The quantity and quality of tutors and mentoring relationships in Jefferson City Public Schools has expanded through community partners over the past 16 months.
At the beginning of last summer, the school district set out to increase the number of reading tutors available for sixth-graders through the Adult Basic Literacy Education program, and it merged its former "JC Champions" mentoring program with the services of the Missouri Valley Big Brothers Big Sisters in August 2017.
ABLE operates out of the same JCPS-hosted office that provides other adult education programs such as high school equivalency test preparation and English Language Acquisition classes and, for 10 years, has offered tutors for sixth-graders.
ABLE's Executive Director Felicia Poettgen said Friday 55 tutors are serving 70 students - up from 20 tutors serving 25 students last year.
Poettgen said there's also been success in getting more men to apply as tutors. She knew of at least 12 male tutors this year, compared to three last year.
She did not want to dwell on space issues because "we'd really like to increase the program as much as we can," but she did say "finding a space for all the tutors to meet with their student is difficult."
Tutors only meet with their students at 1:10 or 2 p.m., she said - meaning tutors are competing for only so much available space in middle school work rooms, libraries and commons areas at the same times. "They meet in any room that is available," Poettgen added.
"We're doing the best we can, and the schools are doing the best they can to find spaces," she said. She added ABLE tutors have "been welcomed and made very comfortable by all the staff" at Lewis and Clark and Thomas Jefferson middle schools.
She said tutors give feedback reports to students' teachers.
JCPS Superintendent Larry Linthacum said in May the district would like to expand the program to serve at least 150 students in the fifth and sixth grades - so the district is about half way to its goal.
The district's long-term goal is to have all students reading at or above their grade level or otherwise attaining individual educational goals if on a specialized plan.
Linthacum said at last month's board meeting the district would hopefully have some data to see if the increase in volunteers is making a difference, adding he's a tutor himself and tutors meet once a week with individual students.
Lee Knernschield, director of Big Brothers Big Sisters, said at last month's board meeting the merger of the district's former mentoring program with her agency's services has increased accountability.
"We found that, unfortunately, there were a significant number of mentors that were not meeting with the child consistently, and maybe there was not a quality visit going on, so that was a huge goal of ours. And we addressed this and closed matches that were truly not active and worked to find new mentors for these children," Knernschield told the district's Board of Education.
Knernschield estimated Friday 25 percent of the previous mentors were not meeting with their mentees on a weekly basis.
She said JC Champions was a great program, but Big Brothers Big Sisters staff have offered better monitoring capabilities - "(JC Champions') goals were right, but there was not the level of supervision in our matches that our agency offers."
JCPS is in the second school year of a two year agreement with Big Brothers Big Sisters in which the school district provides financial support for the agency's coordination of the school-based mentoring program.
She said Friday Big Brothers Big Sisters is serving 113 children through its school-based program, in addition to another 50 children from the community who are JCPS students. The number of child mentees in the school-based program had already increased from the 100 she had cited for the board because of new volunteer matches in the weeks since.
However, Knernschield added the agency still does not have enough volunteers. There are 22 Jefferson City children on the waiting list for a mentor.
Though she added big brothers and big sisters are needed at schools all over the city, Big Brothers Big Sisters has strategically reached out to local churches in the vicinity of Jefferson City public school buildings for more volunteers - Capital West Christian Church for Lawson Elementary School; Concord Baptist Church for Lawson and Thomas Jefferson Middle School; Capital City Christian Church for South Elementary School; and Union Hill Baptist Church in Holts Summit for Callaway Hills and North elementary schools.
"We have had a decent amount of success with Capital West and Union Hill," Knernschield said, though it usually takes a few times for people to hear about the opportunity to volunteer before they make the commitment.
School-based mentors meet with their mentee child for up to an hour a week, and community-based mentors meet with their mentee for up to two hours a week, she said.
"Volunteers grow so much personally as well," she said. "They're going to learn so much about themselves, as well as the needs in the community."
People interested in volunteering as a tutor with ABLE can call 573-636-5558 or email [email protected].
People interested in volunteering with Big Brothers Big Sisters can call 573-634-3290 or email [email protected].