaningful they are. Then there's going to be a saint john's neighborhood celebration where webb students will participate. Unity in the communities, there will be a group from reagan, a group from webb, Marching, they will all meet at pickle and have a -- some big celebration. In June we will be reporting to you, the taks scores, passing rates for our students comparing to our non-participating students. An assessment of positive attitudes and behaviors. Their grades, their passing rates. An assessment of their school attendance. And their assessment of the rates of violent behavior and substance abuse. We have perfected our survey mechanism this year, so we are going to be able to get a lot more information from these students about how the after school program impacts their lives. So we will be able to report that to you in June. These are logos of the partners. Once again I would like to invite all of you to the showcase, you will be receiving a personal invitation in the mail. Stop in for 30 minutes or an hour, I think you will be very pleased with what you see. Now then if you have any questions I will be happy to answer them.
>> okay. I just have a couple.
>> I think the last out, to measure the success, since we have started since -- of course -- since the court has actually got this off the ground and running as far as the program itself, whaltd be the -- what would be the components as far as tracking the students that have been involved in this program, from what -- from understanding you correctly, I think that you did say something about a June answer because -- because as far as having that information by June, because really a lot of concern when we first started this process to see how -- how these persons would be affected if they were again drop out of school at an early age, you know, like in 9th, 10th grade, stuff like that, the academic which is very important, educational piece of this, how they are doing their grades, attendance in school, a whole bunch of other categories that need to be measured to ensure that the investment which we are making have the kind of results that we are expecting as far as performance of this program. So that was -- I think that you will have some of that information in June, I hope I understood you correctly when you made that statement, is that correct?
>> that's correct. The reason we report it in June is because we get most of our information like behavior information and number of referrals for -- for criminal and non-criminal incidents from the school district data base, that's really not -- not all that information is not available to us until the end of the school year in taks scores, but yes we will be able to give you that information in June. Also we would like in the future I think we have kids that are in middle school for three years. We would like to be able to see what happens to them when they go on to high school. Because we do have the information available to us, with the school district data base, we can look and see how many of these students actually make it to high school because one of the things that we are working on is that transition to high school. We have some other funding sources at reagan where most of these kids go, boys and girls club also has a club there. So we are trying to do activities this summer for our graduating 8th graders to make sure that they make it to reagan and keep them there. A lot of kids make it to the ninth grade, but they never finish the ninth grade. That's going to be something to see if we've had any long-term impact with these children.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> we can do kind of a -- in the report that we present in June, we can report individually on each program. For example, council on at risk youth can say how they did with their students. Cis can show you how they did with their students and then we can also do the overall big picture, how the after school program as a whole does. So you will be able to break out each organization and see how successful they were.
>> last question. The outreach that basically is available now was in the purest and also -- in the pearce and also webb middle school. I recall that I was asked the question sometime before, where else would this be made available as far as the outreach other than just these two schools if based on what premise? How do we determine where we will actually provide the services for the program?
>> well, the Travis County after school network, one of its goals for this year is to update the mapping survey that we did about three years ago. That is where we got our information that told us where we needed to focus, what zip codes. But I think that demographics in this county have changed significantly in the last three years and Travis County has made it one of its goals to update the mapping survey to update the information we have for you and for the school district or for different foundations in town. This is what the services really need to be, because I think if you look at this county that you see hrks that it's changing and the fastest growing immigrant population is under burnet middle school now and lanier high school where it used to be the st. John's community. And a lot of people don't know that. It would be interesting when that's done to see where the needs are. It's important that we keep up to date on where the needs are so that we know we're serving who we need to serve.
>> thank you. Any other questions?
>> girls have a tough tran transition time, and it's either being successful in school or not. And then going into a cycle that then gets repeated and gets repeated. So my interest is really in trying to get as many young girls involved in these sort of activities pretty early.
>> I think especially in the math and sciences, often times young girls kind of fade away during that middle school time. Now, we do have some organizations that we partner with that are not funded by Travis County. For example, gin Austin is at webb and pearce and they are a girls group and they have a pretty strong group as well.
>> and elementary school age children, so we can do a lot more work early on in getting young girls interested and getting them engaged with capital 4-h. And that's part of the continuum. We're really trying to start at the elementary school age, move into high school and then transition.
>> it starts out very positive, fearless and enthusiastic. And somewhere along the line that drops off. And so it's always been one of those things that I really am interested, let's find out what happens.
>> especially with women in engineering. And so that monitoring can and needs to start at a very, very early age in terms of getting women interested in those kind of careers, and I知 wondering if one of those things that can be introduced into all thf is chess. In visiting other places around the united states through the international and downtown association, chess amazing games because it is thought, it is strategy, it is thinking ahead, and I have seen some amazing chess clubs that have been introduced mainly in the downtown area for kids to learn how to play this. And it is a thinking person's sport. It doesn't make any difference how big you are, how small you are, I知 just wondering if that's a game that can be introduced. It doesn't cost anything. Maybe I was inspired about the talk about mating interruptioning. [ laughter ]
>> we're also working on that!
>> trust me, I had to hold my tongue. I looked over at Gerald and he was like, don't say it, Karen.
>> (indiscernible). [ laughter ]
>> but we also need to send some very positive messages related to we know for sure you are not going to be successful if you are having babies when you are a baby and to send very positive messages back as well and whatever way we can do it in terms of if those fair moans from the gypsy moth or whatever.
>> my thought is all about the young people who came to see us when this thing was first proposed who led us with a very simple premise. You ought not to have to break the law for your county government to spend something to keep you on the right track. We spend incredible amounts of money and should in terms of what goes into the juvenile probation department. It's in excess of $20 million. Think of what that 20 million would do if we could get ever single child into some kind of an after school network and to basically say we care about you even when you're not within our custody.
>> thank you very much for your support.
>> what are the hours of operation for the Saturday activity?
>> they are there from 9:00 to 3:00, I believe.
>> and how many kids do we have participating.
>> about 180 to 230 on any given Saturday.
>> at both schools?
>> only at pearce.
>> so pages 8 and 9 lists all of the activities that are available?
>> yes, that's correct.
>> it says other funding, but really there are other activities provided by other entities basically.
>> that is correct. We have some other grant money, and so you request see here which ones are funded by Travis County and then by the other funding source.
>> okay. There's a program evaluation sheet that lists evaluation criteria. I understand your point about June, but if we are called upon to make the call today, why do we believe there has been satisfactory progress toward our goals? I guess enumerate those for me?
>> for example, like behavior or, what we could look at right now is student's grades for the first semester. We have more information about tax scores that we could look at last year's.
>> are the grades better?
>> yes, they are. And the report we gave you at the end of last year it showed for participating students versus non-participating students, grades are better, tax scores were better, and we certainly hope to be able to report the same thing to you in June because that is what our goals are.
>> do we have fewer referrals to the juvenile justice center.
>> for participating students versus non-participating students, yes, we do. And the way we break that down is non-criminal referrals or criminal referrals, and criminal referrals are referred to the alternative learning center and sometimes non-criminal.
>> but if we compare the -- we believe the numbers are better with the pilot program in place. One of the things are that these are the theaters to the juvenile justice program. If we have to spend money anyway, it's better to spend money on front end in the prevention mode in positive programs that are likely to change behavior.
>> yes, sir.
>> I saw a figure in here indicating the county's investment. The number I had in mind was much higher than the number I saw here. What the county's investment this year?
>> for this component it's $308,000. And then the additional amount that you were thinking of is actually allocated to capital 4-h, extension services.
>> and they are working in the elementary schools that are feeder schools to webb and pearce.
>> how much is that?
>> I believe it's $75,000.
>> and then we just approved today the contract with carey to do their separate piece of work --
>> yeah, gift thousand dollars -- $50,000.
>> that was a one time infusion to see how it goes this year.
>> but this is part of the after school pilot.
>> it is because they're surveying those elementary schools that are feeder schools to pearce and webb.
>> okay.
>> are y'all aware of the legislative committee looking at this matter tomorrow afternoon?
>> I will be there and we will be reporting on the progress that we made with this collaborative effort last year, we'll be reporting to them our behavior statistics.
>> okay. Can I chat with one of y'all late this evening? I will probably be there too. And I don't know that the three of us ought to say the same thing.
>> well, I think maybe that's your part. I think the floor has this all under control. I知 just going to be in the audience. [ laughter ]
>> if I need to introduce y'all, I have no problem with that. [ laughter ] any other questions or comments?
>> well, that was one item I think I failed to do. I don't know if I adequately actually introduced sherling justice with the Austin independent school district and I am debra britt ton with Travis County health and human services services. Thank you very much.
>> thank you very much for your support, judge and Commissioners.
>> we'll see you back in June.
>> I値l be here.
>> was that brief enough, judge? [ laughter ]
>> would have been briefer except for us. [ laughter ] thank you, though. Appreciate it.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, March 22, 2006 7:57 AM