Cooper Street Center, Boys & Girls deal to assist more teens

PUNTA GORDA — A Punta Gorda councilman said a recently announced partnership between New Operation Cooper Street and Boys & Girls Clubs of Charlotte County will allow the community center to assist more teenagers.

Under the new relationship, the Boys & Girls Clubs will operate its programming within New Operation Cooper Street — commonly called the Rec Center — saving the iconic center money and allowing it to offer services and programs to more children under the Boys & Girls umbrella.

“This will allow us to put more resources to the teen area,” District 1 Councilman Jaha Cummings, a Rec Center board member, said Wednesday during a City Council meeting.

“This is very important because in the county, in general, there is a serious lack of services to teens, especially when it comes to career exploration and higher educational outreach,” Cummings said. “Because of the mandates the state requires on school boards, the guidance counselors, which were only at a one-to-seven ratio, have to put their time into testing. So they’re not able to have as much contact with kids as we’d like, helping them visualize their future.”

The move gives the center the flexibility to expand resources to middle- and high-school students, offering a services such as career readiness initiatives, higher educational opportunities, applications for colleges and universities and financial aid/scholarship information.

The New Image Project — a program that pairs middle-school children with histories of referrals or suspensions with high school mentors — will move from Punta Gorda Middle School to the center. A second tier of the program is devoted to career readiness.

“We want to expand the time we have the kids, and on a more reliable basis. It’s tough to do this all during a school day,” Cummings said on Tier 1 of the New Image program, noting it has a 86 percent non-recidivism rate.

Cummings said the South County Library is aiding with college preparatory workshops and federal student aid application assistance, while Keiser University is helping students prepare for the ACT test.

“We’re hoping to become a model for one of three teen centers in the county,” Cummings said, adding each area — Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte — has its own specific needs.

“We’re really the first to target the needs of teens. Soon teens will be adults, and we’re in a situation where we have an economy that can be a lot more robust if we had a workforce that was ready for it,” Cummings said.

The Boys & Girls Clubs provides a wide range of youth programming from educational support to health and life skills to STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) programs.

The center’s summer program was cut in 2017 due to renovations — funded by a $3,000Selby Foundation grant — and fall enrollment declined as facility upgrades took longer than anticipated. The partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs, however, is expected to boost enrollment once again.

The city appropriated $15,000 from its Trabue Woods neighborhood improvement priority list Wednesday to upgrade the interior of the Rec Center, including new furnishings. In another move, City Council allocated $5,000 a year to the Agripreneur Fresh Market and Garden program for start-up and operating costs.

While the partnership between the Rec Center and the Boys & Girls Clubs has been greeted with praise, a community group has voiced concerned over a proposal to restrict park use.

To accommodate the Boys & Girls Clubs’ morning drop-off schedule and daily programs, the center is in discussions with parents to expand the restricted hours to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The park at the center is currently closed to adults between 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Arlene Gadsden, representing Trabue Woods United Association, a nonprofit community group, said the organization would accept a 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. restriction, noting the community has not been given a chance to voice its concerns.

“I’ve been in Charlotte County all my life, a long time,” she said. “I have three beautiful children that I brought up in the community. As a parent, I’m sure a lot of people here can attest to family time. Our children today are being robbed of that. They just don’t know.

“I require my children to come home and sit down so they have memories. And 6 p.m., to me, is a time to tell the children to go home and be with your family,” Gadsen said.

The center has been critical to the Punta Gorda Historic District neighborhood revitalization, which began about five years ago. It’s been offering academic and recreational programs in the city for 40 years.

Email: jscholles@sun-herald.com