Go ahead and call the meeting to order. This is a joint, a lateral county children's trust, a lateral county joint meeting. We're still waiting on one or two folks from the children's trust to make a quorum, but I think we need to go ahead and get started. And so county commissioners, Commissioner Chestnut is out. And so with your permission, I would go ahead and chair the board. If if we have I've been told by the attorney if there's a point of order issue I'll step aside and delegate that to you if that's okay with your permission So why don't we go ahead and Do you need a motion for that? Are you good? No, we just need to adopt the agenda The county commission is gonna move that we move items three and four before items one and two for the agenda so that gun violence and literacy comes first and then resource centers and foundation capacity building. Okay, so there's a here second to that. Second. Okay, any objection on the trust side? Okay, so we're going to go ahead and move the three to make it one, four to make it two and then we'll do family resource centers and community foundation last. Is there any discussion? Any public discussion to the motion? Seeing none back to the board, all of the favors say aye. Aye. Any pose? That motion carries. We'll hold off on doing the trust agenda until we have a quorum and I think if we could get some more chairs. Yeah, that would be the first one. The first one, too. They're coming. Yeah, they're coming. So before we get started, before we actually get started, I just want to thank so many folks that are here. This is a packed house. We've got some elected folks. I just want to recognize I saw me award come in. I see Vice Mayor Iris Burke from Archer. I respectfully sorry from Archer. I see your school board member, Dr. McNeely. Thank you for being here. I know the Waldo Councilperson Monica Taylor is here. I saw her in the back. I know Mayor Williams from McNeely is here. We've got the Chamber here. We've got the Library of Government Board here. We've got Career Source here. And so many public advocates and community members, because I believe to my commission, and I sent this to the Children's Trust, this is probably one of the most impactful items that we are talking about, literacy, family resource centers, and really kids. And so I see we have now a quorum of the children's trust. And so could I ask the clerk to go ahead and call the roll for the trust? Chair Ken Cornell. Here. Vice Chair Cheryl Swanley. I'm online. Treasure Dr. Magna-Labarda. Honorable Suzanne Wilson-Bullard. Member Tina Certon. Here. Member Mary Chan. Here. Dr. Nancy Hart. Dr. Kamala Patton. Here. Lee Pinkerson. Here. Okay, the Director of Reflect, we've got five. So we've got a quorum. Now how do you get a motion? That we approve the agenda. Any? Oh, as well. As well. Okay, any discussion? Any public discussion? Seeing none, back to the board. I was the favorite say aye. Aye. I'll pose. I motion carried your name. I just see Commissioner Duncan Walker. Thank you for joining us as well. Okay, so we're going to start out with just an update on gun violence and then we'll get the literacy. So who's doing the update on gun violence? Yeah. And our executive director, Mr. Kiner, thank you for being here. Press any buttons? Okay. It's just on, just talking, they'll just in the night. Good afternoon. We asked that the county have Mr. Smart or someone from their staff provide the update for the trust board. You were provided the back ground information that comes to us from the city of Gainesville Anyone from the county here to present the update on the county side Anyone Claudia no, I know we had a backup. I know it's in the backup. Okay. All right. So you want to just give us a two minute update and then we'll see if Mr. Smart's here. So let me slip over to the information that came over. Which page? You will flip to item three. Okay. And page 85. Okay. That's it. I don't think that what you're looking at either of us, like we didn't get any back up. That's from your trust. Okay. Okay's it. I don't think that what you're looking at either of us like we didn't get all that from that trust. So we didn't get any back. Okay. Okay. So the folks have started meeting with their youth steering committee. They are in the planning phases for the technology hubs. If you all will remember that was part of the proposal that about $50,000 be spent for technology hubs. They said that they are working with the alliance stakeholders on determining exactly where those will be. They have selected Corey Collins as the additional facilitator for the youth steering committee. Cory works with the River Phoenix program organization and they began working with one of the youth steering committees. I guess let's see here. In March Cory has been meeting with youth at AMI kids as trying to bring them on board as members of the City's youth council. They are still working on bringing in a strategic planning consultant as of Wednesday, March 12th. a request for proposals had been put out for the strategic plan. And so that's the information that was sent over to us by the City of Gainesville. And I see Brittany here in the audience. So if you all would like more specifics, I would ask Brittany to come up and share that if Mr. Smart is not here. Would you mind just give us maybe a two minute? Thank you for being here, Brittany from City of Cancel. Wasn't on the agenda, it came here just to be here. Really appreciate you being here. Calling folks from the audience is present. That is okay. Good afternoon. Brittany Coleman, the city's gun violence intervention program manager. Just echoing what Ms. Kiner said. There's not much I can share on the strategic plan because of the cone of silence, but that process is moving forward. Mr. Collins has joined with the Youth Steering Committee. They are in the process of onboarding, I believe, four new young people. They are trying to get representation across the high schools. So they really want youth from all of the programs, all of the high schools, at least one, to be a part of the steering committee. So they're onboarding four, and they're looking to bring on more. I can't remember off the top of my head what schools are missing, but there's a couple that they want to get representation from. We are still working with violence and eruptors under the city's umbrella as well. That should be in the backup onboarding those folks, training them so that they can begin work for the city. Okay, thank you. Commissioners or trust numbers, any questions? Commissioner Wheeler and the Commissioner President. How many youth are planning to put on this committee? I believe the recommendation was at least 10 is the goal, preferably more, but I think 10 is the number that they're trying to shoot for in order to get more representation and I can't speak for the county but I know that they're working towards building some at least two steering committees throughout a lot of county so we can have that rule and county representation. Will transportation be an issue or something that we would be able to address for anyone who might be interested and still not be able to get in? Yes ma'am. Yes ma'am. Okay, great. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. A follow up to that before I ask my other question and that is, are you saying that we're going to have separate youth councils one for the county and one for the city as opposed to one larger youth council that would be serving the whole county. Yeah, I think that was a part of the recommendation the city had already I think for the past two years through the one nation one project initiative started a youth steering committee. So the recommendation one was to grow that youth steering committee so that there were more representation across the city. And then we know that of course gun violence is across jurisdiction, right? The city and the county. And so the other recommendation was to create two additional youth steering committees that could speak to some of the rural concerns that could get youth from some of the other municipalities, high springs, some of the unincorporated areas as well. So again, I can't speak for Mr. Smart, but I know that some of the work that they're trying to do so that we can be as representative as possible across both the city and the county. Okay. Is there a plan or any sense of how those bodies work? Coordinate and collaborate? Like how? I mean, it seems like having three used during committees would get kind of confusing in terms of like overall coordination of impact ideas, funding, I'm just wondering if there's a plan for how those would coordinate or. Not currently, but I can say that we are trying to work as collaboratively under the alliance as possible. So the way that the city Youth Steering Committee is operating as they meet monthly, and they have elected a youth liaison from within their committee, and that person attends all of our Alliance meetings so that they're communicating what the students are working on, and we can communicate to them as a county what the alliance is working on and I anticipate that the county groups would work the same so that we're all getting the same information. I can't say the city one of the things that we're working on one of the recommendations of course again was representation and so the students themselves are coordinating some listening sessions if you will with some of the apartment complexes here and they're starting the first one will be at Oakview the residents of Oakview where they're they put together their own program to go out and speak to some of the youth out there at that complex to get again what those folks out there saying because that's been an area that's unfortunately been hit, you know, disproportionately by gun violence and so how do we bring in voices of kids that aren't necessarily on the steering committee but that want to participate and this is one of the ways. So again, the county I know has been very interested in learning from what the city is doing. I know some county staff has attended some of the meetings so that they can hear from the youth about what's working and what some of the challenges are. And I think those meetings have gotten really well. Okay, and then my question, that was just a follow-up. I do have a question. I guess it's more of a comment such questions as the general here and and feel free to chime in Brittany if you have thoughts are already are working on something but some of the feedback that I've been getting and having conversations in the community is that I mean we all know that activities for this age group is challenging and something that we really need to focus on and so that's one piece and I you know I don't know where we are on some of that like thinking about what are those activities, what are those things that we can do to hold regular ongoing spaces and places and things for these kids to do after school and in addition to employment so that they have a positive things to focus on. But also that the students that are beginning to shift their lives, like the ones that have been just as involved or gun and gun violence involved and have like found better paths. A lot of them, they're doing a lot better in school. They're really kind of making a difference in their lives. But then they get like stuck at the end because they don't, they their families don't necessarily have the support to get them to college or they don't necessarily have all the funding that they need so that they can, they can achieve the goals that we've now told them to attain, right? And so they attain these goals of doing better in school and being ready to go to college, but then their families can't support them. And so I guess I would just like to put in and being ready to go to college, but then their families can't support them. And so I guess I would just like to put in all of our heads, like can we start talking to our community partners, the business leaders in our community, the Chamber of Commerce, like how can we begin to develop scholarships or funding buckets that would help to support these young people to be able to meet their academic goals and their career training goals once they've sort of made the change. They've made the switch. They've made the commitment to change their academic goals and their career training goals once they've sort of made the change. They've made the switch. They've made the commitment to change their lives and move forward in a positive manner. And then they get stuck because of economic disparity. So if we, I don't have any answer today, but I do think that that's something that I've seen already. There's a couple of youth that I know that have really started to turn their lives around. now they've gotten into college and they don't have the money to go to college. So you know, then it's like now what, right? And so we really started to turn their lives around and now they've gotten into college and they don't have the money to go to college. So you know, then it's like now what, right? And so we really need to start thinking about, you know, we're doing all this programming so that they change their lives, but then once they have changed their lives, how do we support them long term? This is a good thing to do and mentors. Yeah. from Millier Anna with Santa Fe Cheen. Have they been exploring that? I do think so. I think that one of them got in Santa Fe and is exploring that and and the free learning like all the programs that are available to them there. Um, but, um, a couple of, I think, two of the others got into other universities and so. Okay, anything else from the trust side? Is there anyone here that specifically came for this item that wanted to speak to this item? Come on up, if you just introduce yourself. So Carla, we're going to try to limit it to a minute or two because we've got a full agenda. But go ahead and introduce yourself and get it to your goal. It's going to be really simple because Anna said a lot about what I was thinking. But I'm sorry. Carla Lewis, great to do well, neighborhood association. What is important to note while we're having this joint conversation is I agree 100% with you. That is going to cause us to increase what we invest in programming, particularly in the moments that are most critical for a lot of our kids. I have like you have seen a lot of kids change their lives, especially coming through our programming. That's why we create a scholarship fund so that we can address them going further than what they do. I don't know like Anna what the answer is, but I know what the answer is not, and it is not decreasing the amount of investment or funding that we put into program like has been proposed for some of program for the children's trust. Thank you, girl. Anyone else? Okay, we'll go. Come on up here, come. Just introduce yourself for the people at home. Give us your thoughts. Polly, blow. I'm particularly concerned with what the legislature is looking to withdraw, such as talking about cutting out support for dual enrollment. So somehow, if possible,, local funders have to try to step in because that has been so strategic for so many young people. In my field, I know young folks who were done with high school and the nursing program and passed the NCLEX before they were old enough to get their nursing license. And that was such a gigantic step up. We can't let that just disappear if possible. And I want to speak to what young people are needing to replace what we've had in the past. I know I need to think about the whole community and all kids, but I do have specific concern about black children. And nothing has so far replaced what they had under the segregated school system. I'm not recommending resegregating, but the total love, the infinite well of love, and the high expectations that they had in that system more than made up for the raggedy buildings and the old books and nothing has yet replaced that. Thank you, Collie. Just break on my spreadsheet. Okay. Anyone else? Okay, come on up. Okay. You can have this too. Good afternoon, how y'all doing? My name is Jerel Whitehead. I'm a-founder of Scrowman at Mentor. And Miss Anna had just spoke on them currently in that same situation as well. I have almost 20 to 22 kids that send my program. This year I have two kids that's graduating. My program is at risk program, so it's mostly focused on kids that it's not really on track or supposed to be going to college. However, being part of my program and the influence of the community, these kids are really trying to get life around. And these kids, I got two kids this year that's going to college. Next year, my juniors that's coming to be seen, I have four of them, they stay on track, most likely they will. They grade point averages over 3.0 GPA. A lot of my boys is very active in school. They'll be graduating. And then my sophomore class coming to the juniors within. So based within the next three years, I should have at least probably like 10 kids that'll be graduating. The households, one kid that's going now to get ready to go to the last being already set to the center for, he's the first person out of the last three generation in this household. So it's mom and them don't know how to go about properly preparing him to what's needed, how to go about even giving him that fully support on how to be a great a great person in college to be successful in that field. And so I under totally understand Ms. Anna said and I appreciate everything that Ms. Anna did say because that's something I'm in a position of right now that need in trying to find funding of some type of support even down down to just microwaves and just making sure that the kid that is going off into other schools is properly prepared and having some of the small things that they need to be adjusted into school, to be alone with a thing that they room makes and stuff like that as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to the next item. We've got a full agenda here. So let's move on to literacy next, which is comprehensive literally need assessment. This started well over a year ago. I think in our last joint meeting, Mr. Prisbee kind of led the charge, which I appreciate very much. And who's going to be presenting the report? Get some folks from the US,. Go ahead. They're recognized. So in May of 2023, the Children's Trust Board had a joint meeting with the Elatio County Board, County commissioners. Two years ago. Two years. During that meeting, the Children's Trust was staffed with creating a comprehensive literacy plan. So it was determined that a comprehensive needs assessment was needed to help inform the development of a plan first, aimed at improving literacy achievement for all students. So in October of 2023, discussion was held with the U.F. Last Christmas Center about project coordinating and developing the assessments. So we have been meeting, we've had about 15 meetings over this course of time. And so I want to really take the time out. I did it with the Children's Trust Board, and I want to do it with the joint here, of those partners who really took the time out to ride their feedback and also be a part of those meetings. So a lot of county school district, the allotter county public Library, our United Way of North Central Florida, our Elatio County Campaign for Greater Level Reading Advisory Board, our Florida Campaign for Greater Level Reading, our Greater Gainesville Chamber of Commerce, our UF Anita Zucker Center, UF Last Inter Center, early learning coalition of Elatio County, Gainesville Thrive's Peak Literacy, Willa, Nature Retreat Center, EECS for Kids, our community support services with the county, Dr. Sunchon Moss, Asmido, and one community health and wellness center. So these organizations selected a representative with expertise in the space of early childhood learning, K through 12 education, adult literacy, and Community. So today you're going to hear from Dr. Pam Shelton and Dr. Mary Bradish Hines with the last interest center for learning and they will provide an overview of the final report and recommendations. So each of you probably in your folders you probably have it, but you should have also received a hard copy like this. So I'll I'll turn it over to them. Before we did that, Mayor, could you share with the County Commission so the children's trust heard this at our last meeting and we passed a motion. We deferred some direction. Can you share that with what the trust did? So the County Commission is aware of kind of where the trust left it? Yes, so one of the recommendations that we made was to have a facilitator help us really do a convening of workshop convening all of our literacy partners in our community together so that we can come up with a plan. So as they will talk about our phases, what's next, the next phase for us is phase two of that. One of the things that we talked about is also how we're going to fund that and being able to look at all of our partners being able to help us fund those, but whatever our implementation plan is from that plan. OK, thank you. OK, in the University of Florida, you're recognized. All right. I'll start us off. Is the microphone on? Yep, to speak and it'll just in the back. All right, all right. Good afternoon. As we said, we're here to just provide an overview. You have the hard copy of the report. The report will also be available electronically on our website and on your website, I believe, so it should be accessible to everyone. But we just wanted to highlight some of the main points. And I wanted to start off with, if you'll go to the next slide, just our goals, our overall goals, we had four main goals. I think this is the space bar. That's all right. The first was to solicit ideas from the community as to what is already being done to support literacy in the community. Secondly, to describe a latch where counting existing needs and provide and think about possible improvements. The third was to create specific recommendations that could promote a literacy proficiency from birth through adulthood. And lastly, provide a comprehensive list of organizations providing literacy related program services and resources. Me and named some of those. You'll see in the appendix at the end of the report of lengthy table with all of those who are providing literacy services in Elachua County. The executive summary for the report is on pages two through six and that gives you a high-level overview of the report but we really recommend that you read through it because there are a lot of details that the executive summary won't cover and that we're not going to have time to cover today. All right, go back one slide please. If you look at this table, you have a similar table on page 4. However, in the printed copy, it hasn't been updated. It will be updated in the electronic version to look like this. We reorganized it a bit just to highlight the numbers of folks that we were able to hear from, to speak with. You'll see that we conducted interviews. Our goal was about 30 interviews. We ended up with 74 focus group participants. We thought we would do about 50. We have 157 survey completers. We thought several hundred and we had well over a thousand. We also attended community events in person and gathered information and then were able to complete three classroom visits. But you see there with the interviews that we did talk to aachua County Public School Educators, Principles and District staff, Electric, Elected Officials, Committee and Community Organizations, and our focus groups, again, Alachua County Educators and staff. We had 41 and survey completers. We had over 157 surveys completed, so we did hear from over 200 folks with the Lachua County public schools. And then next you'll see our timeline. So as Mia said, we started about a year ago. I came here and met with this same board about this time last year. And so we got started. And initially we thought we would wrap up at the end of August last year. So but we did meet with the committee and get their recommendations. We created the surveys and set up focus groups. We spoke with the Lachua County Public Schools and by that time it was May and school was to end soon and they helped us understand that we would not get into a Lachua County Public Schools until fall, which made sense. And so we asked for a no-cost extension to the end of December, being that we wouldn't have a large piece of our report completed until the fall until we got into a Lachua County Public Schools. So if you go to the next slide, you'll see another timeline here. We did have to do an official project request and go through that process for a Lachua County Public Schools. And we submitted that in late summer. And there were some delays when Dr. Patton came on board. She kind of smoothed away for us to get approval to get into the schools. However, as she mentioned at the last meeting, that was the week before winter break. And so they distributed the electronic surveys, two parents and teachers. We started some of our focus groups, but it was really after winter break that we were able to complete all the focus groups and have all the interviews and do the classroom visits. And so we requested another no-cost extension to the end of March. And we made a deadline of January 15th to complete our data collection so that we could have time to analyze all the data, get the report put together, and get it submitted to you all. So that was just kind of an overview of the timeline and what was going on. Mary is going to take us through data collection and some of those data. Great. Thank you. Hi, everybody. So some of the impetus for this project is you all discussed, I guess, two years ago now, was really trying to understand to what degree can children in Alachua County be ready for kindergarten? You know, that's a big step that children have to make to be able to come to school, to have schools ready to greet children and have children ready to learn. So what a large part of what the project entailed was not only talking to all the people and collecting all the survey data that Pam talked about, but it was also collecting existing data. So that data comes from different sources comes from the Department of Education in Florida comes from the Department of Health, other resources that we found, national data. We also requested data from different constituents who we talked to, including the school district. And so part of our job was really to take all that data and try to integrate it and then present it back out. The Alachua County Campaign for Grade Level Reading has a similar report that they completed but it was dated the last data that they reported was back in 2010-11. So, you know, it's been a while. We know that data had been available since then. But kind of that concentrated amount of data all in one place had not actually been done for quite some time. And so that was part of what we took on as well was not only collect new data, but present past data. So the data that we present in the report and it is kind of the first part of what we present is from the 2021 school year through the 23-24 school year. And so a lot of the figures that you'll see in the report are for that time period. And so here we're looking at kindergarten readiness. So this is looking at kindergarten readiness fast scores based on BPK attendance. So that voluntary pre-K attendance, you can see the dark blue bars are in the county, kind of the average of all students in Elachua County, the dotted lines being all of Florida. So our comparison group often was the whole state of Florida and where is Elachua comparing to the state level. You can see the green, the dark green bar are the Elachua VBK attenders, and the dotted green bar is the state of Florida VBBK attenders and then the orange bars are the folks who did not, the children who did not attend VBK. And I think the great story here is that you can see that students who have attended VBK in the county as well as in the state tend to have higher readiness scores than children who did not attend BPK. And those are students who are maybe still in other center-based cares, maybe they're at home. But BPK, we know is helping students. What we don't present in these slides, but is in the report, is that there are of all the eligible students in, or eligible children in a Lachoba County who could be attending BPK. there isn't as much uptake in the county as there is in the state of Florida. So that is something to consider moving forward. And then the other impetus for kind of taking this journey is what's looking at the, you know, our students ready at the end of third grade. Are reading you know they start taking those end of grade tests or they how are they doing on those and we want 90% and hopefully more of students to be grade level reading at that point and earlier and later and through author journey and so you can see here so again to orient to the solid lines are Alachua County, the dashed lines are the state of Florida. On average that's the orange line and the dark blue line both in Alachua and in the state about half of students are reading on grade level. And that's just the stats as we know them and they they're the stats as we've known them for a very long time. And then if we look at, if we break down by different groups of students, what you start to see is that's not true for everybody. And so it's the dark blue line or the light blue line on the bottom are your Lachwa County Black students who about a quarter to a third of whom are reading on grade level. There has been an uptick in the last year, which is positive and we're excited to see that, but we know that a lot more work needs to be done. We do have information, similar information to this on older grades. So just wanna make sure that in the full report, we try to report on older grades. We also have a lot of data that we couldn't fit in a report. Our ideal report length would have been 50 pages and it turned into 150 pages. So that is information that we're going to be passing on to the next phase. So the next phase is going to be well set up with a lot more data to also unpack and explore to help them make some decisions about an action plan. Okay, so as Pam mentioned, part of what we were doing last year was collecting survey data from families and community members and ACPS educators and as many people as would fill it out. And one of the questions that we asked was to have people kind of agree or disagree how ready are students or how successful are they? Do they have the literacy skills that they need at all these different kind of markers? You have some kindergarten readiness, third grade, eighth grade readiness. But you also think, okay, are they ready to succeed once they go to college, which we just heard about, right? Are they ready to succeed in their careers and in their daily life? And you can see the average of all respondents is the lighter blue bar on the left hand side. And then family members is the green. Community members is the dark blue bar and then on the far right side you have ACPS educators and I just wanna just say that not even 50% of any group really agree that yes, our children and our students in this county have what they need to be successful at these important junctures And so I think that just speaks to just this idea that the community has concerns, right? And we heard from so many people and so many people were passionate about talking to us during this project and so they were sharing some of those concerns I will say also note that it is the educators who have the lowest confidence And I I think it's because they're seeing the students in their classrooms, they're seeing the children come through and they're wanting the best for them and that's some challenges that they're seeing. We asked the ACPS educators and district staff a number of additional questions. And one of the things we asked them is of all the literacy tools that you're using, which, you know, how successful are these tools in promoting reading, in promoting writing? And you can see the blue bar is reading. The green bar is writing. And it does appear that the phonics program that's being used in the district, hopefully if used to fidelity, really educators are feeling like, yes, I can teach kids how to read. But you can see across all the different tools, they don't have a lot of faith in helping with writing. So educators feel that way about the programs they're using. We also heard that from families that families we talk to said, you know, I want to help my child read, I want to help my child write. I really don't know how to do that. And I am also a parent and it is hard to understand how to give your own children the tools to be able to write, but we heard that across the board. So that was all the quantitative or like the closed ended items that we asked. We also asked, you know, we had so many conversations with people, all the interviews, all the focus groups, over 90% of people who filled out a survey also wrote in an answer. So they took the time to actually write in additional information, which we analyzed all of that. I mean, we're talking hundreds and hundreds of pages of information and trying to understand from everybody we talked to, you know, what's working well for you? I mean, I feel like we're presenting a lot of negative information. In the report, we also present the positive things that families and communities and organizations shared with us. But because we're trying to create an action plan, we're kind of talking about, okay, well, what could be fixed or what could be helped? And so some of the things that families talked about really is, which I've mentioned before, is I am passionate about helping my child learn how to read. I'm passionate about helping them develop the skills they need. I don't really know how to do that. And so just getting a little bit more guidance, you know, if it be it from organizations in the community, be it from the district, you know, can you help me in a very accessible way help my child? So we heard that a lot. We also asked a lot of questions to teachers. And the full report has a lot more information that they talked about but some of the things that they shared with us is and it's actually not that different from what we heard from families but it's different professionally and that I actually have the tools I need. I have a lot of the programs that I think are working, but maybe a new program is getting introduced or I have a new curriculum or a supplementary tool that's being used or maybe there's a new technology. I want to be able to use it, but I don't know, I'm not getting quite enough support to be able to do that and to do that well. And so that's some of the things that we heard from teachers. And then I think one of the things that I personally also really enjoyed was just talking to all the organizations that are doing so much work in this community. There is such a wealth of resources. And Pam's going to talk about this. And so many organizations have figured out, I mean, we heard from people today who came up and talked about their organizations who are doing amazing things for children and youth in the community. But we know that resources are always going to be an issue. And so lack of funding for as many people or as many children as they'd like to serve was something that came up quite a bit. All right. So after gathering all of these data, we needed to make some recommendations. And we worked extensively with the committee on our recommendations. We ended up dividing them into three categories. We started off with eight or ten, I believe, and many, many more recommendations. But as I said, we worked with the committee and thinking about, okay, what's feasible? We have to recommend something that we think could actually be done, right? So is it feasible? Is it understandable? And then also is it evidence-based? And so with that in mind, we did pair down the recommendations. We consolidated some. And then we have these three categories. One is the Enhanced Awareness and Communication. Second is focus support. And then third is expanded professional learning. So you go to the next slide. You'll see on starting on page 104 our first recommendations what we found that Elatua County is very rich in literacy resources. There are many organizations as we've said previously that serve that serve children, youth, and adults with literacy services, and you'll see those in the appendix. But we heard from families, community members, that they may not be able to tap into those resources. They don't know how to access them. They don't know. Even some of the ones that everybody seems to know about, many families didn't know existed. So one of our recommendations is around coordinating those existing resources. Maybe naming a central organization, where those could be to serve as a linking mechanism and to get the word out. So maybe have a centralized location where people can go if they're looking for resources. And then also using your public dollars wisely and requiring organizations to show targeted literacy impacts who receive public funding. And then also we heard from a lot of parents, there are lots of fun activities around the county and maybe infusing literacy into some of those activities. So there are many, many more recommendations in this section, but really that was the highlight. And then in focus support, in talking with families in talking with families and community members, they reveal that economic disparities lead to a host of concerns. Families are working late hours. A lot of families are working two jobs. And so it's very difficult for them to support their children. Children come home, they have homework, they need help. As Mary said, the families want to help. They may not know what to do. They may not, they may come home and the kids are in bed, because they need to work the two jobs. There may be limited access to transportation, especially in our rural areas. We spoke to families who said, you know, they don't have the transportation to get to some of the activities that support literacy in the community. And so that would reduce some children's ability to participate. There may be lack of health and dental care. And many of these disparities are beyond the scope of this project, but just know that some of those things do impact children's learning and impact the literacy. So what we recommended in this section, one, as Mary mentioned, but start early, maybe we get more kids into our VTK programs, and provide evidence-based training for health care organizations. People have talked about maybe having literacy type things in doctors' offices, and then also across the board, focusing on certain training topics, and really thinking about focusing on children with special needs. We heard from lots of families that there weren't services that readily accessible. Children experiencing poverty, black students, multilingual learners, multilingual learners. So again, this is just an overview of the second recommendation. And then our third recommendation was to expand professional learning across the board. So we're talking about for early learning providers, we heard this from them that they needed more professional learning, staff at community organizations, that there's a cohesive effort to provide literacy learning and then also from a natural county Public School educators as Mary highlighted. So as we talked with communities and families, we asked them, so who's responsible? And some of you we interviewed as well, Who's responsible? And across the board, people took responsibility. They're like, you know, we're responsible. But, you know, and I think everybody is doing the very, very best they can with their slice of the pie. But it feels like what we need to do is come together and figure out, you know, how do we work across all of those slices and everybody come together and really really You know move things forward with literacy All right, and then that leads us to our next steps which is to develop the comprehensive plan and me I will turn it back over to you That so I talked some of it already, but the assessment gave us four buckets, developing comprehensive plan, securing funding, supporting high fidelity implementation of evidence-based programming, and then of course evaluating what we're doing. And I put them in three buckets, so versus four. So we're at Phase Two, and I'll just go to the next one. We're at Phase Two, which is coming up with a plan. And Dr. Kim actually really outset it well, being able to pull our community together, to be able to develop this plan together. I estimate that it could take us about three to five months, to be able to really top, get that plan together, and then of course working with all of our community partners. I named Pacific Ones there, but that doesn't mean those are the only community partners. As she said, there's a lot of, we're literacy rich, but being able to take those slices of pies to make a whole pie is where we're at, and that's what we need to do next. Create that plan so that we can implement the plan too. Okay thank you so the trust has heard this a couple of weeks ago. I think what I'd like to do is ask our county commission if they've got questions and comments and then we'll open it up to the public so we can hear from the public who's here to speak on this topic. Get the hand raised. So we've got five to ten folks. Okay great. So let's first open it up to the County Commissioner Alfred and then Commissioner Wheeler. I really appreciated this report. It was really good and I read it twice. One thing that really hit me was this need to start early. And so while I appreciate the discussion of EPK, was there any discussion of daycare, lack of quality daycare, lack of good training for daycare workers, that kind of thing? We spoke with early learning providers and there was some concern for training and a need for additional training, especially focused training in evidence-based strategies, yes. Yeah, we've seen other statistics that say that there's something like 30% of families have been impacted by lack of available, affordable childcare and that's preventing a lot of people from actually even entering workforce. And so anyway, just one curious word that fell into the report at all. Yes. Shall we learn? Yeah. I should there? Yes, I've got all kinds of questions, but the one thing that I wanted to point out about our teachers and I'm still in contact with a lot that are still in the field, colleagues that I've had, it's the changing of the curriculum from year to year to year, buying new programs, you know, we're paying a lot of money for the best, next shiny object in terms of, this is the best thing we have, you know, so we should buy this. And rather than investing in the new shiny curriculum, we really need to invest in our teachers in making sure that they are getting the compensation they deserve. Number one, number two, because we keep changing all of these curriculums, they don't have time to actually perfect it or to adapt it to their own expertise in order to be able to get it out there to their students. So you know, if the school board feels like there's a really good program that's been tested out and is working, then let's give it time in our community to actually work and have the teachers feel confident and comfortable with that program before we switch to the next new thing. I would also like to see at some point, and because I've seen the testing that's going on in the schools, the third grade tests are outrageous. Anybody who knows anything about teaching reading to third graders knows that what we are seeing come down from the state in terms of assessment is unreasonable. And I've been in the classroom with the third grade teachers to hear them say that. And they are the ones who are giving me the assessments for to look at. I taught special education for a long time. And I've used a lot of these get quick formulas for teaching a kid how to learn and I just I would like to see what our assessments, our state assessments, how they compare to the national ones in terms of what we're expecting our kids to do. I would just like to see a comparing contrast just for my own information because when I was teaching special a hundred years ago, you know, we had a different set of assessments that we were using. They were easy to use, they were pretty easy to predict what a kid could do and couldn't do with the direction we were sending them in. And I feel like that we have upgraded and upgraded and upgraded to the point where we've lost sight of the kid. And so, you know, I would really like to see how we compare nationally by using national standards just for my, like I say, for my own information just to see how, you know, if, indeed, when the state is asking our kids to do is unrealistic, I wouldn't have slept to see. And I have other things to say about some of the other folks that have had comments to, I'll say those for the end. But we're watching Good Teacher suffer and the children are suffering even more as a result of that suffering that's in the classroom. And I, this is a lot of work that's gone into things that we know. We logically we know these things. And it's, and I'm just very quickly, I'll say this before I get past it, because sometimes I forget. I spoke with Dr. Johnson and Karen and Sheeran and Collie to your point. And I watched the program there. What is the program out on by Lincoln St. What is it? St. Barbara's. St. Barbara's. I've been to their school programs. I've seen what those programs are doing for these kids. And I asked Dr. Johnson to Collease Point. Do we need to go back to working on segregating our schools so that the kids can learn in an environment that's comfortable and safe. She said, no, Mary Helen, it's not segregating the schools. It's community schools. It's neighborhood schools. But the neighborhoods are segregated. And so we're sending children out of their neighborhoods into places where they don't feel safe to learn. No, we're not. Well, children go to school close to the school that's close to the house. Well, this is, this is, this is, and then I'm glad to hear you say that because I, when I taught at Westwood, I was driving kids across town. No, no, no, and we'll talk. We should have this discussion later, but I just want you to know that there are kids getting educated. There are kids that are getting educated from the black community in a different setting. That's all. It's a different setting. It doesn't necessarily mean it has to be private setting. But it's a different setting and where kids are being supported and it's obvious that they are. That's all. You guys, I've been controversial on this more before and I know that. And I'm probably not a good one to invite. I'm not OK. That's Mr. Wheeler. Yes, you're welcome. Mr. Prisya, and then we'll go back to members of the group. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'll first of all say thank you. Thank you for taking this journey. It really is is like it was a lot of journey to gather a lot of data and information and kind of take what we already know, I think a lot of a lot of what we already knew and already know, but to put it into a needs assessment and into a report that allows those of us who have to sit up here in bureaucracy to justify putting important resources towards this issue and you know again and again and I say from the diias, like we have to stop creating safety nets and start creating safety harnesses. This is the start of that, providing quality education to our children so that they can attain their dreams and they can have upward economic mobility in their lives to the careers that they want to the lives that they want to see. This is the safety harness. Doing this, teaching our children to read, write, and do math is the number one thing that we can do to help those children to succeed in life. And if we do nothing else as a commission, like doing this is a big deal. And yes, I know a lot of people are going to say, well, that's a school district job. It's all of our job. It's the commission's job. It's the children's trust job. It's the school district job. It's all of our jobs. And so I'm excited to have this report because now we can push and push and push and I won't stop pushing Until we've done it, you know, but I think that I guess I'm a little concerned about just a workshop is like the next steps for this I I think that there's really solid recommendations in this report Right identify centralized coordinating body, right, right? And I think that we already have a group of nonprofits that are meeting with the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, having conversations about literacy. They're already meeting with the last thing or center and with Dr. Bowser and with you fly and with the United Way. And they're already all talking. And we already, they already know who the key stakeholders are. And they already know how to implement a lot of this. and they already have the skills and the tools all they need is the funding and the resources to make it happen. I don't- And we already they already know who the key stakeholders are and they already know how to implement a lot of this and they already have the skills and the tools all I need is the funding and the resources to make it happen. I don't I get a workshop, but I think the workshop is for us to be able to get on the same page that we understand what literacy means because we use the words and we don't even we're not even all on the same page. I think we need to educate ourselves and help educate the community on what literacy means and what the different literacy interventions look like so that we can be educated and that's great for a workshop. But I think that we need to empower the community groups, the stakeholder community organizations, the district hopefully coming along for the ride for sure, and get them moving on developing that action panel. I don't think we need a big long conversation about it. I just don't wanna see it take months and months. I mean, it talks about creating a centralized resource hub. I think again, that's, you know, does that, I don't know if that lives, the children's trust or if that lives with another location, but like that seems like something we could do pretty rapidly. Expanding early literacy programs and trainings for staff implementing structured evidence-based programming, high-dose tutoring and adult literacy programs. Again, all things that we already have, it's really about getting the resources to the organizations that are doing those things so that they can do them. The part that I guess I have the most question for and it's more for you, Tina and Dr. Patton is, you know, one of the major things is adopting evidence-based curriculum system-wide. That means mandating curriculum system-wide. That means requiring all the schools to use the same curriculum and the same tools and the same interventions system-wide and providing the professional development necessary to make that happen. What is the reality of that? Like I mean genuinely, I'm interested to know what is the reality of that And because it's about us all pointing our arrows in the same direction, right? We're all need to be going in the same direction. And if the community groups, they may not be using the exact same pricoms, but if they're all using the same tools and the same skill sets outside the schools and inside the schools and giving the parents those resources, then we can start moving that train down the track, you know? But I know that's gonna take a lot for you all to do that and I know it takes a lot of professional development And you're probably already well into professional development for this school year, you know, so I know that's going to take a lot for you all to do that. And I know it takes a lot of professional development and you're probably already well into professional development for this school year. You know, so I'm wondering what's the reality of that and then what's the sort of like planning horizon you need to be able to like execute that at the district level. Remember certain or or to the. Pat and Dr. Pat. and keep me under the table. So before we get to Dr. Patton, I will say that the last children's trust meeting, this was member of certain's really primary point, which is the school board must take the lead. Yeah. And the school board from K through 12 must implement something centralized that is teaching all the kids so they had that right. And Dr. Patton chimed in. I was removed but Dr. Patton you want to you have the floor so. Sure sure so I would think you were reading my note here because I'm a big believer in the lining arrows so we have a graphic now that we're using so we're doing great things but we're kind of going in different directions so it's really about lining up those arrows so that we're all going in the same direction. So when you look at our most fragile kids right they are the kids that have the highest mobility rate so when we're not doing the same thing at the schools and kids are taking longer to figure out what to do because it's not their fault the parent moved and so they can go a little behind to go forward, right? Same with teachers, they move schools, right? So with the more commonality we have in our arrows lined up, the stronger it is. So limited resources, the more we're lined up, the better we do. So that's one, two, don't even know if people know. We have 96 languages spoken in the school system. It's a lot of languages. So you have a lot of different just parents listening in and trying to figure out, kids trying to learn English with parents that don't speak English at home. So excited about some things that the board will see in the next month of looking at a new communication, our tool with the website and all this and let the stuff on the apps. And long story short, just the program that we're gonna be selecting and speaking new programs, but sometimes new programs are right thing. Certainly a communication tool that can communicate with any of those 96 languages, so that a teacher could type in and say, you read Portuguese. It's going to find your phone. It's not what you gave us, but it finds your phone to say, okay, you're speaking in Portuguese. So it's going to translate into Portuguese. If you write me back as the teacher, it translates back in English. So right there is already starting to help us across 40 plus schools. Not did a school happen to buy that or what happens there. So things like that make a difference. Making sure that we catch people right from the beginning. So one of the things that we see is just that idea of alignment that you mentioned. You can read it in the report too. How do we know when you get a new teacher midway through the year, right? Are they getting that first infusion of whatever that alignment arrow is so we can do that in new higher meetings to ensure that before they even hit the school, they know where's the district's alignment. So that'll help a big and I think it's been used making sure that we're using evidence-based best practices, not someone went to a workshop and heard something and oh yeah, that's nice. Is it research and evidence-based? Huge thing. Using things like collective impact fits perfectly in with the Children's Trust. We had a good fortune to have had that in Collier through our Ed Foundation, Community Foundation, but 80 organizations and work chasing organizations, right? We're by having a collective impact that takes a little bit of work, but as I've talked with Marsha and some of the people on the board, it's easy, nothing's easy, but it's an easier use of our time when we can all be in that same direction collectively. So one, by meeting, but meeting then on what are those goals that we all agree to? So again, all the different organizations are not going in different directions, so that makes a difference. Knowing that we have some RL elementary schools that have literacy coaches, right, or reading coaches, whatever you want to call them, different names. But how do they get selected? What training do they have? So we'll institute literacy academies this summer so that even if you've had a reading coach, we ensure that their alignment is there academically to ensure that this is what literacy looks like. Are we you fly from the University of Florida? That is a mandate. It's not a suggestion that is our phonics program. It's interesting when you just talk to people something something we can do it. Some get it that it's it's research base. So just making sure that we also know what is the expectation of what is the district's focus. So that makes a difference, but those literacy academies. We have no reading coaches in the middle or high school. That's hard for me to understand when the gaps are even bigger. So Board doesn't even know the shape, but we figured out a way that we will get all of our secondary and then four elementary Don't have a reading coach having a literacy coach, but they will not get selected until you go through that commonality training So talk to the state last Friday. They're gonna come and provide that training for so that again We have a common lens across very excited about that But use the common planning is very interesting. Do we have common planning or not? So it's great to have a literacy coach, but if they're chasing a teacher versus common planning, where we then infuse that help with the group, whether it's ninth grade, ELA, eighth grade ELA, third grade, but common planning makes a difference. So we'll have things like master scheduling review so that we ensure that we are all in that same alignment moving forward. Things like when we look at the children's trust and I know you referenced the website right so I do think there's power to technology. I'm a big believer in technology, AI, all those things but we can do a good job too of helping take that lead like mentioned, with Ken like mentioned with Miss Certain and by the way just want to say two seconds about our board members that Miss Certain, Dr. McNeely that's here. I do get a chance to work with five people. Now we have our fifth, but five people are very dedicated in support of literacy because they get it. We can't move forward without literacy. That's equalizer for people. So when we this year then put in place our short and even extended responses. Anybody in any group that works with children can help us with that. So we can help provide that kind of training and have those materials available on the website. We certainly won't want to see people that are working with the Children's trust funds, don't be buying software, use ours. You know, it's already research-based. That's double, that's wasting resources to me. You don't even know what it is. So we can get that out so that you can ensure that. If you have homework time, the kid doesn't have homework, we can direct you to what you can do for that kid in that grade level. So those are things that we can help with. Great bit. I think there's a lot of work that can be done with parents. A lot of our organizations work with parents. Shocking. How many parents don't even know? Do you have a home? So those are things that we can help with. Great bit. I think there's a lot of work that can be done with parents. A lot of our organizations work with parents. Shocking. How many parents don't even know? Do you have a homework center set up for your kid? Do you have a place that's dedicated for their learning? So when they look at there, they know that's what I do. I do my homework in this space. What does that look like? Lots of organizations that reach our parents, not just us, so coordinating those efforts can make a big difference. And then, again, just that idea of looking at where we sit, you know, with that parental help and getting the parents, they're actually the kids first teachers, right? They have the kids right out of the womb and then we get them maybe for sometimes that they have a special needs at three, but we have to help get that information. I heard somebody mention about doctors offices. It's amazing what can be done. So I think that idea of a collective impact with working, we're very fortunate to have the children's trust that I think we collectively as the district see you as a partner to help. There's no one answer, but certainly more hands can help out. So we're happy to help, as she mentioned, kind of take the lead in things and work with people because we have that reach, but we internally need to be sure that we're aligned so that we're all moving in that same direction because 96 languages is a lot. But all the black kids speak English most of them. So I guess I'm going to get that help. Yeah, I know. So I guess I hurt, I thank you. That was really helpful to sort of get your vision. And I guess, and when I heard at some point in there that you all are adopting UFLY system-wide. Well, it should have been, I understand, but that's not the common knowledge in the system, so that'll get corrected. correct. So we'll be retraining people this summer to make absolutely sure we start here with this is the x and I understand, but that's not the common knowledge in the system, so that'll get corrected. So we'll be retraining people this summer to make absolutely sure we start there with this is the expectation, principles know it, and everything else, yes. That's great news. That's fantastic. And so that's happening this summer with your professional development and training. So it's sort of a, principles has been great too. They've had half day meetings their entire time here. Nobody has half day principal meetings. Now it's too much on them. So we've already expanded those to all day meetings. That's been a helpful expanded further next year. If the leaders in the school are not up to speed on everything, then that's a problem there. How are you leading when you don't have that PD? So it's not a criticism, it's just to say, where are we at? and how do we get better faster? And I did hear you talking about six to 12. I think that was another thing I read in this report was like the six to 12. I think that was another thing I read in this report was like the six to 12th grade learners are really kind of like falling through the cracks, especially like I know it's start early and start young and I think that's really important for us for the next generation, right? But we have a whole generation that was kind of left behind. and that we have almost probably at this point three generations, so we have a bunch of adult learners and family members that can't support their children because they themselves struggle. And so I think that six to 12, I'm glad to hear. left behind. In fact, we have almost probably at this point three generations. So we have a bunch of adult learners and family members that can't support their children because they themselves struggle. And so I think that's 6 to 12. I'm glad to hear the reading coach idea and getting them trained. I think they need that. Yeah. Because science and social studies can be a help with literacy. We just dump it all on English teachers and that's just not right. And then you have your organizations in Paris, help us. We have to keep broadening those circles. And then my last question is, we talked. So you guys, so I guess what I heard is that you all are pushing on this workshop idea of that's the first step. But I guess I just feel like you're on the collective impact. And I think that's the direction to go. And I guess I see that there's already momentum happening with a lot of the organization's meeting in partnership with the nonprofit center of excellence and like starting to sort of coalesce around some ideas already in collaboration with UFLY in the last summer and Dr. Balls or the Department of Education, like kind of putting these pieces together and so I'm wondering if we can't just empower that with some resources to keep it moving forward. So I mean, and yes, we do the summit or some kind of workshop for policymakers and leaders to be able to have common language around this and so that we're understanding what our expectations are in the community, sort of what are the tools that we are using, what are the curriculum that we're aligning along, what are the skills that we're expecting people to have within different organizations, whether it's after school or tutoring or coaches or parents and families or teachers themselves, so that we can be empowered and ready to provide the funding and resources that are necessary to put all that together. And it takes a real commitment on the district's part to ensure you have the right staff at all those meetings because it's a lot of time out but it's the best time because you're you know uniting partners together and listening in so I'll sometimes be like wow where are they all there with me but what that meeting is is wonderful because it's lining up everybody's year in terms of literacy. I mean I guess my goal, my dream for our board for the County Commission is that we would ask that group that's been meeting with the Center for Non-Papa Excellence to put together kind of their like what would it take next steps to put this action plan together and begin implementation and a plan for evaluation and get us a budget so that we could have that conversation. Well, I'm with you 100%. Let's hear from them. Certainly. Member Pinkerson, Commissioner Wheeler. Why don't you draft the promotion? I'm going to have a motion on the floor and then we'll open it up to the public. How's that sound? Yep. Because, and I'll just say, on the county commission side, I'm with you 100%. when you look out at who is here. This is not a school board problem. This is not a children's trust problem. This is a community problem, and we have all of the, not all the stakeholders. We have a portion of the stakeholders that are here that want to be a part of that solution. And I think I'm ready for the county to invest real resources with, obviously, my county commission's concept. But before we get to that, remember certain, remember Pinguson, then we'll get to Commissioner Wheeler and then we'll back to you Anna. Thank you chair pinkers. Thank you thank you and thank you Anna thank you for the presentation and staff and to our to our UF partners. And I'm not going to rehash everything I said last week, because this part here is really causing heartburn, but I really don't want us to, like, from my, what I heard almost sounded like excuses. And I just think we got to get out of that. This problem really can be, we got to do better, we can do better. And when I read about limited resources being utilized appropriately, I think we have to kind of bring the little talking stick and put it with the district because the district is funded to do this. And when we look at the achievement data by race, they got desegregated by race. If we were making cars and 70% of our cars were defective and not performing to engineering standards, right? That line of business would be out of work. Everybody remembers Pentos and Ford S. Gordes. I mean, not S. Gordes. What was the shivish events, right? They don't make those anymore because they didn't perform well. So we have to do better. And I think the organization which I want, I think this lies with the school district. And I think the bulk of it between those six hours that they have, and then they push out an initiative for parents to have, well, we have a $600 million budget. More money in that when we have folks around here that are trying, that are scraping for pennies is, that's unfair. And I think that we have got to really plug in and do better the expectation has to be that folks use the materials, the district provide the materials and they do commission and will and your suggestions of us getting evidence based that the state requires that already. Right, and the district spends money to adopt both of the adoption process and the adoptive. There is a lot of change from year to year, with standards periodically, more periodically than folks would like, but we can't make excuses. We have to rise to the occasion to meet that. And we have to teach and find it's that really hasn't changed. What has to be done in years, I mean, the methodology may have changed. Or the materials may have changed, but we know children need to know how to read and there's some foundational things that every teacher should know. That the issue with, and I want to go, I agree with what Mr. Blont said. I agree with the Johnson's what they said. But I count apart ways with what you say in the sense of our students needing to go to school and their neighborhood. They're already going to school in their neighborhoods. And what we have in those neighborhoods, schools is hard to staff those schools. We've created environments, high-poverty schools, where children come to school and have a lot of needs. And then we put staff in those schools that are our newest teachers, our newest professionals. Very new recent college graduates, less than three years experienced, most of the time, a good number of them may come to the profession, not as education majors, they're all turn of the certified. By doing that, they've gone through some coursework to get a teaching certificate, but they don't have the foundational knowledge of classroom management and pedagogy. That would be like me going to school and to get certified to teach something, right? So we put that type of professional who means well in a very hard environment. And then couple that with a lot of staff turnover, and experience school leaders. We've got all that on, then we have children, we talked about the mobility issue. We have, it's a cycle and it's a system that's, it's been created where it's really hard for students to come out of that to do well. And I'm not making, excuse me, I'm just telling you what it is. So when people start advocating for neighborhood schools, that's the result of that. That what we're seeing right now is the result of back in 2002 of going to neighborhood schools. And we had a consultant in the county that told them or someone that that wasn't the way to go but then board voted to do that. Neighborhood schools really set back students because we created environments where it is really challenging and those challenging environments have been really hard to staff. And but I don't excuse our organization because I think there's some some some decisions that could be made with our leadership to do that but we do have a problem and if we don't if we don't solve it, it is a further drain on our local community, people who cannot, don't have to have insufficient skills to deem them employable, to make a good living, to take care of themselves and their family, end up being either on social services or adding to crime statistics. We're working a lot of jobs, piece mill jobs because they're not able to work one job and they piece together living and then they have children who are almost, I'm not going to say left to them their own devices but if the parent is working what's happening, right? I'm not going to excuse the organization that I'm a member of. We have to do that. We have to. And we've been marching around this mountain. And I think for far too long. And I remember we started this with a joint meeting. So I want us to, we're here again. I don't want to get on this too. Like I said, legal kick me. So I'm going to be quiet because I went on about this a long time last week. But I do think that those the limited resources that we have, the least resources are limited. I'm not saying that, but I do think better use of them has to be done with the organization of the street. Thank you. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. and that will be the next year. Thank you. Appreciate members of the willingness to accept or wanting to raise the expectations for the school district. I want to, as everybody saw in the slides earlier, 48% of the are 52% of the children that walk through the doors aren't prepared for school and as a result it makes the job that y'all have to do even more difficult. So I think and I think where the workshop may be helpful is is we can see what we're doing well from zero to two when they're ready to get into school see what's worked what hasn't't worked, and where we need to improve. Because as you said, Commissioner Prisiot, as you said, a lot of it has to do with getting the children there ready for school and what goes into that. Because there's so many other factors that go into making sure that a child is prepared for school as far as what's happening at home, the parents, and do not fall to their own. There are a lot of parents that really aren't prepared to be teachers. And I think you heard members certain explain some of the factors behind there as far as working multiple jobs, you know being dead tired when they walk to the door. You know there are a lot of things that go into making sure how much conversation takes place at home so that children are exposed to the language arts. So you know I think we're trying really hard and we've come up with some programs that I think have been effective but I think what we need to try to do is see how many more lives we can impact, because there's so many children that aren't able to take care, aren't able to participate in some of the programs that we have, how do we expand, how do we expand the participation of all. I think that's really important so that when they enter school, there's not as big a challenge as far as educating them. Because I think that that's, I think it's wonderful that you want to raise the expectations because I think raising expectations is imperative to making sure that the children understand that you know that people believe in them and want more out of them. So hopefully we can help you make that job a little bit easier. But sure, we look and we'll get the control. Yeah, there's a lot of focus on the parents and the parent involvement in terms of getting these kids ready. From what I've seen and been able to work with in this community is that, you know, we have children who don't have STEMI centers, you know, they don't even have a bed to sleep in. You know, so that the families are such that there is not a place for a kid to focus on academics. They're just trying to, you know, keep the family survive is the word I heard out there, for sure. And so, you know, they're bringing trauma to school at an early age. And my son was taught at Stephen Foster. I followed him there. He tried to get to Metcalf, but he said they said that the grades weren't kind of. He wanted to go to Metcalf. He has a degree in theater, master's degree in elementary ed, but wasn't allowed to go there because the grades, the scores that he had at Stephen Foster with the low kids there didn't allow him to go into Metcalf. I mean, so there are holes that maybe we could fill to get the teachers who want to go to these places in the right spots. But what I want to say is that if we really want the parents to be involved, we need to give them work that they recognize. I was educated as a, you know, I'm a grandmother now with some of these kids that I've been trying to work with. And I don't recognize the work they're bringing home for simple math problems. They don't know how to help. The reading that they're asking them to do is sometimes unexplainable. I mean, and so if you want the kids to have help at home with their homework, then we need to ask include to our teachers that the work they send home for homework is something that's recognizable to another generation of people. And there's only basic math facts, you know, basic reading that everybody can understand and recognize. And if we're sending home this stuff that has to do with technology or with a new word way to do something, you know, just basic subtraction and multiplication that they're giving the kids to do, I don't recognize them, I talk that. I talk tricks to kids especially. It's very different and so to expect a parent to be able to help, I think this is where we're having problems too. So if the teachers are just sending home or home, what's in something that the parents would recognize, maybe they would get the help that they want. But in some instances that I was teaching special needs kids and I had self-contained group kids. I did all the work at school. I didn't send it home. I said the homework you need to do is to learn how to cook, take out the garbage, help your mom, mother grass. That's the homework you need to learn. And so you know we just need to look at things in a little more realistic way. And done. Thank you, Mr. Chair. OK, before we get to you, so I want to try to offer back, I just have a couple of things to say. So much of the data that we heard is not new. And I think we all have done this for decades, a couple of decades. Specifically, I remember a group of citizens, Tina, and my first year on the commission coming to me, and this is why you ran for a school board. We told that story a couple of weeks ago. So this has been going on for quite some time. The day. and my first year on the commission coming to me and this is why you ran for a school board. We told that story a couple of weeks ago. So this has been going on for quite some time. The data is getting better in the last two years, which is great, but the facts are, Asian kids are reading at 77% of grade level, white kids 74% of grade level, and African Americans 33. Not acceptable. One third versus three fourths. That means when you're in a program and there's three African-American kids in a program, two out of three of them are not at grade level. And all of our programmers are recognizing this and they have a role to help. And I hope that what the County Commission does, because I know the trust is investing in this, is that we put the resources to actually move the dial, less workshops, less data collection, more action, more let's get going and to your point. I can't think of a more important thing for our county commission to invest in the entire family, not just a kid, the actual entire family, that's kind of our job. Public health, welfare and safety. Yeah, so watch you go ahead and turn the floor of the year and then we're going to get to the public. Sure, I mean, you know, it's a hard motion to make because we don't know exactly what the need is, but I have had a conversation with community organizations that are part of the team that you put together to drive this whole thing. I talked to some folks at UF. I talked to a P. I tried to talk to all those community organizations that are out there doing this work. You know it really seems to me that if we can and you know I'm putting I don't even know if the son of a guy So folks are here today, but oh there's all those community organizations that are out there doing this work. And it really seems to me that if we can, and you know, I'm putting, I don't even know if the Center for Ruffa Guest those folks are here today, but, oh, there she is. Okay, great. But, you know, they're already convening, these people, they're already having the conversations. And so I feel like what I'd like to say is that we put an ear mark a budget number on for at least $250,000 this year from the county to partner with the Children's Trust and the nonprofit center of excellence to work with key literacy organizations and stakeholders to develop the plan for implementation and evaluation of this reform based on the recommendations in this needs assessment. And to bring us back within 90 days, what that map of that plan is and a final formal budget so that we could, if there's more money needed or if there's other funding needed, we can allocate it before the end of budget cycle. Okay. It was a second. I ask you a question. Yes, I do have a second. And that we write a letter to the school board asking that they adopt the needs assessment and the recommendations in this report as well. Okay. I'm really sick. with the budgeting you're talking about. We've also talked about the community centers that we have out in McInobey and we have up in high settings. I've been to those community centers. I've seen the work center. And this has been an addition to that. Those have the study centers that we're talking about for the kids that can't have studied at home. Absolutely. keep part of this. I mean are a key part of this. I mean, I think that they're going to be a key component of the conversation is how those, like one resource center was actually one of the people at the table, one of those children's trust-funded resource centers. And we're going to have that. That's why, the other reason why I wanted the agenda to flip one, because all these people are here to talk about this issue, but also because I think the two things we're talking about after this are things that tie into this issue, the resource centers and the, and the, um, right, because I know this foundation, foundation, study, and study. because I think the two things we're talking about after those are things that tie into this issue, the resource centers and the, and the, right, because I know Bishop Foundation Center. I've seen him study at a joint study area and they're amazing places for kids to go get help. Yeah, okay. All right, we have a motion. I second for each state of real quick for financial outfirts. Yes, here we're gonna get to the public. to set aside at least $250,000 this year to partner with the Children's Trust and Non-Prophet Center of Excellence to Work with Key Literacy Organizations and Stakeholders in the school board to develop and to plan develop and implement and I'm sorry to create an implementation and evaluation action plan based on the needs of comprehensive literacy needs assessment. And to come back before the end of budget cycle with a final budget so that we need to allocate additional resources we can. Okay, we've got motion in a second. I think the amount for- And to write a letter to the school board to ask them to do the same. I appreciate the motion. I think the amount might be a little light. I think it's light too, but- But it's a placeholder so that our staff have an understanding. I mean, if you all do it too then- Yes. So we got 500? Alright, so let's go ahead and and the recordings over there. Follow them. Thank goodness Tommy's not here because the county just heard what their commission said. if you all do it too then. All right, so let's go ahead and the clonies over there. Fall over. Thank God, and Tommy's not here because the county just heard what their commission said. All right, we're going to open it up to the public. What I would ask is again, rate your hand if you want to speak. Okay. If you'll just be ready to speak over there, Mr. Clerk, if we could do two minutes. So we already have a separate two. Alright, we're gonna do two minutes. If you'll introduce yourself, when you get down to like 15 seconds, if you'll introduce yourself. When you get down to like 15 seconds, if you'll wrap up your comments, that will allow everyone to speak and we'll get through, we still have two more items to address. So Carla, you're first. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Carla Lewis, Greater Duval Neighborhood Association. greater football summer slaying camp coordinator. I will make it brief so that I can move out of the way for a lot of these people that represent our educational system because I'm quite sure they have a lot. I heard a lot about resource and different organizations and different processes. I've heard about resource and teachers making sure that they have the need. I do not agree with having the teachers to simplify the homework so that they can do the parenting that's like having them teach the kid and the parent at the same time. And when you have 30 children in a class that you have and you have a curriculum and things that you got to follow based on state and county and everything, you don't have time to simplify it for the mothers and the parents that have that gap. The answer for that is to create robust program in from your community organizations. The organizations that you're thinking about and talking about are the literacy programs. Those programs by four o'clock, y'all are done with those children. Unfortunately, they go to homes that are unstable or they come to programs like ours when we teach them garden and science. They learn to read by creating their own recipes and learning how to make their own products. They learn to read and do math through art and dance and theater and other things that we implement in our programming. So when you'll sit down and start talking about and everybody knows I'm very passionate because the children's trust summer program and has been. And so when we are the organizations that are working directly with the parents that have the children for long term, how are we engaging our churches? I love it that Pastor Bishop is now getting resources out there because he's been doing a lot before anybody even gave him a dime. And so we have to be more intentional about how we resources, resource these unique programs that do have the direct connection or you're gonna make, you're gonna keep that loss and that gap it's gonna stay there because all the children not gonna go to your resource centers, they're not gonna be able to see those nice little home works faces, they go home to addicts. Thank you, Carl. Thank you, Carl. All right, next speaker, Kelly. That's an annoying beat. Two minutes, only two minutes. I want to apply my personal experience to learning. I was reading, I think a lot of the emphasis on children's achievement gap, you have your three in the wrong place. Catching up across the third grade year is already too late. They need to be reading by age three. And that was accomplished for me by lap time. Dr. Seuss, me and a parent. A lot. Zero to five is the key learning time. It's when that cerebellum has the most space for new wrinkles and to take on knowledge. And you can't wait till they show up to VPK if they show up at age four to VPK. So I think out of you know, continue studying, continue getting data but let's do something. I suggest you send readers into daycare centers. Allow the kids out in home-based daycare centers. I don't have a magic answer for access to daycare, but for those who are, that's a major stage, home-based daycare. So send in readers, people who have great rating skills, great eloquation, a lab path, a stack of books, and they can stand to be peaked on. And let them get lab time with these kids. Furthermore, get the organizations that are certifying the home day cares to let two readers count as one FTE in their staffing so they can avoid increasing rates. As for neighborhood schools, that's a problem because our housing pattern is a problem. When you concentrate well, you also concentrate poverty. And it is shown that kids who are in mixed income schools do better than kids who are in solid poverty and biomits. But if you stop these early learning experiences, you make the children better participants in the learning experience. I spend a lot of time in Lincoln as a wild zoo. The teachers are lucky if they get to do 50% of core of a period of time in education. So you're gonna get the kids to be better learners. Thank you, Kali. Next speaker. Hey, Ann. Thanks you for being here. Thank you, Turbo. I have reached a minute for two minutes, but I guess it needs to be reset there. You set? Just go ahead and sorry. I'll get you going. All right. I represent Aces in Motion. We've been working with middle and high school kids for about 10 years now, almost all black or by racial students, any Scansville. And there's a lot. I mean, obviously this is a complicated problem. I would like to just say a few points like, of course, early learning is important. However, a lot of studies show that if you put those kids at a run grade level in kindergarten into poor schools or underperforming schools, they go right back down. And we see that even in the very good charter schools, if they're not in a magnet program when they go to middle school, here they're going to drop too. We see that as well. And so that is problematic. So at every stage, when these families need a lot of support, these kids need a lot of support all the long way. Not just one and done. Hey they're on grade level and kindergarten we're good. It's not going to be like that. They'll fall off many different places. So there's that. I wondered if anybody has looked at gender differences because it's huge. Between black girls and black boys, it's different. Very different, way different than white boys and white girls. And I think that you might target, or I don't know if targets are right word, that's a bad word, but pay attention to gender differences in school performance. And I haven't seen the school district break it out like that. The one thing that I want to say is that, like it is, with we're looking at ACEs in motion like accumulation of all the years of failure, that these kids have been socially promoted, they don't know how to read, they don't know how to do basic math. And I think that since the Children's Trust only goes to 18, there really needs to be a measure of success. What do we want our students to look like? It's not just high school graduation in this town. It can't be. But we say done, high school graduated, but who's looking at what they're doing afterwards? There's ways to do it. I think we need your 13 Children's Trust, can't fund it. Maybe the county can. Thank you. Thank you, Ann. Okay, next speaker. Come on up if you want to speak. Hi, my name's Anna Heineman. Thank you, Commission for Highlighting Literacy. I'm a mom of two kids. My first grader and second grader that goes to public school. My second grader, Stuyth, knows with dyslexia, but it was me that figured out the reading disconnect, not his school. And it was because he kept getting great grades and passing everything, passing tests, having all these flying colors, but scoring really, really, really low on the fast test. And it was me that was like, there is a disconnect. What is happening? And it was really hard. My husband and I have PhDs. We could not figure this out. Where is this coming from? We talked to the counselor. We talked to the principal. They were great. But it was only like nobody could help us. So I had to get him screened privately. That was expensive. found out he was dyslexic. I went back to the school and was like, okay, we have a diagnosis. What do we do? They have no tutoring for dyslexic kids. So I have to pay out of pocket twice a week to get my child tutoring for dyslexia. And it is really expensive. But I'm saying this, we can pay for it, we can still afford food and so forth. There's a lot of people in this community that can't, that do not have the wherewithal. To diagnose her kids, get them screened for dyslexia at the cost of $300 and pay $125 per session twice a week. I'm going to pay $8,000 this year to help my kid learn how to read. Me. So I don't know what to do. I just know that this is really really important and there's a lot of parents who are well-meaning that well-meaning and decent in comparison where this is still hard, let alone the myriad of families who do not have the means and do not have the word with all to notice that their kids has learning disabilities. So thank you so much. Thank you. You're great. Listening. Thank you. Yeah. You've got two minutes now. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I think I can beat that. Let me pull my notes up real quick. Hi, I'm Sunshine Moss. I'm Sunshine Moss. I am a local educator. I've been in Gainesville for 25 years. I actually met Tina in the trenches before she was a school board member, and she was asking the kinds of questions that lead to answers. And that's how I met Leah too. I taught in Elatua County. I taught at Williams for two years, and I taught in other schools. I'm an adolescent literacy specialist, really developmental. And my questions, the number of families coming to me over the last decade, 15 years I guess, drove me back to my PhD to kind of figure out like, why don't we end, what is dyslexia, why isn't anybody talking about it, why are there so many children leaving our school system because their needs aren't being met. So that was 15 years ago when I started working with home schoolers and I found myself as a special ed teacher at a Mass-accidice of children with disabilities leaving the school system and so I started tutoring them and what I realized was the evidence-based practice that I was taught and disregarded worked But I have been in teaching situations where I was in a high-poverty communities and black communities where people didn't have access to resources. And so literacy, race, disability, and poverty were all confounded in my mind until I worked in isolation. What I can say is that over the last 15 years, I've seen that gap grow wider. The situation that's happened since the pandemic has busted the roof off of it. I am daily talking to teachers who are leaving the system, parents who are pulling their kids out. They do not know where to get help. It is incredibly expensive. I am not funded and so all my help is behind a paywall. I have a PhD in special education with a focus in literacy, research policy and practice and a minor in research and evaluation. I have been looking for a place where I could use my skillset in our community for the last five years and there are no positions for literacy leaders. And so I'm looking for a job. If anybody has a literacy problem, and there's many other people who would do it, but we need to have people who have the knowledge and skills about literacy to address it. Thank you, Sunshine. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Hey Leo. He won't start till you start talking. Hi. Good evening everybody. Leah Gallian on the Founder and Director of Peak Literacy. We work with 175 youth here in Alachua County. I think the children's trust for doing this, I was here two years ago saying like, please, let's do this. And thank you for all the work that's been done for the literacy evaluation. I commend also Dr. Patton and what you're trying to do with the literacy coaches. Here's what I'll say say is that there are not enough, there's not enough help in all the community that we have to solve the problem. It is so big. You can put one literacy coach in a middle school and you're not gonna make a debt. These kids, I have over 125, I have another 30 training tomorrow night community volunteers, many of which are here that help our kids. There's a large group of people that want to help I very much value us keeping this within the community. There's nobody closer to any of this than Dr. Moss. All the community organizations that are working together, we've been at this for many years before me. One thing I would like to ask is that we do need that literacy mind, whether it's Dr. Moss or somebody else. And so when we're talking about the community foundation, housing something, which I think is a wonderful idea, I'd like to propose that there would be some kind of literacy expert that could be at the core of that. That's helping us guide that. And in three months, you know, coming up with something without that person having funding to really help guide us in that process, I think would be an oversight. So I just like to ask that there be money allotted to that so that we can really make targeted decisions that are gonna help in a cohesive way. Thank you, Leah. Okay, next speaker. All right, good evening everyone. My name is Taylor Gofun. I'm the current district advisory co-chair for Alatua County Public Schools and I was the former director of Data Analytics Evaluation and Accountability for them. I also recognized some of our children's trust teammates. We worked together back in 2022 on the Data Technical Advisory Committee for the Data Collection and Management Policy. Have some, one-dreams, have some ideas and have some recommendations. Just a A couple of one-dremings about the data, love looking at data. It was great that I had the chance to. I think a couple of one-during about the data, love looking at data. It was great that I had the chance to. I think a couple of questions I didn't see answered, and who we talked to, was we mentioned the importance of middle school literacy. We just kind of got a number. I'd like to know if we had a chance to talk to secondary ELA teachers, and more about the rate levels and representation across schools of who we were able to talk to. So that we were able to talk to not only from Westside and Eastside of Gainesville, but also our satellite communities and other areas to be representative there. I think two ideas that came to me is I look at data a lot. Sorry if y'all can't hear me over the emergency going on out there. One of the things that frustrates me most about looking at data is when we look at it and it's too late. When it's state test scores that have already come out, it's already kids that weren't promoted, it's already kids that weren't graduated. What is unique, I think, about the new testing system that we have right now is, and so Dr. Patton, Mr. Yarnalant, you're not allowed to answer these questions. How often is fast given three times a year. How quickly do we see those results? Students give them the next day. How quickly can the district turn around reports to show at the standards level what skills are most needing to be prioritized in grade three? Like maybe on a weekly basis we need to get like a certain number of kids tested but we have more data than ever about how we can support kids in their needs. And I see the district being able to be leaders and how we communicate in real time those trends throughout the year. We do not have to wait until June to be talking about student achievement. We can be talking about it as early as September. And I think that's a big part of the communication goal one is how we get the school board to do that. Thank you. Thank you, Taylor. Thanks for being here. Still really tall. It's tough, man. It hasn't shrunk. It hasn't shrunk. From a really short time. I mean, I'm just saying I'm just saying. All right, next speaker, please. Gary Parker Warn is in the house. Everybody, if you don't know. My name is Kara Park-a-Warn. And I finished school back during the... I'm going to go to the park. I'm going to go to the park. I'm going to go to the park. I'm going to go to the park. I'm going to go to the park. I'm going to go to the park. I'm going to go to the park. I'm going to go to the park. I'm going to go to the park. I'm going to go to the park. I'm going to go to the park. comprehension included in that, but we could call words. So number one, please remember that all teachers are not created equal. All administrators are not created equal. What we need to do if you have six hundred million dollars and you're getting some more from the county, every student or our philosophy in this county county should be that every student will learn to read. How sad is it to me makes me want to cry when you look at a statistics and we I see the children that look like me from my community are on the bottom that should never happen. I administrator should if you are a supervisor of reading you could spend most of your time in the classroom trying to find out what these teachers are doing because some of them aren't doing anything if you have the resources and it sounds like you have lots of money that's not going to do either. You're going to have to get these teachers off of their tails to teach these children what they're supposed to be learning. I know we have all kinds of problems. If we have new teachers in this county and they don't know how to control the class, no learning will go on in the classroom if you don't have control the first day you walk in that classroom. I was an administrator for 17 years at the PK Young. You have to be in control. I will tell students all the time you are not going to cause other students not to learn. The governor sent me here to make sure that all of these students learn. And if you're misbehaving you're going to have to get out. So we're going to have to also start all over again, our parents that cannot read. We need to take some of these reading programs to some of these low housing communities. That's what we did all over the United States. I had my pet, I went to the black community. Thank you, Carey, for a forward. And the body else had their pet, and they went to the other community. You've got to teach these powers. You've got to include them. And you've got to teach these powers. You've got to teach these powers. So for those of you that are not watching, that's how you get an extra 30 seconds. Just keep talking to you sit down. All right who else needs to speak to us today because I do want to get to the next item. Great input. We did have one question from Taylor about the second grade ELA members who did you talk to? Did you get that question? Could you Mary could you answer that and then we'll get back to that's a specific question. We did talk to middle school and secondary ELA educators. We had some more, our most interesting conversations with them, because they could really speak to the students who came into their classrooms and then the disparities they felt they had and being able to support those students. So yeah, that is a good question. All right, thank you. Now we're not going to take questions. All right. Any other comments from the board? Well, just very quickly. Yeah, that's that is a good question. All right. Thank you. Now we're not gonna take questions. All right any other comments from the board Just very quickly. Yeah, please The teachers are working really hard. It's really hard though when the behaviors are an issue and and this is and We're losing good teachers because of the behaviors in the classroom But that also again goes back to the parents. We've got to have those parents involved, you know. To, you know, you and I can real up when you get jerked in the neck if you don't go home with bad stuff, right? Yeah, air pool, all that. Yeah, yeah, got it. Thank you. All right, so we've got a motion on the floor from the County Commission, any further discussion from the County? All right. All right. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. Okay. Thank you, commissioners. All right. Next up, we have family-reached horse enters. All right. All right. All right. All right. Next up, we have family-reached horse enters. All right. Next up, we have family-reached horse enters. All right. Next up, we have family reachful centers. Hold on one second. Marsha. Is there any action that the trust ordering to take is we're about to lose quorum? I don't think there is. Well I guess I was just going to ask you. I mean we could just put up money but the children's trust hasn't put up any money for the next steps of the action plan. So I guess we just basically made a motion asking that the children's trust to like start working on that, but without the resources, I mean, it's so I know that the children's trust actually has this item coming back to us and with that, they were waiting to see what was going to happen here before they bring back We're losing you. Okay, we're losing corn from there. All right, let's do family resource centers. see what was going to happen here before they bring back records. Yeah. Are we losing you? OK, we're losing corn from there. All right. All right, let's do family resource centers. And I think this is the county to no, this is not the county. This is a trust. What one? I'm not here. What, one phone? I can't remember what it was. I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember. It's a June after. I don't think. I don't think. I think it's a June after. Our chairs are all weird. They're really hard to get. That's just right. It would be that one over there. Yeah. I feel like I'm sitting. OK, but then you are recognized. All right. Belita James, Choosing Trusts at Bellatio County. Just to give you a little background on the Choosing Trust and our Family Resource Center, the Trust is committed to expanding family resource center model throughout Bellatio County. Our initial approach included an award to partnership for strong families to support their family resource network. The family resource network encompasses family resource centers already established in Gainesville, the SWAG Family Resource Center and the library Partnership Resource Center in addition to providing financial support for against the Family Resource Center site. We also launched the launch helping the funding the community resource navigator. This program extends the reach of the Family Resource Center network. So they have the Family Resource Center navigator, which is basically the mobile Family Resource Center. As many of you know, the services and supports are based on five protective factors, which when present and families are proven to reduce the risk of abuse and neglect. The Family Resource Center and the CRRANs work together to form what we can center in L lot of counties, Family Resource Center network, prior to the Children's Trust support, Partnership for Strong Families reported positive outcomes and assisting families who visit the Family Resource Center since 2022. The trust support has further expanded the success throughout the county and enhanced services and support. In 2024, trust partnered with partnership to replicate the family resource center model in rural and underserved communities. Our goal was to identify municipalities without easy access to family resource center services. And out of that, we have a family resource center'm established in MikaNope as well as on the east side of Gainesville that is Pleasant Street Community Center also To ensure success and sustainability partnership for strong families provides training and coaching and consulting to assist. So a part of that, they came, they were able to be established because we also partnered with partnership to have a family resource center consulting. So basically what they do is they go and they work with these municipalities in the rural areas and they develop a family resource center there. Our budget for that was $150,000 which was based on their chiefland site, which is a smaller site that partnership, all partnership for partnership for Strong Family also has a family resource center there. So we started out with $150,000. In their first year it was $125, because we started a little late. So it was three months, three or four months had already went by, but this year they were they were fully funded that first year was implemented that's the implementation with the consulting and now they're a free standing family resource center in the rural community in Mika nope as well as we have on on the east side. Okay. So some of what we heard or at least I know that I heard and having conversations with a lot of those family resource centers and in our dialogue as a commission about how we could sort of help support what you all are already doing with these family resource centers, especially to get more social services supports out into our outlying areas and rural areas. One of the things I heard again and again was sort of capacity building needs and so I'm wondering if you all have thought at all about how you could extend the work you've been doing like with the early childhood around capacity building with the nonprofits and our excellence and like with these centers and or with the partnership for strong families to be able to offer more supports like human resources, data evaluation and support, you know, budgeting and administration, that sort of thing. Because I feel like what I've heard again and again is that the functional side of what they do, they've kind of got down with the support of the partnership to give them those family protective skills and some understanding and the navigation skills and support. But what they often don't have is all of the skills they need to do the business operations and the data reporting and evaluation pieces. And so that's something that I know we started a conversation about being able to support possibly, if you all have any thoughts on that or if you thought about that as you're thinking about the way you're supporting these organizations. Well, before Marsha speaks, well, one of the things that we do do, I can think of one right now is that when we identify that they have, there was a capacity issue, we have linked with the center of non-profit excellence to, like for instance, if they're having an issue, let's just say with influencing, they don't have the fiscal team to influence. We have now worked with them to be able to identify somebody that can help them with their influencing or with that. So they have a person that is assigned to them just to do that. So what we do is look at where they're having and capacity issue and then work with the Center of Nonprofit of Excellence to then help them to identify somebody that can come in and support that part of them so that they can help them in that capacity. Okay. Thank you. You want to add anything, Marcia? Yeah. What I was going to say and I can bring Kristie up because she's doing the next presentation about the capacity building which is it's all it's all tied together it's all in a related we gave 150,000 to the Center for Nonprofit Excellence for just this purpose. So whether it was for the Family Resource Centers or the Nonprofits it was to build capacity for these organizations that were struggling so that's something we're already doing related to just what you're talking about, whether that's HR, finance, whatever we find the issues to be. That's what that contract is with the center. Marshall, that's a two-year contract or three-year or two. That's fine. Come up, Chris. Yeah, I'll let Chris tell you you more about it because she's working directly with Teresa on the contract. No. Good afternoon. Evening. Chris, the Goldwater Chief Operating Officer. So the contract with Center for Non-Fifle Excellence is a three-year contract. Each year the funding amount is reduced slightly so the first year was $100,000. We are now in our second year at $85,000 and then the third year being $70,000. In addition to that pot of money that supports the infrastructure of having the Center for Nonprofit Excellence. We include an additional $30,000. It is those dollars that we are working with the Center to allocate funds towards paying for that expertise for organizations, paying for capacity building grants, for organizations that are identified as needing that additional support. There are quite a few different trainings and series that this contract with the Center for Nonprofit Excellence will implement within our community, topics such as grant research, writing and reporting, budgeting, financial matters, developing donor management, development in general governance, data tracking and reporting, strategic planning, human resources. So all of those topics that have been mentioned here and a few others that this contract supports. Okay. Good. Anything else for the commission? So that was kind of three and four. Yeah. You know one of the things that we have talked about at the trust was this idea that you know at the county if we are funding 100% of the organization that organization is really not sustainable. It really should be like an employee of the trust. And so we've got, I think, to use the center to help leverage and build capacity for those organizations that are just starting or don't have that capacity. So I know you and I argue about this a lot. Yeah, but I guess, I guess I want to say though, those organizations are on the front line of providing social services that are part of the health safety and well-hurt community. They're doing the work of the county. Probably a fraction of the cost of what we could do it for them with a lot less bureaucracy. And so I hear you on the Children's Trust side, but I do think that there's, as we're talking about these resource centers, like if we can resource them with the things that they need to be sustainable as a business operation, then they can do the business of providing the social services being on the front lines as a business operation, then they can do the business of providing the social services being on the front lines as a safety net and hopefully eventually a safety harness by providing literacy supports and workforce training and all of those things. And if we can come in with that gap funding for that sort of capacity support, I think it's a win-win for the children's trust and for the county and for those community organizations as like a trifect of partnership. And it would be a more effective, in some ways I think it might be a more effective use than like expanding cap, for example. Because instead of just sort of dovetodding money out into the community, we're actually looking at these key organizations or these key resource centers that are in our communities providing that suite of services. Yeah, so I would like to see the county take the lead in that and then leveraging the trust and the foundation because really we are talking about more than just children and their families. Totally. Yeah, we're talking about everything. Exactly. That's why I was thinking. Yeah, and so I want to, I know Teresa is, I know Teresa's here and I'm interested to hear from the trust doing this contract, kind of what are the recommendations from Teresa as well as from the folks at the trust on how the county can help supercharge what we kind of start. Yes, exactly, 100%. Yeah, and that's all I'm saying. Because I think when we have organizations that rely 100% on whether it's trust funding or county funding or any public funding, essentially what we're saying is that should be part of that public institution. Because they're... But we contract for services all the time. I mean, it's not wrong to contract with an organization that understands our community, that's trusted by their community, that's from that community, and to contract with them to do the work that we can't do as well in that community, 100% with our money. I mean, we do that a lot. Like, we want somebody to build us a building. We don't build it ourselves. We pay a contractor to build that building. If we want to deliver social services in the community. Well, time, yeah, one time stuff, but I think ongoing. We have long time stuff. I mean, we have people who do all kinds of like monitor. or to build that building. If we want to deliver social services in the community. Well, at time, yeah, one time stuff. But I think ongoing. We have long time stuff. I mean, we have people who do all kinds of monitoring services for us. We're paying for ongoing monitoring services for air quality. We pay for that. Right? But that's not the only contract that that entity has. That's my point. That's my point. Yeah, but they are providing social services in a community. I mean, it's a different kind of thing. I mean, if they are providing something that's really n... That's my point. Yeah, but they are providing social services in a community. I mean, it's a different kind of thing. I mean, if they are providing something that's really niche to that government, we might be the only one. But it's not like we could ask a community service center in Mickanobe to also provide community services in high springs that would be, you know, like, they don't have the kind of, they're not doing the kind of work that allows you to be like a consultant that's gonna like multiple contracts because they're delivering what's needed in that community. You know, like they don't have the kind of, they're not doing the kind of work that allows you to be like, a consultant that's gonna have like multiple contracts because they're delivering what's needed in that community. For that community, right? Like they can't just like, we can't just outsource that. You know what I mean? It's sort of like it's unique to what that neighborhood in that community are. It's embedded. It's embedded in them. And it's like, but they're doing it and much more efficient and effective. And I would say cost effective potentially with the support of partnership for strong families to get them honed and with support of the trust to sort of think about evaluation and data and driving the decision making for the kinds of services they provide. I think they're doing it more efficiently in a lot of ways and cost effectively than we might potentially. But it's about the whole idea of the CAP program, right? It's that we are., but I mean, that's what... Right, the CAP program does leverage their private expertise with public dollars. But at the county, at least, we have these thresholds that we can't provide more than 10% funding for certain size organizations, 20% funding for other size organizations. And that's what we're being faced with at the trust is there are some organizations where we are their only funder, literally their only funder. And we have started to have that conversation at the trust but I hear exactly what you're saying as far as locally sourced. Okay, so family resources and community foundation who's here to speak on that from the public? Come on up and let's we've got Yeah, we've got time here and then we'll bring it back to the board Bishop welcome Thank you for being here. I don't know good afternoon. Good evening. to, one, a couple of things in two minutes. So the, I wanted to go back to the literacy piece because when, through the community center, our after school program, we have two primary focuses. Literacy and math is that what we're focusing on in our after school program. They're all gone now, but when I got here, there was 70, well, because the middle school was out today. There was 50 kids there. And those 50 young people that are there, those 60 to 70 that we see every single day, all of every single one of them have issues with reading and math. Outside of the fact that they come there hungry, our snacks and all of the things that we provide. And for the majority of those young people, we're the primary focus for everything that they have. I see an opportunity for the school board to collaborate with, especially in the rural communities. So the rural community, the school board connecting with that. As far as the resource center is that, and we're funded through Children's Trust, but part of our issue that we're having is that we have people that come to our program that doesn't necessarily qualify for children's trust but they still need to help. And so when we are now providing those services, I actually 100% agree with you is that there has to be a way for the county, the town, the community to collaborate to ensure that those services can go on. Because everyone, we see tomorrow, I'll see 175 people tomorrow. And I could see them every single day and still not see the very same people. And so there is a growing need out there and we've got to figure out a way how we can come together and help support those needs. Thank you, Bishop. Thank you. That's what you're talking about, the other way. I mean, it's really encouraging. All of our stuff. Yeah, all of our stuff. And this resource comes in. Welcome. Hi, thank you. I'm Stacy Marit with partnership for strong families. I'm the director of resource centers. So thank you for having us here today. I had just a couple of things. Number one resource center is absolutely tie in with literacy and all of the discussion that's been had this morning. morning so I hope we can continue to be a part of that discussion. I also I'm not sure if this is helpful information but I think for a lot of the resource centers you would find that while the children's trust may be funding a lot of the operational expenses they're not funding 100% of the cost because we're not including all of the costs and all of the other grants and the donations and the in-kind support and everything that we're receiving in order to provide actual services. So a lot of that is for staff, you know, benefits, all of the things that we need to be staffed, but it is not 100%. And I think that would probably be the case at our other sites as well. And then I alluded to some promising evaluation data at our last children's dress meeting. So I wanted to share some more details here today. We just recently wrapped up a federal evaluation of our Family Resource Center model. And so this is really just another example of why resource centers are important and the impact that they have on children and families of our results. We had after contact with the family resource centers, we saw a 50% reduction in the number of hotline calls for the families that consented for us to have this information. So a 50% reduction in hotline calls, a 64% reduction and the number of calls that were accepted to the hotline. So if they did receive a call, there was still a decrease and the number that were screened into the hotline. And then finally a 98.6% decrease and the number of calls that resulted in out of home placements. So I'm some pretty amazing results and we'll have some formal reports and hope that we can come back to share both with the Children's Trust and with the County Commission. So thank you. Thank you, Stacy. Good results. I'd like to speak to the police. Hi, Teresa Beachy. I am with the Center for Nonprofit Excellence. Again, so grateful for the children's trust and how they took this on as a way to pilot and see what the gap in their learning landscape for our nonprofits were. And we have definitely found it. I think we found that there is a tremendous appetite from smaller organizations like Peek and some of the ones that I've been working with Bishop Stokes, I'll be heading over his way tomorrow to just figure out how they can do what they do better. And that's really the goal of the C&E is to create an atmosphere where we can figure out on an individualized kind of boutique basis what it is that an organization needs and then point them in the right direction, whether it is the board support, you know, Christie, eloquently kind of outlined all of those things that we've been seeing from these organizations. So as any of these initiatives move forward, of course, I am very committed to making sure that we can help with the coordination. We definitely have seen a desire for the organizations to coordinate. We had our first coordinated community response meeting last week, and that workshop was very well attended. We put out 30 spaces and 30 spaces were filled. And what they all realized that is if we want coordination of services, we're going to have to build it ourselves because there's not really vehicles around for that to happen, but there's a desire for it to happen. To figure out where we can overlap, where we can share resources, where we can better support each other in all of those spaces, though that big issues like literacy, which the school board, yes, has the largest budget and by far the most access to kids, but there is a place for a lot of other organizations to play a role in how that can be supportive. So we're here to make sure that that can happen. We're very grateful to the community services team and how Claudia and her team have been willing to work with us as well. So we know that that county support is there and we look just look forward to how that can continue to grow and support this really fun and engaging and critical project. And, Tritzi, you heard, thank you. And you heard the motion that the County Commission passed. Will the Senate plug in to that motion? I think that we will be able to serve as a resource for sure. I mean, it's part of the work that we're already doing. I can't speak for the Board of the Foundation in terms of what they would be able and willing to do. But I know that we're committed at the C&E to make sure that coordination and how we can get those groups together to create that plan and help them make sure that that plan has the expertise that it needs or definitely there. Thank you. All right, next speaker, please. Mayor, thank you for being here. Good afternoon. I'm Mayor Williams of Make-Know-Be-Florida. I just wanted to, once again, thank you for inviting me to the meeting and show my support for Bishop Stokes and the Willie May Stokes Community Center. Currently, they are feeling an essential gap that the talent of making up you just simply cannot afford to also do for ourselves between the food giveaway, the after school programs, the resource center as a social services provider myself, just knowing the amount of people that they're able to help in a short amount of time with a limited amount of funding is really impactful. So their success is pretty crucial. For us as we explore ways to meet those disparities in a creative manner. Recently we were awarded a grant to build a new community center and in an effort to not duplicate services. We will be exploring partnering with the Willie May Stokes Community Center, which is one way to help them, but that does not fill their immediate need. So it is my hope that as they come before you and they make the request to meet those needs that we are able to find a way to work with them and collaborate because once again, they do serve a very vulnerable population. A lot of the students that attend the two charter schools in that area are essentially being raised by grandparents going back to the literacy that you all have spoken on just being able to fill those gaps between the generations there as well. So again I I do think that the Senate does an exceptional job of putting their hand in multiple parts at one time. Thank you. Thank you. Before you leave, Commissioner Wheeler, then I have to ask. I just wanted to ask you, when is that grant money expected to come in? Do you have a 19? No. I have Sarah with me. She can call out, expand on that a little more. Come on up, Sarah. Got to get you on the mic for people at home. So we have started the process. And in fact, we chose to select it at an architect and engineer. In fact, it's the same architect. That's going to be working on the library because those two buildings are going to be in the same vicinity. So the next phase, what we're doing now is getting in appraisal so we can enter to contract purchase the land. So the whole grant has to be closed out by the end towards the end. I think maybe the third quarter of 2026. So we're under time crunch. OK. Madam Mayor, what I wanted to say is we had a joint meeting with the City of Waldo and when requests come from large entities in the local community, if they have the letter of support of the local municipality and it's kind of a partnership request or joint request, it carries a lot more weight for us as board members at the county level to consider and get them into budget. So the more coordination you can do with Bishop with those requests the better from the city. Thank you. Thank you so much. Anyone else? Next speaker. You agree with that? Yeah. Oh, come on up, Ian. I can't miss my opportunity. I know some of you were aware that we, at one time, pitched the idea of DuVal Elementary becoming a community center that would serve the whole community, but that just brings, and then it sort of fell apart for various reasons. But I'm wondering, just, you know, we know that our kids do way better if they get mental health counseling. When we realize that they're homeless, they need a whole another set of, the family needs a whole lot of stabilizing things. And it all works together. And so my question is you've got a lot of underutilized schools under enrolled schools. But is there any way that, and Duval is one of them, they have a preschool there now, but I think it's losing money maybe? I don't know, but is there any way that and DuVal is one of them they have a preschool there now but I think it's losing money maybe I don't know but is there a way to embed community resource areas into schools is my question there may technically not be a way to do that but maybe there is or maybe the county and city can figure Any hand? Thank you. Next speaker. Come on on that. Okay. Welcome back, Dr. Moss. Thank you. I, I, the, our resource centers are such a powerful model and I just want to say like it was started from a community initiative, right? A, a, a concern, citizens our first community center at SWAG. There is such an opportunity for the centers to be resources for education in Elachwood County. However, they're also under-resources. So a recent conversation, for example, with a community center leader was, you know, Ms. Hachine, they come, the parents come, and I know I got this adult learning GED prep from the school board, and the people come, and they'll take it, but they don't have the skills they need to even sign on. And he's like, and my people don't have enough capacity to, you know, to help them. And so he's like, the need is so much greater. when you really lift the hood and get into the nitty-gritty, the nuances of the need are so great that even though we have community centers, they may not have a learning specialist skill set. And so there are frameworks that we can use community-wide so that we're all creating using a common language to address issues not just related to literacy, but learning in general and special education. The high leverage practices come to mind, which are like what are the core skills that we all need to know if we're working at any level related to education that can transfer across settings. And so having the kinds of conversations that take more than two minutes to have are so important. And I'm eager to participate, but my capacity to be there has been limited. What I would like to address is a couple of things. One is that our children's trust, which was also a community initiative that we worked for many, many years before we even had the trust. It was designed to be a backbone organization to do collective impact work. And we have, you know, we're going to even just know at five years getting, just getting started, oh no. About 25% of Black mothers are able to read. This is not just a K-12 issue, right? Like we have to make sure that adults know how to read and that every child in childbearing years is literate because they're going to have children. An early literacy starts with making sure that our adolescents know how to read them right and their teachers are well supported and funded and their parents are. Thank you Dr. Wonson. Thank you. That's another way to do it. No, cover the light. Sorry guys. That's good. She eating, but it's creative. So we like creativity here. Yeah, commissioner, thank you for being here, does. Absolutely. Thank you all for it. Having this wonderful conversation and this much needed conversation, I really did appreciate the presentation and did want to kind of follow up on an idea that was just brought forward by the folks from ACES and Motion. Member Certainly and I have had recent but also conversations over several months about the use of Duval. Everybody has heard me appear talking about Duval and while I don't sit on the school board, Duval is important to me because it is in the heart of my district. It is a school that I went to when my parents met in third grade at. But do all of this incredible opportunity as well. While we do see what is happening there as being something that is both viable and helpful, we do understand that it is definitely underutilized. And I would like to say, if I heard correctly, I heard that we have a resource center in Pleasant Street. No, no. What is the service in the organization? Okay, okay. So where is it? It is on the main center. Behind the main center. Okay. It's a pleasant place. Okay, thank you very much. When you said Pleasant Street, I was like, okay. That's not East Gainesville, but all right. But to the point, to the point of the utilization of DuVal, I would really, really be interested in hearing what that possibility might look like. But I also would like to say this, I understand that this is the county and the children's trust, but please do not exclude the city. We definitely need to be tapped, and I'm going to take a bit of a liberty and say, tap me. I think you can tap a few of my other colleagues as well. Don't leave us out of the conversation. We have a host of spaces that should be looked into for the possibility of expanding these types of services as well. Back to the literacy piece, I wonder if there's opportunity and certainly only the city manager and staff could have this conversation with you. But I wonder if there's opportunity for us to take a look at our after school programming through parks, rec, and cultural affairs because there's plenty of opportunity there as well. Please tap the city of Gainesville for partnership in this effort. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. You heard it, Marsha. Oh, yeah. OK. All right, next speaker. Player was having to leave the US government. Good, happy, nice to meet you. Yeah, I'm the table. I wish. OK. All right, we're going to, oh, yeah, go ahead. Bye, Samar. from archer. Thank you for being here. You're welcome. Thanks for inviting me Hello, Iris Bailey City of Archer. So yes, like a former commissioner just said I agree Please don't count the city of Archer out. I am the one for over 20 years was the person that that rented the space to do summer tutoring to our kids. After joining the board, I still carried that torch until it got to be a little too much. And the children's trust, I had no idea about it until what, maybe four years ago, three, four years ago. So we did not have any funding. I've reached out to the school, I've reached out to the community because we do, we need help, our kids need help. And parents, you know, parents, it's complicated because I work in the school system as well. So it is very complicated. Some parents really do want to help and some don't know how to help. But with the extra resources, we're able to support our kids because that's what's most important. So yeah, count Archerian as well because we want our kids to have these resources as well. We need it all around the county and the state. We saw that on the monitors. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Anyone else? All right. Back to the board. Anything else on this item? Okay. We're going to mark these two off. We're going to now open it up to public comment. comment Is there anyone from the public that wishes to address these boards on anything not on the agenda Anything not on the agenda Don't want Not on the agenda to colleague yeah, I'm sure we'll see you tomorrow, right? Claudia did you want to come up? Right, and come in the morning? No. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. Day late, dollars. What? Carls online if we want to hear from them about that. I think we've already missed it. Yeah, I think we missed that one. Yeah, but thank you. Thank you. All right. Member comments will start with the trust. Dr. Patten, you have a chance. Just want to say thank you for the opportunity. It's always good to get to meet some more of our community members. And obviously all these topics are super important. So thank you for having us over today. And nice to see everybody again, too. Amazing gift to our community to have Dr. Patton join us. Yes, absolutely. Every time you speak I think that and I just want to say that loud. Thank you. Have you been a guest? Have I been a guest? Yes, I love it. I want to show you our draft. Yeah, so I want to thank the county, what a county commissioners, you all, your board, for being concerned about an issue that is not really in your willhouse. And being willing, not just having one meeting about it or having one conversation about it, but being continuing to talk about it and investing, being willing to invest funds in it. I as one member of the school board, would actually like to extend my thanks to you guys, because you guys have been good partners to our organization. And when I've called and asked, I've gotten nothing but support from you all. So I thank you guys for that. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations, Piquets. Thank you all very much for continuing the conversation and as well as the investments in children and families, some that's been talked about for a while. And it's great to see that the conversation continuing and continuing. I noticed that the far-re-rated drop from 21% to 19%, but it's not great. It's still stepping the right direction. So thank you all for all your efforts and thank you all for being well to meet with us. It was Commissioner Pinkerson with Dr. Hart back in 2015. Well good. 2014, yeah, that meeting out of swag with the. About 15 years. Yep, so thank you, Commissioner, for your advocacy. Mary Helen, you have anything? Just very quickly. I think Mr. Was it Jareal? Why was he here? Yes. OK. I don't know if he's still here or not, but I would use. I think it would be helpful to have a list of those young people that he has ready to launch that maybe we could pair up some of those people with sponsors or to make sure that whether it's the churches we haven't talked about the religious community anywhere in these conversations. But if we could get a list of those young people that are ready to launch, I think it would be helpful maybe we could pair them up with somebody who might be able to help them get to the next step. Good idea. Thank you. Christopher, anything? Yeah, on Friday, a survey went out to a lot of county employees and we'll be going out today to the Sheriff's Department and to some other first responders that we'll be asking about needs for daycare. And that's one of the reasons why I brought that up earlier is because we have a real true need for quality daycare in this community and it steps right into literacy and being prepared for school. And I just wanted to let you guys know that that is coming. I'll be looking to have some individual conversations with some of you. I have a Sunshine meeting scheduled with Commissioner Cornell as well as Your vice chair who's name I can't remember right now who's not here? Tawmley. Yeah, I think she's online. Chair are you still online? Probably. Yeah, yeah, and I look forward to to that meeting so we can discuss things in more detail. But we will be looking for help from the children's trust with that if these assessment comes out in the direction that we think it will. But I thank you all for in advance for listening to me and if you happen to be one of the people that gets the survey, please fill it out and sit it back. Thank you. Thank you. you with kidding teachers and at all, and thank you. Because a lot of these schools are too early before daycare. We are talking about 24-hour daycare mostly, it's right now for four responders, but I think that there will be an opportunity for the school board to participate. Commissioner, appreciate. I guess I'd mostly want to say thank you. Thank you for, I guess I just didn't really grateful to my colleagues on the county commission because I feel like when I came on this board, I came in like a hurricane with a lot of ideas around how we could support our community to build a safety harness and how we could really start these conversations. And I feel like between what the children's trust is doing and what we are doing and the city and the other, public officials, we're starting to see that catalyzing, although those ideas pulling together, right? Where gun violence meets literacy, meets resource centers, meets public health and community health workers. And like it's catalyzing, it's taking time for us, I think, you know, to get all these pieces together to a place where we can be most efficient with our resources, to make the biggest impact in our community. But we're getting there and I just really appreciate everyone's willingness to come to the table to have the hard conversations, to call our own selves out for the work that we haven't done in the past, to call ourselves out for the things that aren't going right with the things we are doing, and to thank the community for coming out and calling us to the table and giving us their good ideas and being willing to take the time and energy to provide us with their own expertise and their experiences so that we can build a better government and use their tax dollars more wisely. So I just thank you to everybody because this is this is a really powerful conversation today and I'm excited about where it's leading. Cheryl, thank you, Chris. Cheryl, do you have anything you want to ask? No, I just, I really appreciated all the conversations that happened today in the passion with which our community comes out every time and all the great comments that they've shared. So just thank you for these opportunities to collaborate at a broader level. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Cheryl. I'll just conclude by saying, you know, when we formed the Children's Trust, I remember Lee and I and all the kind of commissioners, you know, we unanimously supported it. But then we went over to the city and there were seven city commissioners and they unanimously supported it. And we went to the school board and they unanimously supported it. And every small city we got their support. And it passed over 60 percent, which is no small task in today's day. And with each of these conversations that we have on all the boards that I'm on from the library to career source who thank you for being here, to the calls that I made on Easter Sunday saying, hey, we're having a really important conversation tomorrow. Anyway, you can make it and to see this room fill up the day after, you know, a long, a long weekend. Just tell me that you're exactly right, Commissioner, because we are on the right path. It sure does take a long time, but when we're all moving in this kind of martial plan to make sure that every single child, every single one has an opportunity to be whatever it is they want to be. To be successful and can read. I think at decade from now we're going to look back at some of these meetings and we're going to say, you know, we're not there yet, but we're a lot farther along than we were back back in the 20s. And we probably won't even be here at the same time. But they'll say, a lot longer along than they were back in the 20s. And that's my whole. I say you put yourself on a three-year blind. Well, I've heard that for the young kids, you don't like let it be 10 years because in my opinion, my uncle says some problems are more profitable than not to solve. Ah, well, I think some people don't want to fix problems. They want to prolong them because it keeps them with the job. So I'll give you a long run, let's give ourselves a short run wait to say we're going to address this. Amen. I like the sense of urgency. I guess that's my conclusion. I feel a sense of urgency with this board, with these boards and with this community and I really just appreciate it. So with that we are adjourned. All right. Thank you.