Sarasota/Manatee and Collier/Lee Roundtable Discussions

Posted on 08/10/2011 @ 04:31 PM

Tags: West

Collier/Lee & Sarasota/Manatee Roundtable Discussions

By Becky Newell, Regional Coordinator, West Florida

After participating in several Listening Tour meetings with Children’s Movement supporters throughout West Florida, I’m truly impressed by the commitment level of those who have attended the meetings. These are people who care deeply about children and families, and they’re excited about doing something to improve the lives of children in Florida.

On Monday, we held two meetings: one for Sarasota and Manatee Counties, and one for Collier and Lee Counties. Both groups talked about how the five priorities of the Children’s Movement –making  health care accessible for all children, diagnosing and treating special needs as early as possible, improving early childhood education (including VPK), providing increased support for mentoring programs, and educating parents about how they can help their children – naturally lead to an additional focus on K-12 education.

At the Collier/Lee meeting, Barbara Mainster, Executive Director of Redlands Christian Migrant Association (RCMA), stated it well: “With the emphasis on parent education and mentoring, the Movement already focuses on children of all ages.” She suggested that we should be more outspoken about the need to adequately fund K-12 education, and that we should increase our emphasis on educating parents. Others agreed that parent education is crucial.

Children’s Movement leaders asked for opinions about whether we should continue to focus almost entirely on advocacy, or whether we should also take a more political approach in our efforts. An overwhelming majority of the attendees at both meetings favored political action. As one put it, “I find the fact that we need to take a political approach distasteful, but it seems obvious that it’s necessary.”

Participants also noted the need to present a unified message to Tallahassee about the needs of children. In the Sarasota/Manatee meeting, Kathryn Shea, CEO of the Florida Center for Child and Family Development, expressed concern about the large number of different messages coming from a number of organizations that that work on behalf of children. She believes that a simple, consolidated message will give our efforts more power.

Hear what participants had to say below: