PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Lawrence Jones, Program Director at Good Shepherd Services
3:31:23
·
3 min
Lawrence Jones, Program Director at Good Shepherd Services, provided testimony on operational challenges and potential enhancements for the Summer Rising program. He highlighted issues related to preparation time, paraprofessional availability, enrollment processes, and staff pay rates.
- Emphasized the need for an adequate start date to allow efficient prep time for all staff involved
- Discussed challenges with paraprofessional availability, especially in the evening hours
- Suggested streamlining the enrollment process and improving data systems to reduce confusion and frustration for families
- Advocated for aligning pay rates with CBO staff responsibilities and requirements
Lawrence Jones
3:31:23
Thank you, and Cheah Stevens, Cheah Joseph, and the members of the committee of children and youth.
3:31:29
I'm Lawrence Jones.
3:31:30
I'm a program director here at the Shepherd Services located in Bedside, Brooklyn.
3:31:36
I've been a part of summarizing throughout since the beginning.
3:31:40
The Shepherd itself supports all of a 2000 elementary and middle school students while summarizing.
3:31:46
We also operate 2 cornerstone programs, Mickey Ole, and Redhook, and Monterrey and Bronx that support over 400 students.
3:31:55
Today, we wanted to talk about the testimony around operational challenges that it will potentially enhance the summarizing program in a whole.
3:32:04
1 is establish an adequate start date for the summarizing programs to allow efficient prep time for power professionals teachers and CDOs.
3:32:13
We ran into a large issue this year around making sure that everyone had enough time to get ready for summarizing including power professionals who only had a 3 day break opposed to other CBOs and other school communities and youth.
3:32:29
Also, we talked about ensuring power professionals for availability for all students, especially in the evening.
3:32:35
A lot of power professionals ran out of time or had to leave out early, which ultimately meant that other students missed out on that time as well.
3:32:45
Exploring, expanding DOE day teacher schedules at 1 o'clock or 1:30, which helps coincide with what the CBO needs are as far as making sure that we have adequate staffing and support as a joint venture, streamlining the enrollment process to allow CBO to prioritize family needs and preventing the confusion and frustration.
3:33:06
I echo what my other peers have said around parents feeling frustrated of not getting into their programs, allowing families and youth to choose whether to attend the summer camp program or just the summer school in general.
3:33:21
Also, echoing what my peers mentioned in developing, improved MOI, in the my schools, and DIC Connect systems as well.
3:33:30
I'm making sure all the information that parents need throughout the summer, including those supplemental forms that was mentioned previously in the testimony.
3:33:38
I would just like to note that those those supplemental forms are very different from what is on the my schools as far as allergies and emergency contacts for CBOs, we require so much more information, whether it's walk in forms, whether it's surveys, whether it's signatures around just being able to participate, which ultimately leads to parents having to do almost 2 to 3 different processes just to get accepted into the program in a short amount of turnaround outside of times.
3:34:08
And we just wanna make sure that we're able to also align pay rates with CBO staff as well.
3:34:13
A lot of times, we're pushing into the morning and doing a lot more, whether it's power duties of working with students with different needs, but the pay is not allowed with what their requirements are during the daytime as well.
3:34:30
So I like to thank you guys for our time, and we hope that it continues to be a transparent, robust relationship, and that we can continue to build more in the future.
