The Scoop with Tanya Flanagan

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NB studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Tanya Flanagan 0:19
Good morning, and thank you for joining me for the scoop with Tonya Flanagan, I'm so happy you decided to wake up and start your day with me here on the scoop, where we talk about life, joy, funny moments, trending topics and so much more, we promise to keep you in the know and find out what you know. So let's get started.

Tanya Flanagan 0:42
You Good morning, Las Vegas, and welcome to another edition of the show. The scoop with me. Tonya Flanigan, I'm always delighted to be your host, and it's exciting to actually be physically back in the studio on this beautiful morning I've been talking to you from Northern Nevada for a while this year, as the 83rd session of the Nevada State legislature was in session, and I was there doing my duty, wearing my other hat as a legislator. So it is nice to be back here, boots to the ground in the studio. I have a wonderful guest here with me. This morning, we're going to be talking about Communities in Schools, a program that is very rich and very dear to me and many other members of this community. It's part of our heart. It's part of the fabric of what we do to improve the lives of young people across the city, across the state. And I'd like to welcome to the show the CEO and the State Director for communities and schools, Tammy hansler, so thank you for being here.

Tami Hance-Lehr 1:37
Well, good morning. It's wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me. Thank you for

Tanya Flanagan 1:41
taking the time to sit with me and to chat. I mentioned that Communities in Schools focuses on our young people, but you do just a wide variety of programs. So I'd like to give you the opportunity to tell us what Communities in Schools is all about, how you came to be involved, and just kind of bring us into the conversation with what it is and what it does

Tami Hance-Lehr 2:03
absolutely well, it's my favorite organization to talk about, and not just because I work there, because I truly believe that the work we're doing is life changing. Many of your listeners may be interested to know that sometimes our kids don't show up in the building ready to learn. They have other things going on at home. They may have trauma, they may have food insecurity, there just might be some mental health issues. And so communities and schools focuses on removing whatever barrier it is that keeps our kids from coming to school and being successful, and we do that by placing a full time Communities and Schools team member inside our highest need schools across the state, and that team member goes to that school every single day, and they focus on removing the barriers providing basic needs for our students, providing mental health support, case management, one to one, to make sure that they can succeed with their academics, their behavior. We've been focusing a lot on chronic absenteeism over the last several years, and we do this in partnership with our schools across the state, we are an evidence based program, and nationally, we are almost 50 years

Tanya Flanagan 3:26
old. Oh, wow, are you guys that is, that's a huge track record, because I didn't realize you were nearly 50 years old. So that is wonderful and a great contribution to our community. For a really long time, as education has evolved, and we now have charter schools. Are you primarily in the Clark County School District schools? Are you also in charter schools that might be identified because people don't always realize that charter schools have these performance measures to meet, and so they're classified as different levels based on how well the kids are doing on their test and other performance evaluation. So are you in both spaces, or are you primarily Clark County School

Tami Hance-Lehr 4:06
District? Yeah, we are. We're school agnostic, and that means that we will go anywhere that kids need us. So yes, we're primarily in public schools. Clark County School District is our largest school partner, but we do have a charter school here in Southern Nevada, and are looking to add additional charter schools as we continue to make sure that we're showing up anywhere kiddos need us. And I should also say that Communities in Schools is in our elementary schools, our middle schools and our high schools, because when we're focusing on making sure our kids are graduating Career College and Community ready that doesn't just start their junior year in high school, we want to make sure that even in elementary school, they are seeing schools a safe place. They have opportunities to thrive and grow and really have all the different spaces that they can you. Continue their education, and that's why you will find us, you know, across the state, K through 12, all the way to make sure that our kids have the resources that they need to to make it across the finish line.

Tanya Flanagan 5:12
I like that there is what sounds like is a continuum of care, if you will. So you mentioned being in elementary, middle and high school spaces. Is it such a structure that a child could go through elementary, middle go to a middle school, go to high school, and the program would follow them through if there's a need, or is there more of a hope that if we can identify the challenge at the elementary school level, we can remove this barrier, and the child can go on successfully in middle school and high school, having less of a need and more independence and the ability to succeed. Or is it, in some cases, kids are tracked all the way through?

Tami Hance-Lehr 5:56
Yeah, that's a great question, and it has been my strategic vision over the last several years to make sure that we have that continuum of care, to make sure that all the way through a kiddos education career, K through 12, that communities and schools is there when I when they see the little schoolhouse logo, you know, most of our students don't realize that it's a separate program. They just think we're an extension of the school building, and that's the way in which it's designed. And so we want to make sure that no matter what chapter of a child's life, communities and schools is there. And so to answer your other question, yes, ultimately, I think any nonprofit job is to put ourselves out of a job, right? Is that we've, we've, we've, you know, elevated our students out of, you know, the situations that they and so they have the tools they need to strive and and continue that what they've learned. So I think there are some students that maybe learned those basic skills, how to regulate their emotions, how to, you know, work on their behavior, and that does take them into middle and high school, and they may not need CIS again, but there are some students through things outside of their control, right? Trauma going on at home. They're living in poverty situations. Maybe they're housing insecure, and they're moving in lots of different places. And so there was a lot of times where our kids are dealing with things that this is nothing that they had to do other than they just wanted to show up and go to school. And so that's why I want to make sure that communities and schools is there, not only through the feeder patterns, of which I call them, right? So you're in the elementary school, you're in the middle school, and then we're in the in the high school, and you know that that cis safe place is the place, but I also want to be in the surrounding areas, because if they are housing insecure, if they are moving between parent homes or things that we are in the neighborhoods, creating safe neighborhoods and communities where the school is ultimately always the safe

Tanya Flanagan 7:51
place got you. I like that. I appreciate everything that you're saying about doing this work to be this conduit between community and school, home and school. Let's talk a little bit about how children are selected and identified to participate in communities and school, because I would imagine you have a max number of students that you're able to serve because there's only so much staff. We always have more unfortunately, sometimes we have more need than we have resources to accommodate that need. So how is the child or a family get referred or find out or get into communities and schools?

Tami Hance-Lehr 8:34
Yeah, that's a great question. So you'll always primarily find us in our highest need or our Title One schools. Title One means that the majority of the students that attend the school qualify for free and reduced lunch, which means that they live at or below the poverty line. So that's our baseline. That's where I'm starting from. The majority of the schools that I'm in here in Clark County, 90 to 100% of the entire school population qualifies for free and reduced lunch. So the great news about the Communities in Schools program is that it's open to everyone, everyone in the school, no questions asked. Anytime we roll into a school with a full time person that goes to that school every single day, we also bring in a full resource room. A resource room might be a closet, a classroom, a portable based on the space that the school has to give. But let's assume that it's a classroom, as many of our schools have, that classroom is filled with shoes, socks, backpacks, hygiene items, coats, hats, gloves, laundry detergent. Some of our resource rooms have washers and dryers in them, because what happens when we walk into a school building is we take an analysis of what resources you have in the school, where the school is located. Are you in a food desert? Is it a primarily walking neighborhood, or all the kids bussed in? What's our chronic absenteeism rates? What else. In the neighborhood? Is it a safe place to walk? We're analyzing all of this with the school support team, a principal, a vice principal, maybe their, their, you know, other organizations that are part of it. Who's already here? Who do we need to bring to the table? Because that's the incredible thing about the CIS model. There's so many incredible things, but is that we bring other partners on site with us to make sure that they have, that we have all the resources. But I'm going to get back to your question, because then you asked, How do I pick a kid out? So the program is open to all students. No questions asked. Resource room. Walk in, get a pencil, get a backpack, and what what happens in that resource room is we're creating trust. We're creating trust every single day because I, Tammy, I'm going to show up in the resource room and Tanya, you're my site coordinator, and you're going to give me my pencil one day, and the next day you might give me a granola bar because you missed breakfast, you know, you might show up, you know, three days later, and you might, you know, are looking for, you know, maybe some shampoo or something. What's What? What Tonya you're creating with me, you're gonna start having conversations with me. What else is happening? Do you have siblings in this school? What's going on? And most of our kids don't open up right at once, right? They might be other things going on, but then eventually that same person's in this room every day, and they're not they're not grading me. They're not punishing me. We are one of the only people on a school campus that does not grade or punish any of our kiddos.

Tanya Flanagan 11:29
What I love that I'm hearing is because when you when you first hear about communities and schools, what you really think about is you always think about these programs as a pathway to improving education, but it's always so academically focused. It's about tutoring. It's about grades. It's about filling in the gap where you're just not understanding math or science or English. But this is about filling in the gap of life, where the bumps in the road that make life hard to manage, and then because of that struggle and that trauma, you're failing in this area. So if we can remove these barriers, that hunger barrier, because one of the things I hate more than anything, and as you know, I ran a bill at the session, and we'll dig in that. Dave, you know, not get distracted with that, but there was a food insecurity bill, and one of the reasons for it was because I just don't like when kids are hungry. Growing up as a child, my dad was always adamant that you had to have breakfast, because if you don't have breakfast, you don't have brain food, and it's harder to get through the day, and you can't focus and concentrate on your schoolwork. And I just never forgot that lesson from him, that when you start your day, you need to have brain food, especially as a kid, to do your homework. And so there's nothing worse than sitting in class and feeling hungry. And so your communities and schools is doing exactly that to remove that barrier that makes whatever the issue might be, and giving a kid someplace safe to go if there is a violence, a domestic violence, or a situation in the home, or you don't really have somewhere to live, or you don't know how temporary that housing can be, or there isn't food, there isn't basic supplies, like soap, you mentioned, shampoo, socks, underwear, T shirts. It's just, I really appreciate that you're sharing this with the listening community, because I don't know that we always know what exactly an organization is doing. We know it's a great organization, but this is allowing our listening audience across the state to understand where communities and schools is really filling in the gap and making a difference. Yeah,

Tami Hance-Lehr 13:30
I mean, well, first of all, I mean you, you have 100% we are basically a social service organization inside school buildings, right? And the entire community needs Dave skin in the game and making sure that our kids have the education and graduate career college and community ready. But kids are not going to do that if they're hungry, if they have a toothache, if they have a medical problem, if there's trauma going on at home, if they're coming to school in dirty clothes all the time, and then they get made fun of, and then they get bullied, and then they don't want to come to school anymore. The other thing about these resource rooms is there. Some of them are a lot of them are the safe place. So if you get overwhelmed by having, you know, 400 kids at recess or lunch, and you're having a really bad day, or the noise is too bad in your head, you can go to this resource room and you can sit in a quiet place, and you can read a book, or you can talk to your site coordinator, or you and your friend go, it becomes this, like place where it's all about care, it's all about love, it's all about you know, you mentioned the podcast joy like this is a place where we want kids to feel safe and listen. It's a different world than when I went to school, right? Social media challenges. There's just so much stuff going on, and so we often say that students need to be turned on to living before they can be turned on to learning. And that's really at the heart of what communities and schools is doing in partnership with our schools. We have so many incredible teachers, we have so many incredible social workers and counselors and administrators. They're doing incredible work. Work and there's not enough of them to go around. That's the other reason why CIS really helps fill a gap, because we work with our teachers. So how do we pick our students? We're in a school, school, obviously kids sometimes will self select, because they'll come in and they'll get an item and we'll continue to have a conversation. Teachers refer a lot of our students to us, right? So if you've noticed that Johnny, all of a sudden, is having major behavior issues, which he didn't have before, and he might be missing some classes instead of sending him to the dean or something like we did before. Now you'll send him, you'll you'll have him go see Miss Tanya at communities, in schools. Miss Tanya will have a conversation with you. And all of a sudden, we realize that, you know, maybe this student can't see the can't see the whiteboard, and we need to get them classes, and it's as simple as that, or, you know, whatever it is. So we are teacher referred because the site coordinator becomes part of the fabric of the school campus. They're there in the morning at bus drop off. They're there after school. A lot of our site coordinators will see students that might need some additional help, and then most of our schools have what they call like an MTSS team, so a multi tiered systems of support, where, if you know, we have a social worker on campus, a social worker might take a certain type of student, and then CIS might take another level of student. And so we'll do some referrals that way to make sure that there's a complete care team involved. I often say that cis is a is, you know, like an evidence based, but a non clinical intervention, right? Our site coordinators aren't social workers. They're probably closer to, like, community health workers. So they're, they're, they're definitely supporting that first tier of kids that need some additional support, some additional cheerleading, if you will.

Tanya Flanagan 16:39
I have to say, Tammy, that anytime I've met anyone who works with communities and schools, and I have even a friend across the country who works with this organization in Houston, absolutely proud of the work that he is doing. Those people who are local that I know who work with this organization, absolutely again, proud of the impact and the work that they are doing driven such a passion for the exchange and the engagement and the impact that they're having on not just on the kids lives, but I think that the impact the kids are having on their lives, because when you make the choice to serve young people, to serve families, to serve people who are disadvantaged for whatever the reason may be, you're wired a certain way to want to be in this space and to want to do that kind of work. And what I'm also hearing is, as a nonprofit, there's always the opportunity to receive, to receive support from anyone who wants to engage in this space. So for people who are sometimes at home, and you come across, I don't care if it's a book that you don't read anymore, but maybe you loved it as a kid, and you think some other children would love this book, a place to donate a book, or to donate socks, or to donate T shirts, just to you're saying, Where can I give and make a difference? I used to work with another nonprofit in the city, and several nonprofits, really, because there's a lot of stuff out there, but people would say, What can I do? I have these things, and I think sometimes they're looking for a really cool organization to partner with and to get involved with, and communities and schools is sounds like it's one of those spaces where the community can come in and they

Tami Hance-Lehr 18:22
can. I mean, listen to your point. Those resources just don't build themselves, right? We take many donations gently used clothing, because a lot of our resource rooms have clothing closets. Some of them have school uniforms. Some of them are just regular clothes, depending on what the school needs. And remember, I'm in elementary, middle and high school. So when we talk about clothing, we can, you can clean out your closet, and the gamut is there for our high school kiddos. Interview clothes are so important, right? Job interviews, you know, those types of things. A lot of our students don't always have those. So if people want to learn more, and, you know, just hit the volunteer button or something like that if you want to learn more. CIS nevada.org, is the place to to learn more, for sure,

Tanya Flanagan 19:08
and listening to you talk about the clothing closet and just events that happen in children's lives that they're not prepared for and that can create stress and anxiety. There's homecoming, there's dances, there's the prom, and you know, the kids go and some kids are able to do the extravagant you see these kids do these amazing things when they get ready, but others do need a little help and support. So I guess when we're looking in our classes, I know as a woman, when you've gone to whatever Gala, but you've grown past that dress, or it's another decade in your life and it's still hanging there. Communities and Schools is a space where you maybe could give that beautiful gown to a school or to the program to help a young person who otherwise wouldn't be able to prepare for that event in his or her life, whether it's a gown or it's a tuxedo or snow. Suit

Tami Hance-Lehr 20:00
or, yeah, I, I bet most of our listeners would be surprised to know that through whatever your favorite social service nonprofit is it, it might be making its way to communities and schools. So for example, we know project 150 here in Southern Nevada, they have an incredible prom closet event. They most a lot of our kids go to that event, because we partner with Project 150 and all of our high schools, a lot of their clothing closets and some of their food banks are actually in our resource rooms, because at communities and schools, we never want to duplicate efforts, right? Ever, ever, ever,

Tanya Flanagan 20:33
I love that, and thank you for saying that so we can talk about the collaborative in the community. So please go on and talk about how you guys collaborate with other organizations?

Tami Hance-Lehr 20:43
Yeah, to enter your point, we will have some some prom dresses or some form of clothes for from our young men hanging in the resource rooms, because we always want to have that that available. But on a bigger scale, why should we do it if in another incredible community partner is doing it right? So we want to be able to do that. But I know we have listeners from across the Nevada here, and I have schools in Elko and Winnemucca now in Elko and Winnemucca, I don't have a project 150 there, right? So we actually, as communities and schools, we produced prom closet in Elko and Winnemucca earlier this year, because, again, there was there was a need, and there wasn't another partner doing it. And so the answer can't be, well, our kids can't have it, because kids should have all the things. All the kids should have all the things. So the answer was, well, communities and schools will jump in and do it. So if there is a partner doing it, we want to partner with them. So if you're listening out there other nonprofit organizations and and are providing services, you know, we work very closely with future smiles. I CARE for Kids. Three squares serving our kids. There's so many different organizations that we're working with over 120 of them, so we'll always try to go there first. But if there is a need, like in Northern Nevada, we actually do the weekend food bag program, because there wasn't anybody doing it. So we now get the food from the food bank or directly from, you know, you know, and then, and then do that ourselves. So that's the great thing about the Communities in Schools model. It's, it's very evidence based, and it has a really great model on which we do things, but, but what I do in one school versus another school can be completely different based on what the need of the neighborhood is. The community. Are they bust? Are they walked? If it is a food desert. We want to bring in a three square and set up a grocery giveaway, right? But if there's one right down the street, then we're just going to send all of our families to the one down the street, right? So this is part of the CIS model, is that we're making sure there is no duplication, but everybody should have access to everything.

Tanya Flanagan 22:37
I liked how you talked about the touch points different organizations identifying different need it made me also think about statistical data and the gathering of that, and you wondering what that looks like through communities and schools and maybe even in collaboration with others, because you're getting a view of families across the state of need. So when you do needs assessment. What are we able to learn from you so that we can do better work in terms of meeting the needs, identifying gaps, targeting the dollars and making sure they're channeled to go where they need to go. How do we improve the education process? How do we improve the housing process? How do we improve the job, career development, career readiness program? How do we improve these spaces based on the real life information you are, you know, getting from helping the children and helping the families, yeah, because you have sort of a different look. Yeah, yeah. We're very what's going on. We're very

Tami Hance-Lehr 23:41
collaborative. And so first of all, Community Schools is very data driven organization. We have our own. It's called, you know, system CIS data management, super clever, but we enter all of our data in so we can track our progress, because part of our model is to monitor and adjust. So if we've set an attendance goal with a school that we're going to reduce their attendance by 5% over the year, and we're one quarter in and we haven't even moved the needle, then we really need to go back and monitor and say, Now what are we doing that hasn't worked, and what do we need to be doing differently? And that really came in handy after the pandemic, because what we were doing to support chronic absenteeism before the pandemic was not working after the pandemic. After the pandemic, we had to focus much more on family engagement. Right before the pandemic, it wasn't quite as much about that. But after the pandemic, we had to really engage families. So then we had to go find more community partners, like a Boys Town, or, you know, some of these other organizations to kind of help us, because, again, our site coordinators, you know, don't know everything, right? So you know that they're there, I call them magicians all the time, but there's only so much they can do. But I think the other thing about the data that really our listeners should know is that everything is interconnected to education. So when you talk about a housing crisis, right? We talk about housing insecurity in our families every time a family. Has to pick up and move, and they have young kids in school. They pull their kids out of school. It takes them weeks to get their kids back in school, sometimes. And then think about how long it takes you as a kid to get back acclimated to that next school that contributes to our reading and our math schools. It just does right and food insecurity. You mentioned it earlier. We know how important three meals a day are, right? And if kids don't have the basic needs in their school, if they don't have breakfast and lunch, if they're not getting a weekend food bag, if we're not doing a grocery giveaway, that contributes to what they're reading and their math scores, this contributes to our graduation rate. This contributes to our workforce development. It's all interconnected, and this, this, the stat is there, which is 70% of our public school kids across Nevada qualify for free and reduced lunch. 70% that's, that's, that's a that keeps me up at night, right? That keeps me up at night. So when we're when we're looking at, how are we going to move the needle, right? How are we going to going to look at, what do we want our Nevada to be, right? What do we want the new Nevada to be? I think we really have to think about all the things that come into a school building that that contribute to reading and math scores, and those are just a few of them. And we haven't even touched on mental health yet, which is probably a whole other podcast,

Tanya Flanagan 26:17
right? And you know, you said something earlier that just really resonates with me, that it's everybody's it should be everyone's concern, right? And so in order to impact this and to make a difference, we have to see it as a collective community problem. It's not just, oh, there's this nonprofit or that nonprofit, or this organization or agency, this person is a social worker, or this person is a counselor. It really is a collective community issue. How well kids do in life, what type of start they get. And everyone is not starting from the same point, and so they're going to finish differently. But the journey along the way is where we can begin to try to level things out, to at least allow people to have a better chance to learn and to choose a path forward for themselves.

Tami Hance-Lehr 27:14
Yeah, absolutely. Listen, it's all about working together. It's about making sure that we have each other back so we can support each other. I remember your comment about that, not every kid starts at the same place, right? So during the pandemic, Community Schools played a huge role in connecting kids, which is making sure that every single kiddo had a laptop and laptop and was connected to a reliable internet source, right? We know that that was going to be the key to success. Played a huge role in that, and in that we needed to make sure that students had internet. But some kids needed a hotspot, right? Because they didn't have a house that was like a plug in wall deal. They needed a hotspot. So it's about meeting our kids where they're at.

Tanya Flanagan 27:55
I love that about everything that you've said today, because you've talked so much about the innovative approaches, the real approaches to fill in the gap and finding out what's wrong and how and how to go about providing a solution, whether it's washing your clothes, getting shampoo, getting breakfast, just having a safe space to sit quietly, having someone that you build this relationship with, where you can have a conversation. I really just appreciate learning so much more today about communities and schools. Folks. In case you missed any part of this, I'm talking with Tammy hansler from Communities in Schools. She is the CEO and the state director of this really great nonprofit program that helps families all across Nevada that are in need, but not in need, but not in the traditional sense of what you might think when you think about a program that's in a school. Tammy, I want to say thank you for being with me. We're getting a tour at the very, very end of the show, but I want to make sure, once again, you share how people can learn more about communities and schools that they want to get involved.

Tami Hance-Lehr 28:55
Yeah, well, first of all, time just flew. So I'd be happy to come back anytime. This was really fantastic, if you want to come learn more about the organization, if you want to see our work in action, if you have something to donate, you can learn more at CIS nevada.org

Tanya Flanagan 29:10
again. Thank you so much for spending this time with me, folks, we just got past the Fourth of July. So Happy Independence Day. Hope you continue to enjoy the weekend as it wraps up. Stay hydrated, stay safe and until next time, thanks for listening to 91.5 jazz and more. K, U, n, b, I want to thank you for tuning into the scoop with me, Tonya Flanagan, and I want to invite you to get social with me. I'm on Facebook and Twitter. My name is my handle, T, a n, y, A F, l, a n, a G, A N. You can also find me on Instagram at Tanya, almond eyes Flanagan, and if you have a thought, an opinion or a suggestion, don't hesitate to shoot me an email to tonya.flanagan@unlv.edu Thanks again for joining in. Stay safe and have a great week. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai