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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-YB-1999-03-08 Yar Ithaca Youth Bureau Board of Advisors March 8, 1999 Attendance: David Delchamps, Cathy Currier, Sheila Hemami, Joann Kingsley-Wells, Tim Little, Scott Miller, Bill Murphy, Joan Spielholz, Deb Traunstein, Jim Walker Staff Sam Cohen, Marilyn Hall I Meeting was called to order at 7:08 p.m. A motion was made,seconded and carried unanimously to approve the February 8th minutes. II STAFF AND COMMITTEE REPORTS A Youth Development • One-to-One: The One-to-One Ad Hoc Evaluation Committee has decided to bring a motion to this Board to purpose that 1-1 affiliate with National Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. John Bailey is with us tonight for informational purposes if members have questions regarding the affiliation process. ACTION: Scott Miller moved that the 1-1 Program affiliate with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Open for discussion. Cathy Currier seconded discussion be open. Scott reports the Ad Hoc Evaluation Committee has met four times with Nelson Berghtold the Regional Representative of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America(BBBSA). The committee felt a number of reasons why One-to-One should affiliate and become one program under the umbrella of BBBSA: One-to-One would be required to meet a set of standards promulgated by BBBSA, with periodic review by Regional Representative Nelson Berigtold every 5 years. The technical advice and support already given by Mr. Berigtold has been priceless. Scott and the other members of the Ad Hoc Evaluation Committee will be drawing up a constitution for an advisory council and helping to create guidelines for a nominating process for individuals to sit on that council who will oversee the policies of the program. The use of the name recognition and prestige associated with a national program will be helpful, and since there have been budget cuts the fundraising advice they can provide will be extremely helpful since One-to-One will need to be their ev,..fund-raiser in John Bailey reports he began networking with BBBSA about one year ago and that has been a tremendous help in opening new avenues to learn program information. One-to-One has been reorganizing and regrouping after its budget cutbacks, and needs outside input from others that are doing the same kind of work. David Delchamps sees this as a window of opportunity to have a good long look at things to make a program we already think is great to make better. The cost to the Youth Bureau would be$500 per year for the first 3 years. After the third year the cost is calculated according to the expense side of the program budget- 3.8%of the first $100,000; 2.25% of the next $100,000; 1%of the next$300,000 and 0.5%of the remaining adjusted expenses. At this rate it would cost$6,360 per year to belong to BBBSA based on the budget for this com&no' year of$231,000. Nancy Zook reported that when they met with Nels:r he indicated it � local programs to decide how much support and help they want from him. If you called frequently you certainly got more of your money's worth. John's experience thus far is that Nelson is extremely responsive to his needs. Cathy asked what areas do you not meet their standards. There is a list of items where we are not in compliance— some of which are record keeping issues. One larger item is that to be in compliance with the : .r.ev,'c:k they want . . _. :aye _ , . . , - Nelson on the formation of the advisory council. Bill Murphy moved the question be called. Chair Delchamps asked for a vote on the motion to affiliate. All ayes,zero nays. The motion for One-to-One to affiliate with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is unanimously carried. • Introductions given and welcome Jim Walker, newly appointed member. • Additional One-to-One item—moratorium on referrals. John Bailey states there are 151 children on the 1-1 waiting list. Many have been on the list for several years, particularly rural children. This is not an acceptable situation and one that we're committed to addressing in a global way with new policies and approaches. In the meantime we know that with the number of children on the waiting list now,we won't even be able to serve all those children in 1999. We expect to make 58 matches this year which only addresses 1/3 of the list. In light of that fact and in the light of fact that during the next few months we will be working very hard on making program changes, we would like to place a moratorium on referrals to 1-1. John went on the explain that when referral calls come in staffwill tell them we are not currently able to take referrals because of the length of the waiting list. We will work them to the extent we can to find other options for service, and invite them to check back with us after June 15. A letter will be sent out to referral sources informing them and will work on ways to manage our inquiry/intake system. ACTION: Scott Miller made a motion to place a moratorium on new referrals to the One-to-One Program until June 15`h. Joan Spielholz seconded this motion. Brief discussion followed. Questions raised: what other options are available? John states that a number of schools in the county are using more students to do in school mentoring kinds of relationships with young students; although this is not same as 1-1 it does meet some of the same needs. There are some programs aund that dovetail mentoring with tutoring. The County Youth Bureau is sponsoring a panel discussion t;is Thursday for people interested in mentorship. As we work on this we will become more aware and more networked with other kinds of programs that are doing similar things so that we can spread the youth around. Another question, is the county willing to fund other mentoring-type programs? Nancy Zook explained the county currently funds a program through Cooperative Extension. There are a number of types of other programs, not only mentoring based programs,that some of the young people could get involved in. Nancy will meet with John to work out some new ideas. at:;ai lii ci.rr cd 1.avi one abstention. B Director's Report S m made available copies of the report"Children and Youth in the City of Ithaca"prepared by the County Youth Bureau. • City Planning Update: we have a meeting tomorrow and will talk about where we want to focus, ='hether it's time to go hack to Council to ask them to set un a full comnrehensive committee or whether we • School Planning Update—a group of v00 0 i210 changing the system so that it better serves all youngsters. Many would like to focus on Beverly J Martin school. The group is brainstorming different possible pilots and planning to approach the District Administration. Sam also reports he has been approached by Ellen Baer who is interested in starting a charter school for 6t- 12th grade. The audience for this school would be those children who the Ithaca district has not been serving. She is trying to get together enough funding to put in the full effort to get the charter school established. If there is a school for K-5 and another school for 6-12 totally focused on success for all • .young people, that could lead to a major turnaround. Our PSMP is continually getting calls from the schools because kids are in crisis, due to the mismatch between the youngsters and the system. It takes tremendous energy to try to fit youngsters to a system that doesn't work for them. These are two exciting efforts and Sam feels the Youth Bureau should fully and strongly support them. One of the things that happens to city youngsters is that the schools are not working for them. The PSMP Board will also be talking about this issue and ways that we might support this effort. Tim Little feels it needs to be stated that last year there was a lot of publicity around BJM—the system, structure,revolving administrators, etc.that went into the negative side. The committee is not focusing on BJM because of the past. BJM is now functioning well with a great interim principal, things are working very well. The real reason the committee is focusing on BJM is because of the size of the school. This is the largest elementary school within the Ithaca district and it has the square footage needed. Tim feels we're doing our kids the most disservice when they move from elementary to the middle school. There's a lot of individualized instructions in the elementary schools by teacher aides that can help them with one on one. The district is about 100 mile radius and all of these kids come together and the middle school is not equipped to handle all the different cultures that are coming together. • Voice Mail: Voice mail is here and working well! During working hours front office staff will always be available to answer the telephone before directing the caller to a voice mailbox. During non business hours our directory of various programs will help keep you updated on current activities and cancellations. • Front Office: Common Council approved funding for an Account Clerk/Typist title within the front office. We will also hire an extra seasonal part-time person for the busy months of March through October just to work on registrations,telephones, and front counter. We're really pleased about the way the front office is going and are optimistic that things will be better than they have been in handling the high volume of work activity during the spring, summer and fall! • IYB Sign: we will soon be having a large sign(2' plastic letters) saying"Ithaca Youth Bureau"on the side of the building above the outdoor basketball court visible from the highway az also proceeding with the idea of a sign designed and built by teenagers under the mentorship of a skilled local craftsperson. • Mechanical All Stars—will be given next month. We're moving ahead in some of the directions as stated in March 8th minutes. ',Ye play iv Gnu .,. ., u�L , , i .g� ;.: ., ._. ._ . ^ ^^ weekends. Allen and Marty are visiting a lot of the schools to try to understand why there's been difficulty with referrals this year. We're moving ahead with trying to get funding for apprenticeships in automotive and computers. C. Recreation • Fields and Facilities- Executive Committee agreed there are many complex issues that need to be resolved and a standing committee is needed to work with John Doyle, Alice, Tim, and Sam over a few months period to resolve some of these issues. There's an increasing demand for use of fields and John needs the help of Board members to create guidelines. Bill Murphy, Jim Walker, and Cathy Currier have agreed to work on this. • School Contracts—if there's a contingency budget there could be difficulty in using school space which could become a real crisis. We since have discovered it's likely as a Youth Bureau we would be exempt and we would be able to continue to fulfill our partnership/relationship where we allow the schools to use our facilities and they allow us to use their facilities. We might not have to do anything more than • Recreation Partnership Update: Wednesday afternoon is the next full Rec Partnership meeting. There's a general agreement to move to a Joint Activity fund. We will have to come up with some unity for a full set of programs that everyone wants and come up with a partnership that works. • Bantam Basketball: Tim reports both the girls and boys basketball program ended February 28th. Tim will be focusing on the Bantam program during the off season to look at necessary changes to be better prepared for next season. There's a 5th grade league now within the elementary schools(possibly a 3rd and 4th grade also), with more participants than our Bantam program. We need to look at that league to figure out where we can be of assistance and see if we are able to transplant their league within ours. The problem they are having is gym space and we could be of assistance offering our space,time and coordinating scheduling. • Kiwanis Baseball, Dessie Jacobs Softball, and Spring Lacrosse applications are now in the schools for distribution. • Kiwanis school meetings begin this Wednesday, Coaches meetings are scheduled for April 7 & 8, and hat and shirt is set for May 5 &6. The season begin May 10th. A few changes this year include: we are going with age instead of grade,i.e. for D League it won't be K& 1"`, it will be 5 & 6 yrs. of age. The reason why we took that approach is that 1)the Babe Ruth Association proposal for a bambino league. We also talked about doing an evaluation day for players in A League and try to go to more uniform level of teams. Babe Ruth felt if Kiwanis Baseball could make some changes this year than they would forego the bambino league. We are trying to meet some of those needs by: 1) we expanded A League to 10-12 years olds. In the past A League only consisted of seven to nine teams. We have divided up our league into national (for more experienced teams) and American(the team that just left B league and entered A. The A League will go to more"Little League"type of play (changing the base paths and pitching distance). We will do a mid season evaluation and we hope to make the teams more balanced in the years to come. Other changes include having a spiral batting order as a mandatory for A league. • We've met with Kiwanis Club to work toward more cooperation between the two agencies—Ithaca Youth Bureau and Kiwanis Baseball program. We want to coordinate efforts, i.e. bidding out hat& shirts to try to get lowest price. Our goal is to have the$20 registration fee include the hat and shirt order. Meeting adjourned at 8:53 p.m.