Saratoga Partnership for Prevention

Partnership Meeting Minutes

Date:  

March 10, 2005

Facilitator:      Dave Torres

Location:

3 Blue Streak Blvd., 2^nd floor, School District Administration Building

Recorder:       Robin Ambrosino

Attendees:

R. Ambrosino, K. Bayer, L. Beer, J. Bell, M. Cary, K. Cushing, B. D’Avignon,
B. Dixon, J. Ekman, R. Goliber, D. Greene, E. Herlihy, N. Karas, J. Kelly,
B. LaBarge, S. Lang, M. Laudicina, R. Lavigne, D. McGarry, T. Moon, J. Murphy,
K. Pettigrew, K. Sephas, J. Tirelli, D. Torres.

Materials Distributed:

“April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month” flyer, pamphlet about MADD’s Death Notification Seminar,
pamphlet about CAPTAIN’s Youth Home.

Upcoming Events

·     Saratoga Center for the Family is promoting the month of April as National Child Abuse Prevention Month. To raise awareness, there will be a Blue Ribbon Ceremony beginning at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 2, at the Saratoga County Arts Council on Broadway, a 5K Walkathon on April 30, and a child Advocate of the Year Celebration recognizing Philly Dake on April 30^th at the Holiday Inn. For more information about these events, call 587-8008.

      The Center for the Family will begin another Strengthening Families program on April 5^th. Their evening Parenting Group began on March 15^th, and on April 28^th there will be a Child Custody Stress Prevention education group at Skidmore College.

·     Plans for the Saratoga YMCA’s new building are underway and will include an area for teens. It will be located on 23 acres near the high school on West Avenue behind Espey, with plenty of parking. The goal is for the building to be finished by September 2006.

·     The Saratoga After Prom committee has been collecting donations to help underwrite the cost of the program. The committee continues to look at strategies to get more kids involved in planning.
       In a related matter, the high school PTSO had a long talk about generating interest in more substance abuse prevention programming at the high school. Parents are concerned there aren’t enough, especially after the high school dance on March 4^th (see below).

·      Nicole Karas has a friend who’s starting a new organic landscaping business, called GOGU. For more information, visit their website, www.readysetgogu.com.

·      District Attorney Jim Murphy will be traveling to Utica with the director of Saratoga County Department of Social Services to view Utica’s Child Advocacy Center. All crime related to children goes to the Center first. Jim and Pat Maxwell will be studying the way Utica’s organization is structured. Also, Crime Victims Rights Week begins on Sunday, April 10^th, with a 2 p.m. vigil at the Presbyterian NE Congregational Church. This year’s awardee, for the person giving outstanding service to crime victims, is Loretta Somerville.

·      There will be a Youth Court graduation ceremony during Crime Victim’s Rights Week on Monday, April 11^th. There were 55 new officers trained before Christmas 2004, but there hasn’t been an official graduation ceremony to recognize Youth Court volunteers for several years. The event will be in the high school auditorium at 7 p.m. For more information, call 581-1230 ext. 20.

·      There will be another Saratoga County Treatment Court graduation on Wednesday, May 4^th at the county court offices in Ballston Spa. Also, nine people from Saratoga County’s Treatment Court Advisory Board went to Warren County’s Juvenile Treatment Court training.

·      MADD Saratoga is sponsoring a Death Notification Seminar at Schenectady County Community College from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, April 5^th. Cost is $10. The course is designed to help law enforcement, clergy, victim advocates and other professionals learn how to present bad news to people who experience the sudden loss of a loved one. John Evans, a drunk driving crash survivor and Assistant Director for MADD’s Services and Training division, will be the presenter. He will also teach a Victim Advocacy Training workshop in Latham in early April. Call 785-6233 to register.

       Also, the Sean Patrick French 5K Memorial Run/Walk will take place in Chatham, NY, on April 24^th to raise money for Sean’s Fund and other organizations in the area. Sean was killed in drunk driving crash. For more information, call 583-3600.

·     The Post-Star newspaper will feature an article on truancy in the North Country on Sunday, March 13^th, which will include information about District Attorney’s Office and the Saratoga Springs School District’s collaboration on the Truancy Prevention Initiative.

·     The Saratoga County Board of Supervisors signed a proclamation supporting the 10-county “Parents Who Host Lose the Most” media campaign. Other government entitities from other counties will be doing the same. Channel 10 has agreed to be the media sponsor, and have promised lots of coverage throughout prom and graduation season between mid-April and late June.

·        Judy Tirelli requested that either Judy Ekman, Maureen Cary, or Nicole Karas attend the next PTSO meeting on April 5^th at 7 p.m. in the high school library to discuss the issue further.

CAPTAIN

Presentation

Joan Ostrov, who is Director of Development for CAPTAIN, gave a brief presentation about the Youth Home for kids aged 13-17.

CAPTAIN has been around for 27 years and has run many programs about youth, risk, and families. The shelter program began in 1998 and is certified to serve runaway, homeless and throwaway youth in crisis for a maximum of 30 days. The Home provides shelter, advocacy, support, referrals, and family mediation while teens are with them, with the goal of getting young people to return home. They can accommodate 8 kids at once, both male and female. They can also accept infants at the Home, which is a house located on six acres in Malta.

While teens are at the shelter they live in a structured environment. They receive tutoring and counseling and are responsible for specific chores. The average stay is 11-12 days, but care coordinators follow up with families for up to six months after the teen returns home.

The shelter is seeing more and more kids each year, often younger than 13. In 1998, 17 people stayed at the Home. Last year, 109 stayed, and over 300 kids contacted them by phone. Most of the time they’re able to reunite families. However, 3% of their clients shouldn’t be living at home, and CAPTAIN’s staff works with foster care agencies and Child Protective Services (CPS) to place them elsewhere. A large percentage of the children they see are already involved with CPS.

CAPTAIN’s Street Outreach program is a federally-funded grant program. Teams of trained young people with go into different local communities (Ballston Spa, Saratoga Springs, Mechanicville, Clifton Park, and Corinth) to seek out young people who may be in crisis and encourage them to get help. They are also able to provide resources, referrals, food, supplies of blankets, coats, hats, toothbrushes, etc.

CAPTAIN recently opened a Drop-In Center on Main Street in Corinth, where few county-based resources are available. Tutoring, meals, and referrals are available. The Center is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and so far has been very successful. CAPTAIN is using the building only two days a week, so it is available to agencies who want to use it at other times. For more information, call 371-1185.

Partnership

Updates

·     Maureen Cary reported on the status of the Strengthening Families program at Maple Avenue Middle School, which was slated to begin March 1^st and has been postponed twice due to snow. It will start on Tuesday, March 15^th instead. The Rotary, Wilton Kiwanis, and Elks have all agreed to help underwrite the cost of meals. BOCES Culinary Arts students  will cater meals each week. Attendance is lower for this round, which may be the result of not offering a course last fall.

·     Partnership staff are compiling the Communities That Care Youth Survey results and hope to schedule a meeting with school district administrators before the April Partnership meeting. The goal is to use the bulk of the April meeting to present Youth Survey results.

·     Parent Surveys are finally complete. The surveys will be sent out for compilation by an independent evaluator and comparison with Youth Survey results. Staff hope to have those results by early May.

·     Partnership staff have been in contact with the middle school and high school PTSOs to see if we can get on each of their May agendas to present the youth survey results. Staff are also speaking with Rotary and Chamber members to discuss the possibility of presenting youth survey results to them as well.

·     John Kelly has agreed to give a presentation about underage drinking to Navy recruits. Staff has looked at the PowerPoint presentation materials we already have, but they are geared more for parents. This content wouldn’t be appropriate for Navy recruits.

·     Several Partnership members have been contacted for letters of support or more formal Memoranda of Understanding for the Drug Free Communities re-application grant. Staff have a template to help people write these letters, which are due by March 23^rd.

·     In response to discussions about providing Partnership information to parents in flyers distributed at music concerts, questions have been raised about how to finance the printing of palm cards with “Parents Who Host Lose the Most” messages. There was also concern about the potential amount of waste if multiple family members are taking the same material. After the next Parents Who Host meeting, staff will know better how many flyers will be available, and at what cost.

·   Staff will review existing materials, make them more appropriate to Navy recruits, and revisit the subject at a later date.

2005/06

Planning

Discussion

·     It’s awkward to do grant planning so far in advance, since our grant year runs from October 2004 to October 2005. Right now, we’ve barely had an opportunity to begin things we planned for this year before projecting results and planning for next year.

·     CTC youth data indicates that middle school programming is effective, but that by the time kids are juniors and seniors in high school, substance use is slightly above the national average. With the first group of All Stars campers going into high school next year, we need to think about how we can address the transition to high school in a new way. We need input about what’s currently available, what’s possible, what’s needed, and what’s appealing.

·     The existing 9^th grade transition program includes a tour of the building, 100 students at a time, with 11^th and 12^th graders. Johanna Friedman is a 10^th grade principal. She helped coordinate the existing program and would be a good contact person. The group also raised the possibility of contacting 8^th grade All Stars to participate in focus groups about what anxieties they may have, and talking to 9^th graders about how their transition could have been smoother last fall.

·     In reference to the alcohol abuse at the dance on Friday, March 4^th, where several students were suspended for drinking in the parking lot, Judy Tirelli believes the community needs to send a stronger message to upperclassmen about consequences for irresponsible behavior. A 9^th grader went to the hospital with a .23 Blood Alcohol Content.

·     Group discussed mandatory program for athletes that’s currently in place in Fort Edward. Before the season starts, athletes must attend a mandatory meeting with their parents as a pre-requisite to playing in interscholastic competitions. The policies and expectations of the district are laid out at this meeting. To follow through with these expectations, the district conducts two random drug tests a year.

·     Maureen mentioned a conversation she had with John Underwood, who lives in Essex County and conducts presentations geared specifically to athletes about codes of conduct and rules for competing in sports. He offered to come speak at a Partnership meeting about the myth that participating in sports is a protective factor. His presentations focus on the effect of substances on athletes’ bodies. The Broadalbin-Perth District has done a lot of work with him. For more information, visit his website at www.americanathleticinstitute.org .

·     Group discussed possibility of bringing this concept to a bigger forum – ie., a district-wide superintendents meeting. Whether it’s local or region-wide, an athletic code of conduct would be a general policy initiative that will take time to make happen. And it doesn’t have to be relegated to athletics. Band, orchestra, and cast parties for theater are not exempt from the same kind of behavior.

·   Maureen plans to attend John Underwood’s presentation at the PRIME to area Athletic Directors on Friday, March 18^th. Several partners will also attend to get an idea of what his presentation is like.

·         Group agreed that the most appropriate venue to raise this idea would be the next Safe and Drug Free School Committee meeting at 7:30 a.m. on Wed., April 6^th. Maureen, John Kelly, Dave Torres, and Judy Ekman will bring up the subject there as well.

Next Meeting

The next Partnership meeting will take place at 3:30 p.m. on April 14^th at the district offices on the high school campus. Saratoga Springs Police Lieutenant Gary Forward will facilitate.