Jacksonville City Council approves $2.5 million for Kids Hope Alliance

About $2.5 million is coming to the Kids Hope Alliance to help at-risk youth in Jacksonville by way of the City Council.

Action News Jax reporter Ryan Nelson dug into how the money will be spent and spoke to a local group about how the money will help.

Ellen Wiss is president and founder of Read USA, Inc. She tells Action News Jax their program is working to bring illiteracy to an end in Jacksonville. She says doing so may be the key to ending senseless violence in the city.

“When you are empowered to read and you learn to love to read, you find a different trajectory for your life,” she said.

She tells Action News Jax that  Read USA is launching a peer-to-peer teen tutoring program this summer. 
Wiss says they plan on hiring about 100 Jacksonville teens to tutor children in reading and writing skills this summer.

“They’re not just learning something to make money,” said Wiss. “They’re learning and then giving back to these kids that they’re going to be tutoring.”

Read USA’s $60,000 project is being funded by the Kids Hope Alliance. It’s coming directly from the $2.5 million approved by the City Council on Tuesday.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity for us to deploy more dollars into some of the critical areas,” said Kevin Gay, Kids Hope Alliance board chairman.

Read USA is one of seven programs, including the I’m a Star Foundation, YMCA and Boys And Girls Club of Northeast Florida, that were pre-approved for direct funding.

Of the $2.5 million, 32.8% was pre-approved, while 57.8% has been set aside for the request for proposal process.

We received a statement from KHA describing the RFP process:

“The Kids Hope Alliance executive team will be working with City of Jacksonville Office of General Council (sic), Chief of Procurement, the KHA board, and their Governance and Finance committees to craft the scope of work and details for all program RFPs and direct funded contracts resulting from the funding. Interested agencies are encouraged to watch the KHA website for announcements and details.”

The program’s budget is broken down into categories including early learning, out-of-school time, preteen and teen, special needs, juvenile justice, professional services and Medicare tax.

Wiss says the program will be transformative.

"It's kind of a win-win on both sides," she said.  "Having a job opportunity for the teens is huge."
The measure passed with the support of the mayor and a 17-1 vote. Councilman Garrett Dennis was the lone councilman to vote against the measure.

Dennis told Action News Jax in a statement, “For years, the City Council has found itself in last-minute efforts increasing our summer programming. I sought to increase that funding for the upcoming summer in our Title I schools, but my colleagues did not agree with me.”

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