 I'd like to welcome our viewers to Ignite the Spark. My name is Shar-Spect Pachniak. I am the founder and CEO of the program called Horizons for Girls. Ignite the Spark, when we talk about that, I'm talking about the process of working with our students. And I'm sure anybody can relate to when you're having a conversation with someone and they're kind of zoning out, they're not paying attention. They don't really care. They're going, when is this person going to just shut up so I can get out of here? And that is really what we try and do with our students. We're trying to look for that inner passion, that button that's going to get them excited and get them engaged. And that is so exciting when that happens. When we can see a student starting to ask some questions, giving some feedback, getting involved, then we know we've got them. I'm a salesperson at heart. Did radio sales for 20 plus years? And I always was able to see that spark of interest when I'm talking to a client. Same thing with my students. When I can all of a sudden connect, I've got them. And that to me is exciting. What I do on Ignite the Spark is I love to have people come in and we talk about issues that are facing my students, that are facing students as a whole. And as I was sharing with my guests as they were coming in, I tend to learn a lot when I do this. And so I get to hear a lot of new information also. I'm excited today. I've got two guests with me, Tom and Caitlin. Caitlin, you and I began working with Coastal Cares. And I think that was exciting because the students got to connect with some of the professionals from Coastal Cares. Now, you've recently stepped into a new position. You're with United Way. I'm with United Way. I'm their new director of community development. As we were discussing before, it's been a wonderful eye-opening experience for me to be able to work with all the different nonprofit organizations that are fulfilling a need that Sheboygan County has. And I'm here with Tom Momstad. He is the executive director of United Way and much more of an expert than I am. So he'll be able to give you more intel on the things that we want to discuss today. OK, well, I'm glad both of you could make it. And I know you did a little bit of adjusting, but we were able to make it fit in. And we certainly appreciate that, Char. Thank you very much. No problem. Now, when Caitlin and I were getting ready for the show, she sent me a couple of PowerPoints. And the first one I had never heard of before. And so I am curious. Alice, at first, I thought I was going to be watching this video about a person. But you tell me. The Brady Bunch back in our day, back in our day, as far as Alice, right? Alice was commissioned by the United Way of Wisconsin. And they did a research study to try to determine what the income people need, whether it be families or individuals, to get by day to day, week to week, month to month, to have enough money that if their car breaks down, they're able to get that car fixed. They're able to afford housing. They're able to afford nutritious food. Alice is an acronym, obviously. It's Asset Limited Income Constrained Employee. We always need acronyms. But what it really talks about is the working poor. And people that are working 40 hours a week, maybe even working 45 hours a week, making 10, 12, $13 an hour when you multiply that over the course of a year, $25, $26,000 a year, really isn't enough to afford housing in Sheboygan County and any county in Wisconsin. So what the purpose of the United Way is, is to get the word out about the people that are working in Alice. And what we've decided to do in Sheboygan County is not shame employers to say that you need to pay more money, but try to find ways to bolster some support, whether it be low-income loans, whether it be assistance with car repair, if the car is break down, seeing if they qualify for subsidies in any case, to talk about food banks, make sure they understand about farmers markets, all the different resources that they have at their disposal to help bolster their income to make sure that they're living day to day. Transportation is another big issue, talking about either rideshares or innovative ways in Sheboygan County that we can perhaps provide something to people in the outlying community so they can get the jobs that are paying $17, $18 an hour because we do have very many jobs in Sheboygan County that are paying that kind of wage that if they couple that with a second income, perhaps they're above that Alice threshold. That's exciting. So the United Ways already started to do some different things to make this happen. Yeah, we have given at least seven different presentations to area either businesses. We went to the chamber, Sherm, the HR group, the Society of Human Resources Managers. We've given a presentation to them. We're gonna continue to do that. We have a group of 12 people that are looking at putting a community conversation together. We're hoping to do that sometime in January. We're gonna invite business leaders, community leaders, local politicians, anybody that would be interested in helping us not only understand what Alice is about but how to help the folks that are in the Alice population get themselves in a position where they can get above that threshold. And one thing that we need to say about Sheboygan County, we are doing fairly well compared to other counties in the state. It's certainly my personal opinion that we're not doing well enough. The poverty level was set about 25 years ago and we still use that poverty level today to talk about poverty. So when we talk about 200% above poverty or 300% above poverty, many times that's how you qualify for programs like Medicaid and food stamps and things like that. So I think it's personally imperative that we probably take a look at what the poverty level is and actually put a real number to it. But I know that's very difficult as a society to do. Yeah, that makes it very difficult. But again, I know when I look at the families of my students, definitely there are so many issues that they're facing even if they are a two income family very often, they're just not making it. Yeah, I'm sure you're right, you're absolutely right. And then if you're talking about a two parent functional dual income family, we know that we have many single families in the county that if they're struggling and they're not able to take off of work because they're working an hourly wage, if they take off of work, they may lose a position. Those are real very difficult life decisions. So you talk about access to all kinds of services that may go unmet because the parents need to work. Right, right. Which leads me into the next one that really was a hot button for me. I heard a little bit about it. But again, when Caitlin sent me the PowerPoint, it was like, oh, this is right on. Let's talk about PATH. Yeah, PATH, again, we have another acronym for it, but the United Way of Sheboyin County is helping spearhead some access to healing. It's called providing access to healing is the acronym for PATH. And what it is is having licensed therapists physically go into the schools and then the students go and meet the therapist in the schools, maybe come out a first hour, go meet the therapist, come back into the class. The day goes on. Hopefully, nothing troubling happens in the session, but they're working on issues. They're working on things that are really preventing them and having barriers for their learning, for their attendance, for their behaviors. And so there were four metrics when we first started PATH. And I was fortunate at the time, I was the district administrator in Random Lake and Random Lake was one of the first schools that got PATH in the county. And we had four metrics that we wanted to see happen. We wanted to see increased grades, we wanted to see increased attendance, we wanted to see decreased behavior referrals to the office. And probably as important, if not most important, we wanted to make sure the students were feeling better about themselves, their interpersonal skills were better with both with peers, their adult people they needed to interact with, whether it's teachers, counselors, principals, parents. And we were pleased that very quickly we saw all four of those metrics met. So we were able last year to increase this. We are now in Plymouth and Head Start. We actually work with three, four or five-year-old kids at Head Start. So we're starting really early. The intervention that you talked about earlier, which I think is critical as you do to making sure that we are getting kids early and working on preventative aspects of how they're going to grow and mature over time. This year, the United Way is actually able to expand into Oostburg, Sheboygan Falls, Elkhart Lake, and we added another day out in Plymouth. It's our hope that we can continue to bolster path and get as many as seven therapists throughout the county and the schools. We believe that we will be at a level that we would feel comfortable that the needs of the schools are gonna be met. But until we get to that threshold, I don't think we're gonna stop at the United Way trying to get these therapists into the schools. And how have the schools responded to this service being available to students? Well, I think they can't say enough about it. The school counselors in this day and age are given the mission of doing academic and career planning and there's a law, actually, they have to provide that for every sixth through 12th grade student. So their focus is really pulled. So to give this level of therapy, not only is it difficult, I'm a former guidance counselor, I don't think I could give that level of therapy just because of my expertise. The 3,000 hours that these therapists have to go through for their clinical experience is crucial to making sure they have the expertise to make sure that the kids are provided service that's going to really help them. And I think that is what the superintendents, the guidance counselors of principals are most happy about is these are people that have been trained specifically to deal with the needs of emotional health of children. So they can't be happier. They're, unfortunately, they're talking to Caitlin and I about when are we going to get the next day of service? And so I think that's going to be our mission for the United Ways Boykin County to make sure that we can make that come true for them. And families, how are they feeling? I would, in my mind, it would be, oh, okay, I don't have to worry about running my student to an appointment someplace else that's happening right in the school system. Absolutely, well, let's tie Alice together with that. I don't have to leave my job making $14, $15 an hour where it's an hourly wage, so I'm going to get deducted. I may not have sick time, so I can just rest assured that it's getting handled at school, that reduces my stress as a parent, as an employee. It reduces my boss' stress because I'm not taking off work. They don't have to get substitutes. Productivity doesn't go down. It talks exactly what we were talking about earlier. It's breaking down barriers to make sure that people have access to health, whether it be emotional, social, physical health. We can talk about dentistry programs that are coming to school, but it's really a nice model to make sure that we're meeting the needs of kids and their emotional well-being. Well, and I'm thinking then as a student, and it almost starts to get rid of that stigma of, oh, well, I need to go see a therapist, and it's just part of the school day, and it's no big deal. Well, we're certainly hoping that's the way it is. One of the things that I really appreciated about the folks in Random Lake is that they've forever embraced mental health, and so it was really an easy decision for us to get into the schools. All of the other schools, I believe, are wrestling with a little bit of that, but it's going away. Stigma is something that I still think we need to battle, but when it's part of the daily vernacular, when it's part of the just day-to-day operations, and kids go and come to guidance offices, it makes it easier for that to happen, and I appreciate you saying that because it's stigma is something we continually need to work on, but I think some of those barriers are getting broken down as well, so I appreciate you bringing that up. Yeah, because I just think, again, because I'm working with students so much, and there's so much bullying still going on. I mean, I remember when I went to school a long time ago, and there was a lot of bullying going on, there's still that, it's the nature of the beast, so to speak, is that kids are gonna try and find something to grab on to. Absolutely, and that bullying has evolved. It isn't necessarily face-to-face in the schools. There's an awful lot of things happen on social media and cyberbullying that the schools are dealing with, and if we can find a nexus between schools and the bullying that's happening, we can deal with it, but oftentimes parents don't know about it, kids don't talk about it, so that's certainly something that we need to advocate more is if something's happening online, or you're getting bullied either via Facebook, or Snapchat, or Instagram, or what's the new one? There's gotta be something that's going on, because you're chasing your tail all the time, trying to keep up with all those different things, and they have some of them where it's gone in 10 seconds, so unless that kid takes a screenshot of it, there's really no evidence, and she said, and they don't know what's going on, so it's the bullying is certainly something that is probably gonna be around for a little bit, but I think we're addressing it a little bit better, I don't think it's just buck up and take care of yourself, I think it's more if there's mediation that goes on, there's different ways that students are dealing with it, with adults, and adults are dealing with their kids, so I think that's become a little better too, but you're right, they continue to try to do it. They always do, and you're right, way back when the message I would get was, well, buck up, that's life, you're gonna have to deal with it, and it is still very much an ongoing issue. I know earlier this fall we did a bullying walk, it was our first day, and we're gonna do that every year, and it really opened up a lot of discussions about bullying and those new formats of where it's happening, and that's a challenge, definitely. It was fun when we did that bullying, we actually had a grandmother in her wheelchair participating, she believed in it that much that she didn't do the whole, it was a 5K, she didn't do the whole 5K, but she did a section of it because she said, I'm gonna show that I really am concerned about this issue, that was really cool, I wish I would have had pictures, but I was at the start line, so I really didn't get a chance to get any pictures about that, but it's pretty cool to see that happen. With the spur, what are some of your plans here, looking at adding additional days to some of the schools? Well, certainly we hope that through the United Way we're able to add two more therapists next year. I probably shouldn't talk too much about some of the other thoughts that we have, but we are trying to work with other community leaders to not only emphasize the need, because I believe they know the need as well, so I don't think it's going to be too much to identify the need, I think it's gonna be the funding and the resources, clearly it comes down to that often, but I think if there are resources available, hopefully we can get a couple other counselors, so we'll have six, if we do get to six, I'll give you a little bit of information, I'm gonna probably go and talk to some of my colleagues and say, is there any way that we can collaborate with all eight districts and you give enough money where we can buy one more therapist and then take the number of days and divide them per capita, obviously Sheboygan has more kids than Plymouth and has more kids than Nooseburg, Cedar Grove, the Random Lake, but all of the school districts want to be involved in it, so all of them I think should be prorated based on number of students. If there's any way to prorate them based on elevated need, which I think would be a slippery slope, I'm not sure you'd want to start there, I think you probably want to prorate it by a number of students and then put the therapist in the schools and try to see if you can measure the results, which is critical, I think, that's what the United Way does with all of our programs, is we measure the results and we have to devise that community impact because we want to invest our money where we're gonna have the impact and if we're not having impact, quite frankly we shouldn't be investing the money, it should go somewhere else where we can have impact and positively affect students in that primary prevention as you talked about, that's why I think we really like the Head Start aspect of this, if you're dealing with three and four and five year old students, not only are you dealing with them, but you're also dealing with their parents and tips for them to help cope because if the students have been identified that early, they have some issues that have been identified of need of services, they might be anxious, they might not be developing properly, so the therapist can work with the parents to help work with those students outside of the Head Start environment. Right, and that even as you're talking about that Head Start, then I start to think about maybe even programs and I'm just gonna plan to see it out there, the Teenage Parent Program and those students that are engaged in that type of programming and they've got a lot of issues obviously also, so definitely some challenges for every single one of them. What intrigues me about PATH is that whole in-school setting, probably because it's near and dear to me especially this year, I almost said, nevermind I was gonna mention a different program, but with horizons as of this year, Dr. Sheehan has endorsed the fact that we're in the schools. I go into the school and provide service to students. I'm available on call if necessary so that I can very quickly respond to student needs and that really seems to make a difference. Again, and again talking about that preventative service and being able to start as early as possible and making a difference, it's gonna be easier to make those changes if they really have not become habits. Absolutely, you're 100% correct and just the fact that you going into schools, the therapist going into schools, the time and motion that it takes for the student to get to you and get back to class, which I believe being a former educator is critical because we could have kids gone a half a day, three quarters of a day because they have an appointment. If they can be gone 25, 30 minutes and get back to math, science, socialized language arts and get back to education and not necessarily the reason that they're there, but it's a big reason that they're there is we wanna make sure that they're educated and can move forward while providing that access to service. I think, as you said, it's critical. I think anything we can do within the school setting to keep kids there. And as I said, if we're in Loosburg or Cedar Grove or Random Lake and you're 25 miles or 20 miles away from any therapy appointment, it takes a lot of time and a lot of money from the parents and a lot of effort from the parents. And we don't want parents to make decisions. Do I need to stay at work because I need to earn money or do I have to care for my mental health of my child? That's a pretty tough decision to make. It is, it really is. It's not fair to the schools. I mean, it's not fair to anything. Right. And even to the economy and the community as a whole. I mean, all of this has that ripple effect of affecting everybody, so. But as you said, the longer we let it go, the more expensive it's going to be. You know, you certainly, if you have kids that are, you know, having, you know, societal issues and they're offending and all of a sudden they become incarcerated. It costs a lot more to incarcerate them than to work with them on the front side. Yeah, the statistic, the sheriff had given to me, it was a year ago, it was $286 per day per student to be incarcerated. I mean, what is that, you know, what is that? Proving nothing, you know. And I talked to some of my students who have spent time in juvenile detention and the things they didn't know that they do know when they come out, it's like, we put you there to learn that. And then come out and act on some of those things because they've developed a network of relationships, friends, that they may not have on the outside. So if we develop a relationship of friends, adults that can help bolster them and help support them, perhaps they won't offend and perhaps we can prevent incarceration, which isn't pleasant. I've had too many children that I've had to go see down at the detention center, and it's not something that is, in my opinion, the way that we want to reform our students. Many, many years ago, when I was the director of the Literacy Council, when it was a separate entity, I would go to the Kellnery Correctional Institute and we did reading and mentoring there, trying to help inmates so that when they got out, they would be more successful in staying out. And definitely not the place I'd want to be on a permanent basis. Before we wrap up today, obviously United Way has a campaign that they're always, whether it's just past or they're getting ready for another one, fill me in on what's happening with United Way. Oh, very good, we had our kickoff, our day of caring, where we have 550 volunteers go throughout the community. We had 40 different projects that they went and did at nonprofits throughout the county and they did a really nice job. You talk about Dr. Sheehan, he is one of our co-chairs. Jackie Joseph Silverstein, obviously the dean here is another one of our co-chairs. So they helped kick off the day. I had an opportunity to drive around the county with Dr. Sheehan. I think we went to 15 different locations. Every one of them, the volunteers that smiles on their faces, the executive directors, were just ecstatic that they were gonna get the work done that they wouldn't have been able to do, they wouldn't be able to afford it, they wouldn't have the volunteers. So it's just a wonderful kickoff to our campaign. Caitlin has been out and has been doing some campaign presentations. She's doing a wonderful job. She's absorbing a lot of information. Clearly there's a lot to know about all the different partner agencies that we have. We have 19 of them and we have 40 different programs that we run. We invest in programs. We don't invest in the partner agencies. So Meals on Wheels has a program that we invest in Boys and Girls Club, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Mental Health America. I can continue to go on, but obviously time is something that we probably don't have a lot of. So we invest that money. So it's critical that we continue to get money streaming into us. So our CAT team or community action team, they evaluate all of our proposals and we talked about community impact earlier. If we don't guarantee community impact, we won't invest in those programs. So it's critical that when we get requests for information or requests for proposals that they articulate how this is gonna impact our community in a positive, preventative way. So that's a critical aspect of what we do. And obviously as Caitlin is gonna be going out as our primary campaign presenter, she's gonna have to articulate that aspect above all that we guarantee or will try to guarantee that we're gonna have a community impact that's gonna be positive with all these programs. And the community has been extremely generous. We were able to invest $2.1 million last year, which the most we've ever had. And so we continue to want to increase that. We want to make sure that the United Way is helping collaborate, breaking down barriers, making sure we don't have silos and we're all working together for the betterment of Sheboygan County. Great, great. As we wrap up, of course, one of the things I wanna do is make sure I extend a thank you for the fact that United Way runs the Volunteer Center and that too, Horizons, is absolutely critical for anybody that's ever thought about wanting to do something that really can make a difference and have an impact. Consider being a mentor. It's fun, it's exciting, when you can make that connection with a student, all of a sudden you're going, got it, we're really connecting. We're excited about the fact that when we look at our statistics, we stay with our students until they graduate from high school. We even, you know, a couple of them do stick with us and try and help with the program, which is exciting. We have some peer-to-peer mentors, but we are able to brag and celebrate the fact that we have 100% graduation of the students that stay engaged in our programming. So we know it's working and I invite anybody that's interested to visit our website, horizonsforgirls.com. Give me a call, ask for information. There's a lot of information. Make sure you tune in again next month for Ignite the Spark and as always we're gonna have some exciting information to share with our viewers. But thank you again for joining us today on Ignite the Spark. ["I'm a Star-Spangled Banner"]