In neighborhood tucked out of sight for most, links to brighter future are being formed
By Steve Young, for Pigeon605
When children grow up with hunger, in a latchkey world where parents struggle to make ends meet and role models are hard to find, what chance do they have of becoming the lawyers, bankers, construction workers and teachers Sioux Falls needs in the future?
An improving chance, it turns out.
In the past few years, a collaboration of local government, faith groups, businesses and nonprofits called Sioux Falls Thrive has emerged to marshal community resources in an effort to resolve gaps in housing, food security and children’s out-of-school time. Its mandate is succinct: to support kids from lower-income backgrounds as they journey from the cradle to potential careers in the local workforce.
Thrive’s initial effort in that vein is called the Kid Link Riverside Initiative. Its focus is on children attending Laura B. Anderson Elementary, or LBA, and their families living in the Riverside, Norton Tracks and Froehlich Addition neighborhoods – north of Rice Street and on both sides of Cliff Avenue on the north side of Sioux Falls, and Valley View Trailer Park near Great Bear Ski Valley on East Rice Street.
Close-knit, multigenerational families populate the LBA community, living and laboring alongside a diversity that finds many Hispanic and Latinos in Riverside and more Native Americans in Norton and Froehlich. Statistically, they are among the most impoverished areas in Sioux Falls, with arguably the least access to reliable transportation. Though hardworking, LBA families typically stand one setback away from economic despair.
Hunger is no stranger in these neighborhoods. Citywide, the typical family income is nearly $80,000. But income in Kid Link Riverside neighborhoods averages just $57,000, according to the 2019 American Community Survey.
To stem the impacts of that income disparity, Feeding South Dakota now uses LBA as a mobile food distribution center. Through efforts by Thrive and its partners, the Nightwatch Food Truck Ministry provides hot meals Tuesday evenings outside the Sermon on the Mount Mennonite Church across the street from LBA. The Bread Break ministry likewise makes sure there is more than 200 pounds of food in the church those Tuesday evenings for people to take home.
Bookmobiles swing by. Scholarships are being provided for after-school care. And whether on the school playground or at Sermon on the Mount, those weekly Tuesday evening gatherings find volunteers, parents and children making snowflakes out of shaving cream, challenging calculators in math games and building all kinds of connections through reading, educational activities and more.
Since the day it launched in the summer of 2020, when maybe five children showed up on the LBA playground to check it out, Kid Link now serves 150 meals every Tuesday evening, Thrive president Michelle Erpenbach said. Neighborhood adults with no children come to eat. Families do too. As many as 60 children work on crafts, read books and learn through hands-on activities that seem more like fun than education.
“I can tell you from an observational standpoint,” LBA Principal Wade Helleson said, that Kid Link is “making a huge impact on this community.”
The impact Thrive really wants to bring about is moving the needle on student outcomes. That’s crucial to building a future workforce in the city. Based on research by the Augustana University Research Institute, Thrive and its partners came into this effort knowing that 82 percent of students in the LBA neighborhoods are eligible for free or reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Program, compared to 49 percent of elementary students districtwide. They also know that LBA has a slightly lower attendance rate and higher rate of chronic absenteeism than the district as a whole.
Based on previous annual state assessments, which are given in English language arts and mathematics in grades 3 through 8 and 11, and in science in grades 5, 8 and 11:
- 38 percent of LBA students met or exceeded English language arts grade-level standards on state assessments, compared with 51 percent districtwide.
- 30 percent of LBA students met or exceeded expectations on math assessments, compared with 44 percent districtwide.
- And in science, 14 percent of LBA students met or exceeded expectations, compared with 42 percent districtwide.
But this is more than a numbers game. Test scores and graduation rates are important, but Kid Link officials know it will take years to assess any improvement in those areas. In the meantime, observers say there is positive change occurring even now simply through the math of bringing additional adults and mentors into the lives of these children and their families.
Dressed in Kid Link green shirts, volunteers with the program immediately become recognizable to a child as a friend “who will play with me, or read to me, or be kind to me,” Erpenbach said. “Those kinds of relationships are more valuable than just about anything when it comes to student future success.”
Last fall, community advocate Randell Beck worked with others to start the Riverside Soccer League at Mansor-Pioneer Park every Saturday from mid-September to late October. Aided by a grant from the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation, the league provided 60 children with T-shirts, water bottles, skills training and scrimmages.
Tanette Esquibel along with her spouse, Amber Jones-Esquibel, and many of their seven children joined the soccer fun and continue to come to Sermon on the Mount on Tuesday evenings. Having moved here from Lake Andes last summer, “it’s been a big change for us, “ Jones-Esquibel said. “But the soccer and the Kid Link programs, well, we’re products of our own environment. When we see love and feel love, that becomes part of who we are. That’s part of engaging in the conversation. That’s part of having confidence.”
At LBA, Helleson said he doesn’t need to look at test scores to know Kid Link is making a difference. He tells the story of a student who was getting into fights on the playground and struggling with his behavior. Kid Link entered his life, and one Tuesday evening, when the program was short on volunteers, the boy inexplicably stepped up to help out. A grateful Kid Link staff member contacted the boy’s parents and praised what he had done. The next day at school, Helleson gave the boy a fist bump and words of appreciation.
“Those are the kinds of things where you can see Kid Link building that sense of responsibility, that sense of ownership in your community,” Helleson said.
To ultimately succeed, ownership of the Kid Link program must lie with the LBA community, Erpenbach said. Thrive isn’t there to be an enabler, she adds, but to support a community that doesn’t want to be seen as needy, but rather as having the ability and desire to help itself.
“We have got to make sure that we don’t walk in there with some kind of savior mentality,” she said. “It comes down to building trust, saying ‘I’m a real person. I’m here to help you help your kids.’ We’ll support them however we can, but ultimately, we want them to take ownership.”
So far, building the trust needed to bring about success has been a two-way street, Erpenbach said. LBA families aren’t interested in handouts. It has been a challenge at times to convince them that they can take the food or meals offered, or to make sure children take something home for Mom and Dad too.
One of the women who walks from her home to the Tuesday evening events each week typically brings money for food. It could be 85 cents one week, perhaps $3.15 the next. At first, the Kid Link staff insisted that it wasn’t necessary. But Erpenbach quickly learned to accept the woman’s offering, saying: “I never told her ‘no’ again. And I’m glad she came back because I was learning a lesson too.”
There have been many other lessons learned, Kid Link volunteers say. To not bother the father who has come to a Tuesday evening event but has fallen asleep in his chair after a long day at work. To make sure scholarships are available to families in Norton and Froehlich for after-school care at LBA who might otherwise have no other out-of-school options. To ensure when food is being offered that cultural differences in what is or isn’t appropriate to hand out is taken into consideration.
The impacts in the neighborhood where she grew up have been striking, said Kristy Tripp, a Kid Link volunteer who works as an executive assistant at Sammons Financial Group. As a child, she remembers well the Parks and Recreation Department intern or the staff member at the Girls Club who engaged her in positive ways. Kid Link volunteers are doing the same, though in a much more prolonged and sustainable way.
“When adults made me, a child, feel like I mattered, that did make a difference,” Tripp said. “So you look at Kid Link now, and you might wonder, ‘Does gluing macaroni to a piece of cardboard matter one bit?’ I mean, think about it. I’m here. I’m encouraging you. I’m hanging out with you. I’m here because I want to be here with you. And that has to matter, I feel like.”
Kid Link allows for the kind of hands-on problem-solving activities that there aren’t always time for in school, said third grade LBA teacher Kim Horn. Kids blurting out math answers before a calculator figures it out isn’t work, Horn said. It’s fun. So is making snowflakes from shaving cream.
She now sees these children coming to school who have food in their stomachs, who are less sleepy because they have the fuel in their bodies to stay alert and concentrate. And while she is convinced the standardized test scores are going to improve, she also said the relationships being forged outside of school through Kid Link “outweighs the numbers.”
“Where our kids are and where they go to, there’s no number that can really show that growth accurately,” Horn said. “We just keep showing our kids that they’re cared for and what it is to be a good person in society. That’s what’s important.”
Elaine Roberts, who sits at the front table Tuesday evenings and checks people in, nods her head in agreement. She is a retired educator who once served as president of the South Dakota Education Association. While she absolutely believes they will improve the children’s reading, math and science skills, it is lessons like learning to take turns and getting along with each other that also will move the needle on student outcomes.
“It used to be said that most people fail at work because they don’t have the social skills, because they can’t get along with other,” Roberts said. “These children are learning to get along.”
If Kid Link would end tomorrow, if the Riverside Soccer League simply went away, it would have a disappointing impact, Principal Helleson said. That’s what those programs have come to mean to the LBA community, he said. That’s what it has come to mean to Amber Jones-Esquibel and Tanette Esquibel.
“This is about more than just building relationships at school,” Jones-Esquibel said. “I always tell our kids: ‘We represent each other. We’re not bad people. We want ultimately the same goals in life.’ Kid Link is helping us to reinforce that.”
Today, tomorrow, however long it takes, they will continue that reinforcement, Erpenbach said. At some point, Sioux Falls Thrive will move on to the next neighborhood and take up the same cause there. The belief is that the time will come when the LBA community won’t need them. Its teachers and parents and neighborhood residents will carry the flag of support themselves.
Until then, Kid Link will continue to knock on doors, send out newsletters and spread the gospel of possibilities that exist when communities come together under the banners of trust, connections and unending support.
“It’s working. It really is,” Erpenbach said. “So we’re stumbling along. But more and more, we have people from the neighborhood who are really stepping up and saying, ‘This looks like a legitimate thing, and I want to be part of it.’ That makes me think this can work and is working. I really believe that.”
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