Eugene Family YMCA asks 4J to make school spaces available for youth activities

Presenter: Two leaders from the Eugene Family YMCA ask the Eugene 4J School Board to renew a partnership, by opening up schools to support local youth and families. Speaking during public comment March 4, Holly Kriz-Anderson:

Holly Kriz-Anderson (Eugene Family YMCA): My name is Holly Kriz-Anderson. I’ve worked for the Eugene Y for 26 years and currently serve as the VP of Operational Excellence.

I’m here tonight because the Y wants to be seen as a partner with the district, a partner that helps support youth and families in ways that compliment the work that happens inside your schools.

At the Y, relationships are at the heart of everything we do. We believe that youth thrive when the adults and organizations around them work together to create a strong, supportive community.

For many families, the Y, Kidsports and the school district are some of the most consistent supports in a young person’s life.

Today, the Y operates programs in 17 schools across the districts and serves more than 1,500 youth each year through childcare and youth sports. Together we help support youth from their earliest years all the way through graduation.

At the Y, that journey may begin in early childhood programs or childcare. It continues through swim lessons, youth sports, summer camps, and Parents Night Out. Families use our zones where youth ages six weeks to 10 can spend time safely while parents take a moment to work out, catch up on emails, enjoy a cup of coffee with their friend, or simply take a breath.

As youth grow into middle school and high school, their needs change and we grow with them. They may join cooking classes, learn 3D printing, participate in Youth & Government, or sometimes it is simply a snack and a safe place to be between school and home.

Sometimes the most important thing we provide is not a program, it’s a safe place, trusted adults who know their name.

And none of this work happens in isolation. Our work depends on relationships with the people who care for youth every day in your schools: custodians, front office staff, teachers, the EAs, the counselors, the principals, facilities staff, and the food service teams. Those relationships allow us to support families in meaningful ways.

When McKinney-Vento liaisons reach out because the youth needs afterschool care, we work together to place them in a program. The cost to the district and the family is zero. The Y covers it through financial assistance because we believe youth deserve a safe and secure place to be while their trusted adults are working.

When school counselors connect us with a family going through a difficult time, we work with them to remove the financial barriers so their youth has a place to go after school.

About six years ago, during a time of great uncertainty, the Y and 4J came together to stand up emergency childcare for this community. You had the space and we had the childcare expertise.

Together with an incredible group of 4J and Y staff, we made it happen because families needed us and we did that together.

Since then, our relationship has become more financially-focused and less collaborative. We understand the very real budget challenges the district is facing, and we appreciate that the facility staff have been in communication with us along the way.

We simply wish there were ways to work through these challenges that kept collaboration at the center of our relationship. The Y will always put youth and families first. We want to stand alongside the district as a partner in that work. Thank you.

Presenter: CEO Brian Steffen:

Brian Steffen (Eugene Family YMCA): I’m Brian Steffen, CEO at the Eugene Family YMCA, and I am grateful for all the hard work that you do. I spent about a decade on a school board, and I know that you’re wrestling with big challenges every day.

I recently had the opportunity to spend time in the Y’s archives looking back at some of the work that we’ve done with 4J and reading about when we leased our property on Patterson in the ’50s from 4J and worked with 4J in the ’70s to build on the property we leased for our Tennis Center, and then of course building a new YMCA on Roosevelt’s (Middle School) site.

So we’re proud of the partnership with 4J. We’re grateful for that partnership.

I’m reaching out today because what we see in the community and at the Y is similar to what you see: We see an increasing number of children who are disconnected, isolated, where they’re not as physically active and not as socially engaged as we would all hope.

And there’s partners in our community who come together and work to serve the children just like the Y and 4J: other school districts, Kidsports, Boys and Girls Clubs. 

I’m reaching out because what we see is increasingly families cannot afford to support bonds, to build schools, and to support capital campaigns, to build infrastructure, to create fieldhouses and community centers and YMCAs, and to do all of that.

Because we cannot ask the community to support capital campaigns for organizations and city bonds, it’s dependent on organizations joining together to share resources, and I’m asking the school district to join with the Y and Kidsports and other organizations to prioritize access to schools and to spaces—particularly spaces like cafeterias and gymnasiums—that many organizations cannot have on their own.

Those spaces are critical for us to apply programs like camps, after-school programs, no-school day programs, and without those, we’re left to transporting children to the Bethel School district, to renting spaces from schools and outside of 4J—churches, transporting kids to LCC and it’s taking kids out of the neighborhoods and across town.

And so I’m looking for 4J to look at the YMCA as you’ve looked at us since the ’50s, as a trusted partner who knows you face your own challenges and who doesn’t want to come with just problems, but to create solutions together with you. Thank you.

Presenter: With many local governments and agencies cutting budgets, local leaders from the Eugene Family YMCA suggest it’s time to share resources, specifically, school spaces that include gyms and cafeterias.