BOARD OF DIRECTOR’SMEETING

Minutes–Unapproved

Thursday, March 24, 2016

In attendance:Jane Bambace, Patsy Buker, Shurrea Daniels, Joshua Drechsel, Harry Fogle,

Jack Geller, Pat Gerard, Craig Phillips-Chair, Anne Ryan, Elliott Stern, Yvonne Malague, Jim Madden

Conference Call: N/A

Absent:Celeste Fernandez, Stuart Laake, Ellen Lasher, Erik Smith,

James Sewell, Edward Peachey, Dr. Shana Rafalski, Amy Crumble

Coalition Council:Jay Walker

Coalition Staff: Lindsay Carson, Eva Mathews, Matt Bonner, Janika Polk

Guests: Rick Davis, St. Petersburg Council Member Karl Nurse

  1. CALL TO ORDER

A quorum was present.

ChairCraig Phillips called the meeting to order at 4:07p.m.

  1. Chair Craig Phillipscalled for approval of the agenda for the March 24, 2016 Board of Director’s Meeting.

A motion was made byJack Geller and seconded by Jim Maddento:

Approve the March 24, 2016 Agenda.

The motion passed unanimously.

  1. Chair Craig Phillips called for approval of the consent agenda for the March 24, 2016 Board of Director’s Meeting.

A motion was made by Jack Geller and seconded by Jim Madden to:

Approve the March 24, 2016Consent Agenda.

January 28, 2016, Board of Director’s Minutes16.03.01i

Finance Report16.03.01ii

Performance Report16.03.01iii

School Readiness Enforcement Policy16.03.01iv

VPK Enforcement Policy16.03.01v

Approve Budget Amendment16.03.01vi

Sliding Fee16.03.01vii

The motion passed unanimously.

  1. PROVIDER RECOGNITION
  2. Child Development and Family Guidance

Provider was unable to attend the Board Meeting. Lindsay highlighted that the Child Development and Family Guidance Center, located on 4th St. South in St. Petersburg, recently obtained their NAEYC Accreditation. We are very excited to continue the increase access in our high need areas.

  1. ACTION ITEMS
  2. Pinellas County School Board – Florida First Start Program Contract SR. 16-01

This has been approved by both Finance and Executive Committees last week.

The Pinellas County School Board Florida First Start Program is the home visitation and play groups that we do in partnership with the Pinellas County School Board.

While this is routine, it was not placed on the consent agenda in order to allow the School Board to abstain. This is a standard renewal of their contract. Lindsay Carson noted that the School District representative was not present and therefore could not abstain. This is the contract for next year that will then go before the School Board. We have had this program in place for the last 12 or 13 years now and it has continued to work well.

Chair Craig Phillips called for approval to accept the Pinellas County School Board – Florida First State Program Contract SR. 16-01.

A motion was made by Jack Geller and seconded byElliott Sternto:

Accept the PCSB Florida First State Program Contract SR. 16.01

The motion passed unanimously.

  1. CEO’s REPORT
  1. Report

Lindsay Carson thanked the Board for traveling to St. Petersburg for this month’s Board Meeting. We are amidst transition in terms of our office space in Clearwater. But this is also a great opportunity to get us down to South County. Last year over half the kids we served were in St. Petersburg. Enrollment wise we expect to end the year with a balance budget. We just enrolled nearly 400 children in recent months. School Readiness is going well.VPK at this point has almost a hundred more children enrolled than this time last year. All lot of effort has gone into the goal we set to increase enrollment and it seems to be working.

Exciting news upcoming is ELC’s move to Countryside Blvd. Special thanks to Elliott for who has been instrumental in getting this moving. Our office in Clearwater is packed.

The servers will be shut down tomorrow night. Server should be back up Monday night. Movers will start on Saturday with a slight delay. Our staff is working closely with the contractors as we get settled in by April 1, 2016 which will allow us not to extend our lease and incur any additional cost with our current space.

We have begun our ongoing project to partner with Pinellas County School to get Student ID numbers assigned to our students in VPK. This is of great value to ELC for number of reasons. This unique identifier will allow us to touch longitudinal outcomes for VPK students in partnership with JWB research department. This would allow a more long term benefit of our programs and guide our programing moving forward where we can improve. And the flip side is that the School District can figure out where their incoming kindergarteners will be coming from and plan accordingly. It’s mutually beneficial to everyone involved.

After submitting a letter of intent to apply, we have been invited by the Foundation of St. Petersburg to submit application for additional grant funding that will allow us to provide some mental health services and behavior analysis services for children who, as we refer to as the top of the pyramid, those children who have more significant needs in terms of health, social and emotional development in child care settings. If funded, we’ll have staff working with the provider and then ideally be contracting out to have clinicians to work and create case plans for those children in partnership with the families, while identifying other services needed. This was the first round for the Foundation and there were a lot of applicants. This Foundation came about by the sale of Bayfront and we are pleased to have made it to the next level.

Rachel Meadors, our Office Coordinator, has moved to Tallahassee and taken a position working with our coalition partners in Tallahassee. As her replacement, we welcome Eva Mathews. Eva has been with the Coalition for a number of years and we know she will do a wonderful job for us in this new position.

  1. Legislative Update

Lindsay Carson reported we didn’t get everything we wished for, but we did get what we really needed. On the School Readiness side there was additional funding. In the Appropriations Act it looks like it’s an additional funding of over $500,000 for Pinellas County. However, this funding has specific ties that instead of it covering slots like we have done historically in the past based on child attendance, we will actually be contracting with child care providers in high need areas by census tracts to pay for slots. We are essentially renting a slot regardless of enrollment or attendance so that we can ensurethat they have capacity and openings for them. Thiswas recommended in the CCDF Reauthorization Act and is new to our community. We have been strongly advocating that as the Legislature moves forward with this that there will be some additional quality requirements in place so these providers who will be getting this guaranteed funding will be subject to a higher threshold of quality care. It will open up additional slots and care for children in terms of access; it’s a step in the right direction. They are investing more dollars in School Readiness and I understand these are recurring funds.

VPK on the other hand did not fareas well. We saw no increase in the base student allocation in VPK so we are still paying VPK providers a rate lower than they were paid dollar for dollar, not reflecting inflation, than they were paid in 2005. Interestingly enough, an amendment filed very late in the gamedid affect the VPK Teaching Strategies Gold Pre and Post Assessment There was a petition circulating in Lakeland at one point and the short version is that will not be required next year. They struck the line item in the budget that paid for that assessment and we will not be doing that next year. The Office of Early Learning has sent notification to the providers. However, this change will not go into effect until July which means this fiscal year the providers do have to do it and if they don’t they will be out of compliance. We’re still working very closely with our providers to support them and ensure that they do get the assessments completed this year. It is my intention that in Pinellas County we will continue using this tool. The tool on a voluntary basis is a very good tool. The way that it was being implemented by the state in terms of the timeline and the requirements and lack of funding for support for it didn’t set up our VPK providers for success.

As Rodney MacKinnon, from the Office of Early Learning had shared previously with the Board, the draft readiness rates that came out did not reflect an accurate picture of the readiness of the children who participated in VPK or in general in the state of Florida. Based on the draft rates of the 203 providers in Pinellas who received 100%, only 70 of those providers had 100% in 2012-13. Those rates are now suspended. There will not be a rate for this year. And we will not have new rates for this year and we won’t have rates for next year, as well. All the more reason why I feel we will want to continue support the Teaching Strategies Assessment among our School Readiness providers so that we can still continue to monitor student growth at the local level in our program.

Discussion:

Yvonne Malague commented that the Board and Legislature would benefit from how the providers are looking at this issue. The trouble that the schools have gone through to come in line with the TSGold Assessment has been very overwhelming. My teachers are asking when am I going to have time to teach the children. Yvonne stated that the TSGold is a good assessment. She expressed concern over the money that’s been invested, teacher training and additional hours paid for them to learn the TSGold. The Legislature need to understand the outcome data will not be valid. The teachers are going to fill it out and it’s not going to mean anything since they aren’t going to care if it’s accurate because it doesn’t count. My request would be, if anyone on the Board has a Legislature’s ear, to voice that if they decide to do something like this again involving the whole community that possibly they decide to fund it for 5 years to see if it’s a viable thing. Then, if it’s discarded, at least it would not have cost the providers and exasperated the teachers to this degree when nothing has been gained from the investment. There is nothing wrong with the measurement, the problem was in the implementation and then to up and stop it. Making it a VPK requirement when VPK is typically 3 hours a day where SR is all day, was also a challenge and created a logistical nightmare.

Lindsay Carson explained the reason given by the Legislature as to why it was pulled had a lot to do with the vendor of the TSGold. The vendor wasn’t prepared for the glitches and not as responsive as they needed to be for the scale that it was implemented. Schools have made significant investments to implement this assessment, as has the coalition and the taxpayers. And because of these investments, it would make sense for us to continue some investment to support the teachers with appropriate technical support to get good SR data out of it to drive instruction and improve quality in the programs and set up our providers and teachers for success.

The CCDF realignment so we came into the federalrequirements did finally pass after 3 years we got the bill passed. This strengthens the background screening requirement and also calls for the 12 month eligibility. With these requirements we can expect see an increase in our Waitlist over the next year. If there is a job change and they don’t exceed 85% of state median income level, they can remain eligible during that 12 months and phase out period. We’ve also met with Child Protection at the Pinellas County Sheriff Office to see impact this will have on short term referrals that turn into longer term referrals. We’ll continue to monitor and keep the Board informed.

Background screening will be more stringent, but since these changes were brought about at the last minute, additional guidance will be forthcoming on how the background screening will impact exemptions. We may have providers and teachers who have had a criminal violation that would have excluded them before, but exemptions could be requested in the past. It’s proposed that these individuals will have to resubmit their background screen and this time exemptions will not be provided. We don’t know if there will be a panel to monitor these exemptions. Patsy Buker shared that we do have teachers that are working in SR and VPK programs that are working who have these exemptions so we will see an impact to staffing but we don’t know to what extent.There are approximately 160-200 statewide but we need to be prepared even if it doesn’t affect us at this time. The Legislature is to contact for rescreening by the August 1, 2016.

  1. DISCUSSION ITEMS
  2. PreK: 5K Readiness Run

Mary Burns presented information regarding the upcoming 5K Readiness run and presented an ELC promo video created internally with our eligibility staff. The run has been working with the Fit to Run in St Petersburg and hope the Board will also take part as possible runners and sponsor supporters.

The Readiness Run will be held April 23, 2016 at the Boyd Hill Nature Center and area.

The focus is on a Storybook Villageoutreach event withmore than 10 providers participating in bringing storybook themes alive in games and activities for parents and children. It’s an expo of sorts bringing together our funding partners and community sponsors, creating a great day of fun and resources for parents and children. Kaplan, Scholastic, Cliffordthe Big Red Dog, Home Depot and St. Petersburg Young Professionals Chamber volunteers will be on hand along with our own CCR&R personnel. Special thanks to Jack Geller, Craig Phillips and Elliott Sternwho have sponsored the run and sponsorships are still available. There was very little staff time used to create this event. We have had large support from the community towards its success. The City of St. Petersburg donated free admission for anyone registering for the race and sponsored the entire facility at no charge.

Discussion:

Patsy Buker, knowing the area mentioned that we be mindful of the need for public health precautions regarding mosquitos and recommending that repellant be suggested to those attending.

  1. New Governor Appointees

Elliott Stern, currently from Private Sector, was appointed yesterday to the end of April 2016 and will continue for full term May 2016.

Phillip Russell was appointed by the governor replacing Cindy Seletos.

  1. PRESENTATIONS
  2. VPK Utilization

Discussion:

Elliott Stern addressed a conversation he had with principals regarding the K readiness ratio reported by Campbell Park and Melrose Elementary. He stated that the numbers that were indicated by the principals were much different from those from the state and that they would look into it, but coming from the state there was nothing the principals said there was nothing they could do to change them.

  1. Vroom - Video

Discussion:

Family engagement is critical to success of kindergarten readiness. OEL has received a grant to help promote Vroom! Vroom! Is an online app that offers tips to parents on how to support their child’s development. We’ll be sharing this a lot on social media, at CCR&R events and during the eligibility process as well. We’ll be working with the state to get data on how many families are using the program.

  1. Ownership Changes – Investigative News Story

ELC in Palm Beach was recently featured in an investigating news report looking at the “shell game” played by some providers who do the quick change of ownership to avoid compliance issues to stay in business. Licensing and coalitions have been dealing with this issue for a long time.

Elliott Stern asked if we have any of these ownership change fraud issues in Pinellas County.

Patsy Buker replied, yes, there are.

Elliott Stern suggested that this issue we discussed at the next Executive Board meeting. He also asked if the provider is suspended, do that children have to be relocated.

Lindsay replied yes, if they want to continue to use their SR or VPK scholarship.

Elliott Stern asked how many times can a child transfer in VPK and if there were any special provisions in the event of provider disqualification.

Matt Bonner reiterated that there is rule development for good cause being worked on by OEL and should go to the Board of State Education at their May meeting.

Lindsay expanded that years ago there was draft legislation that would have taken care of this issue but it didn’t pass. It has always been that if a provider is identified by USDA to be fraudulent on a food program, they will not be deemed eligible for School Readiness or VPK funding.