SFGov

back to Juvenile Probation Department home page

Programs_Committee

2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000

MINUTES OF MARCH 19, 2002 PROGRAM COMMITTEE MEETING
held at Youth Guidance Center Room 328 375 Woodside Ave San Francisco, CA 94127

The minutes of this meeting set forth all actions taken by the Commission on the matters stated, but not necessarily the chronological sequence in which the matters were taken up

1.          (ACTION) Roll Call
The meeting was called to order by the Chair at 5:34 pm. Comm. Dupre was present at the gavel.
2.          (ACTION) Approval of February 6, 2002 meeting minutes.
The minutes were approved as written.
(public comment) None
3.          Public comment on any matter within the subject matter jurisdiction of the Juvenile Probation Commission
There was none
4.          (DISCUSSION) Chief Probation Officer's plan for TANF Funding and plan of action with Community Based Programs.
Ed Lopatin gave a brief update. The current TANF grant program sunsets in Oct. 2003, TANF ranch funds end this Oct and may not be extended. He reported that there are bills in Congress, which would extend TANF through '07, but at what levels, no idea.
Comm. Dupré asked what might be the best scenario for TANF ranch funds? Lopatin said that finding another funding source to supplant it. The Chief Probation Officers' Association is lobbying for this.
Comm Richard asked what the plan for the TANF funds was for 2002-03. Lopatin asked if he meant the expenditure plan. Yes. And there was a mention of a $175K supplement to the general fund that would cut expenditures. Where would the cuts be? Chief Williams said that the TANF plan would be developed after they know what the TANF allocations would be. The intent is to keep the majority of current grantees. The Dept will bring a draft of the spending plan to the Commission before they take it to the JJCC.
(public comment) None
5.          (DISCUSSION) Presentation on the San Francisco Youth Development Program.
Comm Richard commended Liz Jackson-Simpson on this plan for how it will help the youth at LCRS.
L. Jackson-Simpson explained that this plan resulted from a proposal led by Children's Mental Health Services to State funders (Workforce Investment Act, Mental Health Substance Abuse). The goal is to reduce recidivism rate of young people who are challenged by mental health/substance abuse issues. The award came in July 2001, and since then multiple-disciplinary teams have created service strategies for young people involved in the juvenile justice system.
There was a meeting of service providers today at LCRS (including the Youth Development Crime Prevention team), to design complementary services for those youth there. The grant identifies service gaps for youth leaving the camp, the hall, and returning to the communities, and this grant will be used to insure a safety net of services. This is essentially a value added aftercare program. (eg. making sure the school program is in place, to connect them (the youth) with mental health or substance abuse counselors. There is another grant being leveraged with this grant. That is the Youth Opportunities grant, which targets 4 specific neighborhoods.
She referred to the document passed out, showing a flowchart and said they hope to start enrolling students into the program the beginning of April.
D. Sanders said this program will greatly enhance the efforts at LCRS. He thanked L. Jackson-Simpson . Chief Williams said that the benefits of this program are that providers at LCRS will be able to coordinate with outside providers to make a coordinated plan to serve youth in LCRS and when they leave. If the Dept is able to get a budget modification approved, they will be able to do staff training and development of all LCRS staff: communications and team building. One issue identified long ago by the Commission, the Dept, and the Courts was the need for that. The Dept has lacked the resources to do that in an ongoing way. But a budget modification is needed to use this grant to do that.
Comm. Dupré asked if the youth could be involved. L. Jackson-Simpson said that this was an intrinsic part of the plan (she showed that in the flowchart).
Comm Richard asked how this will impact the POs' work. L. Jackson-Simpson said that this will assist the Aftercare POs. With the team working in all aspects of the youth's development, more specialists give more help to each youth.
Comm Richard said that he looks forward to a report in 3-4 months.
(public comment) None
6.          (DISCUSSION) Issues involving Log Cabin Ranch School
·          Review of the animal abuse allegations, with response by the Volunteer from the Horse Program, and Don Sanders of Log Cabin Ranch. (see attached document)
Chief Williams said that he just got some information regarding this presentation from D. Sanders.
1.          the owner of the horses at LCRS (Mr. Bougere) plans to move them out on Saturday.
2.          The Dept will then consider whether or not at some future date it would consider returning the program, after reviewing the situation and determining what additional steps need to be taken to make sure the program if it returns will be fully and appropriately operational. So, on that note, he thanked Mr. Bougere for volunteering his time and effort over the last several months to try to bring the program to fruition. The concept is still one that is valuable and worth pursuing, and worth consideration at some future date. It is regrettable that the delay in actually implementing a program, because they had horses but didn't have a horse program, and it's incredible that the delay in implementing the program really fell victim to a combination of factors, The Chief's guess included but was not limited to the transition between a retiring Director and a new Director coming on board. Frankly, it was the failure of the bureaucracy to keep pace with something that was a really good concept that was never brought to full fruition. So he thanked Mr. Bougere for his efforts, and let the committee know that even though for the time being they wouldn't be pursuing the implementation of this program, there is still the possibility, indeed a likelihood that further down the road they will likely revisit the issue and try to establish a program at that point as a part of the schedule that Mr. Sanders is putting together for dealing with a host of issues at LCRS now. It was the Chief's understanding that they have had at least 3 visits at LCRS from representatives from the San Mateo Humane Society, San Mateo Environmental Service Agency, and most recently SF and San Mateo Humane Society. They've asked for copies of their reports and have yet to receive them, but neither has the Dept received any citations or fines for violations, although there have been items that were indicated for corrective measures and those corrective measures have been followed up on, and as a final note, to the best of the Chief's knowledge, through the reports that the Dept has received, there was no substantiation of the kind of abuse that was alleged and that the Dept will be talking to, that came before the Committee's attention on Feb. 6. Again, the Chief said, if at some future point they decide to bring the program back, the implemented, that will likely take a different approach.. and include some of the offers that have been made from interested parties about implementing and operating a program, and contributions, donations and in-kind services to make a successful program. He then deferred to Mr. Sanders who will speak to each of these items, even though many of these will be moot as of Saturday for sure, if not already. But they have made that commitment and they will honor that commitment by walking through the questions and answers.
D. Sanders thanked Richard Bougere and his family for the hard work they put in. and said, in the future, if we decide to go this way, we will.
At this point, D. Sanders read from a prepared document, responding point by point to the statements made by K. Klingele on Feb. 6, 2002.
Comm. Dupré asked how many times the Humane Society came out. Chief Williams said 3. On Jan. 14 (officer Parish, from SM Humane Society), Feb. 14 (Sgt Breuner, Humane Society, and Osborn from Planning and Environmental Services Agency) and March 13, from SM/SF Humane Society.
These are the ones he's aware of. There may be more but he's not aware of them.
Comm. Dupré asked if there was any finding of animal abuse. Chief Williams said he hasn't received any reports and to the best of his knowledge, there was no substantiation of allegations of animal abuse. To date they have not received notices of citations of fines for applicable ordinances. There were items that were taken care of but no substantiation of abuse.
D. Sanders said that at this time, what the idea of what the original plans was, he thinks they've gotten away from that, and what he wants to do as Director, is step back, re-look at the purpose, get folks involved, get the stakeholders in the community, get the stakeholders from the Dept., and look at it and plan from that point. Right now, he's in a new position and he has a thousand things to do. He wants to step back, talk to the stakeholders, talk to the Chief and then make a long-term plan.
Comm Richard asked how many volunteers were working on the horse program. Sanders said it was
Richard and his family.
Comm Richard asked what the cost would be to bring the program back.
Sanders said it doesn't cost the Ranch anything. Chief Williams said this was the original concept, when it was originally presented, the thought was that we would have horses made available to the ranch free of charge, we would have volunteer caretakers, an opportunity for young men to be exposed to an experience they wouldn't otherwise have, but ultimately sign an agreement with the 4-H Club and they would provide a curriculum for involving young men in animal care and in riding, and the school district at one point offered to develop a curriculum around the care and treatment, and riding of horses as well. That was the vision. And it was a vision that was and still is a good one that they projected could be implemented again with no additional cost to the Dept, which was an additional attractive feature. It hasn't come together in the way it was envisioned. In light of the decision of Mr. Bougere and the thousand other things Mr. Sanders has on his plate right now, the Chief said he thought this statement is prudent. It makes sense to make sure that some other elements are up and fully operational, and then in due course of time, somewhere down the road, decide whether they want to reconvene a discussion about the horse program and if so who needs to be involved, what it looks like, what all the different angles have to be taken into account, and still at this point, given where they are at in the budget process, and the fact that they've had to submit two reduction plans, the Chief was not in the position to make a commitment to funding a program. So if that were to happen down the road, that would have to be funded from alternative revenues, if in fact revenues are called for.
Comm. Dupré asked, for the record, if the Dept has outlaid any funding for this program at all. The Chief said no. There is no contract with Mr. Bougere other than some time and effort and labor from the former Director, and there may have been some money he paid out of his pocket for some of the things that happened down there, but there has been no expenditures from the Departmental budget, nothing authorized by him, by way of contract or anything else for that program.
Comm. Dupré stated that it was a volunteer program at the cost of the owner. The Chief said yes.
Comm Richard asked how long Mr. Bougere had been at the ranch. Answer: since last June.
·          Protocols for Advisory Committee
Chief Williams didn't have a copy of the protocols with him. He recollected discussion from the last Commission meeting that they would be referred for further discussion at the Program Committee meeting. He wasn't sure what additional action the Dept needed to take. They haven't done anything in the interim, but they submitted revisions including those recommended by the City Attorney. His understanding was that there would be further discussion of that document, those recommendations, and a final decision by the Program Committee today, so he's prepared to answer questions, if in fact the Committee has any about that, for questions about the content of the protocol, so he was prepared to respond, but this was not an item that he saw where the Dept would be taking a lead.
Comm Richard said then that the Committee was not ready to move forward with that. He reviewed that language referring to evaluating the Chief was thought to be inappropriate, so it was changed. Chief Williams said that he thought the Commission was anticipating a recommendation from this Committee about the final action that they should take.
Comm. Dupré said he recalled that there was a concern about the composition of the committee. His recommendations were included in the revised protocols. He also recalled at the full Commission meeting that there was language having to do with the evaluation of the Chief, and they felt that was not appropriate, and should be taken out. He said that it's time to move on this, since they've been talking about it for some time now, but at the Commission meeting, there was some legal things about going down to LCRS, with the confidentiality of the students. He hopes to fine tune this and move forward with it, as long as those items are addressed.. and most of them have been.
Chief Williams said that the working draft contained a list of membership, which was the recommended membership.
Comm Richard asked if the protocols were approved? Right? And revised. Comm. Dupré said, yes, with the corrections. Chief Williams said that one remaining issue which still has to be considered by the Committee is on guidelines, on the section of Role: the 2nd paragraph. Whether that should be revised or stricken. Comm Richard said that he brought that up, and Comm. Dupre brought it out that it should be removed. Comm. Dupré moved to strike that statement regarding evaluating the Chief. He further re-read the language of the protocol regarding the role of the advisory committee.
Comm. Dupré asked to have a meeting of the Advisory Committee within the next month.
Chief Williams said that he thought finalizing this business and getting the advisory committee operational is very timely because shortly they will have a draft document to review and it will require a lot of input from a number of different parties, and the advisory committee would be an excellent resource to review the document that basically is a description of what they propose to do or are doing to enhance services at LCRS. Certainly within the next 30 days, he is looking for the opportunity to circulate that document and get feedback.
Comm. Dupré asked if the City Attorney should sit at that first meeting. Possibly.
·          Scope of work for the Advisory Committee
Not specifically discussed.
·          Log Cabin School
Jim Fithian, Asst. Principal: been busy re-building the school, both physical structures and program. Painted all the rooms. Captured rooms for educational programming. They are using new computer based reading program to focus on that subject. They will use Title I funds to do this.
He has been wiring the school for Internet access and now has pretty much completed that, including the library. There is still some work to be done, but a significant amount has been accomplished. They are gearing up for the GED testing, and have done a lot of training, but is not ready yet to do the testing.
Fithian made a point that he is paying close attention to the credits being earned by the youth, so that actual transferable credits, both required and elective, are done right and accounted for. There are 3 regular Ed teachers and 1 Special Ed. Mr. Hoffman comes one day a week to do personalized work with students. 2 Para-professionals, the secretary and himself, make up the total staff.
Chief Williams wanted to make sure there is supervision in the library while youth use the Internet.
Comm. Dupré expressed his concern for the low numbers of youth. He said that the whole rationale of the advisory committee was in response to work with the interim Director and really develop strong substantial programs integrated with the schools. As Ms. Jackson is trying to do things that are going to have quantitative outcomes, what he wants to hear in future program committee meetings, things that can help him or help other people who read our minutes because some of the concern is what is really taking place at LCRS. And he's not just harping about the school, he's talking about in totality. What he needs is that with lower teacher student ratios, we should see some measured improvements academically and things of that nature, and for him as a commissioner it would help him in the future if he could have those types of things that he can get out in the community for people that don't know what's going on, we can take a situation and turn it, it looks like a negative situation where you have few students, and turn it into a positive thing, where we can build on the lower teacher student ratio and show that we have improvement of grade levels in various different subjects, etc. those types of things would be helpful to him and that's why he recommended that Fithian come to the program committee meeting because he looks at LCRS in its entirety, not just minus the school. He sees the schools being an integral component to the LCRS experience for the young men. As the Dept is looking at quantitative things, that will be helpful for the Dept to really let people out in the community know LCRS is doing some good things with young people that maybe for their own safety its better that they're perhaps down there, that there's some really good things that are a benefit to the young people. That's the type of feel he needs to spread out into our communities, and he thinks it would also be helpful funding-wise, to different foundations, or funding sources, etc. etc. so he would appreciate that.
Fithian said that they have 5 different assessment tests and have found that youth increase their math and reading on an average of 4 grade levels.. Some have increased 6 grade levels. They just don't do enough PR so the public would know.
·          Treasure Island: transportation, supervision, number of boys attending Job Corps, etc.
·          The Slug Program a Log Cabin Ranch Status Report
D. Sanders reported that of the original 4 youth in Job Corps, 3 are still in it, the 4th isn't. Classes start there at 7am, which is the same starting time for a normal shift. So they implemented a new scheduling system. One person starts now at 5:30am, gets the youth up and gets them to Job Corps by 7am. They normally get back at about 6:30pm-7pm. That's a special shift, which accumulates some OT. They are going to establish a 12 hr shift (union approved) so they can avoid the OT in the future. They have 3 different counselors doing the transportation for this program.
SLUG is working well. He said they are starting to work with the Volunteer Auxiliary to do an organic gardening project. There are now 2 SLUG instructors at the ranch all the time. Doing extremely well. There are 4-5 youth in the program.
Comm Richard asked if LCRS youth in Job Corps wear their own clothes. Yes.
Kathleen Kelly of the Volunteer Auxiliary said she was happy for the collaboration between the Dept/Auxiliary/SLUG.
Henry Breen, of the Volunteer Auxiliary, expressed his disappointment at the brief explanation of the program. He wasn't satisfied with the lack of detail for how the program was going to run. He said he couldn't recommend the Auxiliary put money into this until he felt comfortable that the Dept will fully commit to doing the program.
Comm. Dupré asked the Dept to notify SLUG to come and report at the next Committee meeting, and hopefully by then the collaborators will have been able to iron out their issues.
"Because I feel that when you start off right, you end up right. When you start off with chaos, mess, it ends up chaotic and messy. So let's start it right in the month of April," said Comm. Dupré.
L. Jackson-Simpson spoke off mike.
Breen admitted that SLUG may be doing a lot of good work at LCRS, but that may not be necessarily the work on their collaborative project, otherwise, he or the Auxiliary's President, or the co-Director on this project should have been notified. He doesn't feel comfortable with what's happening now.
A former resident of LCRS spoke regarding his experience there in 2001. He was told he would graduate that year, but after coming back to the regular schools found out that the credits he received at LCRS were "odd" credits and not accepted in the district. He said that he hopes this doesn't happen to other youth at LCRS.
Jean Amabile of the PD, asked how the "appointments" to the Advisory Committee would be made.
Chief Williams said no efforts have been made to contact other members of the committee, since the protocols had not been adopted. Even with the vote today, he thinks there needs to be a vote by the full Commission, which he anticipates will be positive. But if the Committee wants to direct the Dept to begin to notify these people that his opportunity is available, he can do that. He has already mentioned this to Judge Feinstein. Comm Richard said yes, for the Dept to begin notification.
Comm. Dupré said that he has gotten a designee from the JJC. He made a point of order to remind people that under public comment, they as commissioners and as for the public, they listen to public comment but they don't respond to public comment. This was clarified, and Commissioners can respond.
Kathleen Klingele: spoke to the SPCA and said that the only thing they look for in animal care is whether the animal is given water, food and shelter. The SPCA also admitted they don't know much about horses. Anybody who truly cares about an animal knows that this is not sufficient.
Klingele said that they have, at the request of Comm. Dupré, delivered wood chips to the ranch. She said that if they ever do the horse program, she'd be happy to help with that. She sent a letter so saying but never got a response.
She showed pictures they had taken of some horses, one showing a recent injury (a 16 inc. gash in its side) from a broken fence. She said in regards to the halters left on horses, that they are nylon halters, which would not give way if caught on something. Horses are liable to get spooked or frantic in such a case if they don't have breakaway halters. SPCA doesn't know anything about this condition. She showed pics of broken fences with nails protruding from them. A fence board was lying on the ground, also with nails sticking up from it. A horse was standing just above this board. (a dangerous situation)
She said that the conditions that the horses are kept in teaches the youth there the wrong message about caring for animals. She also showed pics of the creek, strewn with garbage (even a couch).
As for the concrete: she said that if a horse is kept in a stall on cement, for approx. 23-24 hrs/day, the stall should be cleaned 3x a day, and have 10 inches of bedding. All this information is in any horsebook.
As for the claim it was a volunteer program, she said she has seen a LCRS employee moving manure around with the tractor, and go to Half Moon Bay to get hay. She also said she didn't know that volunteers could eat lunch every day in the cafeteria. Can anyone come up and eat there?
D. Sanders said that as far as he was concerned, she, the school, and anybody on the ranch was free to eat lunch, as long as he okayed it. They have public works people come and eat lunch. They have visitors to the ranch who eat lunch. They do not have a policy saying that you can't eat lunch.
Comm. Dupré asked if the other non-profit service providers eat in the cafeteria. Yes.
Klingele said that when she brought up her concerns before Sanders promised to get back to her in a week, but never did. She just hoped that in the future they could work together. She said she has a deep care for the youth there, and for the potential of the ranch.
Sanders said that when he first got onboard he wanted to build a bridge between the schools and the ranch. He felt that she and Ms. Dearborn were projecting feelings toward him and his staff, that they don’t have a clue of what this is about. He has a problem with coming into the public to iron out issues they have at the ranch. These he felt should be done at the ranch. He suggested setting up weekly meetings with her and the principal to deal with any issues, there.
He said if she has any concerns about the horses, she should take them to the humane society, because he doesn't know anything about that. He would support her. He took her list of concerns, but couldn't get back to her because he took it to the City Attorney's to help him with it. He doesn't want to be blamed for something the Humane Society can handle. He can't. He's willing to work with her on anything that concerns the philosophy, the mission of the Dept, or the ranch. He's spent more time with this program than with his obligations from the Chief and Assistant Chief. He wants to put this behind him. Between spending 3 hrs today with the providers, and getting stuff before this meeting, he doesn't think that's fair for the children he's supposed to support.
Klingele agreed to working with Sanders to come up with a joint agenda.
Richard questioned Klingele's concern for the horses, asking why she would ride a horse that was crippled. She said she was never told it was crippled.
Comm Richard summed up that the air was cleared now, and everyone is on the same page so it is a new day and we can move forward.
Jesse Arturio: asked how long they (the horse owners) had been doing this. About a year. And during this time they were spending all their money on keeping the horses. Question: was it all by volunteer help? Yes. Richard . Bougere and his family did it. They could not speak for John Staples (the engineer at the ranch who was referred to before as having worked with the horses).
Fithian responded to the former resident of LCRS, who spoke about his credit situation. He promised to look into that case and try to help resolve it.
Comm. Dupré thanked Mr. Klingele for his donation. He also said that he knew that Ms Klingele is a horse lover. He just wanted to bring closure to this, recounting that the horses are being removed this weekend, and no program starting again without the Chief and his staff pursuing that everything will be done correctly starting off. He asked if there was closure on Mr.. Bougere and his horse project at this point. He said that as a Commission all they could do was go to the proper authorities and have them come out and, with their findings, to advise and counsel us. But knowing that she is going to work with the staff down there, and everything, he just wanted to see if they have reached a juncture of closure on this project, with those horses which will be leaving the premises of LCRS. Klingele said that she wasn't trying to blame a single person for what was going on down there. She just felt that the project was gone about in a completely wrong way.
7.          (DISCUSSION) Presentation by the PrIDE program; example/demonstration of their deliverables
Liz Jackson-Simpson: this is the first of many reports to come regarding the PrIDE system. She gave a recap of what PrIDE was. In 1999 the Dept received TANF funding to develop, not only to enhance community based programs that supported our family enrichment, employment services, that were culturally specific and that supported girls services, but the community and other key stakeholders insisted that we have an evaluation system that looked at the quality of the service provision among our providers and throughout the dept. and with that PrIDE was developed.
PrIDE gives information on the status of program outcomes, and impacts on the young people. In Dec. there were 2 reports generated which showed what the characteristics of the young people in probation were, and a snapshot of the LCRS youth. At that time there wasn't enough data collected to do a particularly thorough report. In the past 6 months, through a concerted effort of the Dept, much more data has been collected.
One of the reports today is of the Occupational Therapy Training Program. The second report is a system wide analysis of the TANF program.
Ross Tobias (PrIDE staff): handed out a one-page summary of the OTTP. He described what was done in collecting data, from the self-report forms the kids fill out, to the staff assessment reports done by CBO staff. There are personality scales, communication scales done, needs survey, and more.
Once the numbers are crunched, the details are contained in the write-ups. It's real technical.
He referred to the graphs that show different statistics.
He mentioned the one page summary of community providers, which in a "nutshell" give the PO the information needed about the provider, including its success levels, so that s/he may know if it is appropriate for his/her ward.
They also asked the programs what goals they wanted to be evaluated on. They were given basically a list of the questions; the scales and information collected and had them check off what they wanted. So they tried to focus-in, statistically, on the goals they were most interested in finding out about. So, if a program said, this is what we plan on delivering, then we want to focus specifically on those goals, so we can say, did they reach those goals or not. And if they didn't it's not necessarily a reason to de-fund them, but it may indicate that things that need to be done. Whereas we also by taking everything in a wider sense of all the data we collect, we can also look and say, well maybe there's some other areas where this program is good. We also check to see if there are deficits. We didn't find any for this program.
Colleen Devine, Dir of OTTP: was really happy with the report. They hope with additional clients they will see improvement in other outcomes. Again, the sample size is quite small, so if they continue to serve additional youth, they will continue to see positive outcomes. Throughout the program, they ask the kids for feedback. She said that sometimes their kids take longer than a year to effect their changes, so that a post test at the end of their one year experience in the program isn't the best indicator of program effectiveness. Another way this sort of report can help their program is by having supportive evaluations of their programs when they seek other funding. She mentioned a recent grant they received from the Walter Johnson
Foundation, which will allow them to work with LCRS.
Chief Williams congratulated OTTP for providing enough data so they could do a credible outcome evaluation. Also he wanted to underscore for the Program Committee, the significance of this report. There was alot of legitimate concern and dialog about moving forth with the PrIDE system and what results it could produce. He said that we have before us a document that shows for a significant slice of the population who are kids with some very significant difficulties in their lives and educational experiences, that a program has been able to reduce research documented positive results. That 98% of these young people completed the program, that by itself is an accomplishment. But in addition to that, we were able to document that on at least 4 different scales a documented improvement on how they emerged from the program, as a result of the services, and by the way we've been able to leverage $150K in funding that's going to be used to provide services to our kids at LCRS.
Comm Richard commended AJI on this.
Tobias continued: the 2nd report, the system wide analysis of TANF programs. It doesn't have the before and after picture. It's just a cross section of the TANF (10 programs that they had data on). There's no analysis per se, but there's a cross section like language spoken at home, and you can see the percentage breakdown. Then there's the personality scales. If you want information on the TANF programs right now, who's being served or who was served, that's what's in this report. He mentioned another document, which was the program evaluation timeline which lists at what junctures they will produce reports on the different providers.
Devine mentioned that in some cases there may be a negative numerical result in the self assessments, it may not necessarily indicate regression, but a more realistic self evaluation after time.
Sheila Arcelona commented that another use of these reports is as supportive evidence to convince state legislators who decide to fund TANF or not. She said that in the state there have been concerns for whether counties are using the funds as intended. Some use them for offsetting general fund expenses.
Comm. Dupré said he wanted to briefly review the historical... former Comm. Arámburo had concerns about budgetary outcomes, deliverables, etc etc etc., and Sheila Arcelona really addressed his concerns because what sold him on PrIDE was that they would have something to measure TANF programs and maybe submit it to the Governor's office or the appropriate dept. but most important, perhaps counties that, he remembers when the Chief first talked about TANF, and brought it into the Dept, that some depts and counties were not even prepared and ready to implement, and so from his experience with funding sources, sometimes there's unspent funds and reserves, and things like that, and that will make SF and especially this dept. attractive if we took the initiative to document how we were to expend our funds and how we'll be leveraging additional funds. But, he said all of that to say that that satisfied his concerns and to be truly committed costs, are there going to be additional costs for PrIDE, because that was one of whole issues that came up initially.
L. Jackson-Simpson said that back Sept/Oct they presented an integration plan for how they would fold PrIDE into the dept. They have been taking steps over the past few months to transfer the source code to the dept. to identify space that could accommodate the staff that could be transitioning in from PrIDE into the Dept, but additionally they are doing an RFP that will continue to look at the further development of reporting and transition of PrIDE into the dept. The RFP could be ready by late April/ early May.
Comm Richard: how will PrIDE help in the referral of which kids into which programs.
L. Jackson-Simpson said that there still needs to be more data collection and report generation, but they hope to develop more provider snapshots which POs can use to help make decisions about program referrals.
Right now they are concentrating on training providers about the utility of PrIDE, so they will more aggressively collect data.
Tobias stated that they expect to be doing one report per month, starting in July or August.
He said that since the project is "coming over" in July, these reports might start in August.
Comm. Dupré recommended that the staff procedurally identify bullets, in a bullet form, strengths of what PrIDE has accomplished, including some of this succinctly, so our (Committee) Chair can present to the Commission. Also statistical basics. He said he wanted to remind the staff that that was the primary issue that this Committee and especially a former commissioner had concerns about, and that in the spirit this evening of putting closure on things, and if we can really put closure on this with an accurate documentation, because the program is shooting a lot of information to the Committee, and a lot of it is good and a lot of it's germane to the issue but he thought it would help them if the Dpet would bullet those things.
Chief Williams acknowledged the work of AJI in staying with them through everything it took to get this up and operational and beginning to produce some deliverables. He personally thanked Larry, Ross, Trish for their work.
(public comment) None
8.          Announcements, requests for future agenda items: None
(public comment) None
9.          (ACTION) Adjournment
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:13 pm.

                                         Adopted April 16, 2002

Meeting Information

Programs_Committee