Rhea Chiles was close to tears as she recognized students from Pasco High School for their efforts in participating in the Worst To First initiative on Tuesday, February 16. She honored the students at the University of South Florida by presenting them a painting of a river titled “Heartland,” which she painted herself.
Pasco High School was the first in Florida to reach the 1,000-pledge goal after six of the students returned from a Lawton Chiles Leadership conference in Orlando back in August. “The conference motivated them to take action because the facts and the figures really hit home to them,” Pasco High School teacher Beverly Ledbetter said.
The students organized registration drives, petitions, talked to community leaders, made ads for the school’s television, participated in a video contest, won the contest, and got more than 1,400 petitions signed.
Currently, Florida is ranked 35 in the nation when it comes to the average well being of a child, and second when it comes to uninsured children. Florida students scored 48 on ACT scores and 43 nationally on the SATs. Barely 60 percent of Florida’s students graduate. “Unless we go out there and tell them how bad it is, now one will really know,” Nate Goswick said, a student at Pasco High School.
The goal of the Worst To First initiative is to get the young people involved as advocates with policy makers and create a better solution to kids who are heading in the wrong direction. Bud Chiles, son of the late governor Chiles, is bringing “One Million Steps for Florida’s Kids” by walking from Orlando to Tampa to bring awareness to the Worst To First campaign. So far, he has walked 255 miles, and on Wednesday, February 17, Bud did a walk with preschoolers from A Brighter Community Pre-school to the Ybor City Library.
Bud’s goal is to move politicians to fund programs that would help the children before they start heading in a wrong direction. “Kids start acting up and getting in trouble when they get frustrated in second, third, and fourth grade because they can’t read,” Bud said.
Florida has one of the highest teen crime rates, and according to Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin Beckner, 70 percent of juveniles in the correction’s facilities are there for a nonviolent offence. “Once they get put in the system, they tend to progress to worse crimes,” Beckner said.
According to officials it takes the state an average $20,000 a year to house an inmate in Florida. Bud Chiles doesn’t want Florida to raise more funds set up intervention programs, but to put the use of taxpayers’ money in a more productive way. “We’ve got to make sure we’re investing in success and not failure,” Bud said. “Instead of paying for emergency rooms because kids are getting into fights, pay for clinics and programs.”
The Children’s Board of Hillsborough County has done just that by launching pilot programs and through reinvestment policies has saved the county $800,000. But Luanne Panacek, CEO of the Children’s Board, is tiered and frustrated with policy making in Tallahassee. “There are many concrete things we can do if we just get the right policies in,” Panacek said.
The Lawton Chiles Foundation and the Worst To First initiative sponsored a video contest in the spirit of the Anti-Smoking campaign. The whole campaign was turned over to students. They became the experts because they were the ones who produced the videos and produced the change. “I have seen what kids can do, and what these students are doing today is so important,” Rhea Chiles said.
This article appears in Feb 17-23, 2010.