Cleveland Heights – University Heights Public Library Board of Trustees meeting highlights 4-15-2019

APRIL 15, 2019

 

  • SPARK program
  • Financial report
  • Summer lunch program 2019
  • Summer VISTA Program

 

Present were President Chris Mentrek, Vice President James Roosa, Secretary Dana Fluellen, Suzanne Moskowitz, Vikas Turakhia and Max Gerboc. Annette Iwamoto was absent.

SPARK program

The library will partner with Family Connections to provide the SPARK (Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids®) program. SPARK is proven to narrow the kindergarten readiness gap. It now works with 11,000 children in 11 counties across Ohio targeting high poverty and rural districts. Libraries are proven SPARK partners. Families are visited in the home and trained to become their child’s first teacher using an Ohio preschool curriculum with rigorous evaluation for tracking results. SPARK’s responsive services component identifies children who may need additional services such as speech, physical therapy, occupational therapy, etc. prior to entering kindergarten. Children will enter kindergarten with this advantage, and SPARK increases parent knowledge about their child’s development and how to strengthen prerequisite social, emotional, and cognitive skills for kindergarten success. This service is delivered by a parent-partner who has been trained. Family Connections is the sole provider of SPARK services in Cuyahoga County. The library’s board of trustees approved a resolution for the director to enter into the memorandum of understanding with Family Connections and the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District for SPARK services. The board also allocated $40,000 from the general fund to Family Connections for providing SPARK services in 2019 and the following four years.

Financial report

The libraries’ fiscal officer reviewed the financial statement. Total cash balances across the operating, Bauer Fund, and investment accounts at the end of March was $15,559,124.13. The board accepted the financial report.

Summer lunch program 2019

Heights Libraries will be hosting the Greater Cleveland Food Bank Summer Lunch Program again this year. The program will run June 3-Aug. 9. Youth services department staff will create literacy programming and projects twice a week. HKIC (Heights Knowledge and Innovation Center) staff will be teaching coding and technology related programming once a week.

Summer VISTA Program

Recruitment for the summer Ohio Association of Food Banks VISTA (Americorps) member has begun. This person will be working with the library full time to help with the 2019 summer lunch program including promotion, outreach, and mobile food pantry amongst other things.

Next meeting will be held at the Lee Road Library on Monday, May 20 at 6:30 p.m.

LWV Observer: Khaliah Fisher-Grace.

To receive email postings of full reports, send an email to heights@lwvgreatercleveland.org or join through Google groups using “lwv-chuh observer reports” as a search phrase.

These reports contain member observation and selected highlights of public meetings and are not official statements of the Heights Chapter of the League of Women Voters of Greater Cleveland. This disclaimer must accompany any redistribution of these reports.

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Volume 12, Issue 6, Posted 10:37 AM, 05.22.2019