Date:  

November 8, 2007

Facilitator:  Maureen Cary

Location:

3 Blue Streak Blvd., 2^nd floor, School District Administrative Offices

Recorder: Robin Ambrosino

Attendees:

Robin Ambrosino, Kelley Bayer, Kati Behrens, Maureen Cary, Madeline Daley,
Bob D’Avignon, Judy Ekman, Deb Lagoe, Mary Marcus, Diane McGarry,
Mike Piccirillo, Brenda Quinn, Bob Sheahan, Marion Spar, Dave Torres, Tracie White, Steve Wood.

Materials Distributed:

Community Summit summaries

Overview

Discussion

Decisions/Actions

News &
Announcements

·     Girls Inc. will host two financial literacy workshops for mothers and daughters age 9-12 on Dec. 1 at the Saratoga Springs Public Library and on Dec. 2 at Cornell Cooperative Extension. There will also be a mother daughter workshop called Reaching Together on Dec. 17 at the Ballston Area Community Center. For more information, call 374-9800 ext. 224.
 

·     The school district’s Profiles in Character column is underway for the current school year. Partners were encouraged to nominate kids using the online form, especially kids who might be off the beaten path. This year, nominations are due by the third Tuesday of each month, in time for the column to run on the last Tuesday of each month.

Partnership
Updates

·   The Community Summit on Youth was a big success on Saturday morning, November 3. Over 130 people attended, including 30 walk-ins. Keynote speaker Mike Nerney discussed adolescent brain development, and high school kids helped facilitate workshops afterward. Lots of comments were offered during the wrap up discussion. Attendees came from diverse community sectors, including schools, school athletics, county agencies, local and county recreation departments, the Boy Scouts, the medical community, local businesses, youth serving organizations, Domestic Violence/Rape Crisis, Law Enforcement, parents, and students.

Keynote presentation was videotaped. Depending on the video and audio quality, it may be possible to make the information available as a video feed on the Partnership website. Some brief highlights included:

·   Kids’ brains can’t see future consequences.

·   Kids’ brains are programmed to take risks at this age. Our job is to find appropriate venues for risk taking.

·   Having extra money puts them at higher risk for drug and alcohol use.

·   Kids have much more intense emotions at this age.
 

The Planning Committee will be debriefing soon. Goal is to identify where we can plug ideas into existing Partnership initiatives. To that end, partners were asked to sit with the committees we identified last month and sort through ideas that came at the summit.
 

·   Roughly 75 people expressed interest in continuing the discussion. Information will be sent via e-mail about a follow up meeting.

·   Regardless of video feed, written highlights will be posted online.

Committee
Work

 

·   At the October meeting, group decided to break into committees after 20 minutes of updates at the start of each meeting. Committees are:  parent resources, high school transition, public perception of harm, and youth-focused initiatives.

·   Goal of this meeting’s committee work was to see if any topics that came up at the summit can be plugged into existing committees. Not all ideas should be Partnership based. We want to make it possible for everyone interested in a particular topic to get together – not just follow Partnership committee leads.

·   Committees were asked to mark up “big ideas” sheet for topics relevant to their committee, and choose someone as point person for future meetings.

·   Maureen will contact point people about next steps, as well as larger group from summit to let them know about committee topics and how best to get involved.

Parent
Resources
Committee

·   Courtney Lamport is the point person. She will check with public library children’s room to see if they’d be receptive to placing parenting information there.

High School
Transition
Committee

·   Concepts for future discussion that came up at the summit included culture change from middle to high school, block scheduling, and lack of health education in the early high school grades. Other topics this committee discussed included:

·   Positive things we can focus on to counteract national media, negative messages about teens, etc.

·   Helping parents and kids find out about programs that are already available.

·   Surveying students to identify their interests.

·   Separating the 9^th graders in a wing if possible to protect them from the older teen culture.

·   The transition in sports from modified and fun to an emphasis on winning and competitive team culture.

·   Point person is Bob Sheahan.

Public Perception
of Harm
Committee

·   This group focused on Saratoga’s reputation as a party town, parents’ denial about kids’ substance use, parents’ reliving glory days in front of kids, and the possibility of providing parenting workshops at big companies, and future media campaigns.

·   Point person is Maureen Cary.

Youth
Committee

·   Group discussed these questions:  Community center? What are appropriate venues for teen risk taking? How to provide appropriate risk-taking opportunities? How to identify activities/ organizations to connect to – survey the kids, include them in committees. Need to ask kids what they want rather than dictating. How to pair up with existing programs.

·   Point person is Bob D’Avignon.

Next Meeting

In place of a December Partnership meeting, there will be an audio conference on Tuesday, Dec. 18 on Parental Involvement and Underage Drinking from 3 – 4:15 p.m. in The Prevention Council Conference Room. Participating from home is also an option. Call Maureen for more information at 581-1230.