Programs Funded By The Children And Youth Commission 2018-2020
Funding Category: Early Care and Education for Children 0-5
Santa Fe Community College Foundation: Kids Campus
Since 2013 the Santa Fe Community College (SFCC) Kids Campus has implemented a highly successful PreK program that has produced a significant proportion (94% based on Observational Assessment, All Domains) of children ready to enter kindergarten in the Santa Fe Public Schools (SFPS). Kids Campus, under the auspices of the Early Childhood Center of Excellence (ECCOE), also offers high-quality early learning and development opportunities for infants and toddlers that begins at eight weeks. With a five Star accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the highest possible, Kids Campus is prepared to submit this proposal to expand services for an additional PreK program for four-year-old children with the highest needs. CYFD currently funds one classroom at Kids Campus. This would expand to include two classrooms—one funded by the city and one funded by CYFD. Funds will support 20 children recruited from the city of Santa Fe communities. Children will receive a minimum of 450 hours of instruction based on the New Mexico Early Learning Guidelines led by fully certified, bachelor's level instructors and instructional assistants. The Basic Early PreK program will be child-centered and developmentally appropriate to promote early literacy, thinking, reasoning, fine and gross motor development, language, creative development, and social-emotional competency. An additional 90 hours will support parent conferences, home visits, parent group meetings, transition preparation, and activities that develop early literacy for a total of 540 hours.
Santa Fe Public Schools: Teen Parent Center
Requests funding to provide wrap-around services that enable pregnant and parenting middle and high school students to graduate high school and continue post-secondary education. Additionally, the Parent Center assists teen parents with obtaining on-site childcare for their infants and toddlers to promote a safe, healthy, and nurturing start of life, including prenatal and parenting education, tutoring and academic services, counseling, nursing, and case management. Teen Parent Center is a project to serve 40 – 60 teen parents (ages 13-21) and 30-40 of their children (ages 0-3). Indicators to assess impact: graduation rate, truancy and attendance rates, repeat pregnancy, and low birth weights of babies.
United Way
United Way of Santa Fe County (UWSFC) currently provides a high-quality, full-day, free PreK program for one classroom of 16 three-year-olds and three classrooms of 16 four-year-olds in spaces provided by the Santa Fe Public Schools at Aspen Community School and Ramirez-Thomas Elementary. In August 2018, UWSFC will relocate those four classes to its Early Learning Center (ELC) in the newly-renovated Kaune Elementary School building on Monterey Avenue - which UWSFC has just purchased from the Santa Fe Public School District. Funding is to significantly expand and strengthen our early literacy curriculum by adding a strong dual-language component in Spanish. In addition, research has established that children who are primarily English-speaking also benefit academically by learning in two languages in their early formative years. As described in greater detail in what follows, early dual language instruction is necessary for effectively supporting our earliest learners who come from Spanish-Speaking homes.
New Vistas
New Vistas Early Intervention Program assists children from birth to age three who have or are at risk for developmental delays through providing home and community-based early intervention services. These services are provided to the child and the family as a whole and help support strong families, positive early learning experiences, and good health for the infants and toddlers enrolled in the program. Early intervention is an eligibility-based program focusing on services. It supports children with at least a 25% delay in their progress toward developmental milestones or with demonstrable risk factors that might contribute to those delays. Because of this focus on children within the disability population, New Vistas Early Intervention program services also uniquely align with the CYC's goal of increasing services to priority risk categories. Between 2016 and 2018, New Vistas served 871 children, with 745 living in Santa Fe County. Of those children, 489 qualified under an eligibility category of developmental delay, and 67.57% were of Hispanic, African American, Asian, or American Indian/Alaska Native descent. These service statistics help demonstrate our commitment to serving families from all demographics while aligning with ensuring services to the CYC priority risk populations.
Youth Shelters and Family Services (PPYI)
Youth Shelters and Family Services Pregnant and Parenting Youth Initiative (PPYI) was developed to respond to the unique needs of young parents experiencing homelessness. It emphasizes perinatal health, parenting education/support, and reproductive health. The PPYI Child Care Pilot Program (P4) arranges for homeless, runaway, and at-risk young parents to obtain childcare and facilitates transportation to and from childcare placements. Implementing transportation options ensures that children are consistently receiving quality care for their developmental stages and becoming ready for kindergarten. P4 will allow young parents to focus on their education and employment to become independent and successful parents, thus breaking the cycle of generational homelessness. Through PPYI, P4 will offer wrap-around services, including prenatal/postnatal health, physical and mental health care, parenting skills education, and knowledge of other supportive parenting resources. Personal goals for the parents and children will be identified, and necessary support services rendered. Early interventions reduce the risk of additional adversity from unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. P4 will focus on facilitating a direct path to education for children of homeless parents, from infancy to kindergarten.
Santa Fe Recovery Center
The Santa Fe Recovery Center (SFRC) is proposing to provide an accessible substance use disorder recovery-oriented continuum of care to women and their young children aged 0-3, including women who are pregnant and post-partum. SFRC's proposed Women and Children's Treatment Program will focus on Early Care and Education for Children 0-5 with the goal of reducing the % of low birth weight babies by ensuring children 0-4 meet developmental milestones and are ready for kindergarten. Collaborative parentship will be made with Las Cumbres to ensure participant children are healthy and meeting developmental milestones.
Las Cumbres
The Santa Fe Community Infant Program (CIP) provides treatment for some of our community's most trauma-impacted children and their families. CIP staff help families with very young children address multi-generational cycles of interpersonal and community violence through the provision of evidence-based interventions. Staff help families create safer, more nurturing home environments, contributing to increased assurance that every child prenatal through age five reaches their developmental potential and is on a path toward school readiness. Clinicians offer a wide range of treatment options tailored to meet each family's needs and capacities, including individual, dyadic, family, and group sessions, in the home, community, or office. Caregivers are supported to restore their role as the "protective shield" for their children. It often requires an intensive intervention combining concrete assistance and parenting skills with staged trauma treatment for multiple family members. CIP staff hold exceptional expertise in the field of infant and early childhood mental health, offering therapeutic treatment for families with very young children throughout the county.
Funding Category: Reconnecting Youth
Youth Shelters and Family Services (HYP)
Youth Shelters and Family Services' Homeless Youth Project (HYP) provides case management for teens and young adults and their children residing in the Transitional Living Apartments and the Supportive Transitions to Adulthood through Rapid Rehousing apartments (STAR). The goal of HYP is to offer a path to sustained and secure independent apartment living for homeless, runaway, and in-crisis youth in Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico. Youth are provided housing for up to two years while they gain education, workforce skills, and life skills so they can live independently. The TLP is a supervised home and apartment setting which offers 24-hour/day staff support. In STAR, clients live in apartments scattered throughout Santa Fe. Clients are provided both case management and financial support up to a fair market value of the apartments they rent while they access education, employment opportunities, and health services.
YouthWorks
YouthWorks (YW) provides culturally competent facilitation in delivering positive youth development programs to re-engage disconnected youth ages 14-24 into productivity and self-sufficiency. YouthWorks offers services to youth ages 14 and 15 who are at risk of being disconnected from school and becoming involved in the juvenile justice system. YouthWorks also provides services for young adults ages 22-24 who are disconnected from education or work. For the City Children and Youth funding, YouthWorks will only provide services and report data within the Funding Category Reconnecting Youth 16-21. YouthWorks has developed specific interventions designed to positively impact and reconnect youth to education or work by engaging youth in supportive, hands-on learning combined with classroom GED coursework and life/work readiness training. YouthWorks provides a continuum of care by bridging job-ready youth with long-term job placements in the community and positioning youth for career pathway coursework at the community college or four-year university enrollment. YouthWorks combines all these strategies as a wrap-around model to strengthen every youth who demonstrates the desire and motivation for engagement.
Young Fathers (Reconnecting Youth)
Healthy and engaged fathers work to ensure that their child's needs are met and provide protective factors for their children. Fathers New Mexico supports fathers to become economically self-sufficient, skilled in communication and conflict resolution, and confident in their role as parents. Fathers New Mexico addresses and prevents risky behaviors among young fathers. Our interventions are designed to: promote bonding and attachment, decrease substance abuse, reduce unintended subsequent pregnancies, increase academic achievement and stabilize employment. Our programming assists young fathers in developing stable and nurturing relationships with their children and the mothers of their babies. These efforts support the emotional and physical well-being of the fathers and their children and increase each family member's educational and economic potential. The activities that Fathers New Mexico employs to achieve these goals include Father Group work, case management, and engaging experienced participants in mentorship roles.
Funding Category: Supplemental Education for School-Aged Children
MathAmigos Collaborative Working Group
The Santa Fe Birth to Career MathAmigos (MA) Collaborative Working Group (CWG), in partnership with Santa Fe Public Schools (SFPS), the Santa Fe Community Foundation (SFCF), the Interfaith Coalition for Public Education, the Math Circles Collaborative of New Mexico, the Santa Fe Alliance for Science, and Poder Familia for the MathAmigos Kids Count Initiative to raise PARCC math proficiency for 630 Grade 3-4 children in 5 low-performing elementary schools in the Airport Road Corridor: Cesar Chavez, El Camino Real, Nina Otero, Ramirez Thomas, and Sweeney. PARCC proficiency in these schools ranges from 5.9% to 13%, among the lowest in the District (1). Many factors affect PARCC scores, including preparation for teaching math, multiple skill levels in a single classroom, student readiness to learn, and even technical factors related to testing by computer. Still, we focus on the most rapid route to student improvement, teacher training, supplemented by parent engagement, two proven methods to raise student performance. This Initiative will provide intensive training at the five schools for 30 Grade 3 and 4 teachers providing direct service to inspire students to learn math and become mathematical problem solvers.
SITE Santa Fe
SITE Santa Fe requests Children and Youth Commission funds to support the following SITE Santa Fe Teen Education Programs taking place at SITE and in Santa Fe schools, partnering organizations, and community spaces: Educational Exhibition Tours for local schools led by SITE Guides trained in Visual Thinking Strategies, Zine and Gallery Guide Programs, Youth Development Program, Young Curators Program. SITE's Teen Education Programs engage students in high-quality, structured art programming that builds self-confidence and learning skills and encourages critical thinking. SITE's programs provide services for a diverse range of students but specifically target local schools and communities whose youth are underserved by art education opportunities, are at risk due to poverty and other socio-economic reasons, and are typically underrepresented in the world of contemporary art. By providing unique projects that explore different perspectives of art and culture, SITE staff and exhibition artists support students' social-emotional development and inspire students to deepen their engagement in their schools and local communities. In the Youth Development Program, youth are provided with mentorship, skills, and support to help them re-engage in their school communities. SITE's projects require teamwork and offer the opportunity for personal reflection and expression.
Santa Fe Community Educators Network
Members of the Santa Fe Community Educators Network work together to provide programming for the City Summer Program at El Camino Real Academy and Sweeney Elementary School, as well as Friday programming in collaboration with the Sweeney Early Intervention After School Enrichment Program. They will offer 24 sessions of week-long summer programming for 25 students each and three-hour programs during the school year on Friday afternoons. The program will look at impacting literacy at targeted schools.
National Dance Institute
NDI-NM's program provides a critical contribution to a community-wide effort to move the dial on student school success and graduation. Our program blends social-emotional and executive function skills development and positive messaging with movement-based learning, providing children with an experience they cannot get in their school, which NDI-NM is uniquely positioned to provide. We afford children a positive framework of support and skill development pathway through the critical elementary and middle-school years. Our program is delivered in an inclusive, joyful format that promotes and teaches teamwork, respect and encouragement.
Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences
Reading is Magic (RIM) is a free summer and afterschool reading program for 2nd to 4th-grade students in the Santa Fe Public Schools. It is a collaboration between Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences, a private school for preschool to 8th-grade students, and Reading Quest, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to children's literacy. It is a key strategic program of Santa Fe's Ready to Read, a collective impact effort to increase 3rd-grade reading proficiency scores in Santa Fe. Heading into its 7th year, Reading is Magic has had consistent and remarkable outcomes - students gained on average a grade level's growth after the two-week summer interventions and one year and six months of growth after the 9-month afterschool intervention. Santa Fe's Ready to Read plans to leverage the effectiveness of Reading is Magic and replicate the program at nearby Sweeney Elementary (see CYC Application Santa Fe's Ready to Read Part B - Sweeney Pilot). This application, Part A, is to support RIM on the Campus of Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences, the birthplace of Reading is Magic. We will continue being a lab school, serving students from all over Santa Fe and providing opportunities for teachers to visit and receive hands-on professional development opportunities for learning the instructional approaches used in the program.
Breakthrough Santa Fe
Breakthrough Santa Fe (BTSF) is a year-round, tuition-free, college-access program for motivated, underserved middle and high school students from SFPS. Part of a national collaborative of 25 Breakthrough sites, BTSF provides academic classes and enrichment during the summer and school year to over 190 low-income students. In addition, BTSF provides extra tutoring, intensive college and financial aid counseling, and one-on-one family support to our high school students. 93% of BTSF students go on to higher education after high school.
Sweeney Elementary Early Intervention
Sweeney Elementary's Early Intervention program has three major components to support student wellness and academic growth. Our After School Enrichment program is organized to support the families in our school community in need of quality supervision for their children before and after regular school hours. This program works closely with the Adelante program and with each family to ensure that their child may attend regardless of their financial situation. Our goal is to provide safe, quality supervision that will give students enrichment opportunities such as yoga, art, cooking, and soccer, as well as homework assistance. We would collect attendance data and create surveys for parents and children to respond to. The second component is tutoring in reading for struggling kindergarten, first, and second-grade learners who are below proficiency levels as measured by the iStations assessment tool mandated by the Santa Fe Public Schools. Children would be identified by the first benchmark assessment in September and would attend tutoring twice a week for 1.5 hours. Children would be assessed by the iStations progress monitoring tool. The final component would be a theater with Pandemonium Productions for 5th-grade students. This would assist in language development (vocabulary and usage) with students, especially ELL students while lowering the affective filter. Language development would be assessed using MAPs data (benchmark assessment at the beginning, middle, and end of the year).
Cooking with Kids, Inc.
Founded in 1995, Cooking with Kids programming brings joyful, experiential learning through food to at-risk public school children. Approximately 5,000 pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade students in 12 - 14 Santa Fe Public Schools (SFPS) elementary schools participate annually. On average, students participate in CWK classes as part of the regular school day once or twice a month. Cooking with Kids bilingual Spanish/English curriculum is research- and practice-tested and is designed to correspond with students' developmental levels. The curriculum aligns with Common Core State Standards in Language Arts and Mathematics and National Health Education Standards. In addition, New Mexico Public Education Department Instructional Materials Bureau recently adopted CWK's curriculum for health education.
Communities In Schools of New Mexico
CIS site coordinators fully integrate themselves into the school community. At the beginning of each school year, they sit down with school administrative staff, students, parents, and teachers to complete a School Needs Assessment. This assessment creates a unique School Support Plan, including various activities and intervention strategies to help improve school goals. These School Support Plans are driven by the site coordinator and respond to each school's unique needs. School Support Plans are comprised of our Integrated Student Support in three tiers: Tier I addresses whole-school activities and interventions; Tier II provides small-group support and workshops; and Tier III supports the most at-risk students with intensive, one-on-one case management. School Support Plan goals and strategies are also rooted in five key indicators: academics, behavior and social/emotional learning, attendance, parent engagement, and basic needs. Plans are identified at the beginning of each school year and are cumulative, building on the previous year's goals and achievements.
First Serve - New Mexico
First Serve – NM delivers a high-quality, year-round, structured program free of charge for children and their families for 100 - 120 students per year in grades 3 through 12. The program operates four days a week in nine public schools in Santa Fe and Pojoaque from September until May. In the summer, First Serve – NM hosts a tennis camp three hours a day, four days a week, for eight weeks. Each summer, participants' siblings are permitted to attend the First Serve – NM summer camp with the goal of high matriculation into the FSNM afterschool program in the fall. This typically exposes an additional 8-12 students, with almost all of these joining the program and committing to an entire academic year. During the school year, two days a week are spent in tutoring with homework assistance, academic tutoring, academic enrichment, and life skills lessons that students practice in the classroom, at home, and in their communities. The other two days a week are spent in intensive tennis instruction. With a low student-to-instructor ratio (6:1), opportunities for one-on-one attention, low staff turnover, which allows strong long-term connections between student and instructor, and highly qualified, certified tennis instructors and licensed tutors, First Serve – New Mexico is providing a program that all stakeholders (principals, teachers, parents, etc.) agree is valuable programming.
May Center
Santa Fe's Ready to Read Sweeney Pilot Part B aims to improve third-grade reading proficiency for low-income students at Sweeney Elementary through high-quality afterschool and summer intervention. The pilot program is a collaboration between reading is magic (Santa Fe schools for the arts and sciences), May Center for Learning, and Reading Quest.
Adelante
SFPS Adelante Program strengthens opportunities for the academic achievement and life success of Santa Fe children, youth, and their families who are experiencing homelessness. Founded in 2003, SFPS Adelante today identifies and serves more than 1700 students and siblings from birth through age 21 experiencing homelessness yearly.
Big Brothers Big Sisters Mountain Region
Big Brothers Big Sisters' One-to-One Mentoring Program provides children facing adversity with a chance to overcome challenges through strong, long-lasting, high-quality, professionally supported one-to-one mentoring relationships with caring volunteer mentors. Plan on 50 new matches served with this grant; 289 Santa Fe youth by the program.
Girls Inc. of Santa Fe
The Girls Inc. Stay Connected Initiative focuses on preventing teen pregnancies by engaging at-risk girls in comprehensive, long-term programming that addresses all aspects of the girls' lives, the whole girl. The Initiative has two components: preventing teen pregnancies and helping teen mothers to stay in school and prepare for stable careers. Girls often engage in risky behaviors due to poor body image and low self-esteem. Many girls do not understand they have the capability, right, and responsibility to be in charge of their sexual health. Girls require support to avoid unhealthy relationships and behaviors, build self-confidence, and combat stereotypes and limiting expectations. Girls Inc. has a long history of helping girls, particularly those marginalized by race and poverty, avoid pregnancy by engaging them in school and healthy activities. Trained staff and volunteers build lasting mentoring relationships in girls-only spaces that are physically and emotionally safe and where girls find a community of support. Hands-on, research-based programs provide girls with the skills and knowledge to set goals, overcome obstacles, and improve academic performance. In addition to life and academic skills, Girls Inc. teaches girls to advocate for themselves and others and exposes them to the possibilities of creating lasting social change through community action projects. The objective of all Girls Inc. programming is to develop confident, skilled, and active citizens who strengthen their families and their communities. For the Stay Connected Initiative, we will expand our programming at the schools we currently serve to significantly impact the whole school and expand programs to additional schools, targeting those with high rates of teen pregnancies and low-income students. Youth Wellness and rates of babies being born is our primary indicator, and Supplementary Education, attendance, graduation rates, and social-emotional learning are secondary indicators.
Funding Category: Youth Wellness
Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Fe/Del Norte
Triple Play: Healthy Habits is a dynamic health and wellness program designed to improve the overall health and well-being of our members, ages 6-18, by increasing their daily physical activity, teaching them good nutrition, and helping them develop healthy relationships. The year-round program will occur at our Club @ Zona on the south side of Santa Fe, where we provide a safe, healthy learning environment for our young members. Currently, 76% of our 388 members at the Zona club site are Hispanic, and 83% are from households with incomes below the median income level for the City of Santa Fe. Our program aligns with CYC Funding Category 3–Youth Wellness by teaching kids how eating healthy and daily exercise leads to a healthier lifestyle. We reach out to the kids and families who need us most in our community, and our program has shown that physical activity can lead to not only decreased rates of obesity and overweight in school-age children but also improvement in academic/social-emotional learning.
New Mexico Suicide Intervention Project
The Sky Center provides a continuum of no-cost, collaborative suicide prevention strategies that directly impact the well-being of some of the neediest Santa Fe youth, ages 0-21, and their families. This request is closely aligned with policies to mitigate healthcare disparities in the delivery of behavioral health services. Population priorities are 1) youth and families living in poverty and 2) youth and families in population groups with unequal access to services. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of youth and families seen are Hispanic/Latino (including Spanish-speaking immigrants), and the majority are challenged by extreme poverty, language barriers, high rates of depression, school dropout and violence, alcohol abuse, illicit drug use, and high family conflict. Over sixty percent (60%) have income levels at 50% or below the Federal Poverty median income for the area. The significant needs of the unique individuals in these groups are carefully considered and improved through a coordinated system involving a multitude of public and private partners and community assets leveraged for their well-being. This proposal addresses the CYC Funding Category: Youth Wellness; the priority indicators/results: 1) % Youth attempted suicide and 2) % youth with a mental/behavioral condition who needed treatment but did not receive it (ages 3-17); and the desired outcome: youth who are mentally and physically healthy. Program methods contribute to improving life quality through nurturing resilience, restoring hope, promoting positive peer relationships, enhancing safe school environments, and creating strong family, school, and community connections.
Gerard's House
The Nuestra Jornada (Our Journey) program was launched 2 ½ years ago and is now Gerard's House's largest program. Created specifically for children and teenagers from Central American and Mexican immigrant families who have experienced life-altering losses, the Nuestra Jornada program provided ongoing bilingual grief support groups for 230 unduplicated children and teenagers in 2017, both in the schools and at Gerard's House. Nuestra Jornada's Advisory Committee is a key reason for the program's success. This team of bicultural collaborative partners helped Gerard's House staff design the program to address barriers to services while also having the greatest possible positive impact on immigrant youth. We are especially grateful to Communities In Schools of New Mexico (CIS) and Santa Fe Public Schools (SFPS). Without their considerable help, the program would not exist. Every participant in the Nuestra Jornada program is grieving the death of — or separation from —a parent, sibling, or other loved one. Though most participants have experienced the death of a parent or sibling, many are also grieving multiple ongoing losses, such as separations from family members. Many have also survived or witnessed traumatic violence. Some have been held in detention centers.
Planned Parenthood
The Responsible Sex Education Institute provides the following sex education programs in Santa Fe: Classroom-based education, Sexual Health Education for People with Disabilities (PwD), TALK, PPNM's parent text line, and In Case you are Curious (ICYC) youth text line. These programs provide students with medically accurate, developmentally appropriate, and culturally humble reproductive health education emphasizing protective factors such as engagement within the community and school, a connection with a responsible adult, and positive goal setting. Our programs have been proven to prevent unplanned teen pregnancy and empower youth to make healthy decisions regarding their own reproductive health.
New Mexico Center for Therapeutic Riding (NMCTR)
NMCTR offers two unique programs that use the horse as the primary tool to increase protective factors and reduce risk factors associated with an increased likelihood of negative life outcomes (depression, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, dropping out of school, delinquency, and unmet mental health needs) that can lead to suicide attempts. These innovative, research-based programs are: 1) The School Outreach Therapeutic Horseback Riding Program for under-served, low-income students with disabilities (including developmental delay, Down Syndrome, ADHD, hearing loss, cerebral palsy, TBI, autism, etc.) from participating in Santa Fe schools and 2) The Self-Mastery Equine-Assisted Learning Program for at-risk youth (ages 11-18) referred by local agencies.
IMPACT Personal Safety dba Resolve
Resolve is requesting funding to provide violence prevention services to middle school youth in Santa Fe through collaboration with Santa Fe Public Schools, Solace Crisis Treatment Center, and Planned Parenthood. Our programs will improve students' mental & physical health by reducing incidents of bullying and harassment and rates of suicide attempts.
Esperanza
Esperanza's Seeds of Hope Children's Program includes trauma-informed interventions with children and their families to decrease trauma symptoms, identify and build strengths, increase resilience and ultimately help children and families replace cycles of violence with generational legacies of hope and healing. Esperanza Shelter seeks to expand this program to reach more children, families, and parents who need therapy, parenting interventions, advocacy, and skill building. Therapeutic intervention with children who have either witnessed abuse or experienced it directly is important for healing and to help prevent a repetition of the cycle of violence. Therapeutic intervention can also stop further child abuse or possibly prevent child victimization in the future.