Travis County Commissioners Court
May 1, 2012 - Item 7
Agenda
Next is item number 7, receive update and presentation from Council on At Risk Youth on its fiscal year 2011 accomplishments
>> [there is no text to accompany the first 90 seconds of this item.]
>> there were seven pages related to prevention and early intervention.
I think those are really very, very important.
in that -- we really need to invest in developing an infrastructure for prevention/ intervent prevention/intervent ion.
early on, for -- for youth who are in our school disciplinary system supports the need for intervention.
let me go quickly to shayna, we're going to do a quick overview of the program, peace rocks program, latoya will talk about individual behavioral counseling, wes is going to talk about the behavioral coaching mentors program.
carlos is going to close with comments about the results.
let me comment on the budget quicklily much then I'm going to shayna.
with the budget we are requesting sufficient funding to increase to two additional schools we have 1.5 f.t.e.'s under the current budget for two schools.
welds like to double that.
the grant with the criminal justice division, two-year grant that we have, for the behavioral coaching mentors project, serving 100 kids, expires in September.
governor's office advises us that they will not continue that.
we are hopeful that Travis County might support us there for continuation.
>> did the governor tell you why?
>> they have enacted a policy that with reduction in federal funding, they're not going to fund private sector organizations.
as cary is, is the feedback that we got.
Commissioner Davis, correct.
so let me turn to shayna then to comment on peace rocks.
>> thanks for having us today.
so the actual name peace rox came from our students.
we wanted the groups to relate to them, calling it anger management wasn't necessarily something that appealed to them.
they named it peace rox from a curriculum called the regression replacement training.
it's highly effective, it has been through rigorous testing and it is evidence-based.
it has three main components.
those are skill streaming, that's the behavioral component when students are actually learning social skills and not only that, they're getting to role play and actually implement the things that they are learning on an ongoing basis.
also empathetic reasoning.
a lot of people in the juvenile justice system and in the criminal justice system lack that.
they lack that one thing that's going to keep them from victimizing and from hurting other people, so this is teaching students so walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
the third component is the anger control training.
and that is really important, that is what can make a difference in a moment for an entire kid's life.
it's teaching them what angers them, their triggers, what the physical cues are, what it looks like.
then that anger is a healthy things, but that violence is not acceptable.
this is a list of the 28 art classes that we teach.
and they range from all of the way from following directions to staying out of fights, what's really cool about this program is that it's scaffolded, so the kids are actually learning material and using it and then bringing back what they have learned and implemented and building upon on it on an ongoing basis.
as you can see from the very end there are very targeted lessons such as staying out of fights and dealing with other people's anger, something that all of these students, including I think ourselves, could benefit from time to time.
>> thank you, shayna.
latoya.
>> thank you for having us, we will talk a little bit about the individual counseling.
the after the students finish the 28 lessons that shayna just showed you guys on the powerpoint, they go into individual counseling.
during that semester we look at their grades, their attendance, their discipline, and we talk about their behavior goals and we try to mentor them and coach them throughout their last semester of the cary program.
we meet with them about once or twice a month, depending on their needs.
and these kids really come in, they look for help, they want to be able to use the skills that they have learned, being their first semester of cary, we are there just as their support system to walk them through those skills and coach them and guide them in their behavior goals.
they set three goals for that semester, we talk about what those goals are, what is in the way of those goals, why they want to accomplish their goals.
at the end of the semester, after they have met their goals they have a cary graduation completion party to celebrate their accomplishments, many kids are really excited to see how far they have came from the beginning.
they come in, learn their skills, set the girls, we worked with them, coached them through, they are really excited.
that's what they do during the second semester of the cary program.
>> thanks, latoya, wes.
>> good morning, thanks for your time again, for the last two years, as adrienne said we received a federal grant, we've been able to run a mentoring program at l.b.j., reagan, lanier high schools.
when we first received the federal grant we kind of envisioned making it somewhat of a unique program in that we wanted to continue providing services for some of the students that we had worked with in our middle schools.
what we did is targeted three high schools that most of our middle schools feed into, we found ninth graders that had either been in our program or had qualified for our program in middle school.
these are students that have either been in fight or had aggressive discipline instances.
the other unique part is that we decided to match college mentors from local universities with these students.
what we did is recruited college students that have either majors in the social sciences or course work in the social sciences or major work with youth or experience with youth.
and what we do is we match those mentors with those ninth grade students at those lee local high schools.
they are able to see them for an hour a week, they provide basic role modeling, support, basic coaching.
we also train our mentors in some of our arc curriculum we use with middle schoolers, that really high approval rate by our administration there, support and approval from all of our mentors and mentees, unfortunately our program comes to an end as of August 31st of this year.
while many of our mentors expressed desire to continue serving their students afterwards, we will not continue to be able to add students every year like we have done for the last few years.
>> thank you, wes, we have some tremendously positive outcome measures, I would like to turn to carlos sanchez to review those.
>> good morning.
at the end of every semester, we make an assessment of our students where we compare where they were six months before they entered the program and if you will take a look at the graph that's up here, on the top left hand graph, you will see we look at students, their attendance, grades, serious discipline referrals before they enter the program.
the very first graph looks at a group of students that completed the program after six months.
if you will notice, they have a serious -- they have a reduction in serious discipline referrals over 70%.
the middle graph ends up looking at students who have been in the program for a year.
again, you will end up noticing that the students have -- have over 80% reductions in serious discipline referrals.
the very last graph looks at students who have been in the program over a year.
and past six months.
again, you end up seeing them having over 80% of the students have a reduction in serious discipline referrals.
when I say serious discipline referrals, we're talking about fighting.
physical aggression towards students, physical aggression towards adults.
rude to adults and rude to students.
but what's significant in all three graphs is that they all show a reduction in serious discipline referrals.
>> so the cary program does make a difference and to attest to that difference I'm going to ask our students to have a chair here and share with you some of their comments and observations.
we are going to get through this judge Biscoe in 15 minutes.
at the close, I'm going to ask our chair, terry cowan to come up and say a word very quickly.
>> okay.
.since I have been in the cary program, my anger has gone down by 80%, I've I've been in less fights and more happier.
>> what's your name?
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> have you been in less fights or no fights?
>> less fights.
I have only been in two fights.
not physical, but more talkative.
>> what's our goal?
in terms of fights?
>> no fights at all.
>> no fights at all.
>> you are always going to feel anger, you just don't have to get in a fight over it, right?
>> when you feel anger, you just have to let it out, but you don't express it.
>> or figure a good way to express it.
not hurtful.
>> do we look like cary counselors to you?
>> [laughter]
>> I applaud you for your efforts.
>> thank you.
>> my name is juan.
I learned stuff.
like not to get mad fast, and be respectful.
>> my name is guilemero ramon, I learned how to respect other students and how to respect the adults like in school.
and that's it.
>>
>> [indiscernible] since I've been in the cary program, it helped me to control my anger management issues.
and they showed me to ignore people when they talk about me.
it's made me think of the consequences.
>> my name is jordan, I'm an 8th grader at bedichek middle school.
since I've been in the cary program my respect has increased to other students and teachers.
>> hi, my name is
>> [indiscernible] villarreal, I'm a student at bedichek middle school.
I'm in 8th grade.
and the cary program has helped me to handle my self control because without it you cannot succeed.
>> so how many of you have better school attendance today?
>> good job.
>> who has better grades?
>> good job!
uh-oh.
will.
>> who is willing to show the judge those report cards if he comes to the school?
>> [laughter] now you're talking.
>> thank you, students.
>> thank you all very much for coming down.
>> let me ask one question and then we'll let you go.
but as far as the schools that you really focus on, especially the middle schools, you know, you have the dobies, gus garcia, pearce, bedichek, is there proposed to be an expansion of other middle schools or of those particular middle schools that I've mentioned, is it something to try to focus on before you get to the high school level, such as l.b.j.'s, reagan, stuff like that.
>> we need you to get on the mic there.
>> we're at the alternative learning center, the behavioral alternative learning center.
>> I understand.
>> we're at bedichek, burnet and dobie and garcia and pearce and webb, all of these are underperforming or have been in the past.
where we would like to go, this is why we're asking for additional support, we would like to go to mendez middle school, martin middle school.
>> mendez?
>> mendez.
>> uh-huh.
>> and martin middle school and then to fulmore middle school.
again, those are underperforming schools in areas that really need the additional support.
we serve 600 kids annually.
>> right.
>> there are 6,000 kids engaged in the types of incidents that we address.
we're the only non-profit.
doing this.
devoting 100% of our resources to disciplinary kids.
let me introduce terry cowan very quickly.
terry, you may know, former mayor, Sunset Valley, a member of the community action network for many, many years.
terry is chair of the council on at-risk youth this year.
terry?
>> thank you, honorable judge and Commissioners.
appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.
quickly, I'm involved with cary because cary is using evidence based programs and directed right at the kids that we want to keep in the community and train so that when you help companies come into this community, like apple computer, that these kids have an opportunity to work there.
this is an investment.
there's a return on investment.
we're trying to reduce the pipeline to prison.
the kids, they are outstanding kids.
who are working through some issues.
they are getting support from cary, they're getting skills from cary that can carry them through their entire lives, good citizens, good workers, happy people.
the county is doing a lot.
I had the opportunity to travel and the -- around the state of Texas.
I can tell you Travis County is number 1 when it comes to what you're doing for youth given the resources that you have.
we're asking you to injest in this.
this is a return, you're going to get a return on this.
we're asking you to hold us to that return.
that you are aware of the stats in regard to if the progression is uninterrupted, how much it's going to cost the county.
this is a very inexpensive program per person.
we appreciate your consideration, support, thanks for your time today.
>> thank y'all.
>> what is the investment called for?
>> I'm sorry.
>> who is the investment that you request.
>> the investment is a budget of 200,000 to expand to several of these additional middle schools, we're also asking for -- for 86,000 to pick up the behavioral coaching mentors program that wes referenced that was -- that was reduced by the governor's criminal justice division here recently, so a total of $286,000.
we appreciate very much your interest and support.
judge, I did that in 15 minutes.
>> it's wonderful having you here.
adrienne the tremendous work that you do, the rest of the staff and the kids especially at -- at that addressing this piece of an intergenerational issue.
if we can -- if we can get this -- if we can get people comfortable with dealing with their anger in a positive way, we're going to make a huge difference, not only here, but for generations to come and in other places, too, really appreciate all of your help.
>> I'm happy that you are including girls.
>> girls, you know, I highly recommend getting in your car and cranking up, I bust the windows out of your car.
working that anger out in the car by yourself with the radio turned up really loud.
then you can let it all go.
>> thank you.
>> tell us a little bit about parent tall involvement.
>> [indiscernible] we are submitting a federal grant again today to increase our involvement with parents.
I will have to say it's one of our greater challenges amongst all of those that we have.
we don't have a whole lot of participation, but we do offer support groups for those who will come to the schools and sit in and -- and review some of the same points of -- of -- of intervention and prevention that we try to teach to the kids.
so we're engaged there.
>> judge Biscoe, let me see workers assistance program, we have two evidence based program that are targeted at both the kids and the families.
we bring both in.
cary refers them to our system where we're at the same schools, we're increasing our linkages so we can provide just what you are talking about, because we understand how critical it is.
>> in addition to workers assistance program, I believe there's a daycare, also, that offers parental counseling on a voluntary basis.
>> yeah, that wouldn't be us, but I've heard of that group.
>> I'm so glad that we're looking at that full spectrum.
>> we are linked up with them on other projects.
in order to provide the whole wrap around service.
>> so on August 31st the state funding goes away.
>> that's correct.
>> what was the reference made to federal funding?
>> well, that's federal money that goes through the governor's criminal justice division, juvenile justice delinquency prevention, federal money.
>> this year your budget is $186,000?
>> it's 86,000 through the governor's criminal justice division.
100,000 through Travis County.
>> but the total cary budget this year is how much.
>> total cary budget is 475,000.
>> that's been submitted to p.b.o.
as part of the budget request for next year?
>> we have submitted, yes, through roger's office we have submitted our request, yes.
>>
>> [indiscernible] really appreciate the work that you all do, in consideration of the budget rules, certainly financial situations, criminal justice planning we submitted a flat budget request of $100,000, which reflects what you all budgeted in fy '12 for fy '13.
>> my question goes more to the information available.
rather than asking a whole lot of questions today, if it's part of the budget submission, we can see it.
if not I think we need to see the total budget.
if it's 400,000 plus, we basically need to know how the money is spent.
we're looking -- you are almost asking for us to triple our investment.
so we need to -- I think we need to see the whole budget as well as programs and services that each component represents.
that should be part of the budget submission anyway, right, p.b.o.?
>> it should be just a routine information gathering, more than anything else.
>> judge --
>> we're more than happy to provide for you any information or data that you need.
>> you're getting an early start on the next year's budget process.
>> that's right.
correct.
>> okay.
so we would like to have board members visit with you in the next six to eight weeks, also.
so we will send you that information.
>> let me ask you --
>> judge Biscoe.
what did you find out about the governor -- about the state of Texas cutting your funding, when did you learn of that knowledge?
>> that was in -- in -- I believe it was in may, early June.
>> of last year?
>> correct.
well, let me take that back.
it was -- it was probably six weeks go a, I believe, during one of the capcog planning sessions.
>> pretty recently?
>> we learned of that.
>> that's pretty recent.
okay.
I just wanted to notate that, because there may be others that may be just as effective as you are.
so -- that provide services.
>> correct, correct.
>> all right.
thank you.
>> you're welcome.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you.
young people, keep up the good work.
>> we will.
>> thank y'all.
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