Alright. Hey, Nice to meet you.
Good evening, everybody. It is Monday, September 23. This is the meeting of the Province Recreational Advisory Board. Madam clerk, could you follow-up?
Vice chair Sanchez. Present. Councilman Vargas. Present. General Lafayette is absent.
Kenneth Phillips is absent. We have three present and two absent. We have a quorum.
Excellent. Well, welcome back, everybody. Hope everybody had a good summer. We are here at Vincent Brown Recreation Center tonight. I'm really excited to be here and hear about all the great things that's going on here.
So we're kicking things back off again. We took you know, we've been for the last one, may take a couple of months off for for the summer. Lots of exciting things, I think, that happened throughout the summer, which we'll hear about shortly. But but we are I think things back off and getting things back in here. And I think, you know, we'll talk about our schedule.
We'll be a little bit later on, but, you know, getting things back going on a on a monthly basis basis for the winter because boxing board things are coming up in the rec department. We have a pretty full agenda tonight, so we will dive right into it, and start off. We have as our guests tonight, director Grace, Perlin Perry, who is the director of the Vincent Brown Rec Center, tonight. And if others that are here from the center Assistant director in the last center. And assistant director.
Hello, guys. Hello. Excellent.
Sassy Granados, director of Elmwood Community Center.
Awesome. Well, excited to be here tonight. And before we get started, we had the chance to floor the facility earlier. Some good upgrades that that came here, in terms of flooring and some of the other things that are being addressed. So really excited stuff going on here at Midsummer Brown and director Perry.
We're excited to hear from you about about everything that's going on here at Midsummer Brown.
I'll start off by saying on
behalf of the advisory board, we'll get one this later, but thank you guys for what we do on a daily basis. You guys are we say this to all the rec centers and records that we go around to, but it's absolutely true that you guys really are touching the lives of our kids in this city every single day. And I think we as a board think that the recreation department is the most important department in the city. We strongly believe that, and the work due to that, we're doing some maintenance. So thank you guys for what you do every day in this building.
Andrew. Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah. Thank Thank you.
Alright. Well, I'll I'll just start you off just with this portion of
it just so we can shut up. Oops. Sorry.
So the agenda for the presentation today, so we're gonna do Vincent Brown, the facility, which you guys just toured, the programming, and then we'll get into summer programming activities, fall sports and activities, then the department updates, and then any future agenda items that you guys have on AskAbout, and then public comment, obviously. So we'll start off with, with Harlan and Linda, and we'll talk about Vincent Brown. So what's up, Vincent Brown?
Yeah. So so, obviously, you've met me. I'm Harlan Perry, director. And this job means a lot to me because I came here as a child. So I grew up right down the street on Camp Street, 206 Camp Street.
So this means a lot to me. So, basically, at Vincent Brown, what we try to do is engage as much community youth as possible. And along with the community youth, we try to partner up with people that is willing to give back to the community, give back to the youth. Because like we said, the youth obviously is our future, so that's that's big for me. Everything basically I do in life is about the youth.
So I've been coaching Monahoke Cowboys for twenty years now. That's Mon Holt. It's Mon Holt community based for a lot of kids from out of Providence that, participate in our part on the football. Over here, home field is our Oak High School and our practice for sale. Our practice field is down at Peter Pan Bus Station.
So Vincent Brown, Morehold, Cowboys go hand in hand and a lot of the same kids. So just giving back to community, taking the kids and just giving them something to do to keep them off the streets. We know where free time could become bad time. So that's really what we gotta kinda model ourselves after. We got a bunch of programs.
So our biggest time of the year, as you know, or might not know, summer summer program, summer camp. In seven weeks, just the busiest. You get the most the most kids in and out the building, meeting new parents. So program along with that. Like, you have your summer program that the rec puts forward.
And then here, we give our own programming. So, like, we have skills and drills, that's co ed. So we got a couple, people on staff that coach high school basketball. Phil Goddard and, Clarence Cooper. They are coaching at the high school level.
So they'll take the kids that wanna do basketball skills and drills. They'll keep them hanging in the gym, and then I'll take the kids along with some staff. We got a bunch of high school kids that play high school football at Hope High School, LaSalle Academy, St. Rayfield's Academy That all worked for us during the summer job opportunity. And we'll go take the football kid and over and train.
We've got some of our other staff, female staff, that do, like, dance and stuff with the kids that don't want to participate in athletics. So we try to build our own programming within the summer program. So after you got your summer program, so we'll get into, like, fall programs. Fall programs like falls is total opposite from summer. Summer so far, upbeat.
Falls like downbeat. So we're actually planning for, recreation summer. I mean, our recreation winter basketball league that starts in January. So we'll start signing the kids up. We'll give them practice, and we'll get all the teams together, boys and girls.
So I think we was maybe one of the only recreation centers. I'm not too sure on the numbers that had all six teams. So 10 new girls, 12 new girls, 14 new girls, and the same thing on the boys' side. So my big thing when I came in is I try to get the girls involved a lot more inside whether it's sports or arts and crafts, anything like that. So bunch of good stuff.
We have a after school program that comes with the floor that some kids, we get two fanfulls from Martin Luther King. That's right down the street. So they'll come in here. They'll be fed a snack, homework help. We have some volunteers for that, some former Providence school teachers that help us out with that.
So good stuff with that. So, you know, all around. And then we'll have our banquets, just, praising the kids and stuff like that. So good stuff going on with that. And if you wanna add anything, you could add anything.
As far as for the summer program, we kept the kid really busy with a lot of field trips and programs. We did the baking club back here. They got to do an enzyme bake. We did the garden club in the back, and we also have a garden down at Fox Point. They have the garden down at Billy Taylor so the kids get to hand down.
They get to plant even in the back. Right now, we have extra seeds. Have to plant the collard greens, a couple of onions, water the plants. So while we have the cookbooks in the summer, they get to tend to the garden also. We did a lot of field trips, so we took them down to the children's museum.
The kids had a lot of fun. We did kayaking. We started a fishing program this summer. So we went down to Slater. The kids got to hands on fishing.
Even Harlan a lot. I got to take some fish off the huts, learn how to do bait. It was a lot of fun.
about food? No? Okay. Alright.
Well, welcome. Got good service every weekend with our assistant director. We had a JR day. Hand on. We gave bags back for the kids also.
It'd be a very nice day. And for the fall, we're trying to get more programs, like you said, into the rec. So we have the dance studio coming in. We're gonna try to get some baton lessons with some of the girls. Crocheting, we wanna try to get that in hand this summer I mean, this winter.
And still basketball, so we just got our rosters finalized so we can try to get practice going, get the hands unbowled, get the kids going, finalize on bowling too. I'd ask those to be submitted by this week. Get the kids out every Saturday bowling. Gotta keep them up busy if possible, like I always said.
So, you know, we as a boarder, it really support you guys and the work that you do. So, you know, we ask this about excellence. When you feel like the big needs are, you know, there there are things that you could do or, you know, resources weren't an option. That's never the case. But if they weren't for whatever reason, what are the types of things that you guys feel like you need here to provide better programming, better opportunities?
I just think the more the more the more, like, technical we could get, like, the, like, more computers, laptops, because everything with the kids is just always on is always on, like, a blackboard, like, a system not to squeeze you. So we have, like, three computers in there. But say we'll get, like, maybe forty, fifty, 60 kids that come in between from Martin Luther King and Nathan Bishop Middle School and Hope High School and just to have three computers. So you kinda gotta, it's almost like you're, like, speeding them up. Like, alright.
You've got fifteen minutes, but obviously, you know that you can't get all your work done in fifteen minutes. So if we get, like, more support like that, then I think that's our biggest thing because I'm big on, like, the student portion of it. Like, I know rec center is about athletics and a bunch of other stuff, but I always preach student athlete first. So we could get more stuff like that to where we're not alright. Fifteen minutes.
Now the next fifteen minutes, and they might finish our assignment. And most of the times, they don't finish the assignment. But just to be fair to all the kids who have homework to do, you know, we kinda, like, give it in time slots of fifteen minutes.
There's also good things. I mean, I would just say, you've been, you know, pretty advocating for
You know, trying to get the gym floor done. Some of the other things that are gonna
