Meet our New Manager, M.J. Ziemba

Achieve Escambia wants 60 percent of population workforce ready by 2025

A group of more than 100 people typed their feelings on the economic and educational future of Escambia County’s children into their smartphones.

Eventually, three words emerged prominently out of a word soup of thoughts on a big screen in the front of the room. The three most recurring words were hopeful, optimistic and excited.

On Wednesday, we hosted  our 2018 community report on the state of education in Escambia County. The report, presented at C.A. Weis Community Partnership School, highlighted Achieve Escambia's accomplishments over the past year, its goals for the coming year, and the long-term goals and challenges in front of the community.

Read the full PNJ coverage HERE.

Read the 2018 Community Report HERE.

Community report card shows impact of investment

One year ago, Achieve Escambia launched its baseline report. There were 24 pages filled with extensive data, which provided an honest reflection of where our community stood in terms of educational achievement and workforce readiness.

Over the past 12 months, Achieve Escambia has been working hard with our volunteers and partner organizations to break down barriers, increase communication across the community and most importantly align efforts all for the betterment of our young people.

We will celebrate this year’s accomplishments with a Community Report Card Launch Event on Wednesday afternoon, August 29, at 3 p.m. at C.A. Weis Community Partnership School.

Achieve Escambia saves 3-year-old program

By Holly Magee

Originally published as Guestview column in Pensacola News Journal 

Being an educator is tremendously fulfilling and challenging at the same time. I have the pleasure of serving our community as principal of C. A. Weis Elementary Community Partnership School.

If you don’t know about us, we’re located in the heart of Pensacola … not too far from the intersection of Pace Boulevard and Fairfield Drive. Our 32505 Zip code includes one of Florida’s most extreme pockets of poverty. Recent reports have found that our neighborhood community ranks number one in all the wrong categories: pediatric emergency room visits, volume of calls to 911, and reports of abuse.

Out location describes where we are; it does not define who we are.

We are a school filled with talented and compassionate teaching professionals. We are serving kind, silly and intelligent children who reach for the stars when they dream of “someday.”

We are facing challenges at Weis, as are schools across our community. An overwhelming number of children are simply not ready to begin learning when the enter kindergarten for the first time. In many ways, a child’s education is like a race, and when children start the race well behind their peers it’s difficult for them to catch up.

School leaders and teachers see it all too often. Struggles in kindergarten linger, then multiply, impacting a child’s confidence and their interest in achieving success both in and outside the classroom.

Like many in our community, we are working hard to find solutions to the kindergarten readiness problem. Most Florida children first enter formal education in voluntary prekindergarten (VPK), which students can begin after they’ve turned 4 years old. The state of Florida was one of the first in the nation to offer VPK to all 4-year-olds, and it was certainly a step in the right direction.

At Weis, we are working to start even earlier. Our community realized this several years ago, when we launched a preschool class just for 3-year-olds.

We are already seeing remarkable results. Students in the 3-year-old class are significantly more prepared for VPK when they turn 4. We’ve witnessed increases of 30 percent in oral language, 54 percent in phonological awareness, 36 percent in math and 28 percent in print knowledge.

Despite this success, the Weis 3-year-old class was on the verge of closure earlier this year due to lack of funding.

That was when Achieve Escambia stepped up.

Achieve Escambia names new Leadership Council chair and vice chair

As Achieve Escambia gears up for the release of its annual progress report to the community, the organization has named a new leader for its volunteer board.  David Deliman, Gulf Coast market vice president for Cox Communications, has assumed the role of chair of the Achieve Escambia Leadership Council. Deliman takes over for Debbie Calder, executive vice president at Navy Federal Credit Union. Calder has served as chair of Achieve Escambia for the movement’s first two years and will remain active on the Leadership Council.

“This is an exciting opportunity, and I am honored the Leadership Council has placed their confidence in me for this role,” Deliman said. “The Achieve Escambia mission to improve outcomes, cradle to career, is critical for our community’s future growth, and I am confident we can build upon the foundation of success we’ve built over the past two years.”

Lonnie Wesley, pastor of Greater Little Rock Baptist Church, is stepping in to serve as vice-chair as Stan Connally, president and CEO of Gulf Power, rotates out of the position he has served in the past two years. The leadership changes are taking place at the start of Achieve Escambia’s new fiscal year.

“David and Lonnie will continue to help us build on the success we’ve had in aligning efforts,” said Kim Krupa, Director of Achieve Escambia. “We’ve made great progress in the areas of kindergarten readiness and workforce readiness. Achieve Escambia will continue to help break down barriers, increase dialogue between educators, parents, non-profits and children to help ensure all of our children have the best opportunity to succeed today and for a lifetime.”

About Achieve Escambia: Achieve Escambia was founded in 2016 when members of the Pensacola business community identified a need to better support and supplement the career readiness efforts taking place across Pensacola. Our mission is to improve education & workforce outcomes for our community; every child, every step of the way, cradle to career. For more information visit achieveescambia.org  or like us on Facebook.

Achieve Escambia announces major Florida Blue investment

Pensacola, Fla. - Achieve Escambia, a cradle to career collaboration of more than 150 individuals representing 50 partner organizations across Escambia County, is the beneficiary of a $100,000 investment by health insurance leader Florida Blue.

Florida Blue’s support will elevate the work of cross-sector stakeholders who, as members of the Achieve Escambia partnership, have committed to working better together to improve education outcomes affecting children, youth and young adults on their journey to employment.

“Florida Blue’s investment is an investment in the future of our community. This support will help us accelerate our work and achieve real wins for students and families,” said Achieve Escambia Director Kimberly Krupa. “Specifically, this support will help our two teams working to improve kindergarten readiness and career readiness implement new ways to align our work and tackle barriers related to student achievement in and out of school.”

Achieve Escambia is an organization committed to reducing disparities in education and workforce readiness outcomes. Using a structured form of collaboration, a focus on shared data, and continuous improvement tools, Achieve Escambia partners engage in strategies that yield program and service efficiencies and create innovative ways of working together to achieve more equitable results for learners of all ages and backgrounds.

“With United Way as the backbone, it is tremendous to see the passion the Escambia community has shown to work together for the betterment of our children,” said Darnell Smith, Florida Blue North Florida president. “Florida Blue’s mission is to help people and communities achieve better health, and we believe the Achieve Escambia model to bring community resources together will lead to generations of successful, healthier citizens.”   

104,249 children and youth ages birth to 24 live in Escambia County, and that’s Achieve Escambia’s cradle to career target population. What it will take to improve their educational outcomes and connections to the workforce are the focus of the grant project.

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About Achieve Escambia

Achieve Escambia is a cradle to career collective impact partnership whose members include  Escambia County educators, community partners, business leaders, nonprofits, law enforcement, the military, the faith community, policymakers, government at all levels, funders, and advocates. Members commit to aligning community resources so everyone is empowered to achieve success and working within networks, teams and groups to implement improvement measures, monitor results, and track annual achievement of several cradle to career transition points. Achieve Escambia is the Local College Access Network for Escambia County, under the umbrella of the Florida College Access Network, and a member of the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network, a national association of 70 partnerships working to improve education outcomes across the United States. For more information, visit www.achieveescambia.org.

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About Florida Blue

Florida Blue, Florida’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield company, has been providing health insurance to residents of Florida for nearly 75 years. Driven by its mission of helping people and communities achieve better health, the company serves more than 5 million health care members across the state. In total, Florida Blue and its affiliated companies serve 16 million people in 29 states. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., it is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

What will it take to create real change in kindergarten readiness?

When people ask me about early childhood in Escambia County, I tell them … I’ve never seen a community more committed to figuring out how to make things better.

And there's never been a better time for working better together. 

Student success rooted in healthy families

When it comes to student success most of us think of “reading, writing and arithmetic,” or if you’re a little younger, your first thoughts might be STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). All of those subjects are well and good, but I’d venture to say they’re not the most important to a child’s success.

The foundation to student success is their health and the health of their family.

Continue reading PNJ article ...

West Florida Hospital and Achieve Escambia Announce New Partnership

West Florida Healthcare Signs Partnership with Achieve Escambia

All Local Health Providers United in Improving Education

PENSACOLA (March 8, 2018) – West Florida Healthcare has agreed to partner with Achieve Escambia. This new alignment signifies West Florida Healthcare’s commitment to helping improve education outcomes across Escambia County for generations to come.

“We are so thankful that West Florida Healthcare has joined this movement,” said Kimberly Krupa, director of Achieve Escambia. “West Florida CEO Carlton Ulmer shares our vision of aligning efforts across the community so our young people have the best opportunity to achieve success, cradle to career.”

Achieve Success by Improving College Access

I can vividly remember the first day I stepped onto the campus of The College of New Jersey. Like the start of any new journey, it was a monumental day in my personal history. Surrounded by thousands of students and faculty, I was overwhelmed with a sense that anything was possible.

It’s a similar feeling for countless students who’ve completed high school and are now looking at a new educational challenge. For many, it’s an inspirational moment that can help change a person’s life for the better. And the ripple effect is huge. Families, friends and communities are changed each time someone chooses to begin a post-secondary journey and they’re even more impacted when the student completes that journey and is ready to enter the workforce with the skills, knowledge and determination needed to be a success.

40% of Escambia residents have a college degree. Achieve Escambia wants to do better.

By 2025, local education organization Achieve Escambia hopes to increase the amount of residents with at least an associate degree by nearly 20 percent.

The push to increase post-secondary attainment comes as part of Achieve Escambia's new partnership with the Florida College Access Network, a statewide organization focused on widening access to post-secondary education.

Based on Census Bureau estimates, only 40.1 percent of residents in the county in 2015 had at least a two-year degree. But over the next seven years, the goal is to raise that amount to 60 percent, at the minimum.

"Your education cannot stop at high school, or you will be stuck in poverty," said Kimberly Krupa, Achieve Escambia executive director. "Just looking at jobs that will require a credential in the future, more than 60 percent will."

How Escambia, Santa Rosa counties factored into Florida graduation rate increase

Florida hit a 14-year high in high school graduation rates in the 2016-2017 school year, and both Escambia and Santa Rosa counties were part of the uptick. 

Gov. Rick Scott announced the increase Wednesday. Data shows the statewide rate rose to 82.3 percent, an increase of 23.1 percentage points since the 2003-04 school year and 1.6 percentage points since 2015-2016. 

Statistics on the Florida Department of Education website indicate that Escambia County saw a 3.4 percent bump while Santa Rosa increased by 0.7 percent over the course of the past two school years. 

Too many classroom seats empty when school returns

Students report back to most of our local education institutions on Wednesday. Many of their seats will be empty.

That’s because holidays are notorious times for attendance to slump. Every year, absences spike in the weeks before and after the winter holiday as families squeeze in a few more vacation days. The same pattern emerges around spring break and over long holiday weekends.

Attendance is a topic usually reserved for fall’s back-to-school rush. September is Attendance Awareness Month and enrolled students across Florida public schools are counted in October.

But winter and spring are the seasons when absences accelerate, and when chronic absences begin to surface as alarming problems that can hold students back.

It’s the first day of school all over again.

Education Key in Movement Toward Stronger Economy

There’s a growing understanding across Florida of what it takes to create the talent we need to grow a strong, diversified economy that provides pathways to prosperity for all Floridians.

During a recent stop in Panama City, I had the privilege of participating in this movement alongside peers in business, education, government and economic development.  Together, we pledged to join the “RISE to 55” campaign established by state leaders to raise the percentage of working-age Floridians with a degree, industry certification or educational certificate from the current 47 percent to 55 percent by 2025.

FAFSA No. 1 Priority in Accessing College

Like so many first-generation college students, my senior year of high school felt like entering a funhouse of mirrors. Everywhere I turned, a new mirror popped up, distorting my view of how to access this strange new world of higher education.

Thanks to my guidance counselor, I quickly learned about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. It was my ticket to the future.

When I applied for FAFSA, it was worse than doing your taxes, and you had to do it at the same time as your taxes, which made for a nightmarish new year. It took my family more than a month to fill out the form, including entire weekends spent bent over the kitchen table, poring over the rules.

Today, the FAFSA can be completed as early as Oct. 1, using pre-populated income and tax information from an earlier tax year. The entire application takes an average of 24 minutes to complete, from start to finish.

Many more changes over the years have combined to make filling out the FAFSA the No. 1 most important thing students can do to access college.

The FAFSA is deceptively simple. Through a single application, every American student can access a broad range of federal loans, grants or work-study programs, including Pell Grants for undergraduate students from low-income families. Many colleges also require the FAFSA to be on file for need-based or merit-based aid packages, which can combine to make college accessible and affordable to even the poorest of kids like I was.

If it’s so important, why do so few students in our community complete the FAFSA?

Achieve Escambia November Newsletter

Improving Education Starts Long Before School Begins

104,249: that’s how many children and youth ages birth to 24 live in Escambia County.

And that’s our number.

What will it take to improve their educational outcomes and connections to the workforce? These are the central questions Achieve Escambia is tackling.

But where do we begin? Doesn’t it start in the home?

Achieve Escambia September/October Newsletter

Achieve Escambia Celebrates VPK Enrollment Increase

Escambia County preschoolers are off to a great 2017-2018 school year!

Earlier this summer, one of our kindergarten readiness task forces voted to increase Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) enrollment in our county by focusing on three key school attendance zones. With just a few months to go, the task force set a deadline of September 15 and got to work, spreading the word about the value of early learning to parents and caregivers using a variety of outreach strategies, and coming together across three systems on behalf of local children and families. 

We are pleased to announce their hard work has paid off.

To learn more, click HERE.

We must prepare for careers for tomorrow

 What do you want to be when you grow up? About once a week, I find myself quizzing my three children on their career aspirations. I know it’s pointless and guaranteed to backfire, but I can’t help myself. My 11-year-old rolls her eyes and delights in declaring, “I don’t know.” My 9-year-old, a homebody, wants to skateboard and live in my backyard. And my 5-year-old finger-painter wants to be an artist, of course.

Most kids are like mine, in their little cocoons, practically incapable of imagining life as an adult. Polls show children tend to resort to the familiar — the doctors, teachers, scientists, athletes, firefighters, lawyers and police who fill their books and televisions and shape their everyday experiences. They are woefully underexposed to the estimated 12,000 careers that exist in the world today, and the plentiful pathways to those careers that begin as early as preschool.

Achieve Escambia is building a movement to flip the script on college and career readiness, to redefine what success looks like, from cradle to career.

Achieve Escambia has the data, now what?

Achieve Escambia is a voluntary network of organizations and groups working across all 656 square miles of Escambia County. Our bold goal is to break all records of success in the education of children, youth and adults from the time they are born until they are successfully employed.

How do we do this? How do we improve outcomes, not just for a specific group of individuals, but for the entire population across all ages and through the course of life?

This is where data comes in. It may not sound exciting, but acknowledging the complexity of a community is a critical first step in changing a life.

Our baseline report and online dashboard are now LIVE!

Read WEAR's article on our launch event HERE!

Read PNJ's highlight from our launch event HERE!

PNJ explores our data in more depth HERE!

Achieve Escambia is data driven endeavor

As a member of the Achieve Escambia Leadership Council, I am asked, “What makes Achieve Escambia different from similar efforts?” I respond explaining what Collective Impact means, which in simple terms, means a variety of agencies agreeing to come together to coordinate their efforts to achieve better outcomes and results using resources each agency already has at their disposal.

Achieve is trying to use the Collective Impact model to improve the effectiveness of the processes we have in Escambia County to prepare young men and women to enter the workforce and lead successful and productive lives. The efforts necessary to reach this goal start not upon college or high school graduation, or in middle or elementary school; its starts in pre-school and even before that at birth. This is why our key slogan is Cradle to Career.

The efforts of Achieve Escambia are significant in that the major tool we use is the data that describes and defines our community. As a member of Achieve Escambia’s Data Team, I have been a part of the process to gather this data and select the key indicators. The members of the Data Team represent almost every major institution that plays a role in the Cradle to Career continuum. Every point on the Achieve Road Map, and accompanying Dashboard, is being scrutinized based on what the data collected says about that particular point.

Achieve Escambia is seeking not only to accumulate data about various programs and aspects of our community, but is also looking to validate the accuracy of the data that is already being used.

Here is an example of why this is important. Currently, State education offices report that less than 70 percent of the children who are 4 years old in Escambia County attend Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten, otherwise known as VPK. That is roughly 2,400 out of 3, 850 children, and places Escambia well below the state average. However, as we collected more data we realized there are many 4-year-old children who are participating in preschool, but not necessarily the state VPK program.

From the initial data we have collected we have determined that over 600 children attend private preschools that do not participate in the VPK program, many of which are faith-based programs; there are about 200 children every year that participate in the Head Start program, but not VPK; and the parents of around 150 children every year exercise parental choice and decide to leave their child with the early learning provider they have been attending, sometimes since birth, even though that provider does not offer VPK. This adds up to around 950 children. So that means we have 3,350 children, or approximately 87 percent, attending some type of preschool when they are 4 years old. While not perfect, it is certainly better than 70 percent, and when it comes to addressing improving these numbers it is much more manageable.

This example highlights the need for thorough, in-depth data collecting and the accompanying analysis before solutions are developed and any actions are taken. Otherwise actions taken may be inappropriate or resources may be wasted trying to fix something that in the final analysis may not be broken, or at least less broken than originally thought.

From this type of data analysis, it was determined that kindergarten readiness was a pressing need in our community, and where Achieve ought to focus its first efforts. As a result Achieve Escambia’s first Collective Action Network, or CAN, was launched in November. The Kindergarten Readiness CAN has already initiated two Indicator Task Forces, or “ITFs.” One is focused on increasing the percent of 4-year-olds enrolled in VPK programs in Escambia County. As the lead agency for VPK in Escambia County, the Early Learning Coalition is working with other Achieve Escambia partners toward improving this outcome area, and we hope to see an increase in VPK enrollment numbers as early as this fall.

If you or your organization is doing work with children from birth to age 5, we encourage you to join our Kindergarten Readiness CAN. If you are not in the early learning field, you can still get involved. Talk to your friends and family about the importance of early learning. Encourage them to register for VPK at elcescambia.org. The VPK program is free for every 4-year-old residing in Florida. If later learning and career readiness are of interest to you, please get in touch with Achieve Escambia. Achieve will be establishing more Collective Action Networks as we explore all the way points on our Road Map we have developed of the Cradle to Career continuum. We encourage you to check out our website at AchieveEscambia.org to get more information and how you can become involved in our community’s efforts to prepare our children for a successful future.

I believe Achieve Escambia will make a difference in Escambia County. I am encouraged that the foundations of our efforts are rooted in our own data, because as they say your own data is the hardest to refute, but it is also the most reliable means for good, albeit sometimes hard and uncomfortable, decision making. We are starting by trying to improve the number of children we get ready to enter kindergarten. I cannot think of a better place to start. How we go about this, and how successful we are in our efforts, will be determined by the data. As Kimberly Krupa, the new director of Achieve Escambia, said upon being hired, “I cannot wait to put data into implementation.” Neither can the rest of us, because our children will not wait to grow up while we figure it out.

Bruce Watson is the Executive Director of the Early Learning Coalition of Escambia County and serves on the Achieve Escambia Leadership Council and is an Achieve Data Team Member.

Direct from the Director

Last week, Achieve Escambia hosted a breakfast meeting for more than 60 local education leaders. Many of them had never been in the same room before. They came from child-care centers, public schools, private schools, career academies, colleges and universities, and workforce development agencies.

We used our time together to dream big. For more than an hour, we tackled big questions and wicked problems. That is, large-scale, long-term, complex problems that would be impossible for a single organization to tackle on its own. How can we put students at the center of our community? What is the one thing we can do to make things better for Escambia County children, youth and young adults? How can we align our efforts to improve outcomes from birth to employment?

By asking open-ended questions like this, we slowly began offering up solutions. In fact, our one-hour listening session inspired nearly 200 original ideas. Clearly, Escambia County educators have thought about this before.

What’s different now is that we now have the local capacity, through the Achieve Escambia movement, to develop a long-term framework for measuring progress toward our bold goals and for unifying partners to make a difference together. We are building the scaffolding to collectively and positively impact future generations. This means developing a collective system to not only use data in our decision-making, but to begin using the word “future” as a verb in our community.

We have a lot of problems to tackle. As the social entrepreneur Ari Walach said recently, “2017 is not peak civilization. There’s a lot more we can do.”

As a collective impact movement, Achieve Escambia is both a process and a way of thinking - that there is not one of us who is smarter than all of us.

Working together, we will expand what we know about our community’s state of education, cradle to career. Working together, we will deepen our understanding of what’s possible to change the lives of Escambia County families. Working together, we will use our role as influencers and changemakers to reflect forward, to steadfastly do our part to move the needle, knowing it takes patient urgency to see the results of today, tomorrow.

There’s a place for everyone in the Achieve Escambia movement. Contact us today to get involved.

- Kimberly Krupa

A Chief's Corner

Accomplished Collective Impact Veteran Hired as Director

Foster Care: Making a Difference

We just wrapped up National Foster Care Month, but for many of us, appreciating foster care families is a year round mission from the heart.

First, let’s talk about the need. Children and youth enter foster care because they need a safe place to live while their parents work to resolve issues that have affected their personal and family life. Currently there are over 1400 children in out of home care in our four county panhandle area, and over 500 of those children are in local foster homes. Some local children unfortunately are placed outside of our community due to not having enough homes locally.

Now, let’s talk about the opportunity to help. The way to meet the greatest need is to become a foster parent. You can visit FFN’s web page and even talk to a recruiter so see what it’s about. You’ll need to attend training and go through the licensing process before having a child placed with you.  The licensing requirements are designed to provide kids in need with a healthy, family-oriented environment.  

If being a foster parent isn’t a good option for you right now, that’s okay! Believe it or not, there are a variety of different ways you can help the foster care process. You can support foster families in your area with a meal, kid clothes, school supplies, baby items, or just a short break. 

Finally, what it’s like being a foster parent. Anyone who works to make a positive impact in the life of a child will tell you the experience is usually more beneficial for the adult than the child. You cannot change what happened in a child’s life yesterday, but you can change what happens tomorrow. Foster parents only differ from the rest of us because the reached out to help children. You can too.

If you want to learn more about supporting our local foster care system, visit our website, www.FamiliesFirstNetwork.org  or give us a call at (850) 453 – 7777.

    Shawn Salamida

President, FamiliesFirst Network of Lakeview Center and member of Achieve Escambia’s Operational Support Team

Time to invest in community's future

As a long-time Pensacola resident, I feel that we all have a responsibility to support the education and economic independence of those raised here. I am proud to be one of the many who are partnering with Achieve Escambia, an exciting effort aimed at improving the educational and financial outcomes for our friends and families, from cradle to career. Achieve Escambia is a collective impact approach to improving educational outcomes in our area.

When our team at Cox Communications learned about Achieve Escambia, we were excited! The vision,“Every generation achieves success — cradle to career,” aligns with our company’s focus on elevating the educational experience locally. Achieve Escambia’s mission “To align community resources so everyone is empowered to achieve success” has the potential to drastically improve outcomes and opportunities for generations to come.

The importance of investing in our community

Whether it’s through our Connect2Compete program offering low-cost internet for families on free and reduced lunch, our diversity initiatives, or our involvement in the community, Cox believes in the importance of investing our resources right here at home. There’s a strong, growing list of organizations that are supporting Achieve Escambia’s efforts to align resources to improve educational and career opportunities and we believe that collectively, if we all work towards a common goal, we CAN make a difference in our community. We liken it to fish swimming together in a school or birds in a flock: there is efficiency in working together.

You might wonder why a business or other local group would want to invest in an effort like this. Education effects so many in our community, but is very challenging to affect change as individual partners. And because such an important change doesn’t happen overnight, those of us involved with Achieve Escambia realize there is no quick, magic formula, and that’s why we’re focused on the long-term approach.

What is the long term approach?

Social service programs can help children, adults and families in a variety of ways. Yet Achieve wants to know how can we measure success to achieve a greater impact if all were operating independently? That’s what the partners in Achieve Escambia’s Kindergarten Readiness Collective Action Network (CAN) are working to define this summer. They have met to learn about the many organizations and programs in Escambia County that are providing services to children ages 0-5. They are identifying bright spots and the gaps in that work. Then they’re determining what we can do better as a community to align our efforts so that more of our students can begin kindergarten ready to learn.

At Cox, we care deeply about education because education and our local economy are interconnected. The children of today are the workforce of tomorrow! Research shows, when our children are ready for kindergarten, they become more likely to be prepared for academic success, high school graduation, career readiness, and they are inevitably set on for a path that will lead to their economic success — cradle to career. We all win when we invest in this long-term approach.

An investment in our community’s future

It wasn’t that long ago when communities like ours looked to improve student success and career readiness by asking educators to do more to improve results. The more we learn about student performance, the easier it is to understand why educators can’t do it alone. In order to have the best chance at success, young people not only need guidance and support from teachers, non-profits, families and the community as a whole, but they need all of those efforts to be aligned.

That’s where movements like Achieve Escambia come in. The collective impact model used by Achieve Escambia is a proven method to align efforts. When working together, we accelerate the pace of our success and ultimately, improve long term outcomes.

Whether it is making financial contributions, volunteering or aligning efforts, groups from across our community are seeing the importance of investing in our community’s future. Achieve Escambia is not here to compete with any of the talented and dedicated program providers for volunteer time or financial support. Rather, Achieve Escambia is working to bring these groups together, to create a unified vision, a shared strategy and an open forum for collective action.

What does this mean for Escambia County?

If you or your organization is involved with children from birth to age 5, we would want you to be part of our Kindergarten Readiness CAN. We recently launched our updated website, and we encourage everyone to check it out: AchieveEscambia .org.

In order for this effort to be successful, we all need to invest. Whether it’s time, talent or treasure, our community’s future success is based on the work being done today. This is an exciting and dynamic time we’re living in,, and our current and future generations need us to get to work now to make sure they have the best opportunity at a better tomorrow. I hope you or your organization join the Achieve Escambia movement to help our community achieve success.

David Deliman is market vice president at Cox Communications and a member of Achieve Escambia’s Leadership Council.

A Chief's Corner

I must admit, it is a bittersweet time for my family and I. Earlier this month, I retired from the Pensacola Police Department. I can still remember the excitement and optimism I had for the job when I was hired by PPD as a cadet in 1983. My passion, excitement and optimism for the job are still with me, and for that I’m grateful.

But as Ecclesiastes 3:1 teaches us, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heavens.” During my time as Pensacola’s Police Chief, I had the pleasure of being part of Achieve Escambia. And even though my season of service to the police department is coming to an end, my season of service to Achieve Escambia and the Pensacola community will continue on.

A lot of people have asked me, “Chief, what is Achieve Escambia?” From my perspective, it’s an “all-in” partnership that is bringing people from across our community together to discuss how we can align our efforts to help our community become more successful. I like to think of it like a church choir. Escambia County is the choir, and in the choir are educators, parents, pastors, business leaders, doctors and countless others, all doing their part to help make a positive difference in the lives of children and families.

However, for as long as I can remember, these talented members of the choir haven’t been singing from the same sheet of music. Sure, the choir is loud but the message is lost. Achieve Escambia is working to bring those talented voices to the table to 1) discuss the song selection, 2) determine the beat and 3) agree on how we can determine if the songs are a success. 

It’s pretty cool. We’ve started first in the area of Kindergarten Readiness, and the choir is starting to come together.

Later this year, we’ll launch our second area of focus, career readiness. This is going to be a long-term effort and it may take years to see results. But as other communities around the country have shown us, when a community starts talking about what we all are doing and working to align efforts, the outcomes are pretty exciting. Imagine children on track and ready to learn their first day of kindergarten; high schoolers graduating on time and young adults prepared to succeed in whatever area they choose for their life after school.

I look forward to continuing to advocate for the youth in our community, and continuing to serve with Achieve Escambia. If you’re already involved, thank you and the entire team appreciates your effort! If you’re just learning about Achieve Escambia, please sign up for our newsletter which will help keep you informed on how you can support this effort to improve local lives, from cradle to career!

David Alexander, III

Chief of Pensacola Police Department (Retired) and At-large member of the Achieve Escambia Leadership Council

What exactly is Achieve Escambia?

Over the past 18 months, you may have seen news articles about a movement called “Achieve Escambia” that is working to improve outcomes from cradle to career in our community. In the near future, you will be hearing and seeing a lot more from this effort.

What is Achieve Escambia?

The best way may be to describe Achieve Escambia may be to explain what it is not.

 It is not a program that provides a service.

 Achieve Escambia is a collective impact approach to improving cradle to career outcomes. In other words, we’re looking to align the work being done by so many wonderful groups in our community so that they will complement each other.

 Collective impact works to bring educators, non-profits, parents, students, businesses, and faith leaders together to determine how to achieve a specific goal, and how to measure success.

One year ago, more than 200 people from across the community came together at the Corinne Jones Community Center at Sanders Beach to determine what areas Achieve Escambia would focus on first.

 By an overwhelming vote, kindergarten readiness was selected as our first priority outcome.

Since then, 30-plus partners have been meeting monthly to discuss bright spots and gaps within our community. The core focus of this group is to help get children ages 0-5 ready for kindergarten. We will soon move into pilot projects and systems improvements, working across sectors and organizations to align resources and efforts.

Our first baseline report will be launched by the end of the summer. Achieve Escambia is using data to drive our decision making and our partners in this effort include the University of West Florida’s Haas Center, Studer Community Institute, and all cradle to career providers. This allows for all involved to understand our goals and to keep political or emotional factors from being part of the equation.

Later this year, Achieve Escambia will begin work on our second “Collective Action Network,” or CAN. Working in partnership with FloridaWest, CareerSource Escarosa and other key partners, this CAN will focus on career readiness.

I am humbled to be a part of such a movement. If Escambia County is to be successful in the educating of all of her children, then it will take an intentional, concerted effort from all of her residents. Some can’t be at the table of change while others are not. Some can’t care, while others care less. For Escambia County to push toward greater success, from cradle to career, then it will take greater efforts from all of us who love and call Escambia County our home.

You may be wondering, “Why should this be important to me?” Well, the answer is simple. We are working to improve future generation’s economic opportunities. We live in a dynamic and changing world. We want our community’s children to be prepared to succeed. Escambia County has the tools (all the talented and committed groups working with our youth), now we just need to make sure we’re all working toward the same goal. All of us rowing the boat in the same direction will help generations find the economic success we all desire our children to have.

Many people have asked us, “How can I get involved?” Well, if you or your organization is involved with children from birth to age 5, we would want you to be part of our Kindergarten Readiness CAN. Or there are other areas of focus that might interest you more. We recently launched our updated website, and we encourage everyone to check it out: AchieveEscambia.org.

This push to align efforts is very exciting for our community. It will take an entire community sharing our vision of improving outcomes, cradle to career, to help our friends and families have a shot at a better tomorrow. The work has already begun. Join us today to be part of the solution.

Lonnie Wesley is the pastor at Greater Little Rock Baptist Church and is member of the Achieve Escambia’s Leadership Council Executive Committee